Or just a gay samurai movie, Budo-kubaku Mountain (Budo Yama)

How do you say "I wish I knew how to quit you?" in Japanese?

In a Western Japanese accent, of course.

Or just a gay samurai movie, Budo-kubaku Mountain (Budo Yama)

Heh, I think they already did that: [link]

Shohei Imamura died. From the Voice obit:

Define the Japanese New Wave however you like—there are innumerable possible launching points, and the name players evident in the '50s and '60s were old, young, and in between—but Shohei Imamura was an unarguable and ambivalent figure in the landscape, an artiste among pulp mavens, a pop comic amid tragedians, a deep-dish cynic and folksy absurdist both. Dead last week at 79, the two-time Palme d'Or winner was one of the last of his slowly dying breed, survived still by Suzuki, Ichikawa, and Oshima.

He may have also been the least categorizable filmmaker of the lot (always a handicap in an auteurist world), careless with genre and frenzied about social critique. The son of a doctor, Imamura began as a studio apprentice with Ozu and quickly established a distaste for his sensei's restraint and quiet eloquence. In fact, Imamura has always seemed a sort of Japanese Sam Fuller, fascinated with working-class ruin and primal impulse. And he could be viciously funny, which alone set him apart from most of his industry's big guns. His first phase, beginning in 1958, was taken up with racy comedies and melodramas and the first, overtly Kabuki, version of The Ballad of Narayama (1958), a savage parable about prescribed death in a hard-luck mountain village that he remade to grimmer and more realistic effect in 1983.

Then came Pigs and Battleships (1961), The Insect Woman (1963), and The Pornographers (1966), a run of international taboo-busters that sensationalized his career and offered up a vision of postwar Japan we hadn't seen before: a rat pit of feral opportunism, debasing American occupation, greed, lust, and violence.

I've never seen any of his movies, but enjoy the idea of a Japanese Sam Fuller.

I've never seen any of his movies, but enjoy the idea of a Japanese Sam Fuller.

Check out The Pornographers. Black comedy, and even got a listing in The Catalog of Cool.

Off to Netflix!

I ended up googling The Seven Samurai remake and found this --

According to reports from China that are now making their ways to the US, The Weinstein Company is planning a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Because, you know, it REALLY needs improvement -- what is with that black and white crap, anyway? And who wants to read subtitles? Sigh. A loose-lipped representative of Mandarin Films claims that Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen met with Harvey Weinstein at Cannes about starring in the film, and that both Zhang Ziyi and well-known Asian actor George Clooney have been approached as well.

[link]

The guy who wrote this is just a wee bit upset at the idea of Clooney being cast in it. Sort of "omigod! how can they do it with Americans!"

In the comments someone points out that The Magnificent Seven is a very good remake of the movie.

I found another website that said the idea of a remake is basically just a pipe dream and will never happen. That article was dated 6/5/06. I'd link to that one but it has pop ups from hell and these weird mouse over ads.

well-known Asian actor George Clooney

Um...