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 Ocean Waves Released May 5th 1993, Directed by Tomomi Mochizuki Much in the vein of Only Yesterday, this was a sedate, low-key, slice of life tale. My review schedule has given me quite a long separation between that film and this one, but I find it interesting that only Porco Rosso separated two very similarly themed films in Studio Ghibli's catalog. As for the story of Ocean Waves, I really appreciated the depiction of a high-school "love triangle". Far too often the drama and plight of students is played for laughs and shown as meaningless and trite..but Ocean Waves keeps everything focused in on the perspective of the people actually involved. Nothing is blown so far out of proportion as to be comical, but a disagreement between friends over the affections of a girl is shown to have real repercussions to the friendship. Two students sharing a hotel room over a weekend starts a rumor firestorm throughout the whole school despite nothing untoward taking place. I'm not so far removed from my own school years that I've forgotten what things like this were like. Films like this are what I think Studio Ghibli excels at; even things tending toward the fantastical like Totoro or Kiki's have a very grounded and realistic feel to them. They're stories that really capture the essence of a certain feeling. Ocean Waves shows the awkwardness of school relationships, how they affect life outside the walls of the school, and how they can mature into lifelong friendships or romantic attractions. There's also a good dose of just showing the lengths someone will go to to try to recapture the feelings of family and belonging. I don't really have a whole lot more to say about the film itself, to go further would be to get into just rote plot summary...but I highly suggest giving Ocean Waves a watch. This isn't a pulse-quickening adventure or even a gripping drama...it's just a story. And sometimes that's all you want, is a story. Up Next: Ugetsu Released March 26th 1953, Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi One more bonus review and then I'll be back to watch a Kurosawa! jivjov fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 02:26
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What I liked about Ocean Waves was how grounded it felt- not just in setting, but also in how it lets everyone feel like fairly normal kids. Probably my second favorite Ghibli.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:33
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Raxivace posted:What I liked about Ocean Waves was how grounded it felt- not just in setting, but also in how it lets everyone feel like fairly normal kids. Probably my second favorite Ghibli. Yeah; everyone was just...living life. The only odd person was Yamao, but I think that was just because he didn't exist at all, then he showed up to get really drunk and profess his love for a classmate, and then stagger home. It's less that he didn't feel like a normal guy and more that he just got a hair more screen time than his importance would suggest.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:39
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jivjov posted:Yeah; everyone was just...living life. The only odd person was Yamao, but I think that was just because he didn't exist at all, then he showed up to get really drunk and profess his love for a classmate, and then stagger home. It's less that he didn't feel like a normal guy and more that he just got a hair more screen time than his importance would suggest.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:54
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Raxivace posted:It's kind of like that would be a hugely important scene if he were the lead of the film, and the actual characters we've been following this whole time would just be the random background characters you normally wouldn't care much about. Because we haven't been following this dude for the entire movie though, it becomes this kind of awkward thing that just kind of interrupts everyone else's lives for a moment, like hearing a crying child in the supermarket. It's kind of neat. Oooh, I really like that interpretation; really makes me feel a lot better about that moment. To make a really odd comparison, I really like the Star Wars expanded universe, and it's always interesting to see things from the perspective of someone who, in the original films, was a completely tertiary character.
