After a short life with numerous affairs, a famous actress, Yuri Furiya, passes away, leaving behind five children with different fathers. This is the heartfelt story of these five coming together to form a family with their own struggles and successes.

TV Tokyo has announced that the Battle Royale-like manga Limit will receive a live-action adaptation for the upcoming Summer season.

Limit was serialized from 2009 till 2011 in Bessatsu Friend, a manga magazine. The manga is completed with a total of six volumes. 

“I wish I had done everything on earth with you.”

The quintessential high school English teacher’s go-to novel for nearly the last century, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has received no fewer than five film adaptations and an opera. So why on earth did we need another film version of this masterwork? The honest answer is, we didn’t, but it’s more likely that none of the previous adaptations have been wholly successful in bringing the novel to life.

So how did director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) & executive producer Jay-Z fare on their version of Gatsby? Read on to find out…

“You can call me a hobo, ‘cause I’ll do work. You can call me homeless, ‘cause right now that’s true. But if you call me a bum one more time, I’m gonna teach you a lesson your daddy didn’t.”

Writer/director Jeff Nichols created one of the more interesting films of the last few years with 2011’s Take Shelter. As a matter of fact, now that David Gordon Green has moved on to almost exclusively direct stoner comedies these days, Nichols has become the premiere Southern gothic filmmaker. His latest film Mud, in addition to being his best film yet, continues the year long winning streak of its star Matthew McConaughey, that started with last year’s Bernie.

So why and how is it his best film yet? Read on to find out…

“Life’s a dream. In a dream you can’t make mistakes.”

Terrence Malick is one of the only truly enigmatic directors left in cinema. In 1978, after releasing only his second feature film Days of Heaven, he took a twenty years hiatus before returning with 1998’s The Thin Red Line. The myth that built up around him in those twenty years made him seem less like a real person and more of a legend. In the fifteen years since The Thin Red Line, he’s released three more films, including my favorite film of 2011, The Tree of Life. Now just two years later, he’s released To the Wonder, a film that’s been billed as “his most accessible film yet.”

So how accessible is it? Read on to find out…

1. Tsuki no Sango

Author:   NASU Kinoko
Artist:     SASAKI Shounen
Genre(s): Shounen, Drama

“The story takes place in approximately the year 3000, when humankind arrived at the peak of its civilization, but is losing its will to keep living. It follows a girl, called “princess” by those around her, living on a small island with a fifty person colony and a shinning coral reef. She is descendent of Moon people, and it focuses upon how her ancestor supposedly came to Earth.” -Mangaupdates.com

Thoughts: At first I didn’t think much of the work, but the second chapter changed that.

Click below to view the rest of the notable manga from 2/17 - 2/24.

“Isn’t she sick? I thought sick people sometimes make things up.”

In what is purported to be his final theatrically released film, director Steven Soderbergh returns to familiar territory with his latest thriller Side Effects. Working from a script from Scott Z. Burns (Contagion), he has concocted a well-oiled mystery that doesn’t let up once it gets going, proving that he’s one of the more underrated directors working today.

“They say we die twice: once when the breath leaves our body, and once when the last person we know says our name.”

There’s a temptation to approach everything Al Pacino does with a sense of impending doom. Pretty much everything he’s done since his Oscar-winning turn in Scent of a Woman has made him devolve into a self parody of his younger self. There are exceptions to this, however (Angels in America, You Don’t Know Jack), but more often than not, even the most promising Pacino performances reach a point where he can’t contain his hammier impulses and drags the film down with him.

Thankfully, Stand Up Guys never reaches that point, in spite of a marginal script that desperately tries to sabotage itself with some out-of-place humor (more on that later). But overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the film.

“There are some wars that you fight, and some that you walk away from. This is the fighting kind.”

On paper, the new crime “thriller” Broken City seems like a can’t-miss proposition: a pedigreed cast, a director who knows his way around a genre picture, and a release date in the doldrums of winter when films like this can thrive. The unfortunate reality of Broken City is that it’s a half-baked idea with a script that feels like it was thrown together in a couple of hours.

So what went wrong? Read on to find out…

“You can’t run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.”

In 2009 Kathryn Bigelow, one of the true journeyman (or journeywoman) directors of all-time, finally got her due and was recognized with an Academy Award for directing the Iraq War-set film The Hurt Locker. For her follow-up, Zero Dark Thirty, she stays in familiar territory, chronicling the decade-long hunt for the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, Osama bin Laden.

In spite of knowing exactly how things turned out, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have managed to turn a foregone conclusion into a white-knuckle thriller.

Director J.A. Bayona’s first big budget directorial project was 2006’s The Orphanage, a film that seemed like it was going to be a rote, by-the-numbers psychological horror film. It actually turned out to be one of the better horror films made in the last decade, with tons of style to spare. When I heard that his follow-up would be a chronicle of one family’s survival in the wake of the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in late 2004, I was eagerly anticipating what he would bring to the table.

The Impossible proves that his previous films were no fluke, and that Bayona is the real deal behind the camera.

1. Rin

Author:   HAROLD Sakuishi
Artist:     HAROLD Sakuishi
Genre(s): Shounen, School Life

“Ushimi is a high school student who also aspires to be a mangaka. Rin is a model who appears to be able to see the future. What will happen in the future?” -Batoto.net

Thoughts: Written and drawn by the mangaka of Beck, this could have been horrible and I still would have put it on the list because I know Sakushi-sensei can work wonders.

Click below to view the rest of the notable manga from 12/23 - 1/6.

“Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

Tom Hooper was no stranger to the world of directing when his last film The King’s Speech exploded onto screens at the tail end of 2010, reaping the lion’s share of awards including an Oscar for Best Director. Like so many directors that go from relative obscurity to unanimous acclaim, his next film was going to be bigger and showier in an attempt to show that his excellent work on The King’s Speech was no fluke.

For his follow-up, he chose the biggest and showiest project imaginable: the epic of all epic musicals, Les Miserables.

Did the gamble pay off? Read on to find out…