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Austin Film Fest to Show Boys on the Run, Yakuza Weapon
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The live-action film versions of Kengo Hanazawa's manga Boys on the Run and Ken Ishikawa's Gokudō Heiki (Yakuza Weapon) are among the line-up at this September's Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. Although the dates for the screenings have not been announced yet, the festival runs from September 22 to 29.
Playwright and director Daisuke Miura oversaw the live-action Boys on the Run project, and Ginnan Boyz singer Kazunobu Mineta plays the main character Toshiyuki Tanishi, a toy-capsule salesman nearing thirty. The film follows Toshiyuki's changing fortunes in love and life.
Yakuza Weapon is the live-action film of a manga by Ken Ishikawa, a protégé of Gō Nagai. Its distributors bills Yakuza Weapon as "a hard-edged battle royale featuring tough gangsters, deadly women and cybernetic penis implants." The co-directors are Yuudai Yamaguchi (who directed the live-action Cromartie High: The Movie) and Tak Sakaguchi (who also stars in the film).
Other Japanese films at Fantastic Fest include the American premiere of Takaomi Ogata's Body Temperature film about a young man's relationship with a life-sized sex doll, Yoshimasa Ishibasha's "bizarro musical/variety/samurai/love story" Milocrorze, A Love Story, Shinji Imaoka's pink film Underwater Love about a fish factory worker and a mythical creature, and a 10th anniversary screening for Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus.
[Via AICN Anime]
