Sitges Film Festival Review

This film rocks so much! A total blast! Crazy creative and passionate. At least 40 minutes too long though. But whatever. The end climax is madness. Loved it.

Shinga (Shinga Kubota) and Kan (Kan Takagi) are the singers in rival pop bands, until the mysterious Minami (Kiyohiko Ozaki) of Atomic Promotion signs them up as a pop duo to be called the Stardust Brothers. Although they can't stand each other initially, they jump at the massive amount of money on offer, and after only a week with the company, they are superstars with the #1 pop song on the charts! But fame can be fickle, and soon enough Minami is approached to raise up another artist, Karuo (Issay),the son of a powerful politician, and Shinga and Kan are yesterday's news. But Karuo has designs on Marimo (Kyoko Togawa),the young girl who first led the fan club of the Stardust Brothers and then became a pop star herself, and Karuo is used to getting what he wants....

This was an early film by director Makoto Tezuka, son of legendary Osamu Tezuka, when he was only 22 years old. Despite his youth, the film hangs together quite well, with plenty of nods to pop music of the era and an enthusiastic and energetic cast. A bit of slapstick here and an odd monochrome framing device add to the fun; the occasional homophobia-as-laugh-getter hasn't aged well, however. Overall, though, the film has its moments and the flavor of the Japanese pop culture in the mid-1980s is quite entertaining.

1985. Japan. Macoto Tezka (son of "The God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka) meets musician Haruo Chicada, who has already made a soundtrack to a movie that does not exist. Inspired by The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise, along with the chance to work with some of Japan's hottest bands, Tezka and Chicada would join up with a creative team that also included Lupin the 3rd creator Monkey Punch and directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Daihachi Yoshida.

They harnessed lighting and put it in a bottle that was lost at sea, as nobody really spoke of this movie for around thirty years, both in Japan and here in America.

We were missing out.

Punk rock rebel Kan and new-wave crooner Shingo are already broken up when we met them, former members of The Stardust Brothers, the greatest band of all time. What came between them? A girl? Their manager? Or are they making their lyrics the sad truth to their real lives? "Once you reach No. 1, you just go down."

Look, any movie that has a cameo by UWF founder Akira Maeda and is dedicated to the memory of Winslow Leach is going to be a film that I'm going to proclaim to the heavens.

As is often the case with the movies that I love, the press savaged this movie. Tezka told Japan Times, "People are watching it with fresh eyes now, and I've had lots of positive comments. But I wonder about how I could have taken those ideas further, and all the films I might have made, if people had responded like that at the time."

This is a movie in love with film, with music, with being young and being incredibly strange. Idol culture is fascinating and never more so when it is shown in this movie, which I urge you - yes, you reading this! - to watch right now. After all, this is "a movie that has traveled light years to find you."