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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Kurosawa.

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:37 / 07.11.01

Managed to finally see Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai last night and was just wondering if anyone out there's got any more tips for further viewing of the director's work. I'm also interested in people's opinion as to how it was represented in The Magnificent Seven...

11:48 / 07.11.01

I loved Ran (his adaptation of King Lear). Highly recommended.

Knodge - YOUR nemesis!

13:08 / 07.11.01

Kurosawa is brilliant. Rashomon, Ikiru, Ran, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and Sanjuro are some of his most well received works.

If you get the chance, watch Criterion's Seven Samurai DVD release. It contains a commentary track (I cannot remember the commentator's name right now... Michael Jeck?) which is extremely informative.

There is also a great book available called 'The Films of Akira Kurosawa' written by Donald Richie. It contains a wealth of information on Kurosawa and his films.

13:21 / 07.11.01

I've only seen Hidden Fortress and Dreams. Both great films. Dreams was one of the last films he did. A series of loosely collected short stories. It's extremly lush and fun to watch.

Thanks for reminding me. Now, I've got to go track down the DVD's. And here I thought I'd acctually make it through the month with out buying more DVD's.

uncle retrospective

14:37 / 07.11.01

Watch Yojimbo. It's a bit slow for a while (no, really?) but it's great. I've being going a Kurosawa phaze for a while.
Plus watching his films points out just how dull and inspiring hidden dragon was.

Knodge - YOUR nemesis!

15:13 / 07.11.01

The unfortunate thing about DVDs of Kurosawa's films is that they are generally expensive (at least in Canada). Criterion has made The Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and High And Low, with Rashomon due early next year. There are import DVDs of these films, but I have heard they suffer in the quality department.

As for CTHD, I am a huge Kurosawa fan but still believe it is a great film. I am not sure I can see how watching a Kurosawa film would have any impact on someone's feelings about CTHD.

The Damned Yankee

15:59 / 07.11.01

Yeah, since when did liking CTHD and liking Kurosawa movies become mutually exclusive?

Anyway, not so long ago the Independent Film Channel aired a Kurosawa Film Festival: Yojimbo, Rashomon, the Seven Samurai, and the rest. All without commercial interruption.

I grabbed a bowl of chips and spent the rest of the day in subtitled heaven.

19:43 / 07.11.01

Oh, you'll love Ran. It's stunning.

I've had a copy of The Seven Samurai for ages, but no-one to watch it with.

13:18 / 08.11.01

I'm thinking of seeing a play version Rashomon at the Riverside in Hammersmith over the next week or so... Anyone else up for it???

18:22 / 08.11.01

Earlier, I made a thread plugging "Ikiru." It's a brilliant, brilliant story.

Aging bureacrat in the Kafkaesque society of postwar Japan discovers he's got terminal cancer.

First, he finds a poet/writer/bohemian to teach him how to have fun again -- rediscovers his lost youth and all that.

But that's the first half of the movie.

The second half is what happens when he *decides to go back to work*.

One of the most incredible, man-against-the-soul-destroyers stories I've ever seen.

The Return Of Rothkoid

18:36 / 08.11.01

I've just rented Throne Of Blood, but haven't gotten around to it yet - Lang's M got first dibs on my viewing time, somehow. There's a couple more Kurosawa flicks down the road on video - not DVD, unfortunately - and it looks like I'll be working my way through them soon. I'll be interested to see how this adaptation of Macbeth works out.

Once again, I have to ask - how do people compare The Magnificent Seven with The Seven Samurai? Good? Better? What's the scoop?

08:49 / 09.11.01

ah. long time since i saw seven samourai, but chiron and i had a lot of fun watching the magnificent seven a coupla weeks back. mind you, that might've been because we were speculating on which of them had the biggest cock....yeah, i know, we're so high class....i should point out that chiron started it, not me.

and expressionless: i'm astounded a) that no one will watch the film with you and b) that you're waiting to watch it with someone else! just watch it!

