VIZ Pictures, an affiliate of VIZ Media, LLC that focuses on Japanese live-action film distribution, has announced a trio of theatrical screenings in Seattle and Los Angeles for its newest film, FUNKY FOREST, throughout March and April.
FUNKY FOREST is a visually inventive masterpiece from director Katsuhito Ishii (THE TASTE OF TEA and SHARK SKIN MAN & PEACH HIP GIRL) and will screen in Seattle, Washington, March 21-27, at the Grand Illusion Cinema, and April 18-24 in Los Angeles, California at the Imaginasian Center.
Cult-favorite director Ishii, who also notably directed the animated portion of KILL BILL VOL. 1, teams up with the talented directors Shunichiro Miki and ANIKI (aka Hajime Ishimine) to create a visually imaginative masterpiece with some hilariously odd characters.
FUNKY FOREST was a hit at numerous international film festivals and was an official selection at the 2006 Montreal Fantasia Film Festival, the 2006 San Francisco Independent Film Festival and the 2007 New York Asian Film Festival.
FUNKY FOREST features 21 free-associative episodes ranging from a nonsense "sci-fi" comedy to a dance-battle daydream. Akin to a feature length sketch routine in the tradition of Monty Python, it opens with the Mole Brothers, a traditional but hyperactive Japanese stand-up duo that return periodically throughout the film.
FUNKY FOREST then shifts to a science fiction daydream featuring actress Maya Banno of THE TASTE OF TEA who plays a distracted student who dreams of wild adventures in the cosmos when she should be finishing her homework. In another segment, three unpopular brothers, Masaichi, Masaru and Masao, are comically featured as they struggle to be popular among the girls. Luckily enough, they finally get a chance to have a co-ed picnic with some pretty young ladies.
Audiences will delight in the Babbling Hot Spring Vixens, a trio of professional women on a hot spring vacation telling each other increasingly pointless stories as they get progressively drunker. In one of the film's most memorable comedic vignettes, NEON GENESIS EVANGELION director Hideaki Anno is cast as an animator complaining about the lack of artistry in the youth of today while drawing sequences for a project directed literally, by a dog.
Seattle March 21-27 Grand Illusion Cinema 1403 NE 50th Street Seattle, Washington, USA 98105 (206) 523-3935
