Magare Spoon synopsis

Once a year, on Christmas Eve, Cafe Telekinesis holds a real psychic party. At the party, psychics gather together to show off their abilities while for the rest of the year they hide their abilitties.

Yone Sakurai (Masami Nagasawa) is a program director for a psychic variety TV show called "Are You A Psychic?". She is stressed out and tired from her work, but proud of what she is doing. Yone actually believes in psychic abilities. By an audience request a new plan is set out for the program, a plan which requires the show to uncover real psychics or psychic events. Yone is selected to find these people.
Yone then goes on a nationwide search, but uncovers only fakes. As Christmas draws closer, Yone, a normally cheerful girl, becomes depressed. Her boss at the Tokyo station orders Yone back if she can't find a psychic. Before Yone ends her search she makes one last stop at Cafe Psychic on Christmas Eve! However the psychics there continue to hide off their abilities from her except for the one person who had no special abilities, "The Thin Man" who was just that, thin and could squeeze through small openings, not what she was looking for and depressing Yone even more. Through out her short stay at the cafe, the psychics use their special abilities, mostly hiding it from her successfully though towards the end she did become a bit aware of their talents. The movie ends with Yone waiting at a train station on her way back to Tokyo where waiting she herself trys to become a psychic by willing a spoon to bend, something she had been trying to do her whole life. She did succeed in bending the spoon but was unaware of it due to being distracted and dropping it on the ground.

 This had the potential to be a really enjoyable movie, as much as I enjoy everything Masami has done up until now really have to say the movie flopped, though certainly not her fault. While the Cafe scenes were good to start off, too much time was spent there, close to 2/3's of the film and ended up severly dragging because of it. Also it may have been more interesting had Yone discovered the psychic's abilities and was able to persuade them to come on her show, also what may have worked is her discovering her own ability and gone from there, sadly we were left with a lot of 'what would have happened?' possibilities. Can't recommend it except if you're a Masami fan, she was solid but so much more could have been done with her role, I'd rate it a generous 6/10.

Year: 2009     Running Time: 105 minutes

Cast: Nagasawa Masami, Miyake Hiroki, Masashi Suwa, Tsuji Osamu, Shiga Kotaro, Nakagawa Haruki, Kawashima Junya, Iwai Hideto

Magare! Spoon trailer

 

Robokon movie synopsis

 Satomi (Nagasawa Masami) is a student of a technical college. She is a lazy girl and poor at both study and club activities. One day, a teacher tells her she is short of credits and needs to have extra lessons. More lessons will be killing her, but the teacher gives her a proposal that if she joins the second robot club of the college and takes part in the coming Robokon with the club, he will accept that as the credit.

 'RobotContest' or Robokon is competed by one hundred and twenty-four teams from sixty-two technical colleges - two teams from each college. Everyteam consists of one robot and three members of crew - a captain, an operator and a mechanic. The captain of Satomi's team is the club leader Yotsuya, who has dropped out of the first robot club of the college because it is too tightly organized, but is worried about too few members of his club and his small gift of robot operation. The mechanic is Aida (Oguri Shun), who is a lonely genius -having enough gifts in technological fields and no cooperation. And theoperator is Satomi, who has never operated a robot before. Their robot is named 'BOXhund', designed with outstanding ideas but still incomplete. Still, through many setbacks and inter team squabbling, plus not having the best Robot entered in the contest, this being a feel good teen movie they qualify for the final Robokon contest and go all the way to win the championship, winning with one second left on the clock.

 Though it's far from a masterpiece this is such an enjoyable watch, especially Masami who won the newcomer of the year actress award for her role. Quite fluffy, predictable but the characters are so well played by the cast it's hard not pulling for them as they do eke out the championship in a very dramatic way. Mentioned it's not a masterpiece but it's a fun watch, have watched it at least 5 times and it gets better with every viewing, a must watch for all Masami fans, but kudos to the whole cast too for doing a good job, final rating of 8.5/10, highly recommended. Sadly couldn't find a trailer for the movie, but check the next few posts for many screenshots from the film.

Year: 2003     Running Time: 118 minutes
Cast

Masami Nagasawa – Satomi Hazawa
Shun Oguri – Koichi Aida
Atsushi Ito – Yotsuya
Takashi Tsukamoto – Kazuyoshi Takeuchi
Kazuma Suzuki – Zushi sensei
Risa Sudo – Sasaki sensei
Tsuyoshi Ujiki – Yoshiyuki Hazawa
Hideko Yoshida – Obaba
YosiYosi Arakawa – Gohara
Sei Hiraizumi – Wakita sensei

Erika Toda SPEC screenshots episode #1 and synopsis

 SPEC or Keizoku 2 was an Erika drama from the fall of 2010, it's a remake of the 1999 Keizoku series which starred Miki Nakatani. In the current one, Erika plays Saya Toma, an air-headish detective, yet quite a genius, assigned to the Unsolved Cases Department. While most of the cases don't deal with that, the department gets the real hard, oddball cases to solve. Working with her is the recently demoted Takeru Sebumi, played by Ryo Kase, an extremely serious detective and was demoted for shooting his partner though it wasn't his fault. And leading these two is their superior Kotaro Nonomura, played by Ryu Raita, bit of a bumbling fool but will do anything to stick up for his small team.
 Have only seen the first 5 episodes so far, but to me this is so much better than the original...funny, aloof, serious, interesting, good plots....really a must watch, especially if you're a Toda fan. Not her best drama but I think it's her best acting performance to date, she really carries this show and is so enjoyable to watch. Won't give a final rating yet, it's only been subbed up to episode 6 so far, but after 5 episodes I'd put it at a 9/10, think it's one most would enjoy and a must see for us Erika fans! Bunch of screenshots from the first 5 episodes below, all featuring you-know-who!

Erika Toda SPEC screenshots episode #2

Erika Toda SPEC screenshots episode #3