Ai Maeda

There are two versions of “Toire No Hanako-san.” The first version, released in 1995, was set in an elementary school and centered on a boy named Takuya and a new transfer student named Saeko (Maeda Ai plays Takuya’s younger brother). Takuya’s classmates think that Saeko has been possessed by Hanako, the ghost that lives in the bathroom. The rumor is especially encouraged by a girl who has a crush on Takuya and is jealous since Takuya likes Saeko. The second version, released in 1998, centers on a group of high school girls (among them Maeda Ai and Nomura Yuka) who inadvertently release a demonic doll from a shrine outside of their school.Read More »

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Throws down the gauntlet with the very first shot, in which the camera glides sinuously all over the sprawling exterior of a university campus, caroming from one group to characters to another, for minute after self-consciously virtuosic minute, and just as you’re idly wondering whether Fred Ward is going to show up and start ranting about the opening of Touch of Evil, we suddenly pick up two film students engaged in discussion of that very topic, who then proceed to address The Player itself. Except that Altman’s achievement really is little more than a clever, hollow joke, whereas Yanagimachi has taken that sort of suffocating pomo referentiality as his subject.Read More »