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Mar 31, 2016 03:08
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 Armageddon Released July 1st 1998, Directed by Michael Bay Uh, so I was really getting tired of all those old black and white movies and lame old anime films...they weren't even in a language that I understood. I had to read along with them, and let's be real....reading is for squares. So we're gonna stop doing Kurosawa and Miyazaki and instead watch the entire filmography of the best director of our time, Mr. Michael Bay. But I don't want to start Bad Boys, and what even is The Rock? Let's skip ahead to the finest movie of 1998...Armageddon. We start out with some badass real truth words about how a bigass rock killed all the dinosaurs, and there's gonna be another one someday soon. We flash forward to some astronauts working on a satellite who then get totally wasted by small little rocks. The big twist of this movie is that the asteroids are actually gonna kill us all one at a time...precisions strikes for maximum terror!! We also get an early introduction to two of the unsung heroes of this film; Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman (proving that not everyone named Billy Bob is a redneck hick), and Keith David  as General Kimsey. They're gonna be the backbone of the "establishment" in this movie. Although Kimsey ends up being kinda an rear end in a top hat, but Truman is alright. We then go to New York city under aerial attack. The asteroids target a poor guy's dog (although the dog is busy chewing up some Godzilla merchandise [see? Still relevant to the old reviews in the thread!], so he kinda deserved it). The guy with the dog represents the common man in all this struggle, he's just minding his own business and suddenly an asteroid attacks out of the blue...Poor New York though. Jet fuel may not be able to melt steel beams, but asteroids sure can! We then find out that the astroids are lazy. After only a couple days of targeted bombardment, the asteroids are just gonna wipe us all out in 18 days. We're then introduced to the true badasses of Armageddon...the oil drillers. Bruce Willis plays Harry Stamper, a third generation driller, blue collar as all hell but with a heart of gold. Ben Affleck is A.J. Frost, who's sleeping with Harry's daughter (Liv Tyler's Grace Stamper). Other members of the crew are Michael Clarke Duncan's Bear, Will Patton's Chick, Steve Buscemi's Rockhound, Ken Hudson Campbell's Max and Owen Wilson's Oscar. All get delightful character moments and I'll hit some of those as we go along. We find out that A.J.'s big problem is impulsiveness and not listening to orders. He strikes oil...but on a broken drill that Stamper has shut down for a reason, and is fired. Back at NASA, Truman, Kimsey, and a handful of scientists realize that the only way to stop the rock is to drill a hole, drop a nuke in it, and detonate it. Harry gets scouted as being the best deep-core driller on the planet, and gets brought in to NASA. He shows his heart of gold though, and brings his daughter along to try to keep her safe. Truman lays out exactly what's gonna happen when the rock hits, and tells Harry what needs to be done to stop it. Truman mentions that this is gonna be ultra top secret, due to the mass panic that news of the asteroid would cause. Harry tells the NASA boys that he wants to bring his own team with him to the asteroid, and that he needs to completely rebuild their drill. Turns out NASA stole Harry's own drill design and did a piss-poor job putting it together. We are introduced to an important character trait of Harry's...he doesn't trust anyone other than himself and his own team to get things done right. We hit one of the major plot points of the film...Harry's gone from the rig for 18 hours and suddenly everyone is back to their daily lives and A.J. is running his own oil field. Really sounds like there was an earlier draft of the film that had a lot more time between events. We're also introduced to another bit of the character dynamic between Harry and A.J. We knew that A.J.'s father had asked Harry to look after his son before he died, and now its revealed that A.J. is desperately seeking Harry's approval. We also get insight into why everyone else on the team would risk their lives on this insane mission; some people want to be heroes, others want to get paid, others just don't want to let down Harry. During the physical and psychological examinations, we find out that all of the team have various personality quirks. Rockhound is a genius, A.J. is still completely hung up on Harry, Bear is a big softie, Chick has zero tolerance for the strict rules and procedures, and Oscar is just Owen Wilson-y as hell. Then we also meet the NASA pilots that are taking them up to the rock; William Fichtner plays Willie Sharp and Jessica Steen plays Jennifer Watts. There's pilots for the other shuttle...but spoiler alert, the other shuttle blows up and they die. We get introduced to the SUPER COOL futuristic shuttles and suits they'll be working with. The space suits all have jets in them so that Mr. Bay don't have to worry about filming low gravity effects. Gonna break for a moment during the training montage (complete with A.J. being impulsive and loving things up) and talk about the music. I think every Aerosmith song ever shows up in this film. For those who don't know, Liv Tyler is daughter of Steven Tyler, lead man for Aerosmith. It also debuts "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", which is one of the sweetest power ballads of all time. We also get ZZ Top, Bon Jovi, Journey...basically like every song I remember from that era. On the final day before launch, everyone gets a night off. A.J. and Grace spend it together and get engaged. Chick goes and visits his ex-wife and son...who doesn't know his own father. He's trying to make amends and leaves a toy Space Shuttle with his ex. Max, Rockhound, Oscar and Bear blow thousands of dollars at a strip club; acquired from a questionable loanshark. They piss off some