Audio Commentary
Interviews & Making Film
"Blue Heart" Live
Premiere
James Iha in New York
Trailer

They say all-girl-rock-band movies are a specialist taste, but Nobuhiro
Yamashita is here to prove them wrong. Yamashita (director of Hazy Life and
No-one's Ark, both small classics of deadpan slacker comedy) starts from a
plausible situation - a high-school band breaks up over 'musical
differences' - and gives it a wonderfully improbable twist. The band's co-
founder Kei decides to cobble together a scratch band of her own to compete
in the schools music competition, and recruits Korean exchange student Son
(the incomparable Bae Du-Na, from Barking Dogs Never Bite) as her new
vocalist, unfazed by the fact that Son doesn't yet speak Japanese, let alone
sing it. They have just three days to master a set of songs by the Blue
Hearts, Japan's best-loved punk band of the 80s ('Linda Linda Linda' was
their greatest hit) and everything that can go wrong does. Armed with a
score by ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha and a guest
appearance by the Ramones (really?), Yamashita crosses the molehills of
high-school rivalries with the mountains of punk belligerence to produce a
joyously entertaining movie.