Zatôichi

Has anybody seen this? If so, is it any good? One more thing... does anybody know how I can get a subtitled version of the film?

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I guess Amazon would be a good starting place.

I've seen it. It was enjoyable and had some very strong points to it, but I really didn't like the use of CGI anytime a sword penetrated someone. It looked incredibly cheesy.

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I saw the one made in '89 a while back and liked it quite a bit. I'm really fascinated by this series as the 2003 version is essentially the 27th volume, which amazes me.

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It comes pretty highly recommended from a friend, so I'll probably check it out. I think I already know the twist at the end though.

Yeah....you'd have to be blind to not see that twist coming. I crack myself up.

Ok. I'm guessing from your oh-so-subtle message that I was right on about the twist.

Zatôichi's a fantastic film (I presume you're talking about the Kitano version?) and if you like it you should check out some of the other Blind Swordsman movies.

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I really did like the story (for the Kitano version), but the incredibly poor use of CGI absolutely killed the majority of the swordwork for me.

I didn't think the dodgy CGI made much of a difference as the fight scenes were so short. The film has so much more to recommend it than a bit of slashin'.

Yeah, stating it the way I did makes it sound like it is a hardcore action movie or something, which it deffinetely isn't. But to me, a horror lover, I need that slashin'...a sword going through someone is the money shot, doesn't work as well when that money shot is only 2 cents instead of 50 bucks.

But as for the rest of the movie, which is 95% of it, I loved it and thought it was very nicely done.

If you want great sword scenes, you need to check out some other samurai flicks. I didn't think it was a bad flick but what was that pi$$ poor ending all about with the dance scene? Now, that was tacky.

Tacky? It was pure Kitano (alongside the scenes with the workers in the field and the idiot savant 'samurai'). I'd call it irreverent rather than tacky - a theme which runs through the whole film.

I'm quite used to Beat Takeshi's weird ways but I still stand by the term 'tacky'. I'm partial to samurai flicks and I guess I like them to be samurai flicks.

The main criticism of Zatiochi seems to be from those who expect a more standard slashfest, I guess that I was expecting a Kitano film which just happened to be set in feudal Japan so I wasn't disappointed.

www.cdwow.co.uk ..... £8.99 delivered for the R3 2disc edition, with subtitles. I think they do international shipping, but id check first.

Overall i thought the film was pretty good, although some of the CGI was a bit questionable.

I'd heard that there is an R1 release in November (along with Sonatine).

The translation on my R2 disc is terrible, some words and phrases are jarring when compared with the cinematic releases subtitles -

Zatiochi is no longer 'blind' but 'sight impared' (and he's a masseur not a bonesetter - which sounds far cooler).

I really enjoyed the picture, and I thought that the rather cartoonish gore was fine (Kitano even stated though that he did it as a way to distance the audience from the violence ).
Really, I'm surprised no one is complaining about the dance sequence, expecially if you found the gore out of place.

I think it's a fine film. Definitely worth seeing, especially for the way the (pen)ultimate fight's climax was handled. Very understated. Very Japanese.

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I didn't think the gore was out of place at all, it was quite expected, the problem was in fact that the gore itself was placed out of place. It may have been intentional, but I don't believe it was very necessary. It felt more like a short comming than a stylistic enhancement.

I'm a little torn on the cg blood in Zatoichi, as I was in Ichi the Killer. I get the same feeling watching those two movies as I did from the use of cgi in Shohei Imamura's last film, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. After seeing some of Imamura's other work, all of which contain their fair share of deliberately jarring effects (see the openning and ending scenes in Dr. Akagi or any number of great scenes in The Eel), the blatant cgi stuff just seems like an ugly self-mutilation to me. I had the same problem with the sex scene in Todd Solondz' film, Storytelling. It's sort of like hearing a bar of midi music in the middle of an otherwise good song: I can appreciate the effect they're aiming for but there are probably more artful ways to distance the audience. Compared to these other films, however, Zatoichi's cgi is downright subtle, and in this case nothing more than a minor gripe. I felt that the dance segments hit the target much better.

That said, I really liked Zatoichi. It's not my favorite Kitano film (that would be Boiling Point), and it feels even less centered than his other movies - it's really a long sequence of loosely strung together vignettes, but a lot of those vignettes work really well. Not just the final showdown, but the whole ending is great. My favorite parts are the exchanges between the bonesetter and the old woman - the painted-on eyes are a gas! The score is eccentric but generally exceptional, and it's by the same composer as the one for the recent Animated film, Tokyo Godfathers (also worth seeing.) Zatoichi isn't spectacular, but it's unique and interesting enough to recommend, and I'll probably watch it again at some point.