This is old news really, but I hadn’t written about it and thought I should take a moment. Takashi Miike is the massively productive director of ‘Ichi the Killer’ and ‘Gozu’ (outputs 2 films a year at least normally). He recently wrapped his version of a Sergio Corbucci ‘Django’ film called ‘Sukiyaki Western Django’ AKA a Sushi Western (although I think Sukiyaki is a noodle dish, but still…)

Set during “The Genpei Wars” at the end of the 1100s, the Minamoto and Taira gangs face off in a town named Yuda, while a deadly gunman (Ito Hideaki) comes to the aid of the townsfolk.

Miike is like a faster (read:slap dash) Japanese version of Tarantino, he takes influences from everywhere adds his own brand of weird to it all and then melds into something wonderful. Miike’s films are often hit and miss for me; ‘Dead or Alive’ trilogy = fantastic, ‘Izo’ = violent and nonsensical, took my girlfriend to it, biggest mistake ever. Still, the guy is so prolific if you don’t like one film you’ve seen there’s 50 more that you might like (i’m not kidding take a look at his imdb profile, last year four films and one episode of ‘Masters of Horror’). If you haven’t seen any of his films I would check out ‘Dead of Alive’ or ‘Ichi the Killer’ if you don’t mind hard violence, or ‘The bird people of China’ if you want something softer.

The word was that Tarantino was actually going to star in the film or at least cameo as a western gunslinger called ‘Ringo’, but so far there’s been no sign of him. He was supposed to be returning the favour to Miike after he did a walk-on in Eli Roth’s ‘Hostel’ (he was the Japanese guy in the car park)

Also he’s the dude in the animal-ears hat on the left of the above image.

There’s a small official site for the film here

and some stills from the set here

via twitchfilms