"TOGA!"
Full disclosure: I’ve seen a total of two Takashi Miike movies, Ichi the Killer and Gozu. But based on those and basically every trailer for every other movie of his, I felt comfortable in the assessment that he was a lot like Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different. Sorry, I chose a really racist way to say that he’s weird. Point being, when the new trailer for 13 Assassins hit, I was a little taken aback by how normal it was.
Cult director Takeshi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition) delivers a bravado period action film set at the end of Japan’s feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a wartorn future. [Apple]
And wait, isn’t “bravado” a noun? IT’S LIKE EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW IS WRONG!
It looks like… a pretty straightforward Samurai movie. What, no jump rope with a foe’s intestines while the wife sadly lactates on a boar penis? No hybrid creatures? No ironic rape? I mean, nothing wrong with a good ol’-fashioned Samurai movie, it just seems a little strange is all. It’s like watching Gary Busey sit down to a nice dinner at the Olive Garden, and it looking just like one of their commercials.
[HD at Apple, opens April 29th]
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Takashi Miike :: Akira Kurosawa.
Quentin Tarantino :: Sam Peckinpah.
Autoerotic self asphyxication ninjas are Bound For Fun!
“13 Assassins” sounds much cooler than “Really Really Small Army.”
I miss being able to see people’s last 20 or so comments…just saying.
I’m sure he meant ‘bravura’.
And this movie is fucking great.
I’ve only seen that Engrish-language western, which is just as weird as it sounds. At one point, I was pretty sure that I had passed out and dreamed the whole thing.
It looks like a remake of Azumi.
Needs more Swedish dialogue.
When he was making half a dozen movies each year they were naturally low budget and veered more towards the extreme to increase production value. Add a little crazy to a formulaic gangster flick like Blues Harp or Gozu and you get a larger audience in return, especially overseas. A decent number of his dozens of films are a bit more subdued (I’d hesitate to call Audition or the Dead or Alive trilogy subdued but compared to Visitor Q they are). He also likes to try a lot of different genres (Happiness of the Katakuri is a musical about a haunted countryside B&B, Zebraman – Superhero movie, Ichi the Killer – Comic book adaptation).
Anyways now that he’s down to 2 movies a year I’d expect to see more higher budget, higher quality work like this.
If you watch Ichi the Killer backwards, it’s about an assassin who heals amputee prostitutes with his boots.
Little known fact: “Takashi Miike” is the English translation for his actual Japanese name, “Miike Takashi”.
“You’ll feel like a total ASSassin if you miss out on this exciting film!”
-Pete Hammond while conversing with his love pillow.
Just watched this and it was pretty good. The tyrant is one of cinema’s great bastards and there is a hint of Takashi Miike weirdness in the shape of a naked, dismembered peasant girl. John Woo and Chao-Bin Su’s recent Reign of Assassins is much better though.