ZATOICHI!!!!

[indiana]

I this saw Zatoichi at the Vancouver international Film Festival today, and it was really good! Got to be one of the best "Beat" Takashi movies. Great actting,  super fighting  shots!.  but the funny thing was, for 5 min of the movie. the screen was all mess up. like everyone in the movie was small and fat. i thing there movie lenes was trippin are some thing. ya... the only other movie that i really did not like by Takashi was "taboo" ..this too wield.

[Cecil]

i liked taboo

[ElPandaRoyal]

Taboo wasn't a Takeshi direction, right? I'm not sure but I think he only acted in it.

[pete]

not that I don't like slow, I like slow--but is this movie as slow as the other of takeshi's films?

[Cecil]

i dont think so... i didnt really notice...

[rustinglass]

crap, I missed dolls. zatoichi looks great

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[kotte]

Looks great.

So that's what it takes for a non-american film to attract an american audience? A Miramax logo and a deep-voiced american narrator.

[pete]

I gots the DVD.  it was pretty cool, but the CGI in it was REALLY REALLY bad.  worse than Alias.
and it's as cool as the original zatoichi, with a lot of them fun ways to show off skills (you know, really exaggerated scenes in which the characters show off just how good they are with their swords--slicing cups in half and whatnot).
and as a film in the recent samurai film boom--it's not half as good as twilight samurai.

[Ghostboy]

I saw this this morning and while I didn't dislike it -- it was campy fun, and the excessive CGI gore and random dance numbers were fun -- I don't understand why Miramax is getting behind this in the way they failed to do for the vastly superior Shaolin Soccer or, at least until QT stepped in, Hero.

[Ravi]

The action in this movie comes in short bursts.  Is this how Takeshi Kitano usually stages action?  No long, drawn out battles here.  Being both a Kitano and Zatoichi virgin I didn't know what the film would be like, and I liked it.  The film is a unique combination of campy extreme blood, humor, intrigue, and even music (Sounds like a poster quote, I know...).

[pete]

takeshi kitano doesn't usually do action movies, so they're usually not staged.  or the actions usually consist of a gunshot or two or something.  zatoichi is already pretty elaborate.  but like cowboy films, the action in samurai films are usually never very long anyways.  normally they have a longer stand-off time, but the action sequence itself usually takes place in a slash or two, there's no swashbuckling or exchange of any kind like the hollywood fencing films or the Chinese sword films.
I thought the film was pretty good, but nothing that special.  the effects really bothered me for some reason.

[fulty]

i liked taboo

Me too.  - Tina  mesmerism

[matt35mm]

but the CGI in it was REALLY REALLY bad.  worse than Alias.

That's what I thought of Hero.  The really bad CGI completely took me out of the movie.

But at least Alias has the excuse of being a TV show where they have about 2 days to work on the CGI (and everything else about Alias is Da Bomb).  TV mini-series are the worst though.

[pete]

I saw this this morning and while I didn't dislike it -- it was campy fun, and the excessive CGI gore and random dance numbers were fun -- I don't understand why Miramax is getting behind this in the way they failed to do for the vastly superior Shaolin Soccer or, at least until QT stepped in, Hero.

I actually saw the miramax shaolin soccer today, they cut out nearly 20 minutes of film.  holy crap, did that make a difference.  no wonder ebert said "this movie had no plot, made no sense"...etc., miramax really chopped this one up good.  I can only imagine how pissed tornadore must've been.  and to top it all off, they added "Funny" campy kungfu sound effects and that kungfu fighting techno remix in the end.  what a bunch of assholes.

but back to zatoichi.  the remake to me seems kind of pointless, it takes this revisionist stance that is somewhat unnecessary.  it tries to heightened the existing surreal qualities already existent in the previous zatoichi films, as well as several other attempts to "update" the franchise, but I think that kinda ruins the fun of a chanbara film.  isn't it more fun and more rewarding to find the irony in the excessive violence and the exaggerated display of prowess and the anachronism by yourself?  I think kitano was simply pointing out the obvious in his "revision" of an otherwise standard (the "good" kind of standard) film.  it was fairly effortless, and kitano could have dumbed down his plot way more or added even more confusion to the clan interplay, and it wouldn't've mattered, because the point to his zatoichi is this tongue-in-cheek attitude he's taken to it, and once he's got irony on his side, he's pretty much homefree to do whatever the hell he wants.  if an aspect of the film is bad, like the special effects, they're "supposed to be" bad, and if a scene is done well, he's "paying homage to kurosawa".  

the idea of a great director reviving a kitschy franchise really clouded the judgment of a lot of the film viewers, especially those unfamiliar with the form.  people who've never seen a chanbara film in their lifetime, aside from maybe the seven samurai, are mistakingly crediting kitano for a lot of elements he didn't create and can be found in hundreds of existing films, and they're also some of kitano's major critiques of the genre and the franchise, especially his attempts to condemn self-righteous violence and whatnot.  I don't think it's entirely the (western) viewers' faults, I don't think Kitano has communicated those ideas clearly.