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Well it actually goes downhill from here for a little while to be honest, until Drunken Angel. Sanshiro Sugata is the best pre-Toshiro Mifune film Kurosawa made by quite a margin. Hell I'd go as far as saying One Wonderful Sunday and Sanshiro Sugata: Part II are genuinely bad films (With The Most Beautiful not being much better) and possibly the worst in Kurosawa's entire filmography. Red Beard is pretty close, though you won't be getting to that for a while. I still have to see the last four movies he made though (Ran through Madadayo), so I'm almost at the end of my own Kurosawa journey myself. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 05:09
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Neowyrm posted:Looking forward to it I weep for you. EDIT: Though after you get through this rough patch Kurosawa starts making masterpieces so it's not all bad. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 05:22
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Neowyrm posted:I've never watched a filmmaker's entire feature filmography before (unless you count every time I've seen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), so I've been trying to brace myself for the inevitability that most directors make one or two lovely films. When you have as many total films under your belt as Akira Kurosawa, the ratio stays the same, the volume just increases. Yeah, sadly this is the case. I've actually seen all 50+ of Alfred Hitchcock's feature films (Sans the film that has been lost to history), and his silent period is almost entirely dispensable, and that is longer than some director's entire careers alone. However tracking an artist's development can be very interesting, and you should be able to see how different techniques and styles will be better applied over time. Even in Sanshiro Sugata, despite the film being flawed, you can sort of see the basis for Kurosawa's samurai pictures developing, and you even see his long partnership with actor Takashi Shimura beginning, which would go all the way into 1980.
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Aug 19, 2015 05:39
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Fun fact about the Japanese censor board that looked at Sanshiro Sugata: Yasujiro Ozu was actually on the board that examined the film and was one of the few to actually defend it and helped get it released. Gotta love that Ozu. Random Stranger posted:I don't think One Wonderful Sunday is a masterpiece, but it is an enjoyable film. Especially when you consider how it captures post-war Tokyo so directly (another theme Kurosawa is going to dive deeply into, despite the American censors objecting to it). Sure it's a sappy love story, but it's a post-apocalyptic sappy love story. quote:I liked The Lodger, at least. zandert33 posted:Sanshiro Part II, sure, but "One Wonderful Sunday" a "bad" film? I think you're in the minority stating that. It is possible I am in the minority, yes. I don't think disliking OWS is as outrageous to people as, say, Godard's making GBS threads on Seven Samurai though. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 06:10
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TrixRabbi posted:His 1950s output is going to blow your mind. Is there any other way to access the movie? I wanted to check it out after reading about it in The Emperor and The Wolf (Great book btw, though I'm still only about 100 pages in), but it looks like there's never been a DVD release here in the States of Snow Trail.
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Aug 19, 2015 13:57
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Neowyrm posted:I tried to get him to watch Kon, too. Kon is great. He's like some weird anime version of David Lynch.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:04
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jivjov posted:Anyone have any insight on exactly where The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail falls in the chronology? Wikipedia has both 1945 and 1952 listed, and as far as I can tell from the rather scant article...it was made in '45 but never publicly released until '52? Do I have that right? This is correct. It was made in 1945 but the censors refused to release it until later because it contains "nationalistic imagery" or something in the form of samurai. Make no mistake though, it is not an action film like Sanshiro Sugata. FWIW it is always grouped with Kurosawa's 40's work, and not his 50's work. EDIT: Double checking my copy of The Emperor and The Wolf it was banned by the Occupation Forces in Japan for allegedly being "pro-Feudalism". Raxivace fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 23:06
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Yeah, I kind of get the impression that Kurosawa's heart wasn't completely in making The Most Beautiful, as it lacks the stylistic touches of even Sanshiro Sugata. I think he tried to make the film more about the girls' effort than what they're explicitly putting that effort towards (Ultimately supporting an evil cause), but it doesn't really save it from being propaganda. It's not quite as blatant as something like Triumph of the Will, I guess, but still. Kurosawa was also critical of Japan entering World War II, especially the years coming after this, so I think we should cut him some slack when he didn't have complete artistic freedom here. Takashi Shimura is largely wasted in his brief role, though it is interesting to note that this ended up being the only film of Kurosawa's with a primarily female cast. He's often accused of focusing too much on male characters, and yet we have this oddity at the beginning of his career.
