A driving blog called DrivingSports has a hilarious first look at a 2008 Subaru Impreza STI being turned into a toy for the upcoming 4th “Fast and the Furious” movie (4ast and the 4urious? you heard it here first). The movie’s supposed to have a “rally theme” – hence the choice of the STI as the protagonist’s wheels – so if you end up seeing it for some reason, you can maybe look forward to seeing the big plastic body kit break off the front.

I’m still considering buying an ‘08 Impreza as a daily driver, (not an STI, obviously) and I’m embarrassed to say a 12-year-old me probably would have thought that looks awesome.

A non-teaser trailer for Takeshi Kitano’s new film has surfaced on the Office Kitano website. I can’t tell anything about the movie beyond the fact it’s going to be another weird comedy.

Yahoo has an (as of yet) exclusive HD trailer for the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint venture Grindhouse. It’s an ACTUAL double-feature. The official site calls it “the sleaze-filled saga of an exploitation double feature”, One movie by Rodriguez and one by Tarantino. It seems EXACTLY like a project they’d do.

The Tarantino movie “Death Proof” stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman, and Rodriguez’ stars Rose McGowan and Freddy Rodriguez. They both have appearances by Eli Roth. Why do I get the feeling an evening at the Tarantino house would be a life-changing experience?

Here’s the 720p trailer on megaupload for anyone having trouble with Yahoo: (84.8 MB MOV)

April 6, 2007. Can. not. wait.

Apple has a new high def trailer for Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower. Apple reports the North American release date as December 22nd. Given the success of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, I’d say that Dec. 22 theatrical release bodes well for those of us who live in Nanaimo, where “wide releases” aren’t always wide enough. Luckily Sony is pretty good about their DVD releases.

Logboy at Twitchfilm has posted some details on Takashi Miike’s Django-inspired Spaghetti Western. Rumor has it this will be the first of Miike’s eleven-billion films to be shot entirely in English, and it will feature a cameo from Quentin Tarantino. The cast of Japaneses talents have been given two-month English crash courses. Lets hope that’s enough and they don’t end up sounding like the English dialogue in Ichi…

An Icelandic TV network had Daft Punk on to chat about their new movie, Electroma. A bit of a disappointment to fans of the group, they didn’t appear wearing their trademark awesome robot helmets. In fact they showed up sporting black bags over their head like some kind of scary beheading thing. (They comment on why they don’t show their faces in the interview.) The short interview was thankfully conducted in English, so check it out.
[IMDb link: Electroma]

You can grab the whole Miike “Ryu Ga Gotoku” video from the Yakuza website now. GT has a video review of it posted if you’re one of those PS2 people, and Twitch has word of a 2007 feature film planned.

Part 2 of the Sega Yakuza prequel video is online now. I edited my original post to correct an error, too. I’d previously said that Sega commissioned four different directors to each do a part of the prequel as four separate films (which would have been awesome), but it seems I was wrong. Part 2 has no credits or anything (not to mention the Yakuza site seems to have no visible credits for the film), so it looks like Miike did all four parts himself. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still rad.

The site also offers “High Res” downloads at about 110MB per each of the four parts.

Sega commissioned four directors to make short films to promote their new game “Yakuza” (known in Japan as “RYÛ GA GOTOKU”). Episode 1 was directed by Takashi Miike (Audition, Dead or Alive) and is availible online now. I don’t know how closely the plots of the films and the game are related. There’s nothing wrong with taking a page out of the BMW-Films playbook when it’s an excellent idea.

The official site has the film viewable in embedded flash, or you can view/download it at GameTrailers at about 70MB for the wmv or quicktime [link]

Interesting fact about the game, it cost US$21 Million according to a Kotaku article posted in May.

UPDATE (Aug 25, 2006): Well it looks like I misunderstood something, I guess it’s just one ~40 minute film divided into 4 parts. It appears all of the parts are done by Miike. My bad!

“Itty bitty videos is a stupid idea” shocker
PVRwire has posted an article about the low number of youths watching videos on their portable devices. The article cites an LA Times survey that says only about 14% of teenagers want to watch TV on their cell phones.

The kids who were surveyed said they had two major problems. Mobile video content costs too much, and the quality is not good enough, either because of a poor streaming experience, or low resolution.

I’d imagine they’re still putting finishing touches on a “do you like ice cream?” survey, or one that reveals “majority of teens agree sky is blue”.