IGX

My ex-pat niece, now working for a magazine in Tokyo, recommended this to me.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0906665/

Oh, my head. It's the story of the Genji-Heike civil war, with some events and characters taken directly from "Tale of the Heike," done as a spaghetti Western.

Well, sort of a Western. The cowboys also carry swords part of the time. And then there's some gunslinger who shows up and starts to play the loyalties of the two clans off of each other. So maybe it's a semi-Western remake of "Yojimbo." It's not like that's ever been done before.

But then again, one of the clan leaders has a major hard-on for Shakespeare and insists on being called "Henry," so it might actually be a version of the War of the Roses. In fact, there are roses involved. Red and white ones.

Oh, did I mention that Quentin Tarantino plays a minor role, and that his acting is as painful as ever? And that there's a sheriff with multiple personality disorder?

Avoid this unless you need something to watch with friends while you break in your new vaporizer or bong.

I really wanted to like this movie, as the premise seemed sort of promising - but, oh, what a convoluted fucking disaster it turned out to be.

I did rather enjoy the antics of the sheriff, though.

Kurt J. Wilkens wrote:I really wanted to like this movie, as the premise seemed sort of promising - but, oh, what a convoluted fucking disaster it turned out to be.

I did rather enjoy the antics of the sheriff, though.

I don't know if it's true, but she told me that many of the Japanese actors learned their English lines phonetically, like Lugosi in "Dracula."

I don't know if it's true, but she told me that many of the Japanese actors learned their English lines phonetically, like Lugosi in "Dracula."

I never heard that (though I likely wouldn't, as my interest in the movie pretty much ended when I started watching it), but I'd be inclined to believe it seeing as how I understood nary a word of what they were saying ... or the storyline, or the character's reasoning or motivation, or the ending ...