Director Motohiro Katsuyuki ("Odoru Daisosasen," "Koshonin Masayoshi Mashita")'s latest movie!
Stars Eita, Juri Ueno. The adventure story lapping today and tomorrow by time machine. A time machine appears in front of our hero's eyes, allowing him to move between yesterday and today.
"Summer Time Machine Blues" tells the coming-of-age tale that takes place in the longest day you've ever seen. Bonus discs contains movie commentary by the cast and making-of documentary.
It began as just another hot midsummer day August 19, 2005. Five male members of the Sci-Fi Research Club play baseball on a university campus field in the sweltering heat. They are Shunsuke Koizumi (Daijiro Kawaoka), Takuma Komoto (Eita), Yuu Niimi (Yoshiaki Yoza), Daigo Ishimatsu (Tsuyoshi Muro) and Jun Soga (Munenori Nagano). As they hurl wild pitches at each other, mishandle simple grounders and repeatedly whiff at the ball, Yui Itoh (Yoko Maki) of the photography club tries in vain to capture the boys in Pulitzer Prize-quality action photos. Nearby, stray dog and club mascot, Kecha, pokes around the field looking for something to dig up. When an errant baseball goes sailing into the stone statue of a local pagan deity at the edge of the field, the boys decide to call it quits for fear of angering the gods.
The gang returns to their air-conditioned Sci-Fi Research Club, which serves more as a cluttered graveyard for scrapped toys, games and trinkets than a laboratory for science fiction research. In the back room, another photography club member, Haruka Shibata (Juri Ueno), busily prepares for the club's upcoming photo exhibit by developing poorly composed close-up shots of Sci-Fi Research Club faculty advisor and assistant professor, Jose Hozumi (Kuranosuke Sasaki). With wash basins and towels in hand, the five young men head to the local public bath. During the course of their ablutions, one of them, Niimi, notices to his horror that someone has stolen his precious Vidal Sassoon shampoo!
When the five boys leave the bath house, Niimi continues to stew about his shampoo while Ishimatsu parts with the rest so he can cycle into town and find more fun clutter for the club house. Komoto, too, runs off to buy two advance movie tickets, which he hopes he can use to entice out Haruka, on whom he has a secret crush. But when he returns to the Lab, he finds everybody waiting for him and expecting him to perform a dance bare naked! Are you really going through with this? one of them asks. This ought to be good! blurts another. Something strange is going on. As an utterly perplexed Komoto tries hard to fathom the situation, Koizumi swings his arms in excitement only to cause someone behind him to spill cola all over the air conditioner remote. The weirdness is only beginning. |