Word: toshiro
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...DIED. TOSHIRO MIFUNE, 77, rugged actor in epic Japanese films; in Mitaka, Japan. In his 16-film collaboration with director Akira Kurosawa, Mifune came to embody the heroic, archetypical loner with his rough features and angry intensity. America had cowboys; Japan had Mifune, wielding a sword and his trademark glare in the Oscar-winning Rashomon, The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. Although Mifune often played the Pacific enemy in American films like Midway (1976), his menace needed no translation. It was his Japanese films that stuck with audiences, inspiring such imitators as Clint Eastwood and even Jim Belushi...
...four versions of the event, told by the three participants and the woodcutter, who discovered the body. The participants testify in front of the camera, which is ostensibly recording the bandit's trial, putting the audience in the position of the judge. Tajomaru the bandit, played by the great Toshiro Mifune, gives a version in which fate led him to desire the samurai's wife (Machiko Kyo). After raping her, he set the husband free and fought with him for possession of the woman. It was a fair and glorious duel, choreographed in a balletic fashion...
...something to see. When the film came out, the performances were a point of contention, called naturalistic by some and grotesque by others. In retrospect we can see that they were not influenced by kabuki, as so many facilely claimed, but, rather, by silent films, which Kurosawa greatly admired. Toshiro Mifune's feral performance as the bandit is legendary, and Machiko Kyo brings off the task of presenting what are in reality four different women. Masayuki Mori as the husband is excellent; his serpent-like look of contempt is unforgettable. Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter is the quiet core...
Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, arguably Japan's greatest director and actor, teamed up once again to make the mystery High and Low, which stands out even among their many classics. Thirty years old, the film remains a revelation for lovers of cinema...
...University of California at Santa Cruz researcher Yu-Shen Zhang--who co-authored a Nature paper last January with Toshiro Tanimoto, now at the school's Santa Barbara campus--suggested yesterday that the differences in the two findings were due to inferior resolution in the Harvard team's measurements...