bikers and start a huge fight. Hilarious stuff. Visionary. Then sadness...a chunk of asteroid hits in Asia and kills 50,000 people; prompting the rest of the world to look to the skies. A harbinger of death and doom to come. We also find out that Truman wanted to be an astronaut, but his bad leg prevented it. On launch day, Grace and Harry reconcile their relationship, and Grace makes her father promise that he's gonna come back alive, which of course means that he dies before the credits roll. Dramatic and powerful music plays over a slightly-slo-mo'd suit-up sequence, and Grace and A.J. have one more cute moment that leads to a team-wide singalong. We cut back to the dramatic music as the U.S. President addresses the world. You ever notice that whenever the world all comes together to save the planet, it's always the U.S. President that addresses everyone? (see: Independence Day) During the boarding montage, Chick's ex reveals to their son that the salesman that stopped by is actually his dad. Oscar sums up the "98% Excited 2% Scared" feeling that I love. Then the shuttles launch (and suddenly in stock footage aren't the super cool X-71s). I would like to take a moment to lament that the space shuttle program is no longer a thing. I miss space shuttles. I had a cool toy one when I was a kid that had a pop-out satellite and launch tower. We stop off at the Russian Space Station Of No Particular Name for another explosion and action scene. It enters a spin to simulate gravity, again for the greater conveinance of Michael Bay's filmmaking. A.J. fucks up again and breaks the Very Important Lever and then gets left behind on the station. Thanks to quick thinking from Walking Russian Stereotype, they crawl through a special freezer and escape at the last second! We get another more low-key action scene as the shuttles slingshot around the moon in about 20 seconds, then one shuttle gets hit by debris and crash lands. And now the body count starts! The pilot and copilot of the Independence are killed instantly and Oscar dies in the crash. It was sure smart for them to send up so many people; gives them redshirts! Colonel Sharp fucks up (for the first of many times up here on the rock) and the Freedom overshoots its target LZ. He's landed the shuttle on a literal iron plate that they now have to drill through. Which goes horribly; they broke their first drill bit at only 10 feet! Good thing we don't know how many drill bits they have, otherwise this would just be too tense for words! Back at the crash site, Bear, A.J. and Russian Stereotype load up in the Armadillo and roll out toward the Freedom. Thankfully the rovers have miniguns on them, otherwise they would have been trapped in the crashed shuttle. Back on Earth, we find out that the fine folks at NASA, including General Kimsey, are worried about losing communications, and with it the ability to remote detonate the nuke!! Up in space, Sharp is disgruntled at the lack of drill depth and reports back to Earth that everything is hosed. Sharp is convinced that the plan isn't going to work, and then hurts Harry's feelings. The President orders Kimsey to blow the nuke. Kimsey thankfully has an army of goons laying in wait in the elevator and they take over mission control and arm the bomb. Up on the rock, the situation goes to hell and back with Stamper refusing to abandon the drilling plan and Sharp pulling a handgun. Truman tries to override things down on earth, but Kimsey rearms the bomb. Then Harry beats up Sharp until he gives in and they disarm the bomb. Harry re-signs his own death certificate by reaffirming that he promised his daughter he was coming home. Rockhound starts to go space crazy and goes full Strangelove, and then uses their own minigun to go MORE space crazy. After all that nonsense, there's some kind of drama with the Independence Armadillo jumping a canyon, then Max hits a gas pocket in the Freedom Armadillo and blows up and dies. An off-key rendition of the movie's main theme reminds us that this now means Earth is doomed. Game over, thanks for playing. Back down on Earth, more fragments hit and destroy London. NASA prepares to remote detonate the nuke...but the Independence Armadillo shows up and they're gonna drill like 250 feet in an hour or some poo poo. A.J. does the "being reckless and running the drill too fast" thing again...but this time Harry believes in him and it works!! But this wouldn't be a Bay film without multiple climaxes! There's a giant rockstorm that kills Noonan (who I never mentioned before), and the nuke is damaged to the point where someone has to stay on the rock and blow the nuke manually. Sharp and Watts have to fly, but everyone else draws straws (Rockhound wants them to all stay and die, or just volunteer for the nuke blowing himself; as he doesn't want to pay back the loan shark. Look how well thought out his plan is!), A.J. draws the short straw and he's gonna die a hero. But Harry wants to be hero instead and selfishly makes A.J. go back in the shuttle and go home to gently caress his daughter. He tells A.J. the he always saw him as a son, and then gives A.J. his own mission patch to give to Truman. Harry takes a minute to talk with Grace over the radio, tells her what we've all known for an hour; that he ain't coming back. We're so smart of an audience to follow along with these twists and turns! Liv Tyler gets sad again, which makes me sad, because she has such a sad face. More climaxes happen, the shuttle can't launch until Russian Stereotype beats up a console with a wrench. Then Harry falls down and doesn't get to the detonator until like 2 seconds before the Zero Barrier. Then the shuttle gets caught in the explosion and everyone thinks they're dead. But they aren't dead. They saved the world, they land, A.J. and Grace get married next to a portrait of her dead dad and the best movie in the world comes to a close. Thanks for reading guys...see you next time for GIANT loving TRANSFORMING ROBOTS! Up Next: Transformers Released July 3th 2007, Directed by Michael Bay Happy April Fool's Day!
