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I caught Beat Takeshi's Zatoichi last night, and I must say I was quite impressed. I'm a huge fan of the series, and I was quite skepitcal that it would be a total dud, but they did it justice. Some of the character development was a little weak, but the action scenes were top notch, good stuff. Does anybody have any Takeshi recommendations other than Violent Cop?
MXC. Of course, he's dubbed, but...
the ending song is one of the best moments in cinematic history. seriously. i loved the little musical bits thrown in throught the film, too. very clever.
otherwise, it's a fairly traditional wandering samurai-type thing that's good to great, but i was expecting more insanity after watching the trailer. nice action scenes/cinematography, though.
Other than HORRIBLE use of CGI blood (WTF with Japanese films lately, everything tends to use CG blood instead of good old squibs :(), and somewhat out of place dancing numbers, new Zatoichi was a good movie.
Kitano was good as always, and I also liked Tadanobu Asano as Samurai for Hire working for bad guys.
All the musical bits were very cool, reminded me a lot of Triplets of Belleville for some reason. The part that really stood out to me was the scene at the end when the villagers were rebuilding the aunts house. All the people hammering and sawing in time with the music was really good. I can't imagine the work it took to coordinate that shot.Quote:
Originally Posted by epmode
Everything about the film was cool.
Even the blood.
I didn't think the digital blood looked bad at all. I LOVED the musical number at the end. Maybe I should try watching some of the old series.
I loved the movie, and yes, even the cgi blood. It was done stylalistically.
I thought the blood was kind of cool too. Sometimes it looked kind of lame, but other times it was actually a great solution to the problem a lot of sword combat in movies have (there's a weird absence of people getting cut or stabbed).
I'm generally anti-CG when it comes to special effects in movies, but I thought that was a pretty creative/successful usage.
I think Zatoichi is a terrific movie. It entertained me more than Hero did.