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Sukiyaki Western Django
Legendary japanese director Takashi Miike presents his remake of classic Sergio Corbucci's spaghetti western Django (1966). A crazy offering even by Miike standards, the deliriously entertaining Sukiyaki Western - Django had camp cult classic stamped all over it from day one, and the cast and crew deliver with straight-faced, winking exuberance. The film is set amidst a fusion mishmash of dusty hills and painted backdrops, cowboy hats and Japanese period costume, providing an appropriate environment for the looney tunes genius of Miike.
Summary
Original title: Sukiyaki Western Django
Country: Japan
Genre: Action, Western
Year: 2007
IMDB Rating: 7.4/10 (307 votes)
Runtime: 121 min
Language: English
Company: Dentsu Productions Ltd., Geneon Entertainment, Sedic, Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan), TV Asahi, Toei Company
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Basis of Miike's filmmaking:
the freedom, the joy, the vitality
Plot
It's been hundreds of years since the Battle of Dannoura, yet the Genji (Minamoto) and Heiki (Taira) clans are still feuding. After centuries of war, the rival clans have been reduced to little more than scrappy gangs of ill-kempt stragglers. The Heike led by hot-tempered Kiyomori and the Genji led by criminally cool Yoshitsune both catch wind that there's gold to be found in the small, remote town of Yuta. Showdown in little Yuta is inevitable when both clans come rolling into town at the same time. Joining the fray is a mysterious, nameless cowboy with the fastest guns in the west. Both clans are eager to enlist the ronin into their ranks, but he will only offer his services to the highest bidder.
Cast
actors on the left side, roles on the right one
Director:
(Hint: hover on image for cast info, images are also clickable)
Actors and actresses:
Curious facts
Did you know that..
Sukiyaki Western Django was presented in the 64th Venice International Film Festival in August and opened in Japan on September 15 2007.
Takashi Miike, the man behind such acclaimed movies as "Audition" and "Ichi the Killer", was chosen by Time magazine as one of the Top Ten directors of the 21st century. He was aiming to be the first Japanese to take the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award since Kitano Takeshi in 1997. And Django is Miike's fourth movie to be shown at Venice, but is his first competitive entry.The movie received a five-minute standing ovation after its late-night official screening at the Venice International Film Festival. After earlier mixed reviews, the enthusiastic reception was a relief for Miike and stars Itoh Hideaki and Momoi Kaori, who said "The screening was very late, I was so happy people didn't decide to go home." The movie was shown in front of a full house of 1,000 people from midnight.
The movie has been noted internationally for including cameo by fellow director and Miike-fan Quentin Tarantino. And as he said he agreed to play the cameo role because he considered Takashi Miike "one of the greatest directors living today."Although shot in Japan with almost exclusively Japanese actors, the dialogue is entirely in English.
Sukiyaki Western Django is not the first Japanese western. In the early 1960s, the Nikkatsu studio specialised in peculiar bastardizations of the genre that had Japanese cowboys riding the hills and plains of Hokkaido and coming to the aid of the downtrodden.
It's not even the first film to re-apply the aesthetics of the spaghetti western to the chambara genre, as demonstrated by the very perceptive inclusion of Eiichi Kudo's raucously entertaining The Fort of Death (Gonin no Shokin Kasegi, 1969) in the spaghetti western retro that ran concurrent with Miike's film at the 2007 Venice film festival. Kudo's film features an opening scene lifted wholesale from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and gives a prominent role to the iconic Gatling gun that also pops up in Sukiyaki Western Django.Promotional trailers, posters and leaflets for the movie were altered after Shinto shrine keepers protested against a scene in the movie where a man is hanged from a "torii," a gate that marks the entrance to a Shinto shrine and a traditional religious symbol.
Sukiyaki Western Django is being serialized as a manga, drawn by mangaka Kotobuki Shiriagari ("Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san"). The manga will be serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Superior, starting with the next issue that goes on sale Friday (June 8). The series is scheduled to run for 10 chapters. It is also reported that Shiriagari's character drawings will be based on the movie's cast.