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Apr 2, 2016 00:10
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You make fun of Armageddon and The Rock but they're in the Criterion Collection alongside all of these Japanese movies you've been watching. :P The Rock is cool by the way. Huge influence on Metal Gear Solid. I remember liking Armageddon as a kid but haven't revisited it since then. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Apr 2, 2016 |
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Apr 2, 2016 00:40
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Raxivace posted:You make fun of Armageddon and The Rock but they're in the Criterion Collection alongside all of these Japanese movies you've been watching. :P I've never even seen The Rock. I just decided to revisit a Michael Bay movie and Armageddon seemed fun!
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Apr 2, 2016 00:49
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The villain in The Rock is Ed Harris playing basically Big Boss.
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Apr 2, 2016 02:59
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The scene where Meryl holds up Snake at gunpoint is straight out of The Rock as well. Harry Gregson-Williams did the score too, and Kojima eventually hired him of course. Also I watched Ugetsu for this thread and am very excited to talk about it.
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Apr 2, 2016 03:14
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Raxivace posted:Also I watched Ugetsu for this thread and am very excited to talk about it. I don't have my usual day off tomorrow; so it might be a couple days before I get to it.
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Apr 2, 2016 03:19
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Raxivace posted:Also I watched Ugetsu for this thread and am very excited to talk about it. I didn't realize that was on Hulu's Critereon collection and now I'm probably going to watch it tonight (at least if I can finish up my physics reading first).
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Apr 3, 2016 01:16
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Ugetsu might have the highest watch-along rate of the thread thus far!
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Apr 3, 2016 01:28
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Ugetsu is a movie I'd been meaning to get to for a while now anyways since I saw and loved Sansho the Bailiff a few years ago, so this thread was a good excuse to just sit down and watch it. It's also not too long at 94ish minutes.
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Apr 3, 2016 01:54
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I went to see Ran in it's recently-restored 4K glory this weekend. It was my first Kurosawa since seeing Rashomon and Seven Samurai as part of a Uni Course about 8 years ago. Still absolutely blown away by it and really looking forward to seeing the discussion of it in this thread once it gets around to it. Basically OP, you're in for a treat with this one. Absolutely stunning on the big screen and definitely worth breaking your sequence to catch it properly.
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Apr 3, 2016 20:15
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Work schedule got...wacky for a few days there. Ugetsu review coming on Wednesday or Thursday!
jivjov fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 02:08
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Rat Flavoured Rats posted:I went to see Ran in it's recently-restored 4K glory this weekend. It was my first Kurosawa since seeing Rashomon and Seven Samurai as part of a Uni Course about 8 years ago. Still absolutely blown away by it and really looking forward to seeing the discussion of it in this thread once it gets around to it. I imagine those battle scenes with the guys running around with the different color armor were amazing on the big screen. Hell, right from the first frame it probably knocks you back in your seat.
