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Against the backdrop of spiraling gang violence, a young filmmaker inspired by Sono himself and played by Hiroki Hasegawa assembles a film troupe determined to make one great film. The gang/filmmaker plot lines weave together and climax with gangsters and filmmakers both shooting guns and cameras, respectively, in one small space. Sono wrote the script 20 years ago -- before the "Kill Bill" movies, he points out -- as a portrait of his own struggles to become a filmmaker. "I wanted to create something purely interesting," he said. "The film is about the problems I faced" as an aspiring filmmaker, Sono said, and he included episodes from his own life, including a scene when a bunch of kids makes fun of, then tries to beat up a Bruce Lee-style actor as the troupe films in a park. The movie brims with good-natured absurdity and pokes fun at the movie industry, ruefully commenting on the decline of modern cinema. The young filmmaker, full of ambition, bemoans the decline of 35mm even as he shoots on video, and wears a Cannes T-shirt with an Oscar statuette. "Perhaps it was a miscalculation, because I didn't think this movie would come to either Cannes or Venice," Sono said.
[Associated
Press;
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