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2009 | 2008

12 articles from 2009

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The "Dollars Trilogy" Free on Hulu

5 November 2009 10:27 AM, PST | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »

A quick heads-up for Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood fans. All three of their "Man with No Name" westerns are now up on Hulu for free viewing. Hulu is only going to have these movies up until the end of November, so don't waste time, pilgrim. You can watch all three films right here.

A Fistful of Dollars originally followed the trend of remaking Akira Kurosawa's samurai films as westerns. I say trend, but really there was only, what, The Magnificent Seven? Fistful uses the plot of Kurosawa's Yojimbo as its premise, then reshapes it into Leone's own signature style. Then came the pseudo-sequel, For a Few Dollars More. Leone never meant for the three films to be a trilogy, but it just turned out that way due to Eastwood's same look and acting style in all three.  The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is a prequel of sorts, »

- Arya Ponto

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Tadff 09:  Rough Cut Review

20 August 2009 3:08 PM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Su-ta is going through a particularly bad patch in his career.  He may be a popular film star, but his press has being going sour for a while.  He is hiding his current relationship from the paparazzi by reducing it to sexual trysts in a van down by the river, and the new girlfriend is getting pretty annoyed.  His personal assistant is letting him know his spending and lifestyle are maxing out his current income.  And to top it off, his director, Bong, (enthusiast and obsequious fanboy, a name play on the director of The Host, perhaps?) is obsessed with more realistic fighting in his movie.  This resulting experimentation has had a few landed blows because of Su-ta’s propensity to lose his temper under the stress.  With no actors willing to act opposite him in the fight scenes, the movie is in jeopardy and the director has started to »

- Kurt Halfyard

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Blu-Ray Review: Criterion Edition of Akira Kurosawa’s Legendary ‘Kagemusha’

20 August 2009 6:43 AM, PDT | HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news »

Chicago – Now that he is widely recognized as one of the best filmmakers of all time, it’s almost hard to believe that there was a period in the career of Akira Kurosawa when he couldn’t get financing to make a film. Kurosawa went through a very dark time in the ’70s, punctuated by his disastrous experience with “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” and needed the weight of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to help with his comeback, “Kagemusha,” now available in a beautiful Criterion Collection Blu-Ray release.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0 I adore stories like the one behind the making of “Kagemusha” because they reflect the ripple throughout the ages that comes with amazing creativity. In the excellent special feature, “Lucas, Coppola, and Kurosawa,” the interviews draw a definitive line from John Ford (whose “The Searchers” influenced Kurosawa) to Kurosawa’s work to “The Godfather” to “Star Wars” to “Kagemusha,” which itself inspired countless filmmakers. »

- adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)

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Blu-ray Review: Kagemusha (Criterion Collection)

18 August 2009 4:43 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

When Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha was announced for Criterion Blu-ray I had seen the film for the first time only a couple months earlier and enjoyed it greatly. While it's not the director's greatest film, it is a visual feast that takes full advantage of a high-definition Blu-ray transfer, which I can only assume is the reason it's the first of Kurosawa's films Criterion decided to bring to the new format after their plans to deliver Ran were capsized due to rights issues. Kagemusha is Kurosawa's return to the samurai story and this time in color following his Oscar-winning Dersu Uzala five years earlier. The setting is the warring states of feudal Japan as the powerful warlord Shingen Takeda is fatally wounded, but before dying instructs his closest men to carry on his legacy, while not letting on he has passed away. In an effort to carry out the ruse »

- Brad Brevet

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Akira Kurosawa: The Masterworks Blu-ray Disc Collection II

16 August 2009 6:27 AM, PDT | Affenheimtheater | See recent Affenheimtheater news »

The next few month could become pretty expensive for hardcore fans of Akira Kurosawa. After Toho already announced the first Masterworks Blu-ray Disc Collections with seven films from Japans most well known director back in June, the studio will offer seconds in Dezember. Akira Kurosawa: The Masterworks Blu-ray Disc Collection II will be released on December 18th and will include Yojimbo, Ikiru, Stray Dog (Nora inu), I Live in Fear (Ikimono no kiroku), The Hidden Fortress, The Lower Depths (Donzoko) and Most Beautifully (Ichiban utsukushiku). Like with the first collections, the titles will most probably be available outside the box set as well.

Oh, and just in case you are wondering…of course Toho won’t include English subtitles. »

- Ulrik

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Cjamango

15 August 2009 3:36 AM, PDT | Latemag.com/film | See recent LateFilmFull news »

Sergio Corbucci's Django revolutionised the Spaghetti Western genre in many ways. The low-budget retelling of Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars – itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo – ramped up the violence, the amorality, the bloodletting and the insanity factor to an unprecedented scale, spawning a glut of rip-offs, cash-ins and unofficial sequels of varying degrees of quality. It also, quite unintentionally, began a trend for titular heroes whose names ended in the letter 'o' and when said quickly enough could possibly be mistaken for Django.

