We've been digging for information on The First Contact (Nice No Mori ナイスの森), the next film from Japanese director ever since a flyer and trailers for it turned up in the DVD release for Ishii's The Taste of Tea. Why the effort? Well, the Taste of Tea is easily one of the best films of the year and Nice No Mori will reunite Ishii (best known on these shores as the man responsible for the anime sequence in Kill Bill) with two of his best - and my favorite - stars: Tadanobu Asano and Susumu Terajima. Well, the kind and generous Jason Gray just spotted a report on the film in Sports Nippon and kindly sent a translation our way. Voila.
"Canned coffee commercial co-stars Asano Tadanobu (31) and Terajima Susumu (41), who play brothers in the ads, are bringing the duo to the big screen. They'll reprise the characters they played in the ads for the omnibus film 『ナイスの森〜Ｔｈｅ Ｆｉｒｓｔ Ｃｏｎｔａｃｔ〜』("Nice no mori: The First Contact", culled from 21 short films. The plot will focus on the two geeky brothers and their lack of girlfriends.
The Kirin Beverage canned coffee TV ads feature the pair running through the streets and screaming brand names "Fire!" and "Gold Rush!" The comical campaign began in February of this year, with the fifth batch of ads currently on air, though there will be changes made for the film version.
--edit—(background on three directors of Nice no mori)
In the commercials, the pair are dubbed "The Rich Brothers" as they grasp the gold-coloured cans of coffee, but in the movie they'll be called "The Guitar Brothers", with an added third, younger (and foreign) sibling. Oldest brother Masakazu (Terajima), a high school teacher, and brother Masaru try to get girlfriends by taking crash courses on how to dance and play guitar.
Holding a "Guitar Brothers" megaphone, director Ishii Katsuhito said of the brothers' big screen debut "Just the two of them together in the commercials was funny..."
"I can really let loose when I act with Terajima," says Asano, who plays the younger of the pair, who seem to have become friendly brothers in real life. The film is set to open next year."
So the feature's based on coffee ads? And what's with the Japanese and their coffee ads, anyway? Back in the day a Japanese canned coffee company hired the entire cast of Twin Peaks to do some spots for them ... but enough of that, here are the trailers.
Teaser (downloadable AVI)
Trailer (downloadable AVI)
The more I read about it, the more I desperately want to see this film. By the way, you can see the ads in question here: http://www.beverage.co.jp/product/cm/fire/
(spotted a while ago; had no idea it had anything to do with Nice No Mori)
Is Taste of Tea out on DVD yet?
When I was in Japan during July I saw a vending machine with Tadanobu Asano on it for Fire! and I got one and it tasted terrible. However, I'm sure the movie will be awesome.
I think I first saw the Fire coffee ads about the same time that the Taste Of Tea DVD came out. There already seemed to be a lot of footage shot for Nice No Mori at that point, so it makes me wonder whats taking so long! I think saying that this movie could be "based on" the Fire ads is stretching it a bit since the ads generally just involve two people shouting - they're hardly fully-formed characters...
I've got a theory about that ... I'm reasonably confident that Ishii shot his part of Nice No Mori either simultaneously to Taste of Tea or immediately afterwards. Pretty much the entire Taste cast is in this and if you look at the length of Asano's hair in these trailers compared to the stills from the new Aoyama flick or the Rampo Jigoku trailer it seems pretty clear that this was shot before either of those. (Okay Jasom, you win ... it is an unhealthy fixation...)
Why would it take so long from then? Ishii would have had to finish Taste of Tea off before even thinking of this one and he's been taking Taste of Tea around festivals pretty much non stop since then which wouldn't have left much time for editing. Plus there's the animation component which would've been started afterwards. Plus some parts look to be pretty effects heavy, which means lots of time in post. Plus who knows when the other two directors got their stuff together and got rolling ...
Or Grasshoppa may have just wanted some spacing in their release schedule.
A streaming teaser trailer (tokuhô) has been added to the official website for Aniki's Custom Made 10.30 (Kasutamu meido 10.30). Aniki (Hajime Ishimine) is one of the three directors of Naisu no mori: The First Contact - the other two being Katsuhito Ishii and Shin'ichirô Miki.
Back in March, I posted a link here on Twitch to the Kirin Fire Gold Rush commercials, under the article on Naisu no mori: The First Contact entitled "A Little Help?".
BTW, in the still featured in the Twitch article "Images From The First Contact", the orifice in question apparently is some sort of navel (cf. 00:50 and 01:50 in the theatrical trailer (yokoku) for Naisu no mori: The First Contact).
Internet Movie Database (IMDb):
Naisu no mori: The First Contact
I was looking at that Custom Made trailer earlier today ... not quite sure what to make of it ...
I saw the film at the Hawaii International Film Festival and it was amazing. If anyone has any information on where to buy the dvd when it is released, please e-mail me. Thanks!
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