Akira Kurosawa

yeah you can blame akira kurosawa for that

Oh, is that where this is from?

Akira Kurosawa accidentally invented it when he did Yojimbo with Toshimi Mifune.

It was just a malfunctioning piece and it just exploded in this big spurt and it created the artery spray.

It's not just like this movie though.

If you see anime, they all do it.

At any time you see anything from Japan, anime, live action, or anything where they have the big arterial spray that's just crazy, that is Akira Kurosawa's fault, and God bless

him.

A few short stories, an 87th Precinct novel, and the collection Happy New Year, Herbie, appeared that year, and elsewhere in the world, without any author involvement, two adaptations of his police series appeared in cinemas.

In France, Killer's Wedge became La Superpolée, and in Japan, Akira Kurosawa took the 10th 87th Precinct novel, King's Ransom, and transformed it into a tense and claustrophobic epic.

What had started as a failed stage play in New York found its apotheosis under the guiding hand of director Akira Kurosawa.

During 1963, Hunter had written Uncle Jimbo's Marbles as a short story and a screenplay, although the screen version would never see the light of day.

He tended towards trying to make the most of any material he generated and, even when the projects might not have ultimately come to fruition, his archives are packed full of screenplay versions of books and short stories, as well as ideas for television series.

The opening of Sidney Lumet's book, Making Movies, obviously.

sticks with me because he's like he was talking to akira kurosawa right he's like he was saying like oh there's this shot in in your masterpiece ran of the uh the burning temple and like like how did like it's so flawlessly staged and set up and how did you put that together and akira kurosawa was just like well if we panned to the right we would have seen the airport you know like like I shot it the way I had to shoot it.

I had a shot to get that day.

I know how to make a good shot, but I also know what my limitations are.

And I was just sort of starting to get into a bit of Japanese cinema.

I had seen my first couple of Kurosawa's, I think it was.

And my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, bought me Branded to Kill on VHS.

So this was even before DVDs.

insanely well crafted um and then again like a thing i i come back to and it's it's more of a challenge to show a modern audience i'm a big kurosawa guy so i would point to like seven samurai is like the advent of the what we think of as the modern action movie of like putting the team together and then just sort of like establishing geography of the place and you get each of these characters gets a moment to shine and yes it's like 75 years old but yet it is still an incredible piece of craft

i mean look at something like yo jimbo for example like that like the long shot and like you know the dust i mean it's it's it's it's everything that like i mean i was watching way to gun uh and you know like christopher mcquarrie like he talks about it the idea of like you know the establishing shot is there so that when the action happened you know where that guy is you know where that guy is you know where that guy is so when they're doing line zed And Yojimbo is like, oh, that's it.

That's why Kurosawa had the big long take so we can see where everything is.

In terms of, I guess, where, you know, you mentioned their pacing and stuff like that.

I mean, an action movie, like, I'm thinking of, like, you know, Gareth Evans in The Raid, and he cut that film himself.

I had wondered, I was like, this seems familiar to me and I don't know why.

And instead of going down, speaking of rabbit holes, a little wander along afterwards, there's been some commentary that this has been an unacknowledged rip of a Kurosawa film called High and Low.

which has a similar premise, though slightly different framing, but it's the same dynamics, which are about the dynamics of race in this story.

It's Latino versus WASP, and it's obviously very timely because ICE is mentioned.

This is probably my third copy of it.

All of my Argentos are second and third purchases because they're like Kurosawa for me.

I upgrade when they get the upgrades.

So I've seen this at least a dozen times.