Sukiyaki Western Django posters and wallpapers
Terminology and History
Sukiyaki - is a Japanese dish in the nabemono (Japanese steamboat) style.
It consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs.
Generally sukiyaki is a dish for the colder days of the year and it is commonly found at bonenkai, Japanese year-end parties. A common theme in Japanese comedy is that making passable sukiyaki can be done with a very tight budget, especially if one is poor.The Genpei War (1180-1185) was a conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans
and in late-Heian period Japan. They resulted in the fall of the Taira clan and establishment of the Kamakura shogunate under Minamoto Yoritomo in 1192.
The name "Genpei" (pronounced and sometimes romanised as Gempei) comes from alternate readings of the kanji 'Minamoto' (%u6E90) and 'Taira' (%u5E73). The conflict is also known in Japanese as the Jisho-Juei War after the two eras between which it took place.The battle of Dannoura (Dan-no-ura no tatakai) was a major sea battle of the Genpei War, occurring at Dan-no-ura, in the Shimonoseki Strait off the southern tip of Honshu. On April 25, 1185, the Genji (Minamoto) clan fleet, led by Minamoto no Yoshitsune, defeated the Heike (Taira) clan fleet, during a half-day engagement.
Sukiyaki Western Django trailer
Quotes
Quentin Tarantino:
- To be such a cool character, doing fast draws, wearing a cool costume, it just doesn't get any better than that.
- There's a childlike innocence to it. We could all be eight years old and doing this in our backyards and just having a whale of a time.
Takashi Miike:
- I am convinced that we have made something awesome, a Japanese movie that will please everyone in the world.
- When I was growing up, spaghetti westerns were in their heyday. We played with toy guns and naturally wanted to make this kind of movie when we grew up.
- For this movie, we used Japanese English, not the English perfectly spoken in the United States or in the UK... If this is accepted, then Japanese English will come to be known as something very cool.
Kaori Momoi:
- We wanted to show the world that Japanese actors could make movies in English and not "lose" to "Memoirs of a Geisha".
- If the way Japanese actors speak English comes to be accepted, then it will add to Japanese actors' range.
Ito Hideaki:
- Though I don't speak the language at all, this experience made me want to do another movie in English... And I'd really like to make another spaghetti western in Japan, but this time in Italian.
Sukiyaki Western Django teaser
Qualified Sukiyaki Western Django reviews
by expert sites
- Midnight Eye review, by Tom Mes
http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/sukiyaki-western-django.shtml
Sukiyaki Western Django is not the Miike movie with the bad English. Sukiyaki Western Django is the movie that best embodies the freedom, the joy, the vitality, and the lucidity that form the basis of Takashi Miike's filmmaking. - Twitch - TIFF Report, by Todd Brown
http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/tiff-report-sukiyaki-western-django-review/
Sukiyaki Western Django captures Miike in his glossy, crowd pleasing, supposedly mainstream mode - this is far more the Miike of Zebraman and The Great Yokai War than the Miike of Ichi the Killer - and it is one of the very best examples of the type, a near perfect fusion of the raw energy that made so many cultists fans in the first place and the technical polish that has become increasingly evident in his more recent work. It is stylish, surprising, occasionally shocking but mostly just very, very fun. - Bloody Disgusting Horror, by Mr. Disgusting
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review/1905
SUKIYAKI was no doubt a Miike film, carrying all of the characteristics - including the bad ones. In terms of a quality movie, SUKIYAKI was lacking in the screenplay, the entire tone (seriousness) and overall effort. While the film felt rushed (or ignored) in certain areas (most notably in the acting), Miike excels to the top of his game in others (the eye candy). If you're looking for a Takashi Miike film, you've found it. SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO is a typical Miike film in every aspect, so there are no surprises nor disappointments... unless of course you've never seen anything by Miike. - The Japan Times Online, by MARK SCHILLING
