I recently completed a subtitle gig for the Nikkatsu film "Mutant Girls Squad," which is part of their Sushi Typhoon label. I had a blast working with Shinako from Nikkatsu and Sasaki from Mahara-Mothra. We finished things off the other day in the studio, where we really fine tuned the subs.
As can be expected from filmmakers such as Iguchi and Nishimura, they've come up with moments in the dialogue that have no equivalent in English. Luckily for me, I was given carte blanche by the directors to apply my own bent view of things based on my knowledge of Japan, the west, and my long time relationship with the directors. After all was said and done, I really do feel that the subs are above average for this kind of film and that they will offer non-Japanese speakers greater insight into the blood splattered insanity of the film. I also owe a big round of thanks to my partner, Kenichiro Shimbo.
It's come to my attention that this subtitled version of Mutant Girls Squad will be playing at Theater N from this Saturday until June 18th. Here's a link to the announcement on the MGS blog.
MGS BLOG
One of the recent Nikkatsu films whose set I spent some time on has been officially announced. It's the movie version of the 70s TV show "Denjin Zaborgar," which is the original "transforming" robot TV show. I was going to report on it for Fangoria, since director Noboru Iguchi has made some rather Fangoria styled gore films, but the movie seems to be more action than splatter, so I sent some of my photos from the set over to the Twitch website along with a quote I worked out of Iguchi between takes. Here's the link to that:
TWITCH WEBSITE
In addition, I spent several long days on the set of Yoshihiro Nishimura's latest opus. As this hasn't been officially announced I can't comment on it. But I do want to say that it was one of the most intense films sets I've been to. It was tough, emotionally and physically, but I rate it high on my life experience list. I'll be writing about the film for Fangoria. I will say this, it's a film that has the potential to be one of the most explosive genre films ever to come out of Japan. I even got a couple of lines of dialogue in the film too! (But it should be good despite this...)
A short film that I wrote the script for, "Once More," will have its premiere at the Tokyo Short Shorts film festival this weekend. It was directed by Hiroo Takaoka, who was the cameraman on my films "The iDol," and "Bringing Godzilla Down to Size." Here's the link to the page at Short Shorts:
http://www.shortshorts.org/2010/en/official/a-e.html
Not sure if this will work, but Hiroo put the trailer up on Facebook. Here's the link to that:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/video/video.php?v=453346989347&ref=mf
I notice that the Short Shorts page lists it as a "drama" film. Idiots! I guess this is because genre films get little respect at Japanese film festivals.
It was a fun script to write and I'm interested to see how it's turned out. It's the first time something I wrote wasn't shot by me. The story is basically science fiction but I strove to keep the human element strong.
Finally, my next movie is moving along. Not as fast as I'd like, but these things take time. I have a film company in Japan working on the production with me, although at this early point we're still raising capital.
Hopefully I'll have some good news about my newest project - like an official announcement - in the coming weeks.
Until then...