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Apr 12, 2016 02:17
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 Ugetsu Released March 26th 1953, Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi First off, I'd like to again apologize for the absolute glacial pace of my reviews. I've just had all manner of other things going on in life, and the hours I have to myself have been devoted to less intensive hobbies lately. I'll try to get back on track, as I really enjoy doing this retrospective, and I have all manner of bonus reviews coming after Seven Samurai, so I need to get back on a better pace! Anyway...on to the review proper! Ugetsu, or How not to get rich quick and actually get people you know and love killed trying! My first impression after walking away from Ugetsu is that this was a morality tale. A caution against capitalism, hero worship, battle lust, and cheating on spouses with ghosts. I'm going to structure this review as a retrospective of the four major characters, starting with arguably the star, Masayuki Mori's Genjurō Genjurō starts at a sympathetic enough place...his ultimate goal is to provide money and support for his family. But he starts focusing too heavily on the means and not the end. He gets snappish with his wife and son, he works late hours, spends all his time making and selling pottery. He even puts himself and his family at risk to keep the kiln going in the middle of an invasion of his village. I'm of two minds on his affair with the ghost of Lady Wakasa (played by Machiko Kyō; the reason this film made it on the retrospective list at all)...she's a literal ghost, returned to the world for the sole purpose of experiencing love and passion. I'm willing to entertain the notion that Genjurō honestly could not stand against her seduction...but I don't know enough about Japanese folklore to say for sure. That also would kinda remove his agency as a character...so I'm more willing to say that he knew what he was doing and just fell for the hot ghost lady the moment his wife was out of sight. He turns around at the end though...when he finds out that Wakasa is a ghost, he's all about exorcising her and getting back to his family. He rounds out the film sorta where he began...but minus a wife and plus some perspective on how to provide for his family without being absent and/or cranky. I almost want to draw a parallel to more modern ideas of Japanese salary-men...but again, I don't have the cultural knowledge to know if that would be appropriate. Miyagi, Genjurō's wife as played by Kinuyo Tanaka, is sadly under-served by this film. Much like some of Kurosawa's problems with female characters, Mizoguchi didn't seem to have it in him to give Miyagi a whole lot to do. She's the voice of reason that falls on Genjurō's deaf ears, and gets wounded unto death saving their son's life. Then she gets to be a lovely spirit voice in Genjurō's ear at the end of the movie. Her greatest strength really seems to be dying heroically saving her son. Not a bad character trait...but I really lament the fact that she basically died for her husband's sins. Tōbei, played by Eitaro Ozawa, is the character I waffled on the most...at first I was amused by his exuberance and desire to be a samurai...but then I realized that he really should be old enough to know better...and then I realized that at least part of his motivation was similar to Genjurō's...he wanted to be able to protect and provide for his wife. He's just was much more self-centered about it. To the point of stealing another man's kill and presenting it as his own to get the accoutrements of a samurai. On the one hand, he's really inventive and devious to pull that scam off...but on the other, he's laying claim to rewards he has no right to. I have to give him a bit of credit though...he does make good on his word, getting his wife out of the brothel she ended up in and getting them both home safely. He's not a bad guy...just a naive and overconfident man with aspirations he can't always back up with his own actions. Ohama, played by Mitsuko Mito, is even more poo poo upon by this story than Miyagi was...she makes an honest good faith effort to help Genjurō, Miyagi, and Tōbei escape, but just gets raped and pressed into prostitution for her trouble. Only the fact that she lives through the film leaves her better off than Miyagi. I guess it really is just a sign of the times that these movies are being made in that women are quite frequently used as plot objects more so than people...but Ohama in particular just really rubs me the wrong way. She's drove the boat, she was the object that Tōbei wanted to show off to, and then was basically forced to sell herself to survive. Overall, I enjoyed this movie, even if it required me to put modern gender equality to the back of my mind a bit. There was some really nice cinematography in this one, like the shot of Genjurō and Wakasa in the hot spring that pans over down the trickling river, or the bustling marketplace where Genjurō and Tōbei sell pottery, or (my personal favorite) the escaping boat disappearing into the mist. I'm actually really interested in reading some Japanese ghost stories now (especially the ones from the book this film is based off of). I feel like this was a really good addition to my retrospective, and I see why it's often listed alongside Rashomon as being hugely influential both in Japan but in America as well. Up Next: Seven Samurai Released April 26th 1954, Directed by Akira Kurosawa I hereby promise to have my Seven Samurai review up by the film's anniversary at the absolute latest! Hopefully much sooner than that!
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Apr 15, 2016 05:18
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Seven Samurai is The Best.
