RYUHEI KITAMURA AND SHUNJI IWAI

Ryuhei Kitamura and Shunji Iwai are two brands of Japan's pop cinema. Kitamura is the shonen: all out boys adventure, hard hitting, fast paced and short attention spanned. Iwai is the shojo: slower, more emotional and anchored in real life.

Their collaboration, BANDAGE, is a rock movie that Iwai says he's finished the script on and that Kitamura is supposed to direct, probably sometime after Kitamura shoots his first Hollywood movie - something some people say he's been auditioning for for a long time. It's an adaptation of Clive Barker's short story, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, about a guy who haplessly stumbles across the gory secret that the city father of Manhattan is an enormous monster who needs to eat human flesh. It's a property that's been banging around Hollywood for a while.

Iwai on the other hand is working on a documentary about Japan's directorial legend, Kon Ichikawa. Shooting on the set of Ichikawa's new movie, MURDER OF THE INUGAMI CLAN, Iwai is titling his film THE KON ICHIKAWA STORY and it'll be finished and ready to screen on Dec.9, about 7 days before Ichikawa's new movie hits theaters.