I must confess I am a bit of a fan of the prolific Takashi Miike. Films like "Audition", "Dead or Alive", "Visitor Q" and "Gozu" left rather indelible impressions on me. That said I have not watched all of his many films and at the rate the man churns them out I may have my work cut out for me just to keep up. That said let's focus on "Sukiyaki Western Django" just released limited in the US.<br /><br />Right at the get go we begin with an off the wall cameo by Quentin Tarantino, featuring a monologue and a gunfight, all set before an almost cartoonish painted backdrop of a snow-tipped mountain and a looming red sun. After this quirky intro the real story begins, a "Yojimbo" themed western tale, featuring an all Japanese cast delivering there lines in English and seemingly often dubbed as well. Here is where some already voice there objections, arguing that the native Japanese speakers should speak in their own language rather than sometimes struggling to deliver the lines in English. It does make for sometimes rather herky jerky deliveries on the part of the actors, but when you consider that the whole film is paying loving homage to a great tradition of films by the likes of Leone and others, which usually featured overdubbing, often by other actors even, it seems almost fitting that the dialog delivery in "Sukiyaki" is what it is.<br /><br />Really the whole film is a "what if"... What if instead of Europe posing as the wild west we had Japan and instead of predominantly Italian/Spanish actors we had a Japanese cast? Well Miike asks the question and answers it with "Sukiyaki Western Django" a gleeful homage that lovingly references and even satirizes the hugely popular westerns so firmly rooted in the pulp and legends of the American West, and yet ironically shaped so decisively by the perspectives of men like Kurosawa and Leone. Not my favorite Miike film but nonetheless very much worth the watch, and akin in spirit to Tarantino's own recent homage of sorts, "Death Proof".