Takashi Miike

Started by SubstanceD, February 19, 2003, 04:27:35 PM

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Weak2ndAct

They're certainly not sequels-- just the same combo of the lead actors in vastly different flicks.  Two's fun, three's a letdown (a no-budget Blade Runner rip).  Two is worth seeing alone for the mathematical grid of a midget being shot in the head from three perfect angles-- you'll understand when you see it.

Brazoliange

I'm just finishing up watching through the Black Society Trilogy again (Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines) and really want to recommend it. It's a lot classier than Miike's other stuff (that I've seen, being Ichi, Ichi Episode Zero, Gozu, Audition, and Visitor Q) and generally better.
Long live the New Flesh

MacGuffin

Japan helmer makes Eastern oater
Miike pic 'Sukiyaki' will be shot in English with Japanese cast
Source: Variety

TOKYO -- Takashi Miike, best known abroad for his extreme horror and yakuza pics, including "Audition," "Ichi the Killer" and "One Missed Call," is looking to the American West for his next, "Sukiyaki Western Django."

Scripted by longtime collaborator Masa Nakamura, pic revolves around the struggle between two gangs to takeover a 19th century Japanese frontier town.

All-star cast includes Kaori Momoi ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), Koichi Sato ("Starfish Hotel"), Masanobu Ando ("Big Bang Love: Juvenile A"), Yusuke Iseya ("Memories of Matsuko"), Hideaki Ito ("Umizaru 2 -- Test of Trust") and, in a guest spot, Quentin Tarantino.

Dialogue is in English, a rarity in the Japanese biz, though Miike shot his 2006 horror "Imprint" in English.

Filming will wrap by early December; Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan will release next summer.

Production partners on the ¥800 million ($6.8 million) pic are SPEJ, Sedic Intl., Geneon Entertainment, Dentsu, TV Asahi, Shogakkan and A Team. Overseas sales may be handled by Sony, but a final decision has yet to be made.

Inspired by the spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, Akira Kurosawa's classic "Yojimbo" and the 12th century feud between the Heike and Genji clans that has generated dozens of stories, plays and pics in Japan, "Django" is a freeform amalgam of East and West.

The 19th-century Japanese town where the action unfolds -- an open set built in the hills of northern Yamagata Prefecture -- is a jumble of buildings in Western and Japanese styles that exist only in art director Nao Sasaki's imagination.

The interior of the saloon features a buffalo head, cattle horns and other Western memorabilia on the walls, but the huge painting of an eagle behind the stage could have come straight from a shogun's castle.

The costumes, by Michiko Kitamura, also mix East and West, with Hideaki Ito's gunman-for-hire dressed like a character from "Deadwood," complete with a wide-brimmed black hat, while Koichi Sato's Heike gang leader looks like a videogame version of a samurai warrior, down to his red hair and blood-spattered breast plate.

Why an Eastern Western?

"My father was a big fan of spaghetti Westerns -- I used to enjoy watching them with him on TV when I was a kid," Miike told at press conference held in the town saloon. "I've long wanted to make a Western of my own."

But instead of a retro genre tribute, Miike told reporters he wanted to do something "that defies common sense, that's anti-Hollywood." Thus the decision to cast Tarantino, "who is trying to change Hollywood," he explained.

Pic is Miike's latest frontal assault on the international market.

His last was "Imprint," which was skedded to air on Showtime as part of its Masters of Horror series by well-known horror helmers but was pulled when Showtime execs judged it too extreme.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Kadokawa, Miike work on 'Puzzle'
Duo team for romantic comedy
Source: Variety

Producer Haruki Kadokawa and cult fave Takashi Miike have linked to make "Kamisama no Puzzle" (God's Puzzle), a sci-fi romantic comedy based on a prize-winning, bestselling novel by Shinji Kimoto.

Hayato Ichihara ("Juon 2," "Rainbow Song") stars as twins -- one a diligent student and one who is drifting through school and life. They join forces with a pretty, brilliant, dropout (Mitsuki Tanimura) to unlock the secrets of the universe and build one of their own.

Principal photography is set to start at the Nikkatsu Studio in Tokyo on Aug. 22. Release is aimed for the summer of 2008, though a distrib has yet to be locked in.

Speaking to reporters at Nikkatsu on Friday, Kadokawa said he first read the 2002 novel while in prison on drug charges and that, though the theme seemed heavy, he saw "a strong comic element in the material" that he plans to underline with "a large helping of CG effects."