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Aug 22, 2015 13:40
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Random Stranger posted:Well, you hit the bottom of the Kurosawa barrel. It only goes up from here! If this is bottom of the barrel, then at his best Kurosawa is even higher than the top of a mountain. He had to learn before the could get there, though.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:36
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I dunno, I found Castle of Cagliostro to be a slog to get through. I don't really like Miyazaki in general from what I've seen of his work, though my exposure is only limited to a few films of his.
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Aug 27, 2015 08:36
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jivjov posted:I'm amused that everyone's talking about the next film up and not a whole lot is being said about Sanshiro. Well there's not much to say about Sanshiro II. It's the first movie again but worse for the most part.
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Aug 27, 2015 13:01
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Random Stranger posted:Yeah, the biggest point I can make is how blatant the film is with its anti-American themes. Not in a bad way, more in an absurd Rocky IV kind of way. Even Kurosawa's autobiography has barely anything to say about this movie. Clearly Sanshiro II needed like 45 minutes of training montages set to 80's music, obviously. And hey I've liked some these movies leading up to Ran. Dersu Uzala and Kagemusha are aesthetic triumphs at the very least.
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Aug 29, 2015 04:56
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Random Stranger posted:The day after, it was destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo. Kurosawa never got his wedding pictures as a result. Kurosawa's house was burned down too the day after his wedding. Lost a bunch of a family records, photos, etc.
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Aug 29, 2015 17:44
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Neowyrm posted:I thought this Miyazaki film was garbage personally Yeah, I'm not a fan myself. I actually liked the Lupid the Third show when I was younger (Whichever one aired on Adult Swim like a decade ago anyways at like five in the morning. Apparently there's actually been several different series.), but I think those stories are better suited to 22 minute romps- feature length just seemed bloated to me.
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Sep 3, 2015 05:41
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There are three eras of Kurosawa as far as I'm concerned: the pre-Mifune era, the Mifune era, and the post-Mifune era. That actor had such a big impact on Kurosawa's career, and they both did a lot of their best work together. They're just one of the great director/actor duos, like Scorsese/DeNiro, Rossellini/Bergman, Ford/Wayne, Hithcock/Stewart etc. Takashi Shimura was no slouch either, and he's going to start getting very good roles in Kurosawa films here soon.
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Sep 6, 2015 10:01
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Random Stranger posted:The only one of his superlong films that I feel was a bad experience (as opposed to an "I didn't care for this" experience) was The Idiot. And the studio chopped over an hour of the movie on him with that one so it may be a situation where the original, over four hour cut (it was going to be two movies) is a better film. When I first saw The Idiot I didn't know it had been cut up, and I was really confused once title cards came on-screen and explained plot elements.
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Sep 7, 2015 05:04
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I haven't seen that film, but from what I understand Hideaki Anno was more or less one of Miyazaki's apprentices. I guess it isn't too surprising that his works would have similarities to Miyazaki's.
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Sep 18, 2015 05:43
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Random Stranger posted:I watched No Regrets for Our Youth about four months ago and I remember effectively nothing about it. It's a very slight movie with nothing besides the fact that it's by Kurosawa to recommend it. I'm in a similar position- I watched it about a year ago myself, and the only things I can remember are "Huh, kind of neat to see Setsuko Hara in a Kurosawa film I guess" and that the film got more dull once Hara starts farming.
