Takeshi Miike's "Sukiyaki Western"/ "Django" trailer

[pete]

It's a Japanese remake of Django, with samaurai?



Watch the trailer until the very end and you'll see a recognizable face.

[mogwai]

Watch the trailer until the very end and you'll see a recognizable face.

trailer spoiler:

without watching the teaser i knew it was qt. what gives?

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I saw this a few months ago at the Film Festival. Hilarious would be an appropriate word to describe it. But don't let this fool you, it has as much action as any of Takashi's films.

[MacGuffin]

[w/o horse]

Insert:  me watching the original Django the other day.  Hope the song makes it into the remake, definitely.  I don't know if there's like still unused variations on the way you describe how you enjoyed an action movie and thought that certain gun battles were really cool and unexpected surprises were really awesome and the ending wasn't a letdown at all.  Probably requires a professional.

[w/o horse]

 You go to see Sukiyaki Western Django. Let's say the movie is a grocery shopping excursion. Because it's 2008, a year that hasn't been truly nourishing, you're hungry. It's September, so the food is beginning to look tasty. The arrival is great - there is a bird/snake showoff, there is a Tarantino appearance, there is a show down, the unraveling of a story (because you're so hungry you don't notice the packaging, in this case Tarantino's egregious acting, or at least you don't let it bother you), and you're sure everything you want will be here.

Then - even better news - it's not the typical grocery store. There seems to be food from many nations. You notice Japanese (a Yojimbo reference), Italian (Django, after all), American (a western, after all), Japanese again (the architecture, the director Miike, the actors), and American (they speak English). An exciting blend of some of your favorite foods. It sort of feels like this grocery store is making a statement on how many different ways foods have been used in the past and it's contaminating the foods in order to create new perceptions about our usual diet.

But your shopping trip goes on. And although some of the food looks familiar, and sounds familiar, you haven't put anything in the cart yet! You notice the place is a little overdone and the packaging too desperate to be noticed. This is basically what grocery stores like this usually are, but at the same time newer and better grocery stores have come out in the meantime. You're hungry but sense you can't be satisfied by the food that craves you to crave it.

A couple of interesting things happen that will make the trip memorable. Some breathtakingly beautiful popart violence. Completely absurd, but impressive. It's nice to see it done without the guise of dreamlike representation. It's played completely straight faced the whole way through. All the iconography is present: the Shakespearean allusions (blatancies, rather), the machine gun filled casket, silhouettes against the desert sky, the whores, the bad guys, the gangs. I mean, you can't accuse this place of lacking in variety. And for all the different appetites it attempts to satisfy you're going to take at least some of it for granted, and for all the attempts you're going to become overwhelmed, and these two aspects combined make you sort of still hungry and sort of too full.

As you leave one last moment punctures your daze and punctuates the whole trip nicely. One nice little moment of the fantastic and unexpected (aesthetically I mean, no spoiler here). Fuck going back to a grocery store you eventually do leave with an empty cart, but much worse shopping trips can be had than wandering into this place.

[squints]

As you leave one last moment punctures your daze and punctuates the whole trip nicely. One nice little moment of the fantastic and unexpected (aesthetically I mean, no spoiler here).

SPOILS!!
Are you talking about the end? "He moved to Italy and bacame...." (Cue Corbucci Music) DJANGOOOOOO!!!

[w/o horse]

SPOILER Response to squints:

The instant snowfall is what I was referring to, but the Django theme song was incredibly welcomed.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

This was pretty fantastic.  The intro was the perfect kind of hokey that is overdone, but in a way that is quickly acceptable once it's over since the cold blue sky behind a silhouette of the main character reassures you it's not all going to be shot on that set, with those voices.

Not that the films are too comparable beyond this, but I love the contrast of this movie to El Topo.  Whereas El Topo is an Eastern Western, this is definitely a Western Eastern.

I'm excited for some repeat viewings.

[pete]

I started watching it and lost focus while trying to decipher the English.  I'll give it another go now.  Meanwhile, I cannot wait for The Good The Bad and The Weird!

[last days of gerry the elephant]

That one is OK Pete, not as good as Sukiyaki Western though.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I started watching it and lost focus while trying to decipher the English.

Although Japanese with subtitles would've worked just as well, I think Japanese people speaking classic Western one-liners and aphorisms helped fill the pastiche.

[hedwig]

wow. tarantino's scene is one of the weirdest, most hilarious WTF things i've ever seen.

(spoilerish i guess.)

stay tuned for the ending. you'll know what i'm talking about.

[diggler]

i really enjoyed it. it helped to put on the english subtitles even with the characters speaking english. tarantinos presence is obviously an afterthought to sell dvd's, but it's not too intrusive. for the most part this was a pretty fun accessible film.

[john]

I've been excited about this one for a while. I purchased the Blu-Ray without having seen the film, but I didn't realize the U.S cut is truncated by nearly thirty minutes. Seems like a useless fucking move on the part of the distrubutor. An abbreviated Miike still isn't gonna reach any wider of a U.S. audience than unadulterated Miike.