Kurosawa, Mifune, and spears - what else could one ask for!
We hit our 5th Kurosawa Film here with The Hidden Fortress - I don't know if it gets as much love as some of his other samurai cinema. A friend and I were talking about it recently and it doesn't score very high on our lists but I hadn't seen it in years when I queued it up.
Of course, the one thing that is always said about this film is that it's told from the POV of two lowly peasants, and this inspired George Lucas to tell his story, Star Wars, from the POV of the droids. Two peasants on a search for gold after a nasty conflict fall in with a General and a princess, which is sort of a coincidence with Star Wars, and they have to cross enemy territory with a precious cargo to safety.
I only caught a bit of the commentary but Stephen Prince said that after Seven Samurai, his next two movies didn't do so well, and so he wanted to do a more basic action story again. It is his first in widescreen, and so he does this pretty well. Mifune is great as usual, and it's a nice little story even if I'm not 100% sure about the ending - LOL
gonna go off the road a bit here. - this was the first Criterion film I have watched since my father passed about 10 days ago. This has nothing to do with my viewing of this film other than a memory that sort of ties in. In my Dad's house is my old 4:3 crappy tv with built in DVD player I bought almost 20 years ago - he still uses it and it works ok. Has a couple lines on it and the DVD stopped working years ago - It went to the Nephews probably 15 years ago when I got my widescreen, and made it up to Dad's after another TV crapped out.
I bought that TV for a band practice space where I could sit on a couch, watch movies, and get drunk and not be seen or judged by people who thought they knew my best interests - in retrospect they probably did but it didn't come from love but judgmental self-righteousness so I rejected it.
Except for my Dad - I think he understood cause he went thru this that I would have to. He would express a desire for me at some points to quit drinking and he checked in on me once or twice and got me started on weed, but he never came at me from self-righteousness but love.
Anyways, the first movies I watched on said TV in said practice space drinking Rumplemintz were the Kurosawa Samurai collection - Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and The Hidden Fortress. I still have that original copy of The Hidden Fortress on DVD and never let it go although we have this one now in better quality.
Just a thought that came to mind today as I writing this....
Love you, Dad - see you again someday.
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