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Sep 29, 2015 02:46
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Sorry for the double post but I just watched Ran for the first time and holy poo poo. That movie is loving great. Dat masterful usage of color. Dat staging of action. Dat exploration of how violence reverberates across generations. It's a while off but you're in for a real treat when you get to this one, jivjov.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:54
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RIP jivjov. I didn't really know you too well, but you watched some movies I guess.
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Oct 8, 2015 03:48
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Yeah Grave of the Fireflies is an amazing, powerful film, even with the incredibly stupid bit with the ghosts at the beginning. Nobody ever remembers the ghosts. I think you could reasonably do a live action version. The Italian neorealist movie Germany Year Zero is already a pretty similar film in a lot of ways, which is about a young child in postwar Germany who murders his father, and then commits suicide out of guilt. You'd need someone as good as Roberto Rossellini was to do live action Grave of the Fireflies well though. Burkion posted:And I mean come on, who hasn't wanted to follow up Grave of the Fire Flies with Gojira! I mean the latter is so much lighter of a movie right? Right? Hahahahahaha! When I first watched Grave of the Fireflies, it was in a double feature after the lesser film The Wind Rises. It was nice contrast to Miyazaki's naivete. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 01:01
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jivjov posted:Are we talking about the spirits of Seita and Setsuko looking back on things and whatnot? The 'framing device'? I rather liked it... Yeah, that. It seems super out of place with the brutal realism of the rest of the film IMO.
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Oct 30, 2015 01:40
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Godzilla/Gojira owns. The Criterion release is one of my most prized possessions. Random Stranger posted:That's very explicit to anyone in 1954, and especially anyone in Japan in 1954 (you need to get around to I Live in Fear. I think it's only 18 movies down the line for you). Gonna second I Live in Fear here. It's not top-tier Kurosawa, though it's a solid film.
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Oct 31, 2015 23:47
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Glad to hear you liked Drunken Angel, jiv. That movie to High & Low might be my favorite continuous run of any director ever, though Hitchcock's run of Rebecca to The Birds is neck and neck with it. I was reading though some old 1950's Cahiers du Cinema articles earlier today, and one thing common among them was Andre Bazin and a few others complaining that Kurosawa was too "western" of a director, both in the sense that he takes too much from John Ford westerns in his samurai movies, as well as what seems to me to be this vaguely racist notion of having too much of an American influence in general (Which is hilarious in its own right coming from the French in this time period) and not being "Japanese" enough, whatever that means. I'd be curious to hear what you think of that after having seen a little bit of Japanese cinema now, especially since we're soon moving into Kurosawa's heavier emphasis on genre work in the near future. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 18:17
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Random Stranger posted:I feel Drunken Angel hasn't quite crossed the thresh hold to greatness yet, but with every film Kurosawa is getting closer and closer to it until suddenly "Boom!" he just starts turning out masterpiece after masterpiece like it's no big thing. Of course, Drunken Angel brings in another piece of that magical time by adding Mifune. It's not a masterpiece but I think it's quite a drat good movie in its own right, and personally I like it quite a bit more than most of what Kurosawa did before. Mifune's first appearance is important of course, but the movie also starts a lot of ideas that become very important in this era for Kurosawa- namely the somewhat Shakespearean notion of his protagonists being doomed to die in one way or another. Drunken Angel kind of functions as a solid prelude to his upcoming masterpieces more than the earlier movies IMO.
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Nov 12, 2015 03:54
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Since this is more or less the Japanese film thread, I'm sad to announce that Setsuko Hara has passed away at the age of 95. RIP. I haven't even gotten to see her work with Ozu yet in my watching of his filmography, but I will say she was very much the best in parts in the two Kurosawa movies she did. It's a god damned shame she never came out of retirement.
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Nov 26, 2015 01:00
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If this thread is about experiencing Japanese cinema, than the films should probably be in Japanese by principle IMO.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:21
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I have to admit that I'm curious about The Wind Rises' dub if only because the idea of Werner Herzog voicing an anime character is hilarious to me.
