Giles ,'Selfless'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Dodes 'Ka-Den
This one reminds me a bit of the Love and Rockets comic book, particularly Gilberto's Palomar stories. Except, you know, it's Japanese.
The Hidden Fortress
From which Lucas stole R2-D2 and C-3PO.
The Bad Sleep Well
Noir!
High And Low
Noir!
Throne of Blood
MacBeth!
Yojimbo
Dashiel Hammet!
Seven Samurai
The Magnificent Seven!
The best Kurosawa films (for those with casual interest) are Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, High And Low, and Yojimbo.
The next tier is Throne Of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Stray Dog, Rashomon, and Ran.
If you've seen those, go with Red Beard, I Live In Fear, Drunken Angel (actually this and Red Beard should be a double feature), and Sanjuro.
Serious fans only: Sanshiro Sugata I & II, The Bad Sleep Well, and Kagemusha. I've never seen the others showing this month.
(xpost with David!)
I share my birthday with Kurosawa! And I've had my dvr programmed to record Throne of Blood for the past week.
Y'know, I seriously encourage anyone who has never watched a Kurosawa film to catch at least one. The guy was one of the best filmmakers of the 20th century, if not The Best. Considering that he was a Japanese man making films in the 50s and 60s, it's pretty amazing how well his movies translate to modern Western audiences, but that's mostly because he stole shamelessly from American and European directors and, in turn, some of the most influential filmmakers of today stole shamelessly from him. His films are full of beautiful cinematography and well-observed moments of pure human behavior for the art set, while still fun and witty and action-packed for the mainstream.
I share my birthday with Kurosawa!
Awesome!
And I've had my dvr programmed to record Throne of Blood for the past week.
Also awesome!
Seven Samurai is one of the most emotionally satisfying action movies you'll ever see. The characters are so well drawn and the situation is played for maximum drama that pays off beautifully. And Kurosawa, of course, set the standard for cinematic action at that time.
Yojimbo's the coolest, though.
Which of the Kurosawa's is the version of (I think) Bad Day at Black Rock or (I think, it has Bruce Willis) Last Man Standing. I suck at titles, I just say, "You know, the one they've remade all over the place, with the guy who plays two gangs against each other."
That's Yojimbo, a famous remake being A Fistful of Dollars.
Seven Samurai is one of the most emotionally satisfying action movies you'll ever see. The characters are so well drawn and the situation is played for maximum drama that pays off beautifully. And Kurosawa, of course, set the standard for cinematic action at that time.
I agree with this.
Yojimbo's the coolest, though.
And also with this.
Which of the Kurosawa's is the version of (I think) Bad Day at Black Rock or (I think, it has Bruce Willis) Last Man Standing. I suck at titles, I just say, "You know, the one they've remade all over the place, with the guy who plays two gangs against each other."
Yojimbo was an unofficial version of Red Harvest, by Hammett. Sergio Leone unofficially remade it as A Fistful of Dollars. The Bruce Willis film (by Walter Hill I think) was also a version, though I think it might have credited Red Harvest as its source.
Upon catching a few minutes of Die Hard the other night, I noticed that they took the scene with the bad dude shooting at Bruce Willis as he scurried under a table directly from Yojimbo.