Fire, wind, forest, and mountain
We watched Kurosawa's film Kagemusha last night. I had seen it previously, but it was 25 years ago; neither 
laurellady nor
madelineusher had seen it before. It was even better than I remembered it, and we were all crying at the end. I can't recommend this film highly enough. Among its many other merits, the cinematography is just astonishing; shot after shot made me lose track of the plot as I drank in the sheer beauty of what I was seeing on the screen.
We watched it in Japanese with English subtitles, with
madelineusher providing a running commentary on nuances of language and culture she noticed which the subtitles didn't capture. I've been picking up bits and pieces of Japanese from her as she has been learning the language in school, and I had one of those breakthrough moments in language acquisition last night when I, too, noticed a mismatch between the dialog and the corresponding subtitles. Mine was tiny -- a character exclaimed "What?!" ("Nani?!") in the audio before asking a question about surprising news, but that didn't appear in the subtitles -- but I was inordinately proud of myself nonetheless. I'm very pleased that I got at least some of my dad's knack for languages.
laurellady nor
madelineusher had seen it before. It was even better than I remembered it, and we were all crying at the end. I can't recommend this film highly enough. Among its many other merits, the cinematography is just astonishing; shot after shot made me lose track of the plot as I drank in the sheer beauty of what I was seeing on the screen.
We watched it in Japanese with English subtitles, with
madelineusher providing a running commentary on nuances of language and culture she noticed which the subtitles didn't capture. I've been picking up bits and pieces of Japanese from her as she has been learning the language in school, and I had one of those breakthrough moments in language acquisition last night when I, too, noticed a mismatch between the dialog and the corresponding subtitles. Mine was tiny -- a character exclaimed "What?!" ("Nani?!") in the audio before asking a question about surprising news, but that didn't appear in the subtitles -- but I was inordinately proud of myself nonetheless. I'm very pleased that I got at least some of my dad's knack for languages.