In Japan, 3D films get kicked by new samurai flicks - Movies

TOKYO (Reuters) - Hollywood 3D movies may be huge in Japan, but a wave of new samurai films threatens to tarnish their image by dazzling audiences with old-school action and some clever new twists to the sword-and-kimono stories.
From the works of filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, such as "Seven Samurai," to dramas aired on public broadcaster NHK, samurai fare has long been a staple of Japanese entertainment.
But several films in the genre are hitting theaters in a big way this autumn, led by Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins," fresh from its Venice film festival world premiere last month, kicking off a run of six major releases over three months.
The boom highlights the growing importance of older audiences to Japan's film business as the population rapidly ages and retirees with ample time and money return to the multiplexes to take in the kind of movies they enjoyed back in the samurai cinema heyday of the 1950s and '60s.
"People are retiring, the kids have left home and it's just the husband and wife with time on their hands," said Masao Teshima, president of Asmik Ace Entertainment, the studio behind "The Lady Shogun and Her Men" and "Abacus and Sword."
"There's a market for samurai dramas made for such people," he told Reuters, noting that those aged 60-65 represent Japan's biggest population segment.
Indeed, Toho release "13 Assassins," a remake of a 1963 film about a band of samurai hired to bump off the cruel brother of a Shogun, opened at a solid No. 3 on the last weekend in September, despite tough competition in a crowded market from 3D holdovers "Umizaru: The Last Message" and "Resident Evil: Afterlife."
One weekend later, "Lady Shogun," which Asmik is co-distributing with Shochiku, swashbuckled to a No. 2 debut, according to box office tracker Kogyo Tsushinsha, boding well for the upcoming four samurai movie releases.

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Dark thriller Inhale exposes moral dilemmas - Documentary

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Director Baltasar Kormakur, the Icelandic filmmaker behind "101 Reykjavik" and "Jar City," essentially has crossed fiction with documentary filmmaking to expose the worldwide criminal conspiracy to sell body organs to patients in the West.
"Inhale," opening Friday through IFC Films, is a most visceral movie, and that includes a few unnecessary sequences in which you get close-ups of a dying child, a shattered leg, a wound being sutured and, finally, human lungs about to be extracted from a still-living being.
The thriller certainly works in a dark palette. Cinematographer Ottar Gudnason shoots the film's New Mexico landscapes -- from desert vistas in suburban Santa Fe to crummy, crime-ridden streets masquerading for Ciudad Juarez across the border -- so that most of the color drains away, leaving cool, ominous tones of black and gray. James Newton Howard's music often features a guitar not only to pick up a local flavor but, again, to establish a mood that is dark with foreboding.,
Enormous pressure is bearing down on Santa Fe D.A. Paul Chaney (Mulroney). He is going to court with a case hugely unpopular with the city's Latino community -- always bad for someone who might one day run for elected office, as his friend, gubernatorial candidate James Harrison (Sam Shepard), is quick to point out. Meanwhile, he and his wife, Diane (Diane Kruger), are running out of time in their search for a lung donor for their daughter, Chloe (Mia Stallard).
The screenplay by Walter Doty and John Clafin from a story by Christian Escario keeps twisting the vise that grips these three lives tighter and tighter as the story progresses. When Paul learns he might be able to save his daughter with an illegal transplant in Juarez, he risks his life to plunge into one of the world's most notorious, crime-infested cities.
Life is cheap here, but the organs of life come at a dear price. The scenes in Juarez, where the ante gets upped seemingly by the minute, have a nearly unbearable intensity. As Chloe's situation takes a turn for the worse, Paul meets people who are potentially life savers as well as monsters. A mythical Dr. Novarro might not exist or he might be a police chief named Aguilar (Jordi Molla) or compassionate ER doctor Martinez (Vincent Perez). There also are street gangs in two different age brackets -- street kids led by one (Kristyan Ferrer) who carries firearms and finds crafty ways to get money out of the gringo stranger and older, homicidal gangsters more than willing to beat anyone to death.
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Josh Groban makes drastic changes for new album - Music

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Josh Groban is a rare commodity in the music business: a safe bet.
Classically trained, celestially voiced, the kind of sweet-faced, well-mannered, personable young man who probably gets hand-knit sweaters as gifts from fans in lieu of panties, Groban is virtually immune to the vagaries of pop-music trends.
His most recent album, the 2007 Christmas record "Noel," sold 5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and topped the Billboard 200. All told, he has sold almost 20 million albums in the United States.
Because his material appeals to adults whose taste and preferences are stable, Groban can depend on their loyalty. No one would have batted an eye had he released another collection of holiday tracks every couple of years, toured theaters and arenas, dropped in again on Oprah and "Today" and "Glee," headlined public-TV pledge drives and generally reaped the quiet but lucrative rewards of mainstream, middle-of-the-road success.
Instead, Groban, 29, decided to make some drastic changes. He split from his former manager, Brian Avnet, and signed to Q Prime, known for managing guitar extremists Metallica and Muse. He also parted with longtime producer David Foster and teamed with Rick Rubin, the bearded Zen master behind the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash and Danzig.
On his new record, "Illuminations," due November 15 on Reprise, Groban co-wrote more of the material than he ever had on previous albums, and also recorded a song by an unlikely favorite: goth-rock cult star Nick Cave.
The new partners are especially head-scratching given that Groban's music is possibly the most un-rock stuff out there. With a voice ranging between tenor and baritone, Groban draws more comparisons to Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli than Eddie Vedder or James Hetfield. It's easy to imagine him singing on the radio in the 1940s; his music, which nods to Broadway, opera and European pop, typically finds its truest expression in the kind of swelling, inspirational ballads that accompany first dances at weddings.
Moreover, Groban's older audience still buys physical albums: His breakthrough song, "You Raise Me Up," has sold a relatively modest 977,000 downloads, despite being covered by artists around the world and by "American Idol" contestants who want to bludgeon the judges with their range.
"I was in such a cozy position," Groban says of the period after "Noel" blew up and soundtracked family Christmas dinners across the world. "I had the No. 1-selling album of the year and I could have just kept doing that. But then I started to have an itch."
RUBIN SANDWICH
Groban first appeared on the music scene when he was barely out of high school, working as a rehearsal singer for events like the Grammy Awards and performing at former California Gov. Grey Davis' inauguration. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon for a few months but dropped out to focus on music.
He released a self-titled album in late 2001 that has so far sold 5.1 million copies, according to SoundScan. After a galvanizing star turn on the TV dramedy "Ally McBeal," he would perform for everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the Prince of Wales, and release three more studio albums ("Closer," "Awake" and "Noel") and three live sets ("Josh Groban in Concert," "Live at the Greek" and "Awake Live") during the next nine years. The success of "Noel" as 2007's best-selling album is doubly impressive since it came out in October of that year and only needed 10 weeks to claim the title.
Amid the post-"Noel" haze, Groban met Rubin while at lunch with Madonna's manager Guy Oseary. "I told Guy I wanted to meet Rick and he set it up, and it turned out we had a lot in common," Groban recalls. "I followed up with Rick to say that I enjoyed chatting with him and wanted to be friends, and then he heard some music and said he wanted to produce on the record."
Rubin says he wasn't apprehensive about working with Groban, despite the fact he had never tackled a project of this nature. "I like working with different kinds of artists," he says, "and working in Josh's medium seemed like an exciting challenge."
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