Je t’aime is the extended version of a music video created by Mamoru Oshii for the J-Rock band GLAY and their song Satellite of Love or rather a declaration of love for basset hounds all over the planet. Skip to minute nine if you’d rather see some cyberpunk action from the director of Ghost in the Shell than dogs with too much skin…

[via Catsuka & @animeresearch]

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The Sky Crawlers isn’t exactly a hot topic, but just in time for the upcoming German DVD and Blu-ray Disc release, Universum Anime brings us a dubbed trailer for Mamoru Oshii’s latest theatrical anime. You may not understand a word if you’re reading the English version of this site, but let me tell you that this trailer is quite different from the misleading US trailer from Sony Pictures that tries to sell the film as a Top Gun type action flick.

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Asian Blu-ray Guide Contributor AnimeOnBlu just reported that Well Go USA will release Mamoru Oshii’s Assault Girls not only on DVD (as mentioned here) but also on Blu-ray Disc on October 19th. So Oshii fans have the chance to get their Girls with Guns kick with English subtitles for cheap if they don’t want to import the Japanese release.
My copy of the Japanese limited edition Blu-ray Disc arrived a few days ago and will be the subject of my next Blu-ray Disc Spotlight.
Pre-order Mamoru Oshii’s Assault Girls on Blu-ray Disc at Amazon.com

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After the first announcement back in December, the first images from Mamoru Oshii’s live-action adaptation of Tetsujin 28 (aka Gigantor) have surfaced. The film will be called 28 ½, I guess to seperate this version from the other adapations.
The first shot kinda reminds me of Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers…

[via Twitch & Official Website]

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Good news for those who’d like to take a closer look at Mamoru Oshii’s Assault Girls without importing the Japanese DVD or Blu-ray Disc that will be released next week on June 23rd.
Nippon Cinema reports that Well Go USA has acquired the US rights for Oshii’s Girls with Guns flick starring Meisa Kuroki, Rinko Kikuchi and Hinako Saeki, and will release it on R1 DVD on October 19th.
This release is supposed to include English subtitles for the Engrish dialogues. Although Well Go USA has already released several titles on Blu-ray Disc, no high definition release has been announced this time.

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Fans of heavily armed and armored girls rejoice! Geneon Entertainment Japan has announced to release Assault Girls, Mamoru Oshii’s quasi-sequel to Avalon on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on June 23, 2010 in standard and special collector’s editions. The latter will include a bonus disc with a bunch of promotion material, the ‘prequels’ to Assault Girls, Assault Girl (Oshii’s segment for True Female Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters, click here to watch) and Assault Girl 2 (taken from the Kiru ~ KILL omnibus), a 92-page storyboard script written by Oshii and an enhanced booklet (16 pages instead of just four).
None of these editions will include English subtitles, but according to some theatrical reviews the films dialogues are all in Eng(l/r)ish anyway. Hopefully our sweet girls had access to better vocal coaches than those cowboys in Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django…
[via @wildgrounds]

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During a promotion event for Shutter Island, the colleagues from Screen Rant and MoviesOnline.ca had the chance to talk with script writer Laeta Kalogridis about the current status of her script for the Ghost in the Shell live-action adaptation:

Q: Is that a remake of the 1995 film or is that an adaptation of the earlier manga?
LK: “Ghost in the Shell” was originally the manga. The anime came from the original graphic novel and then — and that anime, as you know, is a relatively famous, groundbreaking piece of material — also generated two seasons of an animated television show as well. And this is an adaptation of the original manga, the original comic book that sort of began everything.
MoviesOnline.ca

Kalogridis told me that the script for Ghost In The Shell will be drawn from Masamune’s manga comic and that it has “a lot of action… lots of action.” However, she then added, “there’s still going to be a lot of atmosphere – [The movie] is about vast possibilities – all of this technology, the Internet – it’s about the limitless possibilities of this technology.”
Screen Rant

Putting aside the usal reserverations against Hollywood adaptations, I’m glad they decided to use Masamune Shirow’s original manga as a source as it includes some great plot points that haven’t been touched in Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film and only found some mentioning in the Stand Alone Complex seasons.
[via ANN]

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Seems like director Mamoru Oshii has regained his love for live-action during his work on his latest film Assault Girls. According to ANN, director of titles Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers and Avalon revealed in Tokyo during a press conference for Assault Girls that his next film will be a live-action adaptation of Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s classic manga Tetsujin 28 (aka Gigantor).
Imagi Studios are currently working on a CG anime adaptation of the manga named T28, which will (according to IMDb) open in theaters in 2011. Oshii didn’t mention any dates in his announcement, but since he already directed a stage play version of Tetsujin 28-gō featuring a 500kg replica of the giant robot in January I guess we won’t have to wait too long.

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Twitch’s Todd has posted a first (?) poster artwork and a full synopsis for Mamoru Oshii’s Assault Girls that will open in Japan on December 19th.

The story takes place in an in-game virtual space called “Avalon”, a barren desert-like battlefield, resembling a devastated world after a nuclear war. “Avalon” is a world full of gigantic monsters. It is a fictional world where an endless “hunt”, known as “play”, repeatedly takes place. The drama centers around a sniper who pilots a camouflage fighter plane; a sorcerer who can freely transform herself; a woman fighter equipped with an assault rifle on a horseback; and a large-framed man equipped with an anti-tank rifle. There is also the “Game Master” who watches the players from the air.

In a world where giant Sunakujira (Sand Whales) monsters crawl the earth, storming battleships fly high up in the sky, and assault rifle muzzle flashes go off everywhere, can anyone shoot down the mutant monster, Madara Sunakujira (Spotted Sand Whale)? If so, who?!

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ComingSoon.net reports that Dreamworks Pictures has hired Laeta Kalogridis as the screenwriter for the 3D live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell that has been floating around the net for quite some time now. Until now, (im at least in April 2008), Jamie Moss (Street Kings) was supposed to write the script for Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Steven Paul’s Seaside Entertainment.
Well, color me unimpressed. For the live-action adaptation of Akira, Warner got Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (who wrote the screenplay for Children of Men) so there is a bit of hope for that, but looking at Kalogridis’ career so far (Alexander, Night Watch, Pathfinder) I just can’t see how she’s supposed to properly transfer the Ghost in the Shell universe into the reel (eh) world.

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