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Almost postponed this Trailer Weekly for tomorrow… simply because I got home from work this afternoon and went straight to sleep. In fact, I could have slept through till the morning, but here I am instead. :-)

Still on the Asia trip for this Trailer Weekly:

  • 食堂かたつむり (Shokudo Katatsumuri/Rinco’s Restaurant, Japan, 2010) – I will be frank – the trailer is pretty unenticing. It’s the film synopsis that intrigues:
    Rinco’s life falls apart when her boyfriend leaves her and she’s forced to move back in with her pet-pig loving mother, whom she has never been on good terms with. If that’s not enough already, Rinco also loses her voice. To escape these miserable turn of events, Rinco opens a tiny restaurant in a forest, where she serves, one customer at a time, her grandmother’s dishes. Rinco’s cooking, however, is magical: anyone who eats her food sees wishes come true.
    That sounds good enough for me to want to give this fantasy film a try – which is, by the way, director Tominaga Mai’s second film. Before Shokudo Katatsumuri came the ‘cinematic oddity’ of Wool 100%:
  • Wool 100% (Japan, 2006) – How to sum this one up? Nipponcinema writes: “[A] strange mesh of puppetry, live-action, and animation, the film tells the story of two old ladies who spend their days rifling through junk piles looking for discarded treasure. One day they return home from their scavenging and see a young girl sitting there knitting the same red sweater over and over again, unraveling it every time it’s complete. The sight makes them re-assess their lifestyles and face long-forgotten memories.” Apparently it’s fantasy and it’s horror, and certainly quirky and wonderfully one-of-a-kind. Not for everyone, but it gives me a great Zipangu sort of vibe!
  • 酔いがさめたら、うちに帰ろう。(Yoi Ga Sametara, Uchi Ni Kaero/Wandering Home, Japan, 2010 – scroll down for not-subtitled trailer) – Again, it isn’t the trailer that gets me, but the film synopsis. In the words of Stan Glick, Yoi Ga Sametara, Uchi Ni Kaero “joins a number of outstanding movies concerned with substance addiction” as it relates the story of ”a man in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, who is drinking himself into an early grave”.

I also found a few films for the want-to-watch list in a Valentine’s Day feature entitled

“Top Ten: Love Confessions in Asian Film” (do click through to watch the confession clips!) over at the Asia Pacific Arts (APA) website:

  • 听说 (Ting Shuo/Hear Me, Taiwan, 2010) – In this case, the synopsis from Asian Wiki is better ignored, because it makes the film sound boring, very much unlike the APA sum-up. Watch the trailer and the APA love confession clip instead.
  • รักแห่งสยาม (Rak Haeng Sayam/The Love of Siam, Thailand, 2007) – Although raising some controversy due to the gay storyline, the film won critical acclaim and multiple Thai film awards. Curiously that gay storyline is very much hidden from the trailer (at least as much as I can tell from the not-subtitled version).
  • 愛のむきだし (Ai no mukidashi/Love Exposure, Japan, 2009) – Last but not least, Sono Sion’s Ai no mukidashi. Somehow I still haven’t watched anything by Sono, who, well, does things his way, even if that means demanding 237 minutes of the viewers’ time or portraying extremely graphic violence. Expect a ‘way out there’ but thoroughly Japanese film.
    Sidenote: Sono’s ヒミズ (Himizu/Himizu, Japan, 2011) will be the closing film for this year’s Terracotta Film Festival. Can’t wait for tickets to go on sale!

And one more find, which I came across while hunting for film posters:

  • 토끼와 리저드 (Tokkiwa Rijeodeu/Rabbit and Lizard aka Maybe, Korea, 2009) – Judging from the comments on asianwiki, this one’s a dark love story, so reign in any expectations of a happy ending.

P.S. I dropped by Ciné lumière today and picked up a ticket for  我十一 (Wo Shi Yi/ 11 Flowers, China/France, 2011) today, which is screening as part of the Pan-Asia Film Festival in March. Yay!