Friday, August 26 2011
‘High and Low’: This Is Not Your Typical Mindless Rich Guy
Akira Kurosawa makes a daring attempt to tell an epic story of rich businessmen, determined cops, and the low-end criminals and drug addicts struggling to survive.
Monday, August 15 2011
The 100 Essential Directors Part 5: Derek Jarman to Mike Leigh
Mid-way through our series, Day 5 is a glorious mishmash of international auteurist cinema. Today we go from saints and sinners, from Brookyln to Britain, from the beginning of time to the Dystopian future, and around the world and beyond.
Friday, October 22 2010
The Individual As Institution: Power, Loss and Madness in Kurosawa’s Ran and Shakespeare’s King Lear
By identifying Lear with the ancient Japanese warlord Hidetora, whose violations emerge from a breach of publicly identified self-hood, Akira Kurosawa plays with the quintessentially Shakespearean focus on individual personality.
Comparing Akira Kurosawa’s Early and Late Films
There are some striking differences not only between the earlier films of Kurosawa and the later films, but in the very different ways that people have responded to these two different groups of films
Kurosawa 101: Day Ten, 1991 - 1993
Today we bring to an end our examination of each of the films of Kurosawa directed in his amazing career. After the ambitious epic Ran, Kurosawa embarked a three smaller but more personal films.
Thursday, October 21 2010
Monster Dandelions and Weeping Demons
In the early 1990s, The Hollywood Reporter picked up on an emerging ‘trend’ of what it called cinema vert -- films about ‘green issues’. Kurosawa’s Dreams, though not financed by the American studio system, fits well in this cohort, albeit as the most formally distinct example of this miniature film movement.
Kurosawa 101: Day Nine, 1975 - 1985
The three films featured today represented the director's ascendance to greater international acclaim, even while he struggled to find financing in Japan, where the movie industry was shriveling. All three of these films were made either in whole or in part by Soviet, American, or French financing.
Wednesday, October 20 2010
Kurosawa 101: Day Eight, 1963 - 1970
These three films by Kurosawa represent the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of another. High and Low is a police procedural that is regarded as one of his greatest films, while Red Beard represented the end of his so-called "Creative Period".
Tuesday, October 19 2010
Kurosawa 101: Day Seven, 1960 - 1962
Today's Kurosawa 101 reviews cover three of his most popular and accessible films Yojimbo and Sanjuro, as well as arguably his most earnest, The Bad Sleep Well.
Monday, October 18 2010
The Brush and the Lens: Kurosawa As Painter and Filmmaker
As a painter and filmmaker, Kurosawa stuck to his own style, informed heavily by traditional Japanese painting as well as European impressionists and expressionists, another arena of art where he answered to both Eastern and Western influences.
