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It's William Shakespeare by way of Japan this week as we discuss none other than Akira Kurosawa's. . .
There's just so much info on this guy it's hard to put it all together into something short, so I'm going to cheat and let Wiki do the work for me:
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II, with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films. His wife Yōko Yaguchi was also an actress in one of his films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for Kagemusha, though more often abroad than in Japan.
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited as "one of the [five] people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in the past 100 years".
It's hard to nail down only two or three players for a film like this, so I'm just going to focus on this guy:
Lord Hidetora is played by TATSUYA NAKADAI.
More cheating, this time from IMDB:
Japanese leading man, an important star and one of the handful of Japanese actors well known outside Japan. Nakadai was a tall handsome clerk in a Tokyo shop when director Masaki Kobayashi encountered him and cast him in The Thick-Walled Room (1956). Nakadai was subsequently cast in the lead role in Kobayashi's monumental trilogy 'Ningen no joken' and became a star whose international acclaim rivaled that of countryman Toshirô Mifune. Like Mifune, Nakadai worked frequently with director Akira Kurosawa and indeed more or less replaced Mifune as Kurosawa's principal leading man after the well-known falling out between Mifune and Kurosawa. His appearances for Kurosawa in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) are among the most indelible in the director's oeuvre.
Premise: In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.
Budget: $11.5 Million
Box Office: ~$16 Million (worldwide)
* "Ran," generally translated from the Japanese, means "chaos" or "revolt."
* Several hundred costumes were all created by hand, a process taking two years to complete.
* Akira Kurosawa referred to his previous film, Kagemusha (1980), as a "dress rehearsal" for this film. He spent ten years storyboarding every shot in the film as paintings. The resulting collection of images was published with the screenplay.
* The film used approximately 1400 extras and 200 horses. 1400 suits of armor (designed by Akira Kurosawa himself) were fabricated and a number of the horses had to be imported from the United States. Kurosawa used the extras and horses so efficiently that when the film was ready for premiere, newspapers in Japan were reporting that thousands of extras and horses were used to stage the battles.
* Akira Kurosawa's eyesight had deteriorated almost completely by the time principal photography began. He could only frame shots with the help of assistants, who used his storyboard paintings as guidelines.
* The castle destroyed in the middle of the movie was specially constructed on the slopes of Mount Fuji for the film and then burned down. No miniatures were used for that segment, although an optical of another castle being burned at the end was used.
* Akira Kurosawa began writing the film 10 years before its release and said that it wasn't originally meant to be based on Shakespeare's "King Lear" but came to that during the writing process.
* Unlike most other characters in the film, the character of the fool, Kyoami (Pîtâ), has no basis in historic Japan. The most similar position in relation to a historic Japanese warlord would be a page, but would be quite different in responsibilities. Rather Kyoami is based on the fool or jester of European medieval times and, of course, William Shakespeare's character of the Fool from "King Lear".
* Because actor Tatsuya Nakadai was decades younger than Hidetora, he wore full-face makeup that took about four hours to apply.
* Director Akira Kurosawa was 76 years old when he directed the film.
* Criterion was set to release the film on Blu-Ray in Region 1 territories which would have made this the first Akira Kurosawa film released on Blu-Ray in America. But Criterion lost the rights to the film at the last minute and was unable to release it and all of their earlier releases of the film on DVD were out of print. As a result, Criterion's release of Kagemusha (1980) became the first Kurosawa film released in the USA. However, Ran has since been released in America as a part of the Studio Canal Collection, distributed by Lionsgate.
Members: @shadow_priest_x @europe1 @EL CORINTHIAN @HUNTERMANIA @iThrillhouse @DaDamn @chickenluver @jeicex @MusterX @BeardotheWeirdo @Caveat @melvinj0 @Joseph Budden @In The Name Of @Coolthulu @CryptKeeper @Werdun @AndersonsFoot
http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/could-a-sherdog-movie-watching-club-work.3237221/
It's William Shakespeare by way of Japan this week as we discuss none other than Akira Kurosawa's. . .
