Hello, my name is Justin the Clue and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today, we are discussing Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miquet.

All right, Justin, I saw the first half of a delightful romantic comedy called Audition. Now, I haven't seen the rest of it yet, but you have got to check out this delightful romantic comedy. How many times have you heard this joke?

Who are you parodying in this context? I parodyying the many people I've heard say that joke before.

No, those people who make that joke I've completely excised from my social circle.

From your life?

Yes, that's right.

Now, Takashi Mika is a guy that I love, but I found recently not many people talk about him anymore.

That's true.

Why is that?

I think it's because he's mostly been making big Japanese blockbusters.

Anime adaptations, manga adaptations.

And the thing that really made him popular was in the 2000s.

He had a string of movies that were violent, that were weird, that are the definition of cult film, and he kept making them.

So there was a mixture of, here is this filmmaker who are pushing the limits of what you can do in cinema.

Isn't it effed up?

As well as he keeps putting them out.

Yeah.

So in the 2000s, when both you and I would have been going to Rogers video, going to the foreign film section, renting Asian movies, going to Ain't at Cool News.com or something like that. Like he was the god of, or one of the gods, of a place like that. And there was also kind of a mystique to him early on. I recall he was putting out so many movies that for a while they weren't even coming out English subtitled that I was on the forums and people were writing, oh man, I just picked up full metal yakuza, the Takashi Mika movie that's like Robocop, but what if he did it? It's effed up. You know, like post-crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you know, hero, Jackie Chan,

that kind of thing. There was a big vogue for Asian stuff in, you know, cult film circles in

the West. But there was also a particular, like, sub-vogue for, like, transgressive Asian stuff,

stuff like Old Boy, stuff that was sort of extreme. Tartan Asia extreme, if you will.

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