12:44 / 10.11.01

James Coburn... yeah. I know you'll disagree Kookster

21:14 / 12.11.01

not at all! i thought we both agreed on him...

sorry for the threadrot.

21:20 / 12.11.01

Me too, actually. (It's always the silent ones, isn't it?)

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:06 / 13.11.01

Sigh.

Back on topic, I thought that the Western adaptation wasn't as good - though it had a much higher camp quotient - and that Throne Of Blood seemed a lot less effective than The Seven Samurai, though was fairly attractively shot.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:29 / 13.11.01

The sense of menace in 'Seven Samurai' is far greater than in the western version. The Swordsman, particularly, is utterly terrifying. He absolutely does not care whether there's someone fighting him or not when he does his form...

The same can hardly be said of the gunsel in Magnificent Seven... and as for the assassin in 'Battle Beyond the Stars', well that's a whole other scary world...

[ 13-11-2001: Message edited by: Nick ]

23:24 / 24.11.01

One of the wonders of Kurosawa is the sheer number of people and films he has inspired for instance (not including Samaurai vs Magnificent 7) watch:

Samurai vs Seven Warriors an HK action flick starring (amongst others) Sammo Hung and going closer to the spirit of the Western than Kurosawa's epic.

Hidden Fortress vs Star Wars

Yojimbo vs Fistfull of Dollars vs Last Man Standing (well actually don't watch this one if you can avoid it, this is just for information's sake) and indeed it even inspired a Pokemon episode I saw

Of course, if you are going to do that make sure you read the Dashiell Hammet novel that came first Red Harvest, but Hammet is for another thread...

If you ever had any interest in Shakespeare watch Ran and Throne of Blood and consider how the Feudal Japanese setting alters certain aspects and highlights others (that is if you are writing exams, of course)

Finally can I recommend Stray Dog (Nora Inu). The Humble Crab showed it to me once, absolutely bloody marvellous, about a policeman who loses his pistol and has to track it down to deal with his shame. Amazing mix of Dostoyevskian criminology, Japanese samaurai films, and American Film Noir. Large amounts of the film are just legwork, with the cop wandering back and forth in an effort to find his prey. Really good; rarely seen.

23:24 / 24.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Kooky is a bad scamp:
and expressionless: i'm astounded a) that no one will watch the film with you and b) that you're waiting to watch it with someone else! just watch it!

I don't have a video recorder.

Pin

20:00 / 25.11.01

quote:Originally posted by expressionless:
I've had a copy of The Seven Samurai for ages, but no-one to watch it with.

I will. We can watch it after The Prisoner. Then try making music (not a euphemisim for sex). We've been here before, haven't we?

11:07 / 27.11.01

It's less action-y and a lot more character developmenty, but i'd definitely recommend Red Beard. Great film - about a medical student in feudal (i think) Japan, who - when he expects to be assigned to the post of the Emperor's personal physician - is sent to serve in a public clinic. Toshiro Mifune plays the head doctor who teaches him...

I don't know why I love this film in particular, it's just that every time i see it, i can't do anything but watch it intently until it's over.

14:13 / 17.11.02

DreamWorks and Stone Village Prods. will remake "Ikiru", the 1952 Akira Kurosawa-directed drama about a dying man's efforts to make a difference before he goes. DreamWorks' Walter Parkes will produce with Stone Village's Scott Steindorff. There's talk of re-making "High And Low" as well.

14:27 / 17.11.02

Um, MW, High and Low has already been remade. It was called Ransom, and it was shit. Ikiru hasn't been remade directly, but if you watch it and then watch American Beauty there's more than a few similarities.

Doesn't make this new development any better, though.

22:18 / 23.11.02

For anyone in the SF Bay Area who would like to see Kurosawa on the big screen, the PFA in Berkeley will be showing a series of his work with Mifune throughout December.

You can find a schedule here.

