Cinematic veteran and personal idol Clint Eastwood has assembled a fairly decent cast (and Paul Walker) for his WWII tale Flags of Our Fathers, which follows those Easy Company soldiers made famous by the flag-raising photograph at the battle of Iwo Jima. 

But that’s not enough war for the guy who went where eagles dare, so we’ll get that same conflict from the outlook of the enemy.  According to Time (as picked up by AICN), Eastwood got the rather unique notion to make a “companion piece” to his film, telling the battle from the Japanese perspective.  Tentatively titled Lamps Before the Wind (a way better title than Lumps Before the Wind, which is what I thought it said at first), the movie will focus on the “honor code” of Japanese soldiers fighting to the death, a contrast to the American G.I.s approach, which involved more of saving their friends’ (and their own) asses and getting the hell off the island.

Clint’s Million Dollar Baby scribe Paul Haggis had too much on his plate to visit the Land of the Rising Sun, but he recommended his research assistant and aspiring scribe Iris Yamashita, and Clint loved the hell out of her script and plans to shoot the movie in February for a simultaneous Fall 2006 release with Flag.  A pretty swift turnaround time, and considering there only seems to be about four Asian actors getting regular work in Hollywood, casting may be his biggest logistic hurdle.

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