YUI was chosen to compose the opening and ending song for the upcoming Japanese movie Paradise Kiss, starring Keiko Kitagawa and Osamu Mukai. The movie is an adaptation of a manga by Ai Yazawa (the creator of NANA).

YUI ~ HELLO ~Paradise Kiss~

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Credit: source vid. steely@jpopsuki

HELLO ~Paradise Kiss~ is the opening song. YUI has really changed up her style with her in her last couple of music videos. I think back to To Mother, when it was a minor sensation that YUI was wearing a dress. In this video all the different outfits kind of make sense considering what the movie is about. I like the head band look (the one in the screenshot). But YUI with straight bangs (with the pony tail, where she’s wearing black) looks so weird to me .

You can hear a snippet of the ending song YOU in this trailer for the movie:

Just read that Ai Otsuka has given birth to a daughter! The father is Su of RIP SLYME, her husband since June of last year (whom she collaborated with in aisu x time).

I had totally missed that she was pregnant, and wasn’t even aware that she’d gotten married .

Source: Tokyo Hive

I watched the Japanese blu-ray version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind last night. For the Blu-ray version the movie has been restored and the picture quality is great. They haven’t retouched things like the film grain and the occasional crooked animation cell, but left it as it was in the original film, which keeps an “authentic” feel.

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I’ve finally started chewing away at the pile of Asian movies that I have, so I thought I’d post some short thoughts about some of the movies that I’ve watched.

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I just placed a mega order (well, several medium size orders actually) at YesAsia. It’s been a good while since I ordered any J-Pop and K-Pop CDs and DVDs, so the must-haves have piled up.

This is what I got: […] there’s more! »

I finally watched Dear Friends (starring Keiko Kitagawa) the other night. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years (still not out on DVD with English subs). I liked it for the most part, although it was a bit awkward at times. Very emotional.

After watching it I browsed around YesAsia a bit and saw an in-store banner about some pre-order discount and thought “Hey, isn’t that Keiko?”. Turns out that she’s starring in a new movie called Hana no Ato, where she plays the daughter of a clan official who develops a relationship with a low-ranking samurai […] there’s more! »

I just came back from the cinema after watching The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I didn’t watch it on the premiere (yesterday) because I couldn’t get a good seat (I got the best seat today). I didn’t get the notification that the tickets were going to be released until the day after I had already purchased my ticket (great service ).

This was the first of the movies where I had actually read the book before watching the movie. I actually found it a bit distracting at first. I was comparing what was going on on the screen with my recent memory of the book too much. There were plenty of scenes that weren’t in the book. I liked Eclipse — I was smiling when I left the cinema, so it can’t have been too bad.

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100 days with Mr. Arrogant (Naesarang ssagaji) is a Korean romantic comedy that I’d been meaning to watch for a long time, but I didn’t get around to it until last week. I know Kim Jae-won from the drama series Romance, but it was the first time I saw Ha Ji-won.

Ha Ji-won plays Kang Ha-yeong, a high-school senior who runs into Kim Jae-won’s character Lee Hyeong-jun when she, after having been dumped by her boyfriend, kicks a beer can down the street and causes a minor traffic accident where Hyeong-jun slightly damages his luxurious car. Since she doensn’t have any money he demands her to be his slave for 100 days to work off the debt.

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I watched the movie Ninja Assassin yesterday. Although it’s starring Korean actor/pop star Rain, it’s not what most people would call a chick flick.

The movie is produced by the Wachowski brothers (Matrix, V for Vendetta) and directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), but as I’m sure you’ve already guessed from the title, it’s not so much about a deep meaningful story as it is about ninjas chopping people into bits.

The opening scene sets the tone of the movie right away. It’s extremely bloody. But not in a disgusting way. People are dismembered right and left, but they stop there. They don’t do any “weird” things to people. It’s just a bloody action movie (literally).

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During my lunch break today I went to buy the movie New Moon on Blu-ray. At the store, the guy behind the counter went and got the BD for me and first put it on the counter. Then he quickly took it down behind the counter again and asked in a slightly hushed voice: “do you want me to put it in a bag for you?”. It was as if I was buying a porno