There was Anthony Steffen - the Spaghetti Western standard-bearer, himself no stranger to playing Django - starring as the main man in both Garringo and Shango. 'Sword and Sandal' star Brad Harris as the fast gun in Durango is Coming, Pay or Die. Montgomery Clark (Dante Posani) as the gambling gunslinger in Djurado and Ivan Rassimov in this, 1967's Cjamango. »

- Nick

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Poster Alert! Godfather and Yojimbo

9 June 2009 10:00 AM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

So I’m a little late with this, mostly to do with me being in Berlin when these two items hit and some of it because I forgot. Nakatomi recently released its second print in the Godfather inspired series of posters. Tim Doyle is the man behind these and the new one is called “Full Of Grace” and depicts the scene where Fredo goes fishing for the last time. The bad news is that Nakatomi itself have sold out of the paper edition but the good news is that you can get them soon over at PandorasPrints.com when they open up for business. You can still get the limited edition wood print at Nakatomi Plaza if you have a 100 bucks burning a hole in your pocket. This print measures 12x36, is 4 colors, signed and numbered by the artist.

The second print they have is by none other than comic »

- Swarez

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Kurosawa's 'Kagemusha' Destined for Criterion Blu-ray

17 May 2009 12:37 PM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

A scene from Kagemusha

Photo: Criterion Collection Back at the end of March it was sadly announced Akira Kurosawa's Ran would not be able to be release on Criterion Blu-ray due to some sort of a rights issue. This meant Criterion's only May Blu-ray release would be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which -- if you read my review -- was fine with me, but I am more interested in old classics rather than the new ones from Criterion and it now appears a Kurosawa gem is taking the place of Ran, with a much better selection if you ask me. A scene from Kagemusha

Photo: Criterion Collection While I am sure most people would rather see Yojimbo, Rashomon, Ikiru or Seven Samurai as the first Criterion Blu-ray, the just announced August 18 release of Kagemusha is fine by me. A scene from Kagemusha

Photo: Criterion Collection Just look »

- Brad Brevet

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Jonathan Liebesman's Odysseus Ends Up at Warner Brothers

24 April 2009 2:40 PM, PDT | firstshowing.net | See recent FirstShowing.net news »

Good news for Jonathan Liebesman - his next project titled Odysseus will be a Warner Brothers feature. The studio won a bidding war over Paramount for the film, which features a script written by Liebesman's collaborator Ann Peacock. Odysseus is another retelling of the classic story about the legendary hero Odysseus, who returns to his island after 20 years of fighting the Trojan Wars, only to find his kingdom under the brutal occupation of an invading force. Odysseus single-handedly defeats every last man and takes back his wife, his son and his kingdom. 300 producer Gianni Nunnari is developing via Hollywood Gang. We were the first to reveal details on this back in January. At the time, Liebesman described it as a "small taut kintetic action film" in the same vein as a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western or Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. THR says that the intent is to make "not a »

- Alex Billington

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DVD Review: Akira Kurosawa Returns to Criterion Collection With ‘Dodes’da Ken’

24 March 2009 8:57 AM, PDT | HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news »

DVD Rating: 4.0/5.0 Chicago – I’m not sure, but I think there are more Akira Kurosawa titles available in the Criterion Collection than any other filmmaker. His classic films like “Ran,” “Rashomon,” “Seven Samurai,” and “Yojimbo” have been critically acclaimed releases for the influential series of DVDs. His 24th title in the Criterion Collection is last week’s “Dodes’da Ken,” one of the greatest directors of all time’s first film in color.

1970’s “Dodes’da Ken” came five years after the great “Red Beard” and five years before “Dersu Uzala” and a decade before “Kagemusha”. The film was made at a tumultuous time in Kurosawa’s personal life and was critically panned in his home country despite being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Dodes’da Ken was released on DVD on March 17th, 2009.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

According to some sources, the »

- adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)

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DVD Review: Akira Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den (Criterion Collection)

17 March 2009 3:23 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

When it comes to Akira Kurosawa I have either seen or own all of his name titles including Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Ran. I have Kagemusha sitting on my coffee table ready to be viewed for the first time and outside of a few noticeable omissions I am finally ready to venture into his lesser known titles and with Criterion's latest release of Dodes'ka-den I can't think of a better place to start. This isn't to say Dodes'ka-den is any kind of masterpiece, because it's not, but the instances surrounding Dodes'ka-den and how it came to be are utterly fascinating and opened up a side of Kurosawa I had never known. Serving as Kurosawa's first attempt at a color film, Dodes'ka-den also marked his first feature in five years following Red Beard in 1965. In those five years Kurosawa would put in work on »

- Brad Brevet

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Some Westerns Come With a Side of Wasabi

20 February 2009 9:00 PM, PST | amctv.com - Future of Classic: Westerns | See recent amctv.com - Future of Classic: Westerns news »

The Western might seem as native as apple pie, but in the 1960s gunslinging American filmmakers began to take their cues from Japan. Their biggest influence was the legendary director Akira Kurosawa. The John Sturges epic Magnificent Seven transformed Kurosawa's Seven Samurai into a Western classic that wisely retained the original's bittersweet ending. In A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone swiped the plot of Kurosawa's Yojimbo -- and set »

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2009 | 2008

12 articles from 2009

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