Actress Koike Eiko (26) has married pro wrestler Sakata Wataru (34). She will give a press conference today to make the formal announcement, but Sakata was already spotted leaving a municipal office last night after he registered their marriage. The couple tied the knot after a relationship of five years, a period which has seen Koike develop from being just another busty pin-up girl into a multi-faceted career as an actress and talento. She first displayed her comic talents on the edgy Fuji TV show “One Night Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and has shown a more serious face on the TV Tokyo talk show “Kamburia Kyuden” (Cambrian Palace), which she co-hosts with novelist and social commentator Murakami Ryu. She worked as a ringside commentator and spokesperson for Japan’s PRIDE Fighting Championships from 2000 to 2006, where she met Sakata. He is now a member of the popular Hustle wrestling promotion managed by Takada Nobuhiko. Koike is said to have been very close to her grandfather, who passed away in August of last year, and she wanted to wait until after the anniversary of his death before getting married.
• The six-girl Osaka-based group Oreska Band have wrapped up their 7 dates on the “Warped Tour”, a major punk festival event on the U.S. west coast. The schoolgirl ska-punk sextet were a big success at the Anime Expo in July and are staying in California till the end of the year to work on an upcoming Hollywood movie. The as-yet unnamed project is by the same team that put together the hit TV show “High School Musical”.
• The 64th Venice International Film Festival kicked off yesterday. Japan’s contender for the Golden Lion award is “Sukiyaki Western Django”, Miike Takashi’s take on the festival’s theme: the spaghetti western. Today, director Kitano “Beat” Takeshi will become the first winner of the new “Glory to the Filmmaker” award, named after his own recent release, “Kantoku Banzai!” The 2003 Golden Lion winner said, “I’m really grateful. I’m delighted that my name will live on in the form of this award.” Also representing Japan is Aoyama Shinji’s “Sad Vacation”, which opens the festival’s Horizons section for cutting edge cinema.