Maki Horikita learning English for role of amnesiac in new film
Wednesday 26th November, 05:53 AM JST
TOKYO — Actress Maki Horikita, 20, will star in “Lost Memory,” a film directed by Hans Canosa, whose 2005 film “Conversations with Other Women” won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival in the same year. “Lost Memory” is scheduled for release in Japan next year and in the U.S. in 2010.
When Canosa came to Japan, he was fascinated by Japanese actors and actresses, and expressed his interest in making movies in Japan. He reportedly watches a lot of Japanese films, and expressed his desire to cast Horikita.
Horikita plays a high school girl attending an international school in Japan. She falls down the stairs and loses four years of her memory. About one third of her lines are in English, so she is taking English lessons. This is in between working on “Innocent Love,” a drama in which she plays the lead role and is showing now on Fuji TV on Mondays at 9 p.m.
Filming of “Lost Memory” starts on Wednesday. “I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out, with a foreign director filming in Japan. I want to concentrate working on each and every scene,” Horikita said with enthusiasm.
Kenichi Matsuyama, 23, who stars opposite Horikita, said: “I took the part because I wanted to work with a foreign crew. And I wanna have a sword fight with them!”
(source:Japantoday)
Kotomi Aoki's popular shojo manga "Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu" is being turned into a live-action movie, directed by Takehiko Shinjo ("Heavenly Forest"). Young actress Mao Inoue of "Hana Yori Dango" fame has been chosen to star in the film.The story revolves around the relationship between Mayu (Inoue) and her first love, a young man named Takuma (Masaki Okada) whom she has known since childhood. Mayu's father is Takuma's cardiologist, and she learns that Takuma may not live much longer past the age of 20 due to his heart condition. When they were 8 years old, Takuma promised to marry Mayu, unaware of his own lifespan. But when he finds out the truth, he tries to distance himself from Mayu in hopes of sparing her the inevitable pain of his death.Filming is scheduled to start in March, around the time that Inoue is expected to graduate from Meiji University. The completed movie will be released next fall.
