Hey folks, Harry here with an interview with the director of VERSUS , Ryuhei Kitamura, who has directed one of the most fun horror - action - comedy - cult films I've seen in a very very long time. Recently on a special ops mission, me and a crack team of advance AICN turbo spies managed to infiltrate the top Japanese Cool Flick Companies to grab a look at this film and Oshii's AVALON... reviews are coming soon. But for now... here's a look from the director... OH... And Miramax? If you have picked up VERSUS have the balls to release it as is. For Christ's sake you don't pick up a genre exploitation film and then force toned down reshoots... God I hate the way Miramax treats foreign cult cinema!
A short report from the Japan filmfest in cologne and brief news about "Versus" & director.
Hello Harry,
I´m a student from Cologne / Germany and visited the Japan Filmfestival here. To get a first impression about this new filmfestival you can look at their homepage: CineAsia-FilmFestival.DE The page is in german / japanese but you can look at the pictures and read the titles / genres. Mail me for translation questions.
I was there on thursday and saw "Seance" a very effective creepy thriller. It starts like a gost story (a women has telepathic abilities and can make contact to ghosts, "Sixth sense" like). Then the women and her husband get involved in a kidnapping of a young girl and things start to go wrong ... way wrong (like in a film of the Coen brothers ... but without the humor ... some very creepy atmospheric scenes here ... great sounddesign ... beautifull shot).
After that "Versus" was shown. I know you already wrote about the film in Asia-Aicn. This film is a wonderfull fun-splatter-roallercoster ride. AWESOME fight scenes between gangsters and zombies. "Braindead" meets John Woo, so to say. I like it very very much. The audience loved it very much, a lot of applause for a number of scenes (my favorite: The in-jokes / parody from Matrix and Blade :-) The director (cool dude, great humor) and 4 actors were there and after the film it was time for questions and answers, a translator was there and did a great job. The german music-televison station Viva 2 was there and filmed the interview , I guess it will be aired on Wednesday. (Viva 2 was also one of the sponsors). All answers by director.
Q: Why did you shoot the whole film in a forrest ?
A: Because there was no police. I don´t like the police. That is the reason why I did build in the 2 cops in the story (they both die a very funny death ... hi hi).
Q: Are you going to make a sequel ?
A: Yes, a sequel is planned, shooting will start in about 2 years. Before I work on the sequel I will re-shoot some scenes of Versus for the american distributor (I guess the film was picked up by miramax if I remember correctly). The new scenes will be less gory (I´m glad I have seen it uncut ...). After that I´m going to make a war film, produced by the american producer who also made Platoon (note: he was making a number of jokes but this seemed to be a serious answer, he even gave the name of the actor he will work with, but I forgot it).
Q: How did you organize the budget for the film ? (400.000 Dollar only)
A: Well, we are 5 good-looking men, we asked the women and they gave us the money :-) applause from the audience
Q: What do you think of germany ? Do you think we are ... hmmm ... cool ? (stupid question, audience laughing)
A (director, very poilite): Yes, we like it here. Cologne is a beautifull city with beautifull architecture. The women look fine. The audience here shows better reaction than in France (audience laughing ... before they came to Cologne they were in France and meet actor Bill Pullman who also likes this film very much. And the french audience also loves this film very much, I think).
The film will be shown again tonight (Saturday), director and cast will be there again. On sunday will be a open discussion / interview. I would like to go there again, alas I have no time (I don´t live in Cologne). Other directors will be there, too. I think this is a great festival and hope it will be next year again.
yours,
John "Dschonbook" Book