Our Director
There's just so much info on this guy it's hard to put it all together into something short, so I'm going to cheat and let Wiki do the work for me:
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II, with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films. His wife Yōko Yaguchi was also an actress in one of his films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for Kagemusha, though more often abroad than in Japan.
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited as "one of the [five] people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in the past 100 years".
Our Star
It's hard to nail down only two or three players for a film like this, so I'm just going to focus on this guy:
Lord Hidetora is played by TATSUYA NAKADAI.
More cheating, this time from IMDB:
Japanese leading man, an important star and one of the handful of Japanese actors well known outside Japan. Nakadai was a tall handsome clerk in a Tokyo shop when director Masaki Kobayashi encountered him and cast him in The Thick-Walled Room (1956). Nakadai was subsequently cast in the lead role in Kobayashi's monumental trilogy 'Ningen no joken' and became a star whose international acclaim rivaled that of countryman Toshirô Mifune. Like Mifune, Nakadai worked frequently with director Akira Kurosawa and indeed more or less replaced Mifune as Kurosawa's principal leading man after the well-known falling out between Mifune and Kurosawa. His appearances for Kurosawa in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) are among the most indelible in the director's oeuvre.
Film Overview and YouTube Videos
Premise: In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.
Budget: $11.5 Million
Box Office: ~$16 Million (worldwide)
Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)
(courtesy of IMDB)
* "Ran," generally translated from the Japanese, means "chaos" or "revolt."
* Several hundred costumes were all created by hand, a process taking two years to complete.
* Akira Kurosawa referred to his previous film, Kagemusha (1980), as a "dress rehearsal" for this film. He spent ten years storyboarding every shot in the film as paintings. The resulting collection of images was published with the screenplay.
* The film used approximately 1400 extras and 200 horses. 1400 suits of armor (designed by Akira Kurosawa himself) were fabricated and a number of the horses had to be imported from the United States. Kurosawa used the extras and horses so efficiently that when the film was ready for premiere, newspapers in Japan were reporting that thousands of extras and horses were used to stage the battles.
* Akira Kurosawa's eyesight had deteriorated almost completely by the time principal photography began. He could only frame shots with the help of assistants, who used his storyboard paintings as guidelines.
* The castle destroyed in the middle of the movie was specially constructed on the slopes of Mount Fuji for the film and then burned down. No miniatures were used for that segment, although an optical of another castle being burned at the end was used.
* Akira Kurosawa began writing the film 10 years before its release and said that it wasn't originally meant to be based on Shakespeare's "King Lear" but came to that during the writing process.
* Unlike most other characters in the film, the character of the fool, Kyoami (Pîtâ), has no basis in historic Japan. The most similar position in relation to a historic Japanese warlord would be a page, but would be quite different in responsibilities. Rather Kyoami is based on the fool or jester of European medieval times and, of course, William Shakespeare's character of the Fool from "King Lear".
* Because actor Tatsuya Nakadai was decades younger than Hidetora, he wore full-face makeup that took about four hours to apply.
* Director Akira Kurosawa was 76 years old when he directed the film.
* Criterion was set to release the film on Blu-Ray in Region 1 territories which would have made this the first Akira Kurosawa film released on Blu-Ray in America. But Criterion lost the rights to the film at the last minute and was unable to release it and all of their earlier releases of the film on DVD were out of print. As a result, Criterion's release of Kagemusha (1980) became the first Kurosawa film released in the USA. However, Ran has since been released in America as a part of the Studio Canal Collection, distributed by Lionsgate.
Members: @shadow_priest_x @europe1 @EL CORINTHIAN @HUNTERMANIA @iThrillhouse @DaDamn @chickenluver @jeicex @MusterX @BeardotheWeirdo @Caveat @melvinj0 @Joseph Budden @In The Name Of @Coolthulu @CryptKeeper @Werdun @AndersonsFoot
But yeah, that's my attempt to try and encapsulate Ran's theme. There are obvious many more examples on can give of this theme plays out in the movie and all that.
