Ueno Juri for NHK's Taiga Drama 2011

(Source: Mainichi) It was announced on the 25th of January that Ueno Juri (25) will be playing the title role in NHK's Taiga Drama on the life of Tokugawa Hidetada's (the second Shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty) daughter, Gou. The drama is entitled Gou~Himetachi no Sengoku (Gou~ The Princesses of the Warring States).

The script was written by Tabuchi Kumiko, who also wrote the script for NHK's previous Taiga Drama, Atsuhime (which starred Miyazaki Aoi). This will be the first Taiga Drama for Ueno Juri of Nodame Cantabile fame.

Ueno Juri for Honda

(Source: Sanspo) Ueno Juri (22) is the image-character for Honda's new car series, "Life". The official press conference was held yesterday, 6th November 2008 in Tokyo.

Ueno, who has been driving for 3 years, says that the car comes equipped with a "pack monitor" which makes it easy to park. She also thinks that it is a very nice car, especially when she enters and gets out of it. She has no problems doing parallel parking and would love to take her friends and elder sister out for a drive!

She also revealed that she was thinking of doing a 5-day road trip from Gifu to Kinki, and reporters immediately asked if she would be doing so with a boyfriend, to which Ueno replied, "...". The CM for Honda's Life goes on air today, 7th November 2008.

Last Friends to hit the Big Screen

(Source: Entame) Osaka Sports reported that the decision to make a movie-version of popular J-Dorama "Last Friends" has been made! The dorama's themes are concerned with modern-day social problems like child abuse, domestic violence and homosexuality, and started out with a viewer's rating of 13.9% (for the first episode) and peaked at 20.7% in the second-last episode last week, pulling ahead of KimuTaku's CHANGE. (The last episode airs tonight.)

Related personnel commented that "nobody had thought that Last Friends would be able to rake in higher viewer's ratings than KimuTaku's CHANGE. Although the 19th (of June) was meant to be the last episode, we suddenly had a phone call asking us to add on a special episode/version of Last Friends, in the way that KimuTaku's HERO was made into a movie."

Apparently plans for the movie are already underway. Following in the steps of "Journey to the West" and "HERO", it's been said that the transition from the small-screen to the big-screen has rarely seen failure.