Word: akira
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Indeed, at times, restorers get carried away with their noble task. Akira Kurosawa is amused by the diligence of historians who assemble the complete Japanese versions of films that the director wanted Western audiences to see in a shorter, faster-paced form. He is now at work streamlining his latest film, The Shadow Warrior, in consultation with his executive producers: Francis Coppola and George Lucas...
Dersu Uzalu. A very fine film, but a regression, albeit in color, to Akira Kurosawa's early days of static, pictorial movie-making. I prefer the raging, audacious Kurosawa of "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo," but this simple piece, a memoir about a little old hunter, has undeniable charm, pathos, and humor. The rich colors and meticulous compositions become frustrating after awhile--we want Kurosawa to shake off his awe of the wilderness and plunge into it with the old daring and fervor--but there's something heartwarming about a touch this sure, and the wisdom and taste to know when...
...wrong times, and the result is that visual and verbal elements constantly elbow each other aside, yielding neither great drama nor great film, but a tentative mess with little emotional force of its own. It is highly significant that perhaps the fullest realization of Shakespeare on film, Akira Kurosawa's Castle of the Spider's Web (Macbeth), is in Japanese...
...Akira Kurosawa is one of the few epic poets of the cinema, and his new movie, Dersu Uzala, brought the festival moments of real majesty. Shot in Russia-in 70-mm. screen size and stereophonic sound-Dersu Uzala is a rather delicate fable about the friendship between a Russian surveyor (Juri Solomine) and the man he employs as a guide. Dersu Uzala (ebulliently and affectionately played by Maxim Munzuk) lives in the forests of eastern Siberia in easy alliance with the natural order. The surveyor, called "the Captain," is a man of science and precision. Dersu is a creature...
...that 80% of all Japanese prefer not to leave home to see a movie. As a result, some 5,000 of Japan's 7,500 movie houses have been closed or converted into bowling alleys and supermarkets. Time was when the great Japanese directors like Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa were winning film festivals all over the world with movies like An Autumn Afternoon, Rashomon and Seven Samurai. Today Kurosawa has priced himself out of the local market...