Kenji Kawai and his Cinema Symphony

In my regular email updates from CDJapan I noticed they're taking preorders for this upcoming CD compilation by Kenji Kawai, the man who has done the soundtrack work for nearly all of Oshii's films (in addition to many other films, TV series, and video games).

The set -- "K-Pleasure -Kawai Kenji Best of Movies" -- will focus on Kawai's work on Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, and (the non-Oshii related) Death Note. It's main selling point seems to be that the CDs are in the hybrid Super Audio CD format.

Anyway, this reminds me that earlier this month Kenji Kawai performed a number of his soundtrack works at a live performance in Tokyo. Check out a couple of TV spots here. A slideshow from the event can be seen here. (A good selection, definitely weighted toward the Oshii-helmed features.) I think I read that there's going to be an upcoming DVD release of this performance. I certainly hope so.

Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden trailer

Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden just came out in Japan a couple of days ago, but I have yet to see any English-language reviews of it. I'm hoping that Mark Schilling over at The Japan Times might do one, but we'll have to see.

For now, here's the trailer via the new Twitch video player.

My Newest Oshii Paper

All right! My proposal for next year's Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference has been accepted. Now I just need to actually write the paper -- titled "Documenting the Anime City: Auteurism and the Anime-ic Documentary in Oshii Mamoru’s Tokyo Scanner and Tokyo Vein" -- by March.