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Apr 15, 2016 07:15
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GonSmithe posted:Seven Samurai is The Best. I know it's the trite, obvious one, but it really is my favorite Kurosawa. With Ugetsu, I loved the way the film was shot. The camera work was really dynamic on those sets. I recall one shot in particular where one couple was in their house in the foreground while through the door and off in the distance you could see the other desperately working in the night. Can't say I cared for the way the story unfolded, though. I think that came from the folktale nature of the adaptation where poverty and keeping to your social station is presented as a virtue. I don't think it intentionally ties back to salary men, especially since in 1950 the concept wouldn't really have formed yet (the go-getting 60's when Japanese business was booming was the real start of that, in my view, and I think we're going to be talking about later on). I think Tobei's story would have worked better for the story if he had killed the general. Not in some dramatic duel, of course, just a simple brutal slaying of a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. By making Tobei lie about it, it reinforced the idea that the real samurai were above those stupid peasants, a theme that's depressingly common in Japan. There's some tension with the concept in Kurosawa's films; Rashomon, for example, had the samurai completely disgraced in pretty much every sense of the word by a bandit. And in Seven Samurai... well, let's just say that the division between noble and peasant is really important to that film. With Ohama's storyline, I think the key point was that she was a survivor who would do anything to keep going, The fact that she could pull herself away and adapt in even the shittiest of situations gives her a bit more character than I think you're giving the film credit for. It's far from perfect, of course, it just fits the setting of the film appropriately. Ugetsu is the exception that proves my rule about Japanese ghosts all being assholes. There was one nice ghost out of the three. For other Japanese ghost stories, Kwaidan is a must watch. It's one of the greatest films ever made and it's a ghost story anthology. Less masterpiecey but still cool and entertaining is Nakagawa's Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan; this would be the 1959 color version since it's a traditional ghost story that's been adapted into films dozens of times. Nakagawa to me is Japan's John Carpenter where he made some visually fantastic and influential horror films while still doing everything on the cheap. Both of those are in the Criterion Collection on Hulu.
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Apr 15, 2016 19:55
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There are days when I think Seven Samurai is the greatest film ever made. On the other days I think it's only the second or third greatest film ever made. I thought Omaha was a fine character and didn't really see much issue with her. quote:By making Tobei lie about it, it reinforced the idea that the real samurai were above those stupid peasants, a theme that's depressingly common in Japan. IOW I saw it less as less about the virtues of staying in your place and more as being about military ambition being a needlessly destructive thing that we shouldn't desire. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Apr 15, 2016 |
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Apr 15, 2016 20:04
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Raxivace posted:I dunno man, the samurai that does behead the guy still does it in a kind of cold blooded way. The samurai in the beginning of the movie are all pretty big assholes too (IIRC none of them come to aid the village when it is first being attacked, which is an interesting contrast with what we'll see in Seven Samurai). The ending shot where Tobei throws his armor into the water seems to be a complete rejection of the class too- it's the peasant that's too good for the samurai now, not the other way around. Yeah, the samurai are definitely assholes who tear through ordinary people's lives, but in the context of the scene where Tobei is elevated to nobility, the lord sees through the lies because there was no way a peasant could kill a samurai. Throwing the armor away to me read as learning his place; he wasn't disgusted by the hypocrisy of the nobility of disillusioned by the reality of achieving his dream, his wife reminded him that he was just a peasant and that brought him home. But that's a fair interpretation, too.
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Apr 15, 2016 20:22
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One last thing I want to mention about Ugetsu is that the ghost woman's older attendant mentions their village being destroyed by Oda Nobunaga, who we will actually see depicted in one of Kurosawa's later movies, Kagemusha. We won't be getting to that one for a while, but I thought the connection was worth mentioning while I still remember it.
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Apr 17, 2016 02:47
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Raxivace posted:One last thing I want to mention about Ugetsu is that the ghost woman's older attendant mentions their village being destroyed by Oda Nobunaga, who we will actually see depicted in one of Kurosawa's later movies, Kagemusha. We won't be getting to that one for a while, but I thought the connection was worth mentioning while I still remember it. Nobunaga is the eternal villain of Japanese culture because he's the guy who brought guns to knife fights. 
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Apr 17, 2016 12:11
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Where would the intermission have sat for Seven Samurai?
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Apr 17, 2016 14:32
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Random Stranger posted:Nobunaga is the eternal villain of Japanese culture because he's the guy who brought guns to knife fights. EvilElmo posted:Where would the intermission have sat for Seven Samurai?
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Apr 17, 2016 16:03
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EvilElmo posted:Where would the intermission have sat for Seven Samurai? IIRC, it occurs after the town meeting where everyone is is in a big semicircle and you can see the dolly tracks in the background.
