The Screengrab : sukiyaki western django

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 9, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Hey, Screengrabbers! It’s me, the Screengrab’s 2008 Person of the Year, here to pass the torch to 2009. But before we do that, let’s take one more look at back at the year that was, in case you missed it while you were on vacation or seeing The Spirit for the fifth time. The end of the year is a time of lists, and we sure had them here: Top Ten lists from Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne (Parts One and Two), Scott Von Doviak (Parts One and Two and Top 10 Unwatchables), Leonard Pierce (Parts One and Two) and Paul Clark (Parts One and Two and Honorable Mentions). We also compiled the consensus Screengrab Top 10 Movies of 2008, as well as the Top Ten Screengrab Top Tens (Parts One and Two). To get really meta on you, we even had the 2008 Highlight Reel: The Top Twelve Screengrab Posts of the Year.

Whew. Enough with 2008 already. I’m already hard at work on my campaign to repeat as 2009 Screengrab Person of the Year, but until then, here are some notable posts from the year just begun:

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six)

Forgotten Films: Groove

Reviews by Request: Poultrygeist and Sukiyaki Western Django

A Better Travis Bickle for a Better New Year

Screengrab Review:Just Another Love Story

Unwatchable #57: Phat Girlz

2009 Movie Poster Preview

Screengrab 2009 Preview: Andrew Osborne’s Picks

Reviews By Request: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007, Takashi Miike)

Paul Clark — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As always, I’ll be polling you folks to determine my next Reviews By Request column, although this time the rules will be somewhat different. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

Of all of the United States’ contributions to popular culture, one of the most enduring has been the Western genre. In the mid- to late-1800s, stories about cowboys and the Wild West carved out a particularly American idiom in literature, and after the invention of the motion picture, many of the most popular movies- such as Edison and Porter’s The Great Train Robbery- were Westerns. In the classical age of Hollywood, few genres were more popular throughout the world than the Western.

By the 1950s, foreign filmmakers were beginning to show their Western influences, notably Akira Kurosawa in films like The Seven Samurai. And this influence became explicit by the 1960s when a number of Italian filmmakers began to produce Westerns in Europe. The resulting films quickly became known as “spaghetti Westerns,” and their popularity began a wave of Wild West stories made on foreign soil. There were “paella Westerns” in Spain, “cod Westerns” in Scandinavia, even “curry Westerns” in India. It was only a matter of time until a Japanese filmmaker would offer up a Japanese take on the genre, and it seems only natural that the filmmaker would be prolific genre-bender Takashi Miike. It also seems obvious that Quentin Tarantino would have some part in the proceedings, but that’s another issue entirely.

Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django is first and foremost an homage to classic Westerns of the past. Even its premise- a mysterious mercenary wanders into the middle of a turf war and proceeds to play both sides- is one of the archetypal storylines of the genre. It has served as the storyline for a number of “spaghetti Westerns” including Sergio Leone’s seminal A Fistful of Dollars and Corbucci’s Django, which lent Miike’s film its title. Of course, both films were essentially Western takes on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which in turn was a samurai version of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. But you get the idea- Miike’s genuflecting before the old masters. There’s even a whiff of Shakespeare in the story, in which the rival gangs are signified by the colors Red and White, in homage to England’s Wars of the Roses.

But although Miike has all his references in order, the end result is somewhat underwhelming. Miike hits all of the expected genre beats, but very little that happens in the film carries much weight. Part of the problem is that the characters just aren’t all that memorable. We meet the mysterious gunfighter, the samurai-styled leader of the Whites, the Shakespeare-obsessed leader of the Reds, the revenge-bent woman, the duplicitous lawman. Hell, there’s even a middle-aged woman who turns out to be the famed warrior Bloody Benten, whose name I would imagine was inspired by the same Japanese deity who lent her name to Screengrab favorite Benten Films. But Miike is so busy with other business that he never finds time to really do much with the people who populate his story. Even the gunfighter gets lost in the shuffle for much of the film.

As I mentioned before, Miike fan and friend Quentin Tarantino appears in the film, playing an old gunfighter named Ringo who tells the saga of Bloody Benten and literalizes the sukiyaki motif. Many of Tarantino’s own films also tend to be elaborate homages, but unlike Sukiyaki they tend to add up to something more than the sum of their references. Much of this has to do the way Tarantino actually manages to take time to establish the characters in his films- for example, the way he actually shows us some of Budd’s life in Kill Bill instead of just making him a rival, or the scene in Death Proof in which he reveals that the fearsome-looking Stuntman Mike is actually a whiny baby. On one level, Tarantino noodles in the margins of his story just as much as Miike, but while Tarantino’s noodlings lend his films additional depth, Miike’s tend to feel like one-off moments, designed to grab the attention but have little relevance on the story at large. Granted, some of these moments are pretty awesome- look at the way Ringo procures an egg for his sukiyaki, or the goofy touch of having the two-faced lawman suffer from multiple personality disorder- but put together they don’t really add up.

Or consider the films of Sergio Leone, whose storylines were every bit as impenetrable as Sukiyaki’s, but whose style pushed the iconography to such frenzied levels that they’re hypnotic on a moment-to-moment basis even if the broad outlines of the story get lost in the process. Leone’s “spaghetti Westerns” are Westerns taken to their stylistic extreme, and while “extreme” is a word that’s often associated with Miike’s films, Sukiyaki Western Django is a rarity- a Miike film that feels too tame. It’s entertaining enough, and the final shootout is good as these things go, but overall it’s a little disappointing. I’ve gone on record as a rabid fan of Audition, but with each subsequent Miike film I see I’ve come to realize that that film’s tight directorial control and bold formal structure was a rarity in his work. Sadly, Sukiyaki Western Django needed a more assured hand on the reins.

In my ongoing effort to see as many 2008 films as possible, I’ve decided to change the rules a bit this time around. Below, I’ve listed five of the most intriguing titles from the last four Reviews By Request polls (sorry, no House Bunny). As usual, I’m asking you to pick your favorite, but rather than only writing up the top vote-getter, I’ll write up the top three, one per week for the next three weeks. So, what’ll it be?

What 2008 movies would you like me to see? | BuzzDash polls

As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section. See you next week!

DVD Digest for November 11, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

You can always tell when it’s the holiday season, because the studios begin to clear out their coffers to release titles both new and classic, no matter whether they’ve already been released on DVD.

DVD of the Week: With thousands of titles (both theirs, MGM’s, and other studios’) in their library, no studio has more classic movies to draw from than Warner Bros. This week brings a goldmine of classic WB titles, but none of these is more appealing than the new box set Warner Bros. and the Homefront. Just in time for Veteran’s Day, the box set contains three of the studio’s best-known flag-waving entertainments, all of which are new to DVD. The most notable of the bunch was the 1943 hit Irving Berlin’s This Is The Army, starring future president Ronald Reagan along with the titular composer. The other films in the set are a pair of star-studded patriotic musicals, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Hollywood Canteen. In addition, Warner Bros. has dug into their massive collection of archival material in order to pair vintage short films, newsreels, trailers and cartoons with each of the films, including the semi-notorious Herr Meets Hare. So while some might claim that the films in the Homefront collection are disposable, the box set is anything but.

Warner will also be releasing two box sets for the holidays, Warner Bros. Holiday Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2. Volume 1 includes previously-released DVDs of Boys Town, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas in Connecticut, plus a bonus DVD of The Singing Nun. Volume 2 contains the new-to-DVD titles All Mine to Give, Holiday Affair, and It Happened on 5th Avenue (each sold separately), plus Blossoms in the Dust, available only in the box set. Paramount will be rereleasing three of their most beloved classics- Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Sunset Blvd- in special “Centennial Editions” just in time for the studio’s 100th anniversary. Other classics coming to DVD this week include: JFK 3-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Quo Vadis (Warner), and The Director’s Series: Roberto Rossellini (Lionsgate), which includes Escape By Night and Where Is Freedom?.

The highest-profile recent releases coming to DVD this week are Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django (First Look, also Blu-Ray); the holiday-themed This Christmas (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Christophe Honore’s Love Songs (Genius Productions); the breakdancing doc Planet B-Boy (Arts Alliance America); and two titles who will have almost no audience members in common, Toby Keith in Beer For My Horses (Lionsgate) and the Flaming Lips in Christmas on Mars (WEA).

This week’s big TV on DVD news is the release of the massive The Sopranos: The Complete Series (HBO) box set. In addition, there’s also The Cosby Show: The Complete Series (First Look), as well as Scrubs Season 7 (Disney). And finally, the Blu-Ray only titles for this week are exclusively TV shows: Band of Brothers (Warner), Chuck Season 1 (Warner), Firefly: The Complete Series (Warner), and Supernatural Season 3 (Warner). So that’s cool, I guess.

Screengrab Review: "The Family That Preys"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:15:00 GMT

The operant notion amongst the publicists of my acquaintance lately -- and God bless them, every one -- seems to be: let's send Leonard screeners of movies to which he is not even remotely in the target demographic. Of course, I can't say exactly who the target demographic is for Sukiyaki Western Django. Martians, probably. I have a slightly better idea who the target demographic is for Tyler Perry's latest outing, The Family That Preys, and I'm damn sure it doesn't include me. And yet here we are! On the theory that someone has to review these things -- a theory that I'm not entirely convinced I agree with -- the job has fallen to me, and I will do the best I can possibly do under circumstances that would be a lot more trying if God hadn't invented the martini.

The plot of this one, such as it is, involves Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates (for whom I briefly felt sorry for having to appear in this toxic waste dump, until I realized it would probably buy them both a new summer house), playing old friends who are faced with various family dramas, traumas, and scandals. In order to clear the air, get away from their allegedly comical families, and rebuild their friendships, they take a cross-country road trip of the sort that we haven't seen since Gone Fishin'. Of course, this makes it sound like the movie isn't just about Tyler Perry dressing up in a crazy outfit and acting wacky, which it is. There's no Madea in this one, but that doesn't stop Perry from hamming it up like gangbusters, upstaging people I've never heard of named KaDee Strickland and Rockmond Dunbar.

I certainly won't be the first person to say that these movies are essentially critic-proof; Tyler Perry isn't so much a filmmaker as he is a sort of institutional-grade entertainment producer, and time spent applying any kind of critical framework to his movies is as well-used as time spent complaining about the appetizer menu at Whataburger. If you're not the sort of person who sees Tyler Perry movies, you certainly shouldn't see this one, seeing as it's awful and all. But if you are, you probably didn't read this far anyway.

Screengrab Review: Surfer, Dude

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 24-30, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

My fellow Americans, I am here to humbly accept your nomination of Recapper of the Week in Screengrab! I think we all know it is time for a change. No longer can we sit by, complacent, while the screenwriter of Showgirls turns to Jesus. No longer can we allow Robert Downey Jr. to badmouth The Dark Knight. No longer can we stand by while good men like Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne face-off over Judd Apatow and Pineapple Express!

No, my friends, this is a time for unity. A time for us to gather together and marvel at the World’s Greatest Animated Shorts – Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five! We must respect the Screengrab Fall Preview Picks of Andrew Osborne and Leonard Pierce, as different as they may be, as equal planks in our broad platform.

Some will tell you Guy Ritchie is caught up in the zeitgeist of slaggery. Some will insist that Fascination and Meet the Spartans are actually watchable movies. Some will wonder when Robert Zemeckis went bad, or why Terrence Howard would record an album, or under what circumstances David Lynch met Devo.

We don’t have all the answers! But we do know that That Guy is Bob Hoskins! We do know that Sukiyaki Western Django is some fucked-up shit! We do know that An American Carol is coming out whether we like it or not! And if we all stick together we can survive anything, even RocknRolla or a sequel to The Strangers !

God bless the Screengrab, and let’s make it a Wet Hot American Summer!

Screengrab Review: "Sukiyaki Western Django"

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It's been a busy week for screenings; imagine my surprise when a DVD of the new (well, newish; it opens in limited release here in the States this Friday, but it was actually made in 2007) movie by Takashi "The Filmmaker of Love" Miike showed up in my mailbox. Miike, the mind behind such twisted cinematic fare as Audition, Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, has a reputation for extreme weirdness, and his new one is no exception. It may bewilder, confuse and infuriate, but it certainly isn't going to bore.

Set in some nebulous time zone between the Battle of Dannoura in the 12th century and the wild and wooly days of the Wild West (or, in this case, the Wild East), Sukiyaki Western Django essentially does to A Fistful of Dollars what Dollars did to Yojimbo: lifts its plot wholesale and plops it into a western setting. But, since it's Miike behind the lens, you know you won't see the story of warring clans bloodily competing for gold done up in any kind of pedestrian fashion. Taking his cues from Sergio Leone, he sets the movie's action in "Nebada", a section of the old west that's about as authentic as the remote deserts of Tuscany. He also instructs his actors -- almost all of whom are Japanese, though see below -- to speak in an extremely bizarre form of phoenetic English, which proves to be extremely distracting, if sporadically amusing. And in one of the movie's most ridiculous divergences, Quentin Tarantino plays a freakish admixture of the Man With No Name and the cowboy narrator in The Big Lebowski. Tarantino, who cannot act in his native language, also cannot act in Japanese, but Miike simply has him imitate the other actors, who are speaking cod English with thick Japanese accents, and the result is...well, you really just have to see it for yourself.

The movie itself is pretty much a boilerplate western featuring characters created by second-tier spaghetti western director Sergio Corbucci; with the exception of some exciting (if convoluted) flashbacks, the plot almost directly follows A Fistful of Dollars. And while the acting seems to be strong from moment to moment (clan boss Yusuke Iseya and ex-gunslinger/retired grandma Kaori Momoi are lots of fun to watch), it's hard to tell through the goofy conceit of the vocalized English. What saves it from collapsing into a total mess is Miike's generally unimpeachable visual style: the production design and costumes are brilliantly done, combining a genuine Old West flavor with colorful spaghetti western conceits and traditional Japanese heraldry, with the end effect that you genuinely feel as if you're watching an alternate universe where feudal Japan developed along the lines of the Wild West. And the pacing of the film is exquisite, with the bloody and electrifying battle scenes coming at exactly the right time to keep the viewer riveted to the screen. Without the gimmicks, Sukiyaki Western Django might have been a better film, but it wouldn't have been a Takashi Miike film.