TV/Movies Megathread

[Grey Fox]

She used to be married with someone who has the same last name & spelling! then me.

That's...rare.

[Savonarola]

When I was in junior high one of my friends told me he saw a Japanese movie that was a total rip-off of a western.  The only difference were that the good guys had swords instead of six-shooters and they walked in and out of town instead of riding in and out.  Years later I would see the same film, called:

The Seven Samurai (1954)

Still a classic.  What I liked most on this viewing is that all the only weapon the samurai fear is the musket; and that all the samurai who die are killed by an anonymous (and unseen) musketeer.  With their skill and bravery the samurai handily win every battle with bow, spear or sword, but in the end, technology always wins.   

[CountDeMoney]

I've seen Maura Tierny's tits.

Today?  She's in her 50s.

Thats not old 

I'm sure you have lovely tits

I know I do.  And I'm 46.

[Josquius]

When I was in junior high one of my friends told me he saw a Japanese movie that was a total rip-off of a western.  The only difference were that the good guys had swords instead of six-shooters and they walked in and out of town instead of riding in and out.  Years later I would see the same film, called:

The Seven Samurai (1954)

Still a classic.  What I liked most on this viewing is that all the only weapon the samurai fear is the musket; and that all the samurai who die are killed by an anonymous (and unseen) musketeer.  With their skill and bravery the samurai handily win every battle with bow, spear or sword, but in the end, technology always wins.   

Takeda Shingen. What should have been

[Duque de Bragança]

When I was in junior high one of my friends told me he saw a Japanese movie that was a total rip-off of a western.  The only difference were that the good guys had swords instead of six-shooters and they walked in and out of town instead of riding in and out. 

That's close to what Japanese critics said of Kurosawa: too western.

[celedhring]

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children - I thought that this was Burton's best film in the past 10 years. Then I stopped and realized that this actually means very little, and it gets that honor by merely not being an overproduced vacuous piece of over the top crap. It's overproduced and over the top, but there's an actual relatable story in it.

[KRonn]

I just saw The Accountant, Ben Affleck, JK Simmons, Anna Kendrick. It was pretty good, I liked it.

[Savonarola]

When I was in junior high one of my friends told me he saw a Japanese movie that was a total rip-off of a western.  The only difference were that the good guys had swords instead of six-shooters and they walked in and out of town instead of riding in and out. 

That's close to what Japanese critics said of Kurosawa: too western.

I have heard that, and that Ozu was the preferred director among Japanese critics.  I thought that was kind of funny, since before the Second World War Ozu made a couple gangster pictures that looked like Warner Brothers' films with Japanese actors.  (Ozu did distance himself from those films after the war.)

[Duque de Bragança]

I have heard that, and that Ozu was the preferred director among Japanese critics.  I thought that was kind of funny, since before the Second World War Ozu made a couple gangster pictures that looked like Warner Brothers' films with Japanese actors.  (Ozu did distance himself from those films after the war.)

Now this is interesting and less known I believe. Thanks for the tip.

[celedhring]

Kurosawa is very western indeed, compared to Ozu or Mizoguchi. Ozu pretty much created Japanese Classicism, he's a John Ford or Howard Hawks for them, he towered over Japanese film. Kurosawa was part of a generation that moved away from this giant, and embraced western film aesthetics in the wake of Japan's occupation after WWII. Kurosawa's style was defiantly Hollywoodian. Ironically, he was initially dismissed by the New Waves because his films were "too classic" for a western viewer, and people like Ozu and Mizoguchi were enshrined instead.

[CountDeMoney]

Mishima bench presses your corpse with his cock.

[celedhring]

Mishima bench presses your corpse with his cock.

He's Japanese New Wave (sort of, he's pretty much his own guy). That comes after 

[Ideologue]

Kurosawa is very western indeed, compared to Ozu or Mizoguchi. Ozu pretty much created Japanese Classicism, he's a John Ford or Howard Hawks for them, he towered over Japanese film. Kurosawa was part of a generation that moved away from this giant, and embraced western film aesthetics in the wake of Japan's occupation after WWII. Kurosawa's style was defiantly Hollywoodian. Ironically, he was initially dismissed by the New Waves because his films were "too classic" for a western viewer, and people like Ozu and Mizoguchi were enshrined instead.

I like Kobayashi, though he was probably even more "Western" than Kurosawa, given his usual theme of individuals being broken by the oppressive action of Japanese society.  (I guess one might make an exception for his anti-American war crimes apologia, The Thick-Walled Room, although that's only not "Western" in its content.)  I do wonder if some of Kurosawa's 50s/60s stuff seems more "Western" because it's so often based on Western stories (Yojimbo, High and Low, etc).  Sanjuro is either original or based on Japanese source material, and it doesn't feel much like the crime novel its predecessor was based on, for example.  The style tends to be Hollywood-influenced, of course.

I think I've only ever seen one Mizoguchi film, Ugestsu, and it was sleepy as hell.

[Josquius]

Define western.
Do you mean American or continental?
In the mid 20th century in particular, French cinema was very much its own thing.
I can see more influence from post-war French/pre-war German on Japanese films of the time than I can American. Cliche to say so but...a lot more introspection and unexplained moments.

[celedhring]

Define western.
Do you mean American or continental?
In the mid 20th century in particular, French cinema was very much its own thing.
I can see more influence from post-war French/pre-war German on Japanese films of the time than I can American. Cliche to say so but...a lot more introspection and unexplained moments.

Pre-war German? Kurosawa got that Riefenstahl tinge? 

And yes, the French Nouvelle Vague was a huge influence in the Japanese Nuberu Bagu (down to the movement's name). But Kurosawa doesn't belong to that. That's people like Shinoda or Imamura, a generation later.

Anyhow the fact that Kurosawa adopted western film language does not mean that he doesn't inform it with his own sensibility and aesthetic. But he certainly adopted it.