WEIRDNESS HO! - MIIKE REMAKES DJANGO

Okay, okay, nobody likes a remake but Takashi Miike's SUKIYAKI WESTERN: DJANGO gets a pass because it's a freak fest of largest proportions. A remake of Sergio Corbucci's legendary exploitation spaghetti western, DJANGO, this is a Japanese Western, shot in English and featuring Quentin Tarantino in a prominent role.

Hideaki Ito, Koichi Sato, Masanobu Ando and Kaori Momoi star in this flick that mixes the Genpei War with the Wild West as the Minamoto and Taira gangs turn innocent folks caught in their gang war crossfire into swiss cheese until a mysterious gunman, played by Ito, comes to their rescue. The cast has endured two months of English training as well as horseback riding lessons and gun handling courses but, as Miike says, "Real actors are generally hardcore masochists, and the tougher it gets the harder they work to battle through."

Tarantino will be a major non-selling point for a lot of people and Miike describes him in a way he hasn't been described in about ten years, "He's a guy who doesn't play by Hollywood rules, so I thought he'd suit this film." Tarantino probably is the Hollywood rules these days, but that's okay. Miike's been too busy making actual movies to notice what's happening in our backwaters industry.

Miike flew to the States to ask Tarantino to appear and the Big Chinned One will play a mysterious gunfighter named Ringo who fights with a female cast member at the start of the film.

To top it all off, the theme song will be an enka version of the original DJANGO theme, sung by Saburo Kitajima. Shooting is expected to wrap in December and the movie is set for a Fall 2007 release.

(Thanks to Ryuganji for the news. You can read the original articles here and here.)