VIZ Pictures is bringing Funky Forest: The First Contact to the US for three limited runs, in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
Funky Forest is “a visually inventive masterpiece from directors Katsuhito Ishii (who directed The Taste of Tea, and the animated portion of Kill Bill, Vol. 1) and Shunichiro Miki and Aniki (aka Hajime Ishimine). It 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. It then shifts to a science fiction daydream featuring actress Maya Banno (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—Katsuichi, 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.”
Funky Forest 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. It will be in New York City from 7 to 13 March at the Imaginasian Theatre, 239 East 59th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), New York, NY 10022; (212) 371-6682. Then it will move to Seattle for 21-27 March at the Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 NE 50th Street, Seattle, WA 98105;(206) 523-3935. The final US engagement is 18-24 April in Los Angeles at Imaginasian Center, 251 South Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012; (213) 617-1033.
VIZ Pictures is an affiliate of VIZ Media that focuses on Japanese live-action film distribution “with particular focus on Japanese ‘kawaii (cute) and cool’ pop culture.”