KOJI YAKUSHO IS GO!

Fans of Japan's great leading man, Koji Yakusho, are like birdwatchers. We spot him here, we spot him there, we hope to spot him everywhere. His projects are rarely covered in the fan press until they're almost right upon us, and that's not right.

(If you're wondering who we're talking about, then run quick and watch Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CURE or DOPPELGANGER, or SHALL WE DANCE? or UNIVERSITY OF LAUGHS. He's great in all of them.)

He's got three upcoming projects, one blah, one rah, and one that sounds tentative. The blah is MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA but Mr. Yakusho brings a ray of sunshine to this bleak project. He plays Nobu (the guy who loves the geisha but she doesn't love him back) and expect him to break your heart. There's a translation of a press conference he gave about the movie here.

The rah is ECSTASTY HOTEL in which Mr. Yakusho joins a cast of 23 characters in a real-time movie set in a hotel during the two hours before New Year's. There's info here, and the website is here which features a very complicated chart. It's being released on January 14, 2006.It's being directed and written by Koki Mitani who wrote the fantastic Koji Yakusho flick, UNIVERSITY OF LAUGHS.

The tentative one is the Cate Blanchett/Brad Pitt/Koji Yakusho three-parter, BABEL, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 GRAMS) which is three stories set in Japan, Morocco and Tunisia.

Many thanks to Stauffen for pointing this stuff out and to Pymmik's Unoffical Page on Koji Yakusho Movies.