YIFFF: Aniki, Katsuhito Ishii, & Shin'ichirô Miki's FUNKY FOREST (NAISU NO MORI: THE FIRST CONT

Aniki (Hajime Ishimine), Katsuhito Ishii, and Shin'ichirô Miki's omnibus movie Funky Forest (Naisu no mori: The First Contact) is scheduled to be screened as an official selection at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival 2006 (Yûbari Kokusai Fantasutikku Eigasai 2006) - "YIFFF" for short - in Hokkaido, Japan on February 24th at 7:30 p.m. (19:30). The movie premièred at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival (LVHIFF) in Honolulu on October 22nd of last year.

The screenplay for Funky Forest was written by Aniki, Ishii, and Miki. As was reported here on ScreenAnarchy back on October 1st of last year, the movie's principal cast (as credited, from left to right, in the trailers for it) is as follows: Susumu Terajima, Tadanobu Asano, Ryô Kase, Chizuru Ikewaki (Ikewaki Chiduru), Kazue Fukiishi, Machiko Ono, Yoshiyuki Morishita, Kanji Tsuda, Kaiji Moriyama, Mariko Takahashi (b. April 24, 1984), Erika Nishikado, Rinko Kikuchi, Hideaki Anno, Seiji Tanaka, Kôtarô Shiga, Anri Ban, Shihori Kanjiya, Kaho, Kenji Mizuhashi, Akiji Minegishi, Ikki Todoroki, Aoi Miura, Nana Shimoda, Maya Banno, Ryû Morioka, Andrew Alfieri (Andoryû Arufieri), and Takahiro Satô.

At the bottom of this article are links to ScreenAnarchy-hosted downloadable teaser and theatrical trailers for Funky Forest, as well as streaming teaser and theatrical trailers for Aniki's Custom Made 10.30 (Kasutamu meido 10.30). Immediately below is a description of Funky Forest from this page for the movie on LVHIFF's website.

Katsuhito Ishii (TASTE OF TEA, Golden Maile winner, LVHIFF 04) is back! This time he's joined with two other hip directors to create this extremely odd omnibus, which stitches together a number of funny and/or weird short films with overlapping themes and crossover characters into a wild quilt of trippy dreams, unrequited desire, horny losers, odd aliens, awesome dancing, bodily functions, cool music, and some really disgusting creatures straight out of David Cronenberg's fever dreams.

A talented cast led by Tad[a]nobu Asano provides a certain gravity to such far-out sequences as the girl in the after school club whose "sport" involves using a badminton racquet to swat at the milk squirted towards her by a shy fellow with foot-long nipples, after which he starts pulling bloodsucking creatures out of his pants and tossing them at her.

The preceding sequence is not the strangest part of the movie - it isn't even the strangest part of that particular short.

FUNKY FOREST is not for everyone, but Ishii fans, VERMILLION PLEASURE NIGHT lovers, and the curious or daring will find it a richly rewarding, one-of-a-kind experience.

Funky Forest teaser trailer (downloadable 5.4 MB AVI file)
Funky Forest theatrical trailer (downloadable 18.9 MB AVI file)
Funky Forest official website
YIFFF: Funky Forest (English)

YIFFF: Funky Forest (Japanese)
Custom Made 10.30 teaser trailer (streaming Windows Media)
Custom Made 10.30 theatrical trailer (streaming Windows Media)
Custom Made 10.30 official website