Via kinejapan
Takashi Miike was recently hired by the american Showtime cable channel to participate in a serie called Masters Of Horror. The serie include famous horror movie directors such as John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper.
Looks like Miike’s episode won’t get air time due to its extreme content.
Some folk at the tvbarn2 mailing list reported on a q&a with Showtime’s Robert Greenblat about the whole thing :

QUESTION: In front. I wonder if you could talk about the episode of
“Masters of Horror” directed by Takashi Miike that you guys have apparently
withdrawn as unsuitable for even premium cable viewers.

ROBERT GREENBLATT: Sure. Yeah. I don’t know if people know him as a
filmmaker, but he tends to make films that are really extreme in terms of
their visual depiction of torture and violence. And the episode came out
just really, really strong. And rather than try to figure out how to cut it
and make it work for us, we decided it’s probably better not to butcher
Takashi’s vision and, instead, not air it, and they’ll put it out on DVD.

QUESTION: Was this not foreseeable?

ROBERT GREENBLATT: You know, we sort of said, “Let’s see. Let’s see how
edgy it gets and how extreme he wants to go.” And we kind of gave him the
freedom to film it, and then we decided to take a look at it and evaluate
it after the fact.

Miike’s new flick: Yokai Taisenso is about monsters. Not regular monsters: the Yokai monsters. ! The yokai monsters were the heroes of a popular serie of movies at the end of the sixties. It was a back to the roots move at that time. To compete with western monsters movies(Hammer-like ones), Daei created a line of monsters inspired by old folk stories. Those monsters were great and the movies are forever cult classics.
The Yokais were similar to certain kaijus who are terribly frightening but are in fact defending Japan against a bigger threat. You have to realize that the designs of the monsters were out of this world. The star of the cast was a living umbrella with a giant tongue and a human leg. Yes, a living umbrella with a giant tongue that’s the kind of monster the yokais were. Other memorable ones were the woman with the super long neck or the kid with two faces. You see one of the particularity of the Yokai serie is that there are 100 monsters. It’s the japanese monster army getting together to beat the shit outta foreigners or vile buisnessmen (yes i’m looking at you Horiemon). A hundred crazy looking japanese monsters in a single movie. That’s how wonderful those movies were.
Now Miike’s remake has to live up to those movies and it’s going to be hard but since, he’s Miike he won’t give a shit and might do something interesting. Anyway here’s the official site and the trailer.
And what the hell, here’s the imdb links to the old youkai movies :
Yokai hyaku monogatari
Yokai Daisenso
Tokaido abaketo chu

Three…extremes (Three monsters in south korea) is a horror flick featuring 3 of the most hyped asian indy directors working today. That is Fruit Chan(Made in Hong Kong), Takashi Miike(Dead or Alive) and Chan-wook Park(Old boy).The film is divided in three segments each one directed by one of those guys. Dumpling is Fruit Chan’s, Cut is Chan-wook Park’s and Box is Miike’s. Apparently Fruit Chan has also made a director’s cut out of her segment called Dumpling: Three…Extremes. Heroic-cinema.com has a review of Three..extremes, but not of the Dumpling: three…extremes which has a review in lovehkfilm.com.
And it’s not over until i say so ! So keep reading.
Now Three…extrremes is actually a sequel to a film called Three or San Geng(probably korean), released in 2002. Three was based on the same idea of getting three asian directors on the same horror flick. Unfortunately there was no japanese director to be found on Three so i won’t talk further about it. Yes, it’s not cinema.3won.com ok, it’s 3yen and i already have enough trouble keeping with japanese related movie news not to care about what’s happening in South Korea. It’s over hyped anyway.
Three…extremes on the other hand seems quite interesting, but it hasn’t been released in Japan yet so i didn’t see it.
Moviesonline.ca claims to have the trailer for two of the segments of Three…extremes but i didn’t get them to read properly maybe you’ll have more luck.