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20070914a1.html
The biggest miscalculation, however, was the decision to have the Japanese cast speak English - and not simple day-to-day conversational English either, but ornately colloquial dialogue that rolls out of monolingual mouths like someone reciting the Gettysburg Address while gargling water. Some in the cast, such as Kaori Momoi and Yusuke Iseya, rate fairly high on the intelligibility scale, but the overall effect is grating. Will this bother local audiences? Maybe. I would also be annoyed if I had to sit though a Hollywood remake of "Yojimbo," Akira Kurosawa's classic 1961 Eastern Western, with Brad Pitt emoting in mangled Edo Period Japanese. - Explain! Magazine, by Cam Lindsay
http://www.exclaim.ca/motionreviews/generalreview.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=808&fid1=27945
The fast-paced action is well staged on a set that borrows from both western and samurai traditions; Miike mixes both good old gunplay (a Gatling gun that's housed in the original film's iconic coffin) and martial arts swordplay, which intermingle cohesively until the last fight. - Reel Time, by Will Sloan of Inside Toronto
http://blogs.insidetoronto.com/reel_time/festivalsrepertory/..sukiyaki-western-django/
"This is a crazy, fast-paced spectacle of a movie, with some stunning action scenes and gorgeously colourful production design. The problem is, it's an empty spectacle. Ultimately, Sukiyaki Western Django is an exhausting experience. This is not a film you become involved in - it isn't funny or engaging."
Sukiyaki Western Django long promo
Further reading
- Sukiyaki Western Django Official Site
- Sukiyaki Western Django Official Site (in English)
- Midnight Eye feature: Takashi Miike at the 2007 Venice film festival
- Midnight Eye feature: Takashi Miike at the 2007 Venice film festival
- Legends Of Horror
- Director Takashi Miike on Legends Of Horror site
Sukiyaki Poll
Where to buy Sukiyaki Western Django DVDs?
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Sukiyaki Western - Django (DVD) (English Language)
(Special Collector's Edition) (Japan Version)
This three-disc Special Collector's Edition comes with a storyboard booklet and the following special features:
Disc 1: Making Of, Production Announcement, Advanced Screening, Premiere Gala, Venice Film Festival Footage
Disc 2: Weapons Making Of, CG Making Of, Special TV Program (Channel NECO), Macaroni Western Trailer Collection
Buy DVD at
$70.99
Sukiyaki Western - Django (DVD) (English Language) (Standard Edition) (Japan Version)
This edition comes with director's commentary and theatrical trailers.
Buy DVD at
$37.49
Sukiyaki Western - Django (English Language) (Blu-Ray) (Japan Version)
Blu-Ray Disc
An English-language remake of Sergio Corbucci's classic 1966 western Django set in historical Japan, starring Japanese actors with questionable grasp of English? If anyone could pull it off, it'd be Miike Takashi! A crazy offering even by Miike standards, the deliriously entertaining Sukiyaki Western - Django had camp cult classic stamped all over it from day one, and the cast and crew deliver with straight-faced, winking exuberance. The film is set amidst a fusion mishmash of dusty hills and painted backdrops, cowboy hats and Japanese period costume, providing an appropriate environment for the looney tunes genius of Miike. Bombastic action and copious, inventive bloodshed are present and accounted for, but the violence is more of the terrifically entertaining variety of Ryo Ga Gotoku than the stomach-turning feats from his Ichi the Killer days.
Buy DVD at
$45.99
Sukiyaki Western Django Soundtrack
Sukiyaki Western Django
Movie Soundtrack
Release Date: 09/17/2007
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LeslieBrenner
Well done, 5 stars. The movie sounds highly entertaining and fun! Posted March 18, 2008 |
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fefe
Your lens has inspired me to check this movie out. Posted March 07, 2008 |
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N376
Beautifully arranged and presented. Posted February 19, 2008 |
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Arizona-Snow
This lens rocks, a well deserved 5*! Posted February 19, 2008 |
