[fortunato]

sukiyaki western django (2008)

haha, goodness...where to begin?

i got to see this on the big screen as part of a weekend-long "b-movie celebration".
i figured i knew what i was getting myself into watching a spaghetti western by takashi miike (and featuring quentin tarantino), and in a way, it's precisely what you might think. however, there are a few points that took me by surprise.

it's quite easy to tell that miike and his bunch have a profound love for the genre, and made the film not only to pay homage, but to have a blast doing it. the result is a goofy, gory, WAY over-the-top film, packed with all of the essentials of the spaghetti western; savagely convoluted plot, brow-furrowing dialogue, lots of cool characters, leonesque close-ups, cinematographic grandeur, intermittent flashbacks, a soundtrack that morricone himself could have easily written, and so on. miike, on a technical level, does a great job of keeping the pacing right and balancing between comedy, drama, and action.

and the gore is most ample, and very much traditional miike.

all in all, it's definitely a lot of fun. i'd recommend it for sure, especially to lovers of the genre, because that's who they made it for.

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also, a question for people who have seen death of a ghost hunter (2007):

is it any good? what'd you think?
thanks in advance!