 Princess Blade With scenes echoing and updating ninja movies, Mad Max, and your favorite soap opera, director Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade is a stylish and satisfying balance of tear-jerking melodrama and gravity-defying fight scenes. The film, which stars Japanese idol Yumiko Shaku and up-and-coming actor Hideaki Ito, has been enjoying a limited American theatrical release and will be available on DVD in the winter. Currently planning a Princess Blade sequel, Sato took time to talk about the atmospheric action flick. |
GR: What was it about Kazuo Koike's Shurayukihime manga that made you want to adapt it? SS: Characters--the heroine Yuki is so cool and attractive--but the story has been changed drastically from the comic which was set in old Japan. I really wanted to make a sci-fi movie with Japanese swords. Even though The Princess Blade is very different from the comic book, its author liked the film very much. GR: What was it like working with Hong Kong-based martial arts choreographer Donnie Yen? Did you ask him to make the action look Japanese? SS: Sometimes he demonstrated the action choreography to give examples. It was perfect, and nobody does it like him. I told him not to use a Japanese sword like a Chinese sword, but he said that if we insisted on a Japanese style the action would be monotonous. As the result, the two styles were mixed. By setting the movie in a Far Eastern sci-fi world, we could develop a style of action that has never been seen before. GR: The Princess Blade has a great look. What were you going for? SS: Extreme simplicity, which I think makes this movie cool and stylish. GR: Were there any specific challenges to filming the chase and action scenes in the forest? SS: I think the forest in Japan is very plain. I thought the scenes should be shot like an alien one in Star Wars or Kurosawa flicks. To change the atmosphere we used smoke and fog, selected the best locations, and changed the color in postproduction. We didn't use any CGI. |