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Apr 17, 2016 21:49
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Random Stranger posted:Nobunaga is the eternal villain of Japanese culture because he's the guy who brought guns to knife fights. He also burned a buddhist temple.
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Apr 18, 2016 02:31
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MonsieurChoc posted:He also burned a buddhist temple. Who among us can say that we haven't burned a Buddhist temple?
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Apr 18, 2016 02:56
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Just got out of the showing of Ran. It was one of the most beautiful things ever put to film.
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Apr 25, 2016 00:59
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I know, right? We all told you to go see that for a reason lol.
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Apr 25, 2016 01:20
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I turned to my friend afterward and said "I was reminded of King Lear" Then I found out it was based partially on King Lear.
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Apr 25, 2016 01:23
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jivjov posted:It was one of the most beautiful things ever put to film. Man, you practically don't even need to write a review, because this just about sums Ran up. e: not that I don't want to hear your thoughts in more detail, ofc, just that that's pretty much a completely correct opinion
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Apr 25, 2016 07:45
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jivjov posted:I hereby promise to have my Seven Samurai review up by the film's anniversary at the absolute latest! Hopefully much sooner than that! I may miss this by a single day. Today is my best friend's birthday and I don't think I'll have time to watch a movie after work tomorrow. But I have Wednesday off, so it'll go up then at the latest.
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Apr 25, 2016 16:57
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So, I've just now reached the point where I could sit down and watch Seven Samurai...but I don't want to commit to an over-three-hour film when it is already 7:30. Thus I will watch it tomorrow. To make up for my transgression, I will offer a peek behind the curtain and the next movies on my list. After Seven Samurai I will, of course, be watching Magnificent Seven. After that I'll be hopping back to Studio Ghibli for Pom Poko, and then for a set of full-on bonus reviews I will be watching the Samurai Trilogy directed by Hiroshi Inagaki. Gotta get some more Mifune in my life. After the Samurai Trilogy I'll be watching I Live in Fear, then Whisper of the Heart, and that's as far out as I've set my schedule.
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Apr 27, 2016 01:30
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jivjov posted:So, I've just now reached the point where I could sit down and watch Seven Samurai...but I don't want to commit to an over-three-hour film when it is already 7:30. Thus I will watch it tomorrow. The Samurai trilogy is pretty good. I may have to rewatch that in a few weeks...
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Apr 27, 2016 01:35
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The Samurai Trilogy is an interesting but flawed set of films. Not a lot of people seem to have seen them, so I'm glad to see you checking them out. They're a good contrast with Kurosawa's samurai films from this period. My (Admittedly limited and likely flawed) impression is that the trilogy is the kind of thing Kurosawa is explicitly trying NOT to make, so it provides a good contrast. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 01:36
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Magnificent Seven is a perfectly good movie that will seem much worst than it actually is after watching the original. e: You should definitely watch Samurai Rebellion. Mantis42 fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Apr 27, 2016 |
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Apr 27, 2016 06:46
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Raxivace posted:They're a good contrast with Kurosawa's samurai films from this period. My (Admittedly limited and likely flawed) impression is that the trilogy is the kind of thing Kurosawa is explicitly trying NOT to make, so it provides a good contrast. That's a good way of thinking about it. The Samurai Trilogy is much more representative of the standard period film in Japan. It's well done but it doesn't really have anything to say intentionally say beyond, "Musashi Miyamoto was a pretty cool dude," unlike Kurosawa's period movies which worked with deeper, more resonant themes. Also, it doesn't help that the Samurai trilogy is essentially a biopic of a national saint. The reverence for the subject often limits what the film can do. (Weirdly coincidental, but I watched The Passion of Joan of Arc the other day and it doesn't have that problem at all as Joan is portrayed as a mad woman barely holding it together...)
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Apr 27, 2016 12:28
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Yeah, I sort of feel like the Samurai trilogy is a bit much to get a taste of a "by the books" samurai film. They are by no means bad films, just not particularly great. If you want something more basic, I'd say go with "Three Outlaw Samurai", "Kill!" or "Sword of the Beast". For something with more depth "Harakiri", "The Sword of Doom" or "Samurai Rebellion". If you want to get into 70s samurai films it's almost like a different genre.
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Apr 27, 2016 14:37
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