When you put it like that, I guess I better get it!

Use some of the £398.91 you saved on the ‘Cold Harvest’ DVD and go for it. 😛

I’m surprised a similar effect wasn’t achieved with Mario Van Peebles after your recent ‘Solo’ review. 😛

The SMAP members, like most Asian idol groups, have also starred in plenty of movies outside of their ‘singing’ careers. Most notably, Goro Inagaki has worked with Miike before, when he played the villain in ’13 Assassins’, and Shingo Katori lamentably played Zatoichi in 2010’s ‘Zatoichi: The Last’.

Thanks, Paul! I don’t think the film’s overlong, really. But being that it does feel episodic, I can understand how it may lead one to feeling that way. Regardless, I hope you and the rest of the COF crew dig it. I think it’s a lot of fun.

I have nothing against Kimura but I don’t consider myself a fan (clicking that link was the first I’d ever heard SMAP). I barely remember him in 2046 and thought that the ‘look how cool!’ style of the live-action Space Battleship Yamato did him no favors. I thought he was good in Yoji Yamada’s samurai drama Love and Honor, though, and would recommend that film to basically anyone interested in a good historical drama. But Blade of the Immortal is the role where I think he makes the biggest impression as a movie star. Funny thing is, I tweeted a link to my review on Twitter and a flock of Kimura and SMAP fans are sharing it to far corners of foreign language Twitter. I think that’s the first time that’s happened with one of my reviews of a Japanese film, so it’s interesting to see Kimura’s star power at work.

Being familiar with Miike’s sense of humor, it almost wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to stick to the manga so closely on purpose. Kind of like a poke at those fans who complain how other manga adaptations don’t stick closely enough to the source material, so here’s what a movie looks like made exactly how you wanted it to be.

This also looks like it could finally give me an appreciation of Kimura Takuya the actor. The only movies I’ve seen him in are ‘2046’ and ‘I Come With the Rain’ (ironically both non-Japanese productions), neither of which he really registered as a performer with strong screen presence. However I may be slightly bias, in that the 4 years I spent living in Japan made it difficult for me to take him seriously, since he was on TV so much performing as a member of SMAP (a group that dominated the J-pop scene since the early 1990’s, despite none of them being particularly good singers).