Word: kitano
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...Kitano started the new Zatoichi by leaving his hair the decidedly unsamurai blond shade he'd recently dyed it. "I think that if I tried to imitate Katsu, then a viewer would have a lot of problems with it," says Kitano. "So I thought I should make everybody think it's a completely different thing." So what else sets Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi apart from its 26 predecessors? The auteur explains: "Throughout the film there is a feeling of fast action at the contemporary speed of the modern film." Translation: everything from the electron-quick fights to the rapier-thin...
...film's plot is as streamlined as its combat. Zatoichi (Kitano) wanders into a village beset by gangs, one of which has hired a lethal samurai (Tadanobu Asano) to wipe out its enemies. Meanwhile, a geisha assassin and her brother, a female impersonator, seek revenge on the criminals who slaughtered their family. Zatoichi ends up in the middle. This is a film designed to get to the payoff as fast as possible, and that payoff is bloodier than a hematology convention. Hyperviolence is not new to the Zatoichi oeuvre, but Kitano does Katsu one, two or 11 better. To Kitano...
...Kitano has also shifted the spotlight further away from the title character, giving his co-star, Asano, much of the film's focus. Japan's king of cool, Kitano, and its crown prince of cool, Asano, had already served in a samurai drama of a different sort, Nagisa Oshima's gay-themed Gohatto. Unhappy with Asano's fighting scenes in that film, Kitano put the indie icon through three months of extra sword training before filming began. "I put a lot of energy into Asano's scenes," says Kitano. "I gave him all the cool ways of withdrawing his sword...
...Kitano's boldest update involves the film's music, replacing traditional festive dance with hip-hop-influenced tap routines. "Takeshi has a special feeling for tap music," says Hideboh, the film's choreographer and leader of the fusion tap group the Stripes...
...dance troupe appears throughout the movie as jiving peasants, providing a pulse of human percussion. The result is something like the Broadway show Stomp transplanted to Edo-era Japan. It's Kitano's way of embedding the dynamic heartbeat of the modern inside the body of the traditional?a hallmark of his recent work...