I still havent seen any of his non-samurai movies.

Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood are probably my two favorite

Throne of Blood (the Macbeth adaptation) is very good.

Eksvplot wrote:don't mean to piss in the punchbowl here, but i always thought Kurosawa was sort of overrated. more to the point, i don't know why he's constantly name checked in magazines and various polls as one of THE great foreign directors of all time and yet a far superior filmmaker like Robert Bresson remains largely unknown here in the states. this is very strange to me.

i think kurosawa deserves credit for bringing japanese film to a blockbuster level. comparing him to bresson is like comparing spielberg to alexander payne. they're totally opposite in method and effect.
i think kurosawa is good, but if i watch too much i can really feel the manipulations.

Eksvplot wrote:don't mean to piss in the punchbowl here, but i always thought Kurosawa was sort of overrated. more to the point, i don't know why he's constantly name checked in magazines and various polls as one of THE great foreign directors of all time and yet a far superior filmmaker like Robert Bresson remains largely unknown here in the states. this is very strange to me.

I think the simple answer is that Kurosawa's cinema is more instantly palatable to western (well, American) audiences. It is a cinema of movement and action (as well as the significant human insight and depth he brings to a movie), and therefore more superficially appealing to US filmgoers' tastes.

Plus, a key point is that Bresson is basically inimitable. Apart from being stylistically more austere and alien to the uninitiated, mainstream Hollywood directors have not assimilated Bresson's aesthetic the way they have Kurosawa's, because they just can't. So Kurosawa's style has more familiarity to the American viewer, because so many of the films they are used to have (often directly) borrowed from him.

I agree that Bresson is the superior filmmaker, but I consider Bresson to be the superior filmmaker in any contest between directors: the man has no equal.

Kurosawa is right up there though. I wouldn't say he was overrated. Many of his action sequences are transcendental moments in cinema. In a way, it isn't such a fair comparison; Ozu is perhaps more of an equivalent to Bresson, stylistically...hell, they're all great.

i see your point, but it can be really tricky making such concessions, creating different categories of greatness, etc. ---- and often times this leads to nothing more than the perpetation of the status quo. (also, what does it mean for a book to be a fetchign read among grocery store paper backs?) but in the end Kurosawa's not bad, or even average. it's jsut that i think he gets a little too much credit and attention, particualrly considering what else is out there.

my favorite would be either the sanjuro/yojimbo series
or it would be seven samurai

toshiro mifune is the king. i havent seen many korusawa films without him in it

why did they stop making movies together?

Eksvplot wrote:i see your point, but it can be really tricky making such concessions, creating different categories of greatness, etc.

If you are familiar with the concept of apples and oranges, and the pointlessness of comparing them, it isn't really that tricky.

In the Eternal Sunshine thread, you said it wasn't as good as Obscure Object.

In the Kurosawa thread, you say he's not as good as Bresson.

When you see your dad put his shoes on, do you think, "Fuck, Kenneth Cole is way better at that than Pops?"

What is gained by setting up these ridiculous comparisons?

Kurosawa is not the least bit overrated. And Bresson was a great filmmaker.

okay then, Erik Satie is apples and D.C. Talk will be oranges.

happy?

why did they stop making movies together?

not sure exactly, but they had some sort of falling out and never worked together after that. Once again, I'm not sure.

Mifune is king for sure. Very intense presence. I like Kurosawa's non-Mifune movies just as much though. Ikiru is insane and sad and beautiful all at the same time. The guy that stars in that is pretty awesome.

Kurosawa is really good with characters. I once again have to say good things about Dreams. He manages to have great characters that don't talk much and only appear for short parts of the movie.

I also saw a very good Kurosawa movie set in modern day Nagasaki, but I forget the name. Google could proabably solve that problem, but alas, my laziness knows no bounds.

Did you know Akira Kurosawa was a marxist? This is evident in Seven Samurai.