Miike Takeshi!!!

Anto and Moe

Anyone one here a fan of Miike Takeshi's films? I can say that he is without a doubt the most odd director/screenwriter that I have ever come across! His best movie so far has to be Dead or Alive, thoug DOA2 is so terrible that I have yet to see 3. But this is just one of his high budget movies. He makes tonnes of movies every year, such as Visitor Q (banned in NewZeland) which was mad in 7 days with a 70,000 dollar budget! Any who, if you're in to very odd twisted strange movies I strongly suggest taking a trip down to Lazer (you won't find this guy in Xtravision) and looking this guy up!

Philbert

Anto and Moe wrote:

Anyone one here a fan of Miike Takeshi's films?!!

Yes.

Anto and Moe wrote:

I can say that he is without a doubt the most odd director/screenwriter that I have ever come across!!

Have you seen GOZU or Audition? Very strange but great!

djkeogh

Gotta love the Miike films. I have a number of them on DVD. Started off with the buying of audition a while back and since then I have been hooked.

Dead or Alive is great. Gotta love that ending. Also loved Ichi The Killer and to a lesser extent Gozu. Visitor Q is on my list of must see Miike flicks. I recommend him to all but his films are not to everyones tastes so be warned!

projectmayhem

yeah i started with audition too.. bought it purely off the hype (i rarely do that) and started watching his other films, great stuff. weird, but great

Memnoch

i honestly don't get what's so great about them..
i watched gozu, yes it had some very funny moments, but overall the film was pretty atrocious. The story was weak, and the movie trudged along quite slowly. It seems more an attempt to think up as many randomnly shocking images as possible and string together a movie out of them. This is something I don't see the point of. Wierdness is fine, in moderation, but just pure wierdness for the sake of it alone isn't all that great.

Anto and Moe

Yeah, we started with the audition to! "You can't go anywhere without your feet!" forgot to mention Ichi, pure genius!

Playboy

Memnoch wrote:

i honestly don't get what's so great about them..
i watched gozu, yes it had some very funny moments, but overall the film was pretty atrocious. The story was weak, and the movie trudged along quite slowly. It seems more an attempt to think up as many randomnly shocking images as possible and string together a movie out of them. This is something I don't see the point of. Wierdness is fine, in moderation, but just pure wierdness for the sake of it alone isn't all that great.

It's hard to explain but the weirdness isnt just there for the sake of it or for shock value. We are seeing these movies in a different cultural context so whats weird for us isnt neccessarly weird for the Japanese. Miike's movies are loaded with symbolism and metaphors for a changing Japenese society. Also the reason why japenese movies and asian movies in general can be quite shocking is suspension of disbelief. Supposedly due the narration of Japenese silent movies by a peson in the theatre they have a different attitude towards movies. They are less involved and more aware that what is happening on the screen isnt real. We in the western world tend to be much more involved in our movies so we find shocking images much more shocking than a japanese audience would. There was panic when one of the first silent movies was shown in this side of the world. As a train approached the camera the audience started to flee because they actually thought the train was going to come through the screen and crash into them. This type of reaction would not have happened in Japan due to the narration by the person in the theatre who was explaing what was going on in the film and the technology involved in how it was done.