01:49 / 24.03.05

I've been running through the Criterion Collection via NetFlix recently (which, if you can become a part of, is wonderful) to catch some of the remaining Kurosawa films I haven't seen yet. Buying them outright, which was noted earlier, is damn expensive but worth it for a few.

I have to say so far that Yojimbo is definitely my favorite and shows both the abilities of an excellent moviemaker crafting a story and a natural and likable Toshiro Mifune. It's nice to see an interesting story with character development, something that popular film has a tendency to push to the side in order to rely solely on concept.

Speaking of Toshiro, if you get a hankering for more samurai film, check out his work in Samurai I-III. Except for some pretty low exposures that are read through, the movies are pretty good too.

04:01 / 09.03.08

3 years after the last post, let me just reiterate that Stray Dog is absolutely stunning.
There's a moment in it where a prostitute helping the cop is looking up at the stars and talking about how beautiful they are, and in any other movie, it would be hokey and ridiculous, but in this film, you actually feel bad for her without feeling manipulated.

I first saw Yojimbo, and then Seven Samurai, which is really unfair, because it leads you to believe that Kurosawa is flawless and the best director in history, which nobody could live up to. High and Low was great, and Sanjuro outstanding- haven't seen Ikiru yet, but it's on my shelf. Kagemusha is gorgeous, but drags on at parts. Kurosawa's worst sin, however, is The Bad Sleep Well. Hypothetically, it's my favorite movie of all time, as it's Hamlet, reimagined as a film noir in post war corporate Japan. In actuality? It falls flat on its face when Kurosawa decides all the exposition is best delivered via long dialogues. If that's not enough, he then has his characters explain, at great length, exactly why they're doing what they're doing. %Thank you, Stan Lee.% Despite this, it has some amazing moments, unforgettable lines, and damn awesome characters, but they can't overcome the fact that the three hour movie would play a lot better at 1:45, and I'm a man who prefers his movies long.

Ran is gorgeous, the man paints with color, but his black and white movies may be even prettier.

Mmmm.... Kurosawa.

16:03 / 17.03.08

Stray Dog might be my favourite 'small and obscure' movie.

I'd be willing to bet good cash money that the guy who wrote Se7en, has studied this movie. They are very similar in set-up. Rookie Cop comes under the wing of jaded veteran to hunt unseen criminal who stays one step ahead of them for most of the movie.

In fact comparing the two highlights even further why Stray Dog is such a great movie. Whereas the Brad Pitt flick is set in a timeless Hollywood neverland where cops still wear fedoras and also use the internet, Stray Dog is intensely about a very specific time and a place, ie Japan just after WWII. Tokyo is like another character.

Although it is a police procedural, its also about a whole country trying to overcome the trauma of war and a period of dehumanising fascist military rule. Its a while since I saw it but I remember admiring how the director was able to bring this simple humanity into it.

Kurosawa had something to say about the time and place he was living through. Fincher just made a movie about other movies.

And speaking of WWII relevance, The Magnificent Seven was made by men who'd all experienced WWII, many as soldiers. Although its a Western, there was a lot in this movie about what the GIs had to deal with in WWII. The last time I saw this film, I'd just read Band of Brothers and I noticed that the shoot-outs in it had more to do with the kind of teamwork that the GIs had to rely on than traditional Western fast-drawing and sharp-shooting.

13:59 / 22.03.08

thoughtmecca:
Please, please take Ikiru down from the shelf and give it a go. It's so beautiful and full of hope. Takashi Shimura (the older, principled lead samurai from SS) subtly portrays such a wonderful range of emotions in his character and you can't help but love him.

18:07 / 22.03.08

I feel almost obliged to recommend Ikiru as well. In fact, I almost posted something about it yesterday. Its an incredibly well crafted film and somehow occupies the same strata of memory (however fuzzy) as It's a Wonderful Life in intention and temper. I'm not a fan of Kurosawa in general but watch this, certainly.