She Likes to Watch

What do the words “Sukiyaki Western Django” mean to you?

If you’re like me, that phrase sounded like gibberish until a few days ago. That’s when I watched a trailer for one of the weirdest movies to come from the Land of the Rising Song.

It’s “Yojimbo” meets “Young Guns,” a samurai epic with a spaghetti Western twist. “Sukiyaki Western Django” is revisionist history at its most sexy– rife with cliches and ridiculously fun.

Directed by Takashi Miike, best known for raw, violent flicks like “Ichi the Killer” and the “Dead or Alive” triology, the film is set during Japan’s Genpei Wars at the end of the 1100s.

As the Minamoto and Taira gangs face off in the town of Yuda, a deadly gunman (Hideaki Ito) comes to the aid of the townsfolk.

It looks like good, hip fun, but there are a few things about “Sukiyaki Western Django” that just don’t make sense:

For starters, the cast is almost entirely Japanese, but they all speak heavily accented, nearly unintelligible English. (I hear some versions have subtitles, thankfully.)

They’re speaking American slang.

And for some bewildering reason, Quentin Tarantino has plopped himself right in the middle of it all, playing an archetypal cowboy named Ringo. Do we really need the godfather of indie cinema spouting mysticisms and making stirfry?

Check out a few scenes from the movie here:

here:

And here:

Of course, revisionist history is nothing new for the world of Westerns.

John Sturges imported Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai” to Mexico for “The Magnificent Seven.” And “Sukiyaki” could be considered a remake of Sergio Leone’s classic “A Fistful of Dollars.”

I’ll be eager to see just how well “Sukiyaki” mixes ancient Japan and the Wild West. Will it be another “Kung Fu Hustle”? A “Six-String Samurai”? Maybe, if we’re lucky, we might get the fantastic fusion of a “Cowboy Bebop.”

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“Sukiyaki Western Django” has been playing in Japan since September 2007 and recently made an appearance at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, but Lord knows when it’ll finally hit California.

A limited release in the United States is set for Aug. 29.