Norwegian Wood: The Movie

About two years ago, it was announced that a movie version of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood was in production. The only details then was that Tran Anh Hung would direct, and it would be released sometime in 2010. I haven't seen any of Tran Ang Hung's work, but apparently he's a very well-respected director. I've also heard around that Murakami is incredibly picky about movie versions of his stuff, so if Murakami approved it/him, it should hopefully be worth seeing.

The latest news is that Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood will be scoring the film. At first I was like, Um what? but as it turns out he composes classical music too, including scoring the film There Will Be Blood. So that's pretty cool. Still, Ryuichi Sakamoto's score for Tony Takitani is my favorite soundtracks of all time and one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard, so Greenwood's got his work cut out for him.

Other news you may have missed:

• It's release date is a (relatively) more specific December 2010 for Japan. I hope it gets a limited release some time soon after in America as well...

• It stars Kenichi Matsuyama as the main character Toru Watanabe. Kenichi Matsuyama is a pretty famous actor these days; you may have seen him as L in the Death Note movies, the main guy in the Detroit Rock City movie, and in the drama version of the [awesome] manga Sexy Voice and Robo. Except for being pretty hilarious in Sexy Voice and Robo (which after only one episode I thought in general was pretty lackluster, and they lead the whole TV show with the best plot line in the manga, so I figured it was only going to go downhill from there), I don't have great feelings towards him. I hated the first Death Note movie (I liked the manga enough; but it was more how the movie was terribly written and acted and directed that made me hate it than it's "faithfulness" to the original) so much I didn't see the others.  He's got a lot of other credits, but from the stuff that I've seen, he hasn't really done anything to make me take him seriously as an actor. Let's hope I'm wrong and Norwegian Wood changes that.

• Rinko Kukichi stars as Naoko. I don't know her, but apparently she was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie Babel, and her character didn't utter a single word. That's pretty neat.

• The character Midori is being played by fashion model Kiko Mizuhara, in her first acting role. (Not to judge a book by it's cover, which honestly is what I'm totally doing, but this makes me nervous.)

• The IMDB forums link to this site that has some stills from the movie. Looks pretty damn cool, honestly. 

Can't wait to see it.