Kadokawa's last two pics, the 2005 WWII epic "Yamato" and 2007 Ghenghis Khan biopic "The Blue Wolf: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea," have been large in scale and ambition, with the former earning Y5.09 billion ($46 million) at the Japanese B.O.  "Kamisama no Puzzle" is a far smaller project, but given that the helmer is Miike, an international fanboy icon for such taboo-smashing pics as "Audition" and "Ichi the Killer" and the J-Horror hit "One Missed Call," the pic is sure to draw buyer attention.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Miike, Oguri set 'Crows Zero' sequel
Japanese action film to shoot in July
Source: Variety

TOKYO -- Producer Mataichiro Yamamoto is prepping a sequel to "Crows Zero," an actioner about school gang wars that earned $24 million in Japan in 2007.

Helmer Takashi Miike and star Shun Oguri will reunite for the sequel. Filming is skedded to start in July, with release set for next year. One other main cast member from the first pic, Kyosuke Yabe, has also signed on.

Produced by a consortium led by the TBS network and distribbed by Toho, "Crows Zero" is based on a comic by Hiroshi Takahashi that has sold 32 million copies in Japan.

Oguri plays Genji Takaya, the son of a yakuza boss, who enters gang-ridden Suzuran High School to do what Dad couldn't in his day -- unite all the school's gangs under his rule.

TBS is repping "Crows Zero" at Cannes.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Producers team on 'Assassins' redo
Thomas, Nakazawa to make Miike pic
Source: Variety

Producers Jeremy Thomas and Toshiaki Nakazawa are teaming to make helmer Takashi Miike's samurai pic "Thirteen Assassins."

Project, which is set in the shogun era and follows 13 assassins who come together for a suicide mission to kill an evil lord, is based on Eiichi Kudo's 1963 film of the same name.

Thomas' U.K.-based Recorded Picture Co. will co-produce with Nakazawa, who produced the foreign language film Oscar winner "Departures."

Hanway Films, which Thomas founded in 1998, will handle international sales. Toho has acquired Japanese rights.

Principal photography starts July in Japan's Yamagature Prefecture.

Nakazawa previously worked with Miike on Quentin Tarantino starrer "Sukiyaki Western Django" and "The Bird People in China."

Thomas has a long history of working with Asian directors and on Asian subject matter.

He raised most of the money for Bernardo Bertolucci's $25 million "The Last Emperor" independently, at one point even scouring phone books for sources of finance, and also obtained permission from the Chinese authorities to lense in the Forbidden City. Pic, which was released in 1987, won nine Academy Awards, including best picture.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Shout! Factory has just announced that Takashi Miike's cult horror classic Audition is coming to both 2-disc DVD and Blu-ray on 10/6 (SRP $24.99 and $29.99). Both will include an introduction with director Takashi Miike and star Eihi Shiina, newly-recorded audio commentary with Miike and screenwriter Daisuke Tengan, new interviews with cast members Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Renji Ishibashi and Ren Osugi, international trailers and a booklet with an essay by Tom Mes (author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike). Both are mastered from a new 1080p high definition transfer from the inter-negative, and feature a new 5.0 digital soundtrack mixed from the original Japanese audio elements. Miike doesn't do commentaries very often, so having this new one is awesome.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Japanese cult director in Venice with samurai film (AP)

VENICE, Italy - Japanese cult director Takashi Miike says he remade the 1963 classic "Thirteen Assassins" to help Japan's younger generation learn about the past.

The film is set about 150 years ago, toward the end of the samurai period. An esteemed samurai, Shinzaemon Shimada, played by Japanese superstar Koji Yakusho — best known to international audiences for his roles in "Babel" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" — calls on 12 other elite warriors to end the sadistic rule of Lord Naritsugu.

"I wanted the audience to realize that this story is not taking place in the remote past, but rather in a recent past when our grand-grand parents lived," the director told a news conference Thursday ahead of the film's premiere in competition for the Golden Lion. "It is our story, the story of our everyday life. In Japan, contemporary history is something children do not know very well."

The movie is a remake of Eiichi Kudo's black-and-white classic of the samurai genre.

Stylish and intricately choreographed, the story line presents the noble ideals often associated with samurai, for example, when early in the film Shimada says the greatest honor he could achieve as a samurai would be to die a "noble death."

"Fate smiles on me," he says when the opportunity to face off against Lord Naritsugu comes his way.

The film also relies on Miike's trademark use of violence. He also gives each samurai a distinctive personality, deepening interest in the characters.

The film comes to Venice competition with a strong production pedigree behind it. Jeremy Thomas, the project's executive producer who met Miike in Venice a few years ago, worked on Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 Oscar-winning film "The Last Emperor."

The film's other executive producer, Toshiaki Nakazawa, was behind the film "Departures," which won the best foreign film Oscar.

