I have a Rob Marshall

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I have a Rob Marshall question...well, actually a comment ...that applies to Clint Eastwood's imminent filming of Red Sun, Black Sand, the companion piece to his Iwo Jima drama Flags of Our Fathers. Sun will cover the same conflict but tell the Japanese-soldier side of things with Ken Watanabe playing General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who led the battle against American troops for 40 days, according to Variety. The comment...okay, a jibe...concerns a statement Marshall made after his Memoirs of a Geisha opened late last year, which was that the reason he didn't shoot it in Japanese is that he can't speak the language and therefore couldn't direct actors speaking it. And yet the Variety story says that Eastwood will shoot Red Sun, Black Sand entirely in Japanese. I'll bet dollars-to-donuts Eastwood doesn't speak any more Japanese than Marshall does -- the difference is that one director seems to trust himself (and his audience) a bit more than the other. Iris Yamashita has written the script, based on a story by her and Oscar-winner Paul Haggis, who adapted Flags of our Fathers. That American vantage-point story is now in post-production and is expected to come out before Red Sun, Black Sand. Paramount will release the films domestically, while Warner Bros. International will distribute overseas. In Japan, Red Sun will be titled Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood will begin filming it next week in Los Angeles, but also has plans to shoot exteriors on Iwo Jima.