Batoru Rowaiaru: AKA Battle Royale

[Lucas]

Anyone catch this movie?

Its really funny IMO, crazy plot. Sometimes I wish we could take all the high school kids and make em fight to the death on an island.

[Jimbo]

I wanted to buy it once but was told I would need a special player for it, as it was 'restricted in the US', as the clerk said. It looked good, hopefully I can find it again.

[Shaolinlueb]

battle royale is so 2001 jk

i saw that when i was i just started college and it as awesome. infact i could watch it again and its awesome. definetly have to see the extended version with the more blood.

[ghostexorcist]

Yep, it is one crazy movie. I would pay good money to see the plot put into effect!

The one part I thought was really funny was when Takeshi Katano was riddled with a machine gun and then stood up like nothing happened. Then he kicked the bucket after some inordinate amount of time.

Another weird one is "Suicide Club." If you haven't seen it, the movie is about mass suicide becoming the new fad. Plus it involves a weird girl band/cult that initiates people into their fold by taking a swipe of their body with a wood plainer.

[Lucas]

lol ya he gets up to answer the phone so his wife can ***** at him some more, then dies. lol classic.

i had never heard of it so a friend let me borrow his dvd. not sure about the avaiability but it played in my xbox360

there was as sequel, it was a box set he let me borrow, but he said it sucked so i never watched it. something about the directors being changed halfway through.

[GeneChing]

We've already had a thread here discussing the Hollywood remake and that was 2006.

That being said, we haven't had a thread specific to BR alone and that's certainly a classic worthy of attention here.

I love when that one guy draws the pan as a weapon. Freaking hysterical.

[Lucas]

Its even better when he actually uses it to defend himself from that axe. lol.

I like how that one girl got a megaphone for her weapon haha

[GeneChing]

The more I think about it, the more I identify with the dude who drew the frying pan. Archery? Bah! How would Katniss do with a frying pan?

Man, I should see this flick again. I remember this film being lol funny.

THG opens tomorrow.

[GeneChing]

'Battle Royale' finally in U.S. theaters
G. Allen Johnson
Published 3:44 p.m., Wednesday, August 8, 2012

A dozen years ago, a debate raged in Japan over the violence and the message of a film that exposed a deep divide between an older, more reserved generation and the perceived unruliness of the younger generation. "Battle Royale," made by then-70-year-old Kinji Fukasaku, who was forever scarred by his postwar youth in a devastated Japan and became known for his violent gangster films of the 1970s, was a box-office smash in Japan, popular on the international festival circuit and released to acclaim in Asia and Europe.

But it was unseen in America, until this year.

The premise: Youth in Japan are out of control. They cut school, dye their hair weird colors, get lost in video games, are not respectful to their parents and are not thought to have the work ethic to carry Japan into the new millennium. So a national lesson is taught each year when one particularly unruly class is selected to be stranded on an island. Only one student will be allowed to escape the island and re-enter society - the one who is a survivor of a brutal killing game.

Not surprisingly, U.S. distributors, normally interested in making a little cash off of a hit movie, shied away from a film with wall-to-wall teen-on-teen violence, even if much of it was satirical. The United States was going though a bit of generational angst of its own less than two years after the shocking mass killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. No distributor would touch it, and although remakes of Asian action and horror films were huge at the time, no studio green-lit a remake.

It has taken 12 years, but "Battle Royale" is finally in U.S. theaters. It opens Friday, ironically a month after a mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater has renewed discussion about disaffected youth and movie violence.

"This reaction was exactly what I had in mind when we depicted this sort of confrontation between adults and young people," said Fukasaku shortly after its controversial release in Japan, but he could have been talking about the present day.

(Fukasaku died in 2003 at age 72, during production of "Battle Royale II"; his son, Kenta Fukasaku, completed that film, which tackles youth in a post 9/11 world.)

Cleverly directed with visual panache, "Battle Royale" subtly, amid unsubtle carnage, examines human nature and sociological sickness through 42 students and their sadistic teacher (Beat Takeshi, a.k.a. Takeshi Kitano).

Some students commit suicide; others try to reason peacefully, to no avail. Others are determined to survive at all costs, even if it means killing their best friend. (The female villain Takako is played by Chiaki Kuriyama, who would reprise a version of her gleeful schoolgirl killer for Quentin Tarantino in "Kill Bill: Vol. 1.") It could also be read as a metaphor of the dog-eat-dog world of free-market capitalism, if you want to go there.

Certainly, in the world of "The Hunger Games" and ongoing debate about violence in society, "Battle Royale" is as relevant as ever.

Friday-next Thursday. S.F. Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post St., S.F. www.sffs.org.

G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com

'Battle Royale' could be reborn as a TV show

A scene from "Battle Royale" (Anchor Bay / July 26, 2012)
By Steven Zeitchik
July 26, 2012, 1:24 p.m.

EXCLUSIVE: When "The Hunger Games"hit big in the spring, many blogs were quick to point out the movie’s similarities to "Battle Royale," a 2000 Japanese hit about teenagers in a totalitarian state fighting for survival in a government-imposed competition.

Now a long-stalled U.S. remake of "Battle Royale" could be restarted -- as a TV series.

In the last few weeks, the CW has had talks with the project's Hollywood representatives about the possibility of turning the property into an English-language show, said a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. The talks were preliminary, but if a deal could be reached, the network would acquire rights to Koushun Takami’s underlying novel, then unpack and expand on it for an hourlong dramatic series.

Asked about the CW talks, Joyce Jun, a Hollywood attorney representing U.S. rights to the title, would say only that "there is no deal in place." A CW spokesman confirmed only there had been some discussion but declined to comment further.

One sticking point to any deal is believed to be the approval of Takami, which according to Japanese law must be secured before any remake moves forward.

The "Gossip Girl" network already has one teen-centered post-apocalyptic show in development, "The Selection," a story of young adults battling for survival in a dystopian future. The network put the show back into development after opting not to pick up the pilot in the recent development season. While it's unlikely any network would put two shows with similar themes on the air at the same time, it could continue developing both and see which one better suits its needs.

The discussions come after years of frustration for backers of an American redo of “Battle Royale” -- and show how a rich TV landscape can offer a second chance to stalled film projects.

Hollywood film producers Neal Moritz ("Fast and the Furious") and Roy Lee (the upcoming “Lego” movie) had been on board to produce a film at New Line as far back as six years ago, long before Suzanne Collins had published "Hunger Games." But a movie project stalled when New Line's operations were consolidated in 2008.

When "Hunger Games" came out in the spring, it effectively killed any chances of a "Royale" film; citing the similarities, producers said at the time that no studio would want to risk looking like copycats.

But a TV series could offer a new opportunity, picking up on the theme but in a different way, much like the CW’s "The Vampire Diaries" found success even in the wake of the first “Twilight” movie.

Apocalyptic survival tales are in vogue at the moment. In addition to "Hunger Games," NBC this season is set to debut J.J. Abrams’s “Revolution,” about a group of people fighting for survival in a post-technological world.

I don't know about a TV series, but it would make a great reality show. Wasn't that the plot of it?

[Jimbo]

Since my last post on this thread, I got Battle Royale (about a couple years ago). IMO, it's way better than Hunger Games, which seems like a blatant, albeit much high-budget, ripoff, regardless of HG's author's denials.