Miike was last in Venice with the 2007 film "Sukiyaki Western Django," in which actor and director Quentin Tarantino had a cameo.

Tarantino, a big fan of Miike's films, is president of this year's jury, which will decide the winner of the Golden Lion on Sept. 11.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Pubrick

I just thought I'd say something so you wouldn't be the only one posting here once a year as you have been since 2006.
under the paving stones.

Gold Trumpet

I know some people who attribute a vaulted level of respect for his type of editing and style respect. Like Alfred Hitchcock before, to them, his style and continuous dedication to it is an overwhelming benefit to cinema. Brian De Palma had some years of constant work within a mode of style, but he's fallen off from being able to work. Martin Scorsese now reminds me of that kind of professional workhorse for his trade, but for lots of world cinema goers, I know Takashi Miike is the best modern example. I am strangely nonplussed by him.

Alexandro

i've liked everything I've seen from him but that's that. he has a lot of street cred I guess because his films are so easily identifiable as weird, maybe because of the violence...he works a lot. I don't know. I'm not turned off at all but I don't rush to see something new by him.

MacGuffin

Takashi Miike Film Lines Up Graphic-Novel Adaptation 'Lesson Of The Evil,' Wants To Have It Ready For Venice
Source: Playlist

Curiously missing from many top-ten lists of last year was Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins," his sweeping ode to the samurai epic with enough stunning imagery and action to match its thematically rich story. The prolific director is occasionally known for tossing off films with a whiff of exercise and effort (read: "Ninja Kids!!!"), but that film displayed such mastery behind the camera, including a final 45-minute battle of incredible geography and flow, that one couldn't help but be blown away. Now, Punch Drunk Critics has dug up news of his latest project, an adaptation of the best-selling graphic novel "Aku No Kyoten" ("Lesson of the Evil"), and those who are new to Miike's wonderfully diverse filmography are sure to be surprised while his other fans crack a giant grin.
The adaptation, set to shoot in April this year, marks the reunion between actor Hideaki Ito and Miike, last seen working together in the fun-but-flawed "Sukiyaki Western Django." In the new film, Ito plays Hasumi Seiji, a popular high school teacher flawed by psychopathic tendencies, who notices a rise in bullying and bad behavior among the student body. Naturally, he decides the best punishment for the offenders would be to kill them all, most likely in increasingly horrible ways not fully explored in "Ichi the Killer."

Regardless of the subject matter in Miike's films, there is always a delightful mix of black humor and visual insanity coursing through his work, and "Lesson of the Evil" sounds like a prime playground for those elements. The film is aiming for a November release in Japan after a premiere at the August Venice International Film Fest, and considering Miike will probably shoot two or three films on the side during that gap, that's an easily obtainable goal for the director.

Such quality distributors as Magnet Releasing (who distributed "13 Assassins") and Alamo Drafthouse were created specifically for this sort of fare, so those stateside can probably expect a VOD/limited theatrical run early next year, which is about par for Miike's films these days.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Tom Hardy To Star In 'The Outsider,' Takashi Miike's English-Language Debut
BY MIKE FLEMING JR | Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Tom Hardy will star in The Outsider, a Silver Pictures' film that will mark the English-language debut of Japanese director Takashi Miike, who's in negotiations to direct the Andrew Baldwin script. The film is based on an original idea by John Linson, who will produce along with Art Linson through their Linson Entertainment banner. Joel Silver, Andrew Rona and Steve Richards will produce for Silver Pictures. The project, originally set at Warner Bros, will be independently financed to shoot in Japan early next year. It's an epic story set in post-World War II Japan, chronicling the life of a former American G.I. who becomes part of the Japanese yakuza.Hardy has become the go-to guy for everything, with startling diversity. The Warrior star is right now circling a chance to play Elton John in Rocketman, the Michael Gracey-directed project that just got Lawrence Bender aboard to produce, with UTA in the process of setting up distribution, having landed financing in Cannes. After The Dark Knight Rises, Hardy next stars in the franchise reboot Mad Max: Fury Road. He also stars in the Dennis Lehane-scripted and Michael R. Roskam-directed Animal Rescue opposite Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts and James Gandolfini, and in the Daniel Espinosa-directed Child 44 for Scott Free and Summit.

New to Hollywood films is Miike, who has helmed more than 60 Japanese-language films including Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins and Audition. The Linsons are executive producers the FX series Sons of Anarchy, and their features include Lords of Dogtown and Fight Club.

Silver Pictures is about to start The Gunman, with Sean Penn and Javier Bardem starring. Next up for Silver Pictures is the airline thriller Non-Stop which stars Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore and hits theaters February 28, 2014. CAA reps Hardy, along with United Agents.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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