Yes or No?

My proposal went something like this: "It looks as if we are going to lose the war, and if it comes to the point of the Honorable Death...

Eat this chair!

[Kurosawa has to undergo a directing test upon completion of Sugata Sanshiro; the examiners include the censors of the Ministry of the Inter...

mono-no-aware

Rereading Kurosawa's Autobiography. (re editing Uma [Horses]): There is one place in the story where a foal has been sold and the mare f...

inscrutable occidentals

Was watching Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More again for a piece I'm writing for The Believer on sequels. The DVDs have inte...

Suntory Reserve

Mithridates has unearthed an amazing YouTube clip of a series of whisky commercials starring Kurosawa Akira and Francis Ford Coppola. I coul...

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿Qué???????????!!!!!!!

An extract from J M Coetzee's new book, Diary of a Bad Year, appeared in the NYRB for 10 July. The Seven Samurai is a film in complete ...

Kurosawa on Mifune

After hearing O'Toole on watching Rashomon for the first time and seeing Toshiro Mifune, I went back to the section in Kurosawa's So...