Shion Sono`s COLD FISH

New Horror Film from Sushi Typhoon and the Director of LOVE EXPOSURE Source: Sushi Typhoon Official Movie Site: coldfish.jp (Japan) Special Thanks to Marc Walkow

After the international acclaim of his masterpiece LOVE EXPOSURE (Ai no Mukidashi, 2008), director Shion Sono is back with COLD FISH (??????, Tsumetai Nettaigyo, 2010), the third release from Nikkatsu`s new genre film label, Sushi Typhoon. The film is a horror story— with a bit of Sono`s trademark black humor— inspired by the real life crimes of exotic dog breeder Gen Sekine, his common-law wife Hiroko Kasama, and his business partner Nagayuki Yamazaki, who murdered and dismembered a number of people in 1993. COLD FISH made its World Premiere this past September at the 67th Venice Film Festival. The North American Premiere followed that same month at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the film has since played Fantastic Fest in Texas, the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, Sitges Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain, the BFI London Film Festival and the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. At Sitges, COLD FISH was awarded "Best Motion Picture" in the festival`s Casa Asia division. The film will open theatrically in Japan in early January. UK rights to COLD FISH were acquired earlier this year by the distributor Third Window Films. Third Window will release the movie theatrically in the UK in April or May of 2011 with the DVD and Blu-ray tentatively scheduled for that June. COLD FISH will continue to play the North American film festival circuit in 2011, with a DVD and Blu-ray release to follow from FUNimation Entertainment. The following press notes are courtesy of Sushi Typhoon...

COLD FISH Notes

YOU WILL BE VICTIMIZED!

Noboyuki Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) runs a small tropical fish shop. His second wife, Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka), does not get along with his daughter, Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara), and this worries him. He also feels somehow unfulfilled and dissatisfied with what his life has become. One day Mitsuko is caught shoplifting at a grocery store. There they meet a friendly man named Yukio Murata (Denden), who helps to settle things between Mitsuko and the store manager. Since Murata also runs a tropical fish shop, Shamoto establishes a bond with him and they become friends; Mitsuko even begins working for Murata and living at his house, to avoid conflicts with her stepmother. What Shamoto doesn’t know, however, is that Murata hides many dark secrets behind his friendly face. He sells cheap fish to his customers for high prices with his artful lies. If anyone detects his fraud or refuses to go along with his money-making schemes, they’re murdered and their bodies disposed of by Murata and his wife Aiko (Asuka Kurosawa) in grisly ways. Shamoto is suddenly taken in by Murata’s tactics, and by the time he realizes that Murata is insane, and a serial killer who has made over fifty people disappear, he is powerless to do anything about it. But now Mitsuko is a hostage at Murata’s home, and Shamoto himself has become the killer’s unwilling accomplice. Meanwhile, the murders, without any trace of the bodies, continue unabated. The police have long suspected Murata and try to get information about him from Shamoto; Murata quickly senses the danger and threatens Shamoto not to report anything to the police. Shamoto has no choice but to obey Murata’s order. Cruel murders gradually cripple his mind and finally the ordinary man being driven to the edge of the abyss.

COLD FISH Credits

CAST: Mitsuru Fukikoshi as Noboyuki Shamoto Denden as Yukio Murata Asuka Kurosawa as Aiko Murata Megumi Kagurazaka as Taeko Shamato Hikari Kajiwara as Mitsuko Shamato Tetsu Watanabe as Takayasu Tsutsui Taro Suwa as Yoshida Jyonmyon Pe as Hiroshi Okubo Masaki Miura as Yoshida`s brother Makoto Ashikawa as supermarket manager Masahiko Sakata as Inspector Susumu Kawajiri Natsuo Seto as Yuko Sawada CREW: Directed by SION SONO Executive Producer AKIFUMI SUGIHARA Producers YOSHINORI CHIBA and TOSHIKI KIMURA Written by SION SONO and YOSHIKI TAKAHASHI Music by TOMOHIDE HARADA Director of Photography SHINYA KIMURA Production Designer TAKASHI MATSUZUKA VFX Supervisor TSUYOSHI KAZUNO Special Effects Supervisor YOSHIHIRO NISHIURA Action Design TAK SAKAGUCHI Running time: 144 minutes Available formats: 35mm, HDCam About Writer / Director SION SONO Born in 1961, Sion Sono first gained notice as a poet, when he started publishing in 1978 at the age of 17. After dropping out of university to make 8mm films, he debuted his first 30-minute short called I AM SION SONO! at the PIA Film Festival in 1985. In 1987 he competed in the festival with A MAN’S HANAMICHI and won the Grand Prize. In 1990, he made his first feature, BICYCLE SIGHS, which played in numerous festivals around the world, and followed that up with his 1992 feature, THE ROOM, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo Sundance Film Festival. In 1997, he staged a guerrilla street poetry project, “Tokyo GAGAGA,” which attracted much attention with its spontaneous street gatherings and performances. In 2001, he first gained international notoriety with his dark schoolgirl / pop music saga SUICIDE CLUB, and Sono followed it up with a Suicide Club novel and manga, as well as the film, NORIKO’S DINNER TABLE. In 2007, he made the “hair horror” film EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS, and in 2009, released the four-hour long LOVE EXPOSURE, which broke independent cinema box office records in Tokyo and went on to win two prizes at the Berlin Film Festival. With his career heading into the stratosphere both domestically and abroad, Sono seems poised to enter the realm of world-renowned filmmakers very soon. Case in point: his Sushi Typhoon COLD FISH was invited to premiere at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, among many others.

About Sushi Typhoon

Born in 2010, Sushi Typhoon is the the upstart, wild offspring of respectable parent, Nikkatsu Corporation, once home to legendary 1960`s action stars like Joe Shishido, Akira Kobayashi, Tetsuya Watari, Meiko Kaji and Yujiro Ishihara. With a long history of genre films and violent gangster epics, the company was also the leader of Japan`s erotic renaissance of the 1970s with their Roman Porno line and now, Nikkatsu`s latest offering, Sushi Typhoon, takes their century-old extremes to the next level. The brainchild of veteran producer Yoshinori Chiba, The ushi Typhoon seeks to satisfy audiences who crave the good taste of bad taste, and for whom too much is never enough. A tour-de-force of inventive, boundary-pushing entertainment, the first phase of Sushi Typhoon`s films will be released in late 2010 and early 2011, with the company self-distributing their titles in North America with the assistance of FUNimation Entertainment. FUNimation will begin releasing Sushi Typhoon titles to DVD and BluRay in early 2011.

For more information on Sushi Typhoon please see the earlier coverage here on SciFi Japan: