sukiyaki western django Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game vampires and their totally awesome human girlfriends love to play together on date night! Last week we asked you to give us your best captions for a wacky photo from the flick Sukiyaki Western Django, which is currently out on DVD. With only one person to award the grand prize, our crack team of caption judges spent hours (screw that, days!) searching for the right mix of humor, heart and heroics. Here, then, is our winner -- congratulations to you, sir!




1. "Despite producing some of the most innovative music of the 1980's, Japanese Country-Style Gangsta Hip-Hop was short-lived." -- Kurt P.

See full image and all captions





This week, well, we're celebrating a film that needs no introduction. It opens in theaters today, it was adapted from a very popular book, it stars one of the hottest guys in the history of the galaxy (Pattinson? Try Hottinson!) ... and it has something to do with vampires. Yup, it's time to sharpen those teeth and take a real nice bite out of the photo below from the film Twilight. Here's where it gets tasty: One very lucky grand prize winner will hop, skip, walk and dance away with one Autographed Twilight poster, one Movie tie-in paperback, one Movie Companion book and one Twilight Soundtrack. All I know is one lucky fan is about to win the Twilight lottery. Sound off below ...



Read the official rules for this contest

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption - the game that I totally missed writing about last week, but am thankful our good pal Kevin filled in. Last week we asked you to channel your inner animated animal and produce a quirky-enough caption for a photo from the new hit flick Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Congrats to our three winners; our poor lion friend will never be the same.

1. "Fifty bucks says he picks his nose."
"Double or nothing he eats it." -- Mike R.

2. I've got a joke for you: What has furry opposable thumbs and is about to re-enact his favorite scene from the movie Alive? This guy. -- Nathan T.

3. The others were getting tired of his bad Dr. Evil impersonation. -- Lauren L.

See full image and all captions

This week we're celebrating the very cool Japanese action-western Sukiyaki Western Django, directed by Takashi Mike. The film tells of a revolver-wielding stranger who crosses paths with two warring clans who are on the hunt for treasure in a remote Western town. The DVD is now available in stores, and one grand prize winner will walk away with one Sukiyaki Western Django wooden coffin containing a set of three collector's steel books, one Samurai robe, one canvas scroll with poster art, one six shooter hydro-gun and one limited edition deck of playing cards. Um, I want. Sound off below cowboys (and girls) ...



Read the official rules for this contest

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
The red beastie with a penchant for kittens is back. This time, Hellboy must stop an underworld leader bent on awakening an army of unstoppable gizmos created to take over the world. He's got problems with Liz, and new aggravations from Johann (voiced by Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane). You can pick up the regular old simple edition, a big 3-disc set, or if you like collectibles, a boxed collector's set with a statue, poster, and book on regular DVD or Blu-ray. (More info on the DVD right here.) Buy it.

Mister Foe
On the less flashy front, there's the excellent Jamie Bell in Hallam Foe. Another victim of renaming, the film is known as Mister Foe stateside, but still covers Bell as Foe -- a peeping Tom on the streets of Edinburgh after his mother's untimely death. You won't get the mass of goodies that Hellboy has, but there are a few extras to dip into. Rent it.

Sukiyaki Western DjangoUber popular Japanese cult filmmaker Takashi Miike now brings us Sukiyaki Western Django -- riffing on spaghetti westerns, two clans battle for a town's treasure as a gunslinger strolls into town. According to Jeffrey M. Anderson's review: "Miike has managed the best Spaghetti Western knockoff in years." Buy it on DVD or Blu-ray.

Also out: Star Wars: Clone Wars.

Was it the controversy over the title? Or the controversy over the bloody tampon scene? Either way, Alan Ball's Towelhead finished the weekend with the best per-screen average of all films, earning $13,250 at four engagements in New York and Los Angeles, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Neither this flick, first unveiled at Toronto last year, nor Ball's recent return to HBO, Southern Gothic vampire drama True Blood, have drawn unanimous critical praise, but specialty audiences still seem interested in whatever the American Beauty scribe / Six Feet Under creator is doing.

Speaking of directors with a strong following, Takeshi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django expanded to Los Angeles and maintained a healthy $4,200 per-screen average in its third week of release. Also in its third week, comedy I Served the King of England expanded into 37 locations but hasn't picked up much steam ($2,262 per screen), while steady earners Tell No One ($2,263 per screen; 11th week), Frozen River ($2,011 per screen; 7th week), Elegy ($1,948 per screen; 6th week), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona ($1,724; 5th week) all saw somewhat predictable declines in business. After all, sex and thrills only go so far among indie filmgoers.

Our criteria for inclusion in the Indie Weekend Box Office report hinges on the distributor, so here's another shout out to the #1 overall earner, Burn After Reading, from Focus Features. Likewise, soon-to-shutter Picturehouse released Diane English's The Women on the largest number of of screens they've ever handled -- 2,962 -- resulting in a per-screen average of $3,405. The picture earned more than $10 million total.

Is everyone in Toronto for the festival? Has everyone caught up with everything they want to see? Are arthouse movie lovers football fans too? I'm not sure how else to explain the downturn in the indie box office this weekend, in which Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django continued its stay at the top, per estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Sukiyaki made $5,100 at its single Gotham engagement; now let's see what happens when it expands beyond New York City.

Also holding up decently in its second weekend was I Served the King of England, which increased to 17 theaters and earned $4,241 per location. Everyone Wants to Be Italian was the only debuting indie to crack the Top 10, but its tepid $2,224 per-screen average at 98 locations indicates that not everyone wants be Italian. No word on what happened with The Pool (which I loved), August Evening, Ping Pong Playa, Mister Foe, or the other new indies.

Speaking of poor performances, Hamlet 2 earned just $520 per screen at 1,575 theaters. Yikes! That's a lot of empty auditoriums. The film's cumulative total is $4.3 million, though, so perhaps it can break even on the DVD release.

Among the holdovers, Frozen River and Transsiberian pushed past $1 million dollars in earnings, Elegy broke past $2 million dollars total, Tell No One reached $4.7 million dollars, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona soared past $16 million in its fourth week.

Take one renegade Japanese director, set him to work on a Spaghetti Western, add a cameo by a talkative American filmmaker, and what do you get? First place in the indie four-day weekend box office race. Sukiyaki Western Django, directed by the prolific and extremely versatile Takashi Miike and featuring Quentin Tarantino in a small role, tore it up at the single Manhattan theatre where it opened, grossing $13,100, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The version released in the US does not represent Miike's original vision, however. Distributor First Look edited 20 or so minutes for the bastardized edition currently playing, so this is a muted triumph. *

The light-hearted I Served the King of England had the right stuff to average $8,487 per screen at eight locations. Directed by Jirí Menzel, the film stars Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, and the always wonderful Julia Jentsch. Naked Penélope Cruz outdrew mostly-clothed Penélope Cruz, as Elegy bested Vicky Christina Barcelona on per-screen numbers, $5,697 to $5,102. To be fair, however, Woody Allen's latest is playing on nearly 700 screens and cracked the Top 10; it's made more than $13 million so far, though Elegy's $1.7 million is nothing to sneeze at in the specialty field. Right behind came two consistent cold-weather flicks, Frozen River ($5,028 per screen) and Transsiberian ($4,728). The more temperate Tell No One blew past $4 million in total US earnings in its ninth week, averaging $4,480 at 102 theaters.

Up next? Chris Smith's very good drama The Pool opens on Wednesday; Friday will see the release of Chris Eska's entrancing poetic drama August Evening, Jessica Yu's playful comedy Ping Pong Playa, romantic comedy Everybody Wants to Be Italian, thriller Mister Foe, drama Save Me, and the self-explanatory comedy/drama Surfer, Dude.

* UPDATE: A representative for First Look says that the company acquired the film after it had already been edited from 121 minutes to 98 minutes, and further states that Miike did the editing. My apologies for the error.

As a further aside, the original-length version screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2007 and was released in Japan shortly thereafter.

The last weekend of the summer means the multiplexes will be crammed with Hollywood's leftover products, most of them rolled out without being screened for critics (never a good sign). But don't despair! The Indie Spotlight is here to fill you in on the limited-release, art-house films opening this weekend, and if they're not playing where you live, you can keep an eye out for when they do arrive. See, it gives you something to look forward to!

The six films opening today are, in alphabetical order: Ballet Shoes, I Served the King of England, My Mexican Shivah, Sukiyaki Western Django, Year of the Fish, and Young People F***ing. In a slightly more subjective order, here's the scoop on each of them.

Sukiyaki Western Django
What it is: A comedic Japanese tribute to the spaghetti Westerns, featuring Quentin Tarantino in a small role and directed by the twisted Takashi Miike.
What they're saying: The reviews are about evenly split at Rotten Tomatoes. Some say it's a one-joke movie that's all style and no substance; others say the sheer insanity of it makes it entertaining.
Where it's playing: New York City (Landmark Sunshine Cinema). Opens in L.A. on Sept. 12.
Official site: Taste the sukiyaki.

I Served the King of England
What it is: A comedy/drama about a man working at a fancy Prague hotel under the Nazis and then under the communists. It was the Czech Republic's official Oscar entry this year, though it didn't wind up getting nominated.
What they're saying: Every single review at Rotten Tomatoes is positive ("darkly humorous," "intelligent," "witty") -- every single review except for one, that is, by Jeffrey M. Anderson, who is also one of Cinematical's finest writers. Why you gotta be different, Jeff?
Where it's playing: New York City (Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Quad Cinemas), Los Angeles (Laemmle Royal, Regency South Coast Village in Costa Mesa, Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena), San Francisco (Embarcadero Center Cinemas).
Official site: It's in English!

By chance, two Takashi Miike movies, Dead or Alive and Audition, opened in my town with in a week of one another in 2001. It was pretty eye opening seeing the huge difference between them, the speedy carnage of the former and the slow suspense of the latter, and I became an instant fan. Since then I've managed to track down just six more Miike movies, and in that same time he has made over forty (including videos and TV shows). The speed of his production fits perfectly with the personality of his movies. They're often nonsensical; I couldn't make heads or tails of two of his more recent pictures, Gozu and The Great Yokai War. And they're very definitely energetic, verging on crazy. He reminds me of the great German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who cranked out over 40 movies and TV shows in less than 15 years and died at the age of 37. Miike is now 48 and one wonders how much longer he can keep going before he combusts.

Miike's new movie, Sukiyaki Western Django, finds him making a slight change of pace. No, the movie is still crazy and fast and nearly unintelligible, but he has stopped for a moment to consider the work of other filmmakers. The movie is a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, and especially Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which in turn was based on Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). Remember Bono's taunt at the beginning of U2's cover version of "Helter Skelter"? ("This song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back.") This movie feels as if Miike is doing some stealing back of his own.

I don't have a subscription to ScreenDaily.com, so I can only read the headlines, but those headlines sure are handy. Here are three that caught my eye, all deals taking place in and around the American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica, California.

• Carlos Reygadas' challenging drama Silent Light sharply divided critics when it debuted at Cannes earlier this year, though everyone seemed to agree that certain scenes were indelibly beautiful. Tartan Films has picked up distribution rights in the US; they previously released the director's Battle in Heaven. Expect a limited theatrical engagement. It plays at AFI Fest in Hollywood next week (November 7 and 9).
  

• Blood Brothers (pictured), on the other hand, has united critics: no one seems to like it. Alexei Tan's reimagining of John Woo's A Bullet in the Head has been criticized for being too glossy and lacking substance -- none of which discourages me from wanting to see it. First Look Studios has acquired US distribution rights. First Look has handled genre titles before, often sending them straight to DVD, so a theatrical release is not assured, especially in view of its lukewarm reception so far.
  

• Sukiyaki Western Django, Takashi Miike's English-language Spaghetti Western, apparently confused everybody. Some were disappointed that it not as outrageous as from the versatile and prolific director. First Look has picked up US rights for this one as well, but it's a new, edited version that is 25 minutes shorter than what was previously screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Given Miike's name recognition, this has a shot at a limited theatrical release before heading to DVD.
  

AFM runs through November 7. AFI Fest, which opened last night with a gala screening of Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, runs through November 11.

[ Via ScreenDaily ]