If you have not seen a Kurusawa film before, I would not suggest Kagemusha as first film. I would start off first w/ Seven Samurai or Yojimbo to see if you enjoy the style of the late Kurusawa.

I'll second that: START with 7S, Yojimbo, Sanjuro or Hidden Fortress, to be instantly hooked on B/W Kurosawa's own action brand of Samurai Crack. :D

By that point, you can see the difference on how 70's-80's color Kurosawa was darker and more pessimistically anti-war, eg. "Ran".
(Kagemusha's plot involves a lowly royal decoy forced to play the general in a decisive battle, but if you know any of Kurosawa's style by this point, you know it ultimately won't turn out to be a Japanese remake of "Dave". :cool: )

Damn. :(

It is a great film, but as others have said, probably not the best one to start with. It has a very measured pacing, and for me seems much more methodical (and in some ways, this makes it harder to get into) than the other films people have mentioned. Don't get me wrong though, it is a great film and very much worth watching.

I'm watching Howard's End right now, first Blu-Ray on my new stand (although I need my father and brother to come to actually mount the TV on it, using it as a console's quite the improvement from my old one), and it's a really lovely picture. I was concerned at first with the beginning being so grainy, like I had bad TV reception, but that quickly went away. It's still a lovely transfer, and I'm enjoying the film so far.

I still have my fingers crossed that the B&N sale will be on when my parents are down on their trip to New England. Mom's going to B&N anyways, so the sale at that time would be perfect.

For Kurosawa, I would recommend skipping his samurai films (to begin) and go for THE BAD SLEEP WELL or his penultimate HIGH AND LOW. If you absolutley want a samurai period piece then I'd say YOJIMBO. His most human/humane films are IKIRU and RED BEARD but you should slowly work towards those films, study his style and form, and then you will have the tools to decipher the subtext. If you enjoy Shakespeare then RAN, THRONE OF BLOOD and KAGEMUSHA are open to you immediately. Kurosawa can be frustrating if you can't read his cinematic language, but if you're like me you keep trying!

I'll still stand by my own experience, as I suspect I'm not alone:
Seven Samurai is three-hours+ long...But just as you're starting to wonder whether you've watched a half-hour of it and should probably take a break, you look at the time and discover you've already watched an hour and a half, and you still can't let the plot go just yet.
It's that good. :thumbsup:

(Yojimbo is good for the badass-factor of realizing Clint's "Fistful" copied the basic lines of dialogue--
But if Yojimbo put the hero in an entire town of sleazebags, Sanjuro lets Mifune's Samurai With No Name mix with a few "good" characters, and gives him more of a humorous blend to show his mix of grungy personality with wily warrior. And yes, it's hard not to think of John Belushi.)

The acting in Kurosawa's earlier films (particularly by Mifune) annoys the hell out of me. There is just too much overacting. Its the least annoying in Seven Samurai. But then again, its an annoyance that pops up in a lot of Japanese films from that era, so I guess I can't place too much blame on one person.

I just watched BLOW OUT tonight so I'll post my essay tomorrow. The transfer looked very nice projected on a large screen and the sound, which is very important to the story, was distinct and clear. That's as far as I go reviewing superficial qualities, now I need to dissect the body. Now that my wife's asleep, I'm about to wander back to the Korova and watch PALE FLOWER.

Kurosawa Rules
 

With Kurosawa I started with RAN first. I had always seen this on the shelves in the stores back around 2002 and always wanted to take a chance on it so finally I did and I was blown away. Instantly my top movie of the time. Then I saw the PBS special on Kurosawa so I immiediatley went out and grabbed SEVEN SAMURAI and that's when I fell in love with Toshiro Mifune and Kurosawa became my favorite director after just two films. Of course the rest is history, I've seen over 85% of his work and love most of them. My top 5 would be Ran, Seven Samurai, High and Low, Stray Dog, and Throne of Blood.

Anyone know how to bring up the English subtitles in KES? I couldn't find it in the menus. Normally foreign language Criterions have automatic English subtitles, but this being an English movie maybe you have to select to show subtitles?

I don't remember that there was a subtitle pop-up menu option on Kes.

But there are English [SDH] subtitles. Fortunately, because being French, it would have been a movie with some dialogues sometimes difficult to funderstand (accent) like on Fish Tank....
All you have to do is to press the "subtitle" button on your Blu-Ray player remote control...

I just pressed the "Subtitles" button on my remote.

I have a universal remote without a subtitles button, but will try to figure it out. Thanks.

So I'm guessing High and Low is a must for any fan of noir?

YES. But I haven't seen it since the Film History class I took in 2002 at a local college which the Spring semester was focused on Kurosawa.
Kurosawa is one of those several directors I'd own the majority of his filmography on Blu-ray disc format.

See, they're be back in Canada by the 13th, They're gone from the 2nd to 9th, and I'm going home to look after the dogs. I assume the sale's in-store only? I know B&N will ship some movies and some books to Canada, even if they won't sell their Nook/Nook Colors to us.

The Makioka Sisters
 

Anyone have any thoughts on The Makioka Sisters? I loved the book...but have never seen the film. I'm considering blind buying it when it's released in a couple of weeks.

And here's Jacques Rivette talking about Showgirls:
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/co...6/rivette.html

"... I prefer Showgirls (1995), one of the great American films of the last few years. It's Verhoeven's best American film and his most personal."

Just watched World on a Wire last night. Hopefully the restored print does the great set design and cinematography justice. The region B blu looks pretty rough, so I'm hoping Janus' print is a little sharper. But most importantly, great film, and I will definitely buy Criterion's edition.