Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

November 9th, Wednesday. 7:30 pm. Music Hall. RSVP to filmmatters@giantrobot.com. There will be giveaways, DVDs, signed items, and more! Here’s a few quotes: “VISUALLY STUNNING. A beautifully staged marvel that confidently reasserts Kitano’s considerable cinematic gifts. By the final reels, it’s all-out yakuza war.” – Rob Nelson, Variety “When it comes to the gangster film few have ever done it better than Kitano and with Outrage he is absolutely back in peak form. A truly iconic international crime film.” – Todd Brown, TWITCH “Bursts with direct cinematic power. Humor as mean and dry as a straight-up martini.” – Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter   Here’s the trailer [youtube]3Fj3htxRRHM[/youtube]
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It’s back to the Yakuza movies for Beat Takeshi and it’s about time. The film is a 2010 release and will be hitting the US in December. Outrage looks to be like one of his classics. It’s made the festival rounds and it seems like everyone has seen this except us which makes us think that it’s not a hard one to find. Or wait for it on the big screen. The reviews are mixed but that sounds about right for a Beat Takashi gangster movie!     [youtube]VH9Auqz0A8I[/youtube]
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The premise is amazing: After World War II, an American prisoner of war stays behind in Japanand slowly makes his way up in the ranks of the Japanese yakuza. This is the movie idea currently in being scripted at Warner Bros. by a fellow named Andrew Baldwin. No, not the reality TV personality. The idea for “The Outsider” was conceived by John Linson, who produces the FX show “Sons of Anarchy” with his father Art. Apparently, Warner Bros. loved the idea so much that the studio bought the movie based solely on the way the premise was pitched. Some entertainment trade papers are already describing the movie idea as a criminal version of “The Last Samurai”, but to us it sounds a bit more original than that. We’ve seen crime dramas before where Americans get entangled in criminal activity in Japan. Robert Mitchum in Sydney Pollack’s “The Yakuza” and Scott Glenn in John Frankenheimer’s “The Challenge” both come to mind. But in these films the Americans are definitely on the outside trying to look into a seemingly impenetrable organization or set of codes. The idea for this movie sounds like it turns the typical East-meets-West senarios in crime drama on their head. At the moment, the movie has not even been cast. But we think Edward Norton might be a good choice for the lead, since he actually does speak some Japanese. (Reuters – American Yakuza at Warner Bros.) Moviehole also has a short piece about this upcoming film.
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Amateur Japanese Radiation Detectives “If TEPCO was operating this facility in the U.S., all of the reactors would have been shut down indefinitely and there would have been a complete changeover of management.” The gist of this is that people are not very happy with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Citizens affected by the nuclear disaster in Japan view the company’s response to the crisis as slow and somewhat sloppy. According to the report at the link, for a time after the disaster TEPCO was using fire hoses and temporary water pumping equipment to attempt to cool the reactors at Fukushima. So, out of safety concerns and a sense of duty to help, some regular folks in the Fukushima and Minami Soma areas are borrowing Geiger counters and monitoring radiation levels themselves. They are not licensed specialists, and they have no formal training in radiation risk management. But one former garbage-sorting worker and one elementary school principal, amongst others, have decided the best way to assess the ongoing risks of Fukushima radiation is to do it themselves and use their common sense to get the safely through the threat. (Bloomberg-Business Week – Geiger Counter Gumshoes)   Yakuza Disaster Relief is So Efficient, it’s Just Criminal “Those lining up to profit from the clearance operation, which is expected to take three years, include homegrown gangs and Chinese crime syndicates.” For some reason, this story reminds us of the Paul Sorvino mafia character in the movie “The Rocketeer”, who takes sides with the good guys against the evil Nazi played by Timothy Dalton. Sure, that was only a movie; but the point is that bad people are capable of doing good things when their country or way of life faces a threat, whether the threat comes from humans or nature. And so it seems to be with Japan’s Yakuza, which has been credited with very quickly and efficiently offering supplies and shelter to March 11th disaster survivors, in some cases days before government agencies were able to do the same. But in the wake of that generous initial response, the Yakuza are now seen as a possible problem where the bidding for post-disaster debris removal and reconstruction contracts are concerned. Police and government officials are worried that Yakuza-affiliated companies will win these lucrative contracts by sharply under-bidding legitimate civilian firms, perhaps with the help of local government officials, and end up exporting disaster debris outside of Japan for sale on the global black market. (The Guardina UK – Yakuza Disaster Contracts)      
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