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Dec 5, 2015 18:02
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tekz posted:I watched Dersu Uzala, it owned a lot and has got me interested in watching more Mosfilm/Soviet cinema. Anyone got recommendations? I've only seen a little bit of Russian cinema myself outside of Dersu Uzala (Battleship Potemkin, The Man With a Movie Camera, and Stalker. Watch these if you haven't seen them tekz, they're all amazing.), and would love recommendations as well, outside of more Tarkovsky stuff which I plan to check out more of anyways.
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Dec 27, 2015 22:39
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Is it really true that Stray Dog invented the "buddy cop" genre? As much as I love the movie I do wonder if that is giving it perhaps slightly too much credit, since to me it resembles more of a master/apprentice type of story than what we might think of as "buddy cop" movies today. Or maybe I just haven't seen enough of them, haha. Either way Stray Dog is still amazing. Still one of the best post-war movies out there. EDIT: Grammar. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jan 1, 2016 |
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Jan 1, 2016 15:52
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I've read that too, though anytime I've seen it described that way, it's usually just written as kind of a given. I guess I just wonder if maybe some of the other noirs made in the 1940's shouldn't be considered proto-buddy cop movies as well, even if they don't literally feature cops or whatever. The Maltese Falcon comes to mind even though one of the "buddies" dies five minutes in (And Spade and Archer weren't even friends really). There's also the film Laura, which seems reminiscent of these types of stories to a degree until the ending.
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Jan 1, 2016 17:15
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Random Stranger posted:Personally, I see buddy cop movies growing out of detective fiction in general where you always need someone to bounce the detective off of. Once you start making those two characters more equals, the whole thing kind of snaps into place. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Honestly you could probably trace the "buddy cop" origins all the way back to Holmes and Watson (The actual Doyle stories at least, and not the movies that made Watson a complete idiot or whatever). Stray Dog getting the credit just seems a little arbitrary. Speaking of Japanese noir, I watched Take Aim at the Police Van for the first time the other day and holy poo poo it is crazy. It's like noir on adrenaline- people can't even go outside for five minutes without somebody driving up to them and beating the poo poo out of them. One dude is thrown over a cliff. There's some King Joffrey poo poo going on too when one woman is shot in the bare breast with an arrow of all things. Movie isn't even 80 minutes long, and is insane. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jan 1, 2016 |
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Jan 1, 2016 20:15
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jivjov posted:Something that gets taken for granted (by viewers) in a lot of fiction is the audience stand-in. Obviously it's nigh-impossible to just tell a story of a professional of a craft or trade just doing their job. The methods and reasons will be opaque and some combination of boring or frustrating for the viewer. Someone or something has to convey to the audience what the methodology, the reasonings, are. This can be something as blatant as "the new guy" that's as fresh to the situation as the audience at home is, or something along the lines of the buddy cop formula where two differing viewpoints have an in-universe excuse to have to explain their thought processes aloud to the each other, and thus the audience. Yeah, people do take it for granted, and it is hard to pull off well. The worst is when these audience stand-in characters do not actually feel like characters. Ellen Page in Inception comes to mind- she only exists (for the audience) to be narrated at for like half an hour.
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Jan 1, 2016 20:39
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Anyone here ever seen the Japanese silent Orochi (1925)? It's got one of the coolest action climaxes I've ever seen in a silent. The main plot I could take or leave, but this action scene feels like it predicts Kurosawa by a good 25 years. It's on YouTube with benshi accompaniment (For some reason there are two benshi going at once), though personally I just muted the video and put the subtitles on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FhTOBq9sJc jivjov posted:So I'm planning on reading Kurosawa's memoir, Something Like an Autobiography...should I post a book review in the thread? Sure, why not? I'd like to read that myself one day...
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Jan 6, 2016 01:45
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Are you reviewing Ocean Waves as a part of the Ghibli section, jiv? I'm kind of curious about what you'll think of that one now.
