Finding time
Do you realize I've just spent two weeks watching Kurosawa's Seven Samurai? I really really liked it, but watching a three-hour movie when you've only got it as a video file on your computer (because, you know, ahem) and you're seeing your family and friends again for the first time in four months means largely watching it in periods of fifteen minutes.
Surprisingly, it made me appreciate The Magnificent Seven even more, and not in the "one sucks, the other rules" way; both movies are absolutely brilliant, but I had to watch Seven Samurai to really understand what a tasteful and creative re-invention Magnificent Seven really is, particularly how ingenious the Western genre could parallel a Japanese historical epic (I mean, wow, how else would you, could you set a story involving marauding bandits terrorizing a village and the skilled wandering warriors hired to fight them?). And still both movies are so different, completely apples and oranges.
And see, this is the part where I try something new, like mentioning Toshirō Mifune without salivating about his manly manly ways - instead I'll just point out that movies that can introduce a character, make me dislike him and then gradually make me passionately adore him over the course of the film completely blow my mind. The only other movie that really springs to mind in that context is Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia.
And then there's Isao Kimura who's pretty like a girl in that way that pleases me in a samurai movie and leaves me cold in, say, a boy band. And uh, am I the only one who mentally checks Takashi Shimura as "Japanese Morgan Freeman"? Then again I guess it would be more appropriate to consider Morgan Freeman "the American Takashi Shimura".
Yeah I think it's time to get out of bed now and get started on the day.
Surprisingly, it made me appreciate The Magnificent Seven even more, and not in the "one sucks, the other rules" way; both movies are absolutely brilliant, but I had to watch Seven Samurai to really understand what a tasteful and creative re-invention Magnificent Seven really is, particularly how ingenious the Western genre could parallel a Japanese historical epic (I mean, wow, how else would you, could you set a story involving marauding bandits terrorizing a village and the skilled wandering warriors hired to fight them?). And still both movies are so different, completely apples and oranges.
And see, this is the part where I try something new, like mentioning Toshirō Mifune without salivating about his manly manly ways - instead I'll just point out that movies that can introduce a character, make me dislike him and then gradually make me passionately adore him over the course of the film completely blow my mind. The only other movie that really springs to mind in that context is Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia.
And then there's Isao Kimura who's pretty like a girl in that way that pleases me in a samurai movie and leaves me cold in, say, a boy band. And uh, am I the only one who mentally checks Takashi Shimura as "Japanese Morgan Freeman"? Then again I guess it would be more appropriate to consider Morgan Freeman "the American Takashi Shimura".
Yeah I think it's time to get out of bed now and get started on the day.