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Jan 9, 2016 08:12
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What I'll say about Shimura in Scandal is that I do think the performance is a bit underrated- he's somewhat playing against type as a flawed guy and the case is basically his attempt at redeeming himself. He strikes me as a cinematic ancestor of like, Saul Goodman (His Jimmy McGill era at least) and characters like that. Atticus Finch he ain't.
Raxivace fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 19:32
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It's a really intriguing list for a lot of reason, even just starting with the first film on there. Kurosawa probably respected D.W. Griffith's genius as a formalist, but I'd be very curious to know what he thought about the, uh, troubling aspects of his films and Broken Blossoms in particular. The John Ford influence on Kurosawa is obvious, but My Darling Clementine is a bit unlike Ford's typical westerns. It's kind of nice to see MASH on there since Robert Altman was a big Kurosawa fan, to the point where he introduces Rashomon on the Criterion DVD/Blu-Ray. Breathless is also surprising, since Jean-Luc Godard loving hated Kurosawa's movies and thought the man was a hack. The Birds is not the Hitchcock I would have expected Kurosawa to like the most. Barry Lyndon ftw. Kurosawa correctly acknowledges that The Godfather Part II is better than Part I. The King of Comedy is also an unusual pick for Scorsese, but it's a drat good movie that's under-appreciated. The Gold Rush has always been lesser Chaplin to me, and I've never been quite sure why people put it so far his other features. Same with Renoir and Grand Illusion. Whoever wrote the article is right- the lack of any Orson Welles is a bit surprising.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:03
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Random Stranger posted:While stopping at Rashomon worked thematically for his book, the problem is that an awful lot happened to Kurosawa after Rashomon that's needs to be addressed. Rashomon is the start of the peak of his career (which when we're talking about Kurosawa is actually a fifteen year long Himalayan plateau), but what happened after that is just as important as he undergoes his Orson Welles like fall (which I guess we'll talk about eight months from now I don't think Orson Welles ever really fell as a filmmaker quality-wise, though his methods of financing movies were waaaayyyy ahead of their time, and the confusion about this caused a blow to his reputation along with the Hearst stuff. Dude was basically trying to be an independent filmmaker at the height of the studio era, and I don't think people really understood that at the time. Then again, you'd think people would have been more receptive to that in the 1970's and 1980's, and sadly that never seemed to pan out. From what I understand Kurosawa had some heavy financial issues too, though he had also issues with depression and suicide that caused obvious problems. We'll talk about that later I guess. jivjov posted:Kurosawa seems like the type to check out films made by his detractors though. Perhaps, though I will say I think that Godard was probably a better filmmaker than critic. I'm talking a lot about Welles for a Kurosawa thread, but I like his quote about Godard's later work that kind of devolved into socialism pamphlets: "His gifts as a director are enormous. I just can’t take him very seriously as a thinker — and that’s where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin". Ironically, Godard was a huge fan of Welles. jivjov posted:I'm just hoping that his second book gets translated at some point. In the meantime you can check out the Kurosawa/Mifune biography, which is quite good. http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-Wolf-Kurosawa-Toshiro/dp/0571199828 Raxivace fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 01:56
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Rashomon is actually adapted from TWO short stories, both by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, which are included on the Criterion blu ray release. The first is simply called Rashomon and other than the setting of the Rashomon gate, has nothing directly to do with the movie from what I can tell. The second is In a Grove, which covers the trial testimonies like you see in the movie, but doesn't have the same Grand Budapest Hotel style layered storytelling, where you're being told a story about someone telling a story and so on. Also the commentary track on the blu ray is really good, check that out. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 04:57
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Twice a year Barnes and Noble sells Criterions for 50% off. Pick up the blu rays then, that's what most people do. They're worth owning- not just the Kurosawas but all their releases tend to be top notch. My Criterion of The Third Man is one of my most prized possessions. Also maybe consider cutting back on the Amiibos and stuff. That's like, a lot man. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 05:16
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