Recommended viewing for those who enjoyed Ran

If you liked Ran, then I also recommend:

Kagemusha (1980)

Seven Samurai (1954)

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

Samurai Fiction (2003)

A Note on Akira Kurosawa

To say that Kurosawa is among the greatest filmmakers to ever live is an understatement. He revitalized the Japanese film industry in the wake of World War Two. Many of America's top directors cite him as a source of inspiration including: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), Martin Scorsese (The Departed, Goodfellas), Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones, Schindler's List), and even the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas. Lucas in fact based the story of Star Wars off of Kurosawa's film, The Hidden Fortress. Countless others have used Kurosawa's work. A Fistful of Dollars, the first movie in Clint Eastwood's The Man with No Name Trilogy, is based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo. The Magnificent Seven is based on one of Kurosawa's greatest works, Seven Samurai. The movie Vantage Point borrows its storytelling structure from Kurosawa's Rashomon. So as you can see, to say that Kurosawa is among the greatest filmmakers to ever live is an understatement.

Film of the Week: Ran (1985)

Ran was released in Japan in 1985. It was among the first color films of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Many critics praise Ran for the vibrancy of its colors. Ran is an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear to medieval Japan. Adapting western stories to an eastern world is a trademark of Kurosawa's. He adapted Macbeth to feudal Japan in Throne of Blood, and adapted Hamlet to the corrupt postwar business world of Japan in The Bad Sleep Well. Kurosawa remains one of the most important filmmakers in the history of Japan, and the world.

A Note on Blaxploitation Films

You may have found yourself wondering what a "blaxploitation" film is. It began back in the 30's when movies like Refeer Madness and Sex Madness began a genre called "exploitation films". They grew to full height by the early 1970's. Exploitation films recieved their name because they were known to exploit lurid subject matter such as graphic drug use, sex, or violence. They were often played in a double feature in a sleazy theater called a Grindhouse. Subgenres formed within the exploitation genre. Cannibal films used graphic violence in cannibalism to attract viewers. Nazisploitation films focused on Nazis torturing prisoners. Slasher films entailed a psychotic killer hunting down victims and brutally killing them. Blaxploitation films were films put out by the African-American community, that were designed for urban African-American viewers. The films usually took place in an urban setting, with pimps and drug dealers as a staple. The films usually glorified all the African-American characters, and featured despicable white characters such as a corrupt or racist cop and foolish white mafia members. The 1971 film Shaft is among the most famous of these movies. The films died in popularity as African-Americans became more widely accepted into the main stream film community, through the works of actors like Sidney Poitier. These films remain an important look at the attitudes, challenges, and societies of African-Americans in the 1970's.

Film of the Week: Coffy (1973)

Coffy is one of the finest examples of a blaxploitation film. Pam Grier, the queen of this genre, stars as a young nurse turned vigilante bent on destroying the drug trade in the african-american community after her younger sister became an addict. This film was rare for the time in which it was made. It had become both normal and acceepted to glorify drug use in blaxploitation films, but Coffy took a rather unfashionable turn to carry a strong anti-drug message. Although this film is often overlooked by major critics, it is a major film from a lesser known, but still important, genre of American filmmaking.

Reccommended Viewing for those who enjoyed The Wild Bunch

If you liked The Wild Bunch I would also reccommend

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Unforgiven (1992)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1963)

A Note on Anti-Westerns

The western genre has many sub-genres, with the most popular being the spaghetti western. One sub-genre is the anti-western. A good anti-western tends to challenge the traditional westerns of the 50s and earlier. Anti-westerns focus both on fact rather than legend and morality. The most widely acknowledged anti-western is Clint Eastwood's 1992 film, Unforgiven. Despite Unforgiven's impact on the genre, The Wild Bunch is worthy of perhaps even more recognition. The Wild Bunch brought up the realism which causes the moral questions over two decades before Unforgiven. The Wild Bunch forces the viewer to ask themselves whether killing is justified in the situation at hand, or even if it is ever justified. The debate on whether taking another human being's life is right may seem a very deep subject for a film, but Peckinpah takes it on fearlessly. Despite Peckinpah's attempt at a moral challenge, many of his contemporaries nicknamed him "Bloody Sam", and his violence remains a controversy among film critics to this day.

The Wild Bunch and violence in cinema

The late 60s were a turning point for everything, especially movies. In early movies, violence had been shown, but not to an excessive or even realistic degree. In 1967, Bonnie and Clyde came out, giving movie goers the first realistically violent action-drama. As I said, violence had been somewhat taboo in all movies before this one, but no where was it more taboo than in westerns. John Wayne spent many a movie gunning down Indians without giving viewers a drop of blood. This all changed in The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah's controversial choice to include a splash of blood with each shot transformed the movie, and made it something that no one had ever seen before. The gunfights were now realistic, the blood gave each character a realism that was unseen in westerns. Each death became strikingly real, and rather that a triuph, death would now be viewed as a tragedy.

Film of the week 9/13-9/20: The Wild Bunch (1969)

Sam Peckinpah's 1969 classic The Wild Bunch is among the greatest westerns ever filmed. The film stars William Holden and Ernest Borgnine as leaders of a group of outlaws in the late 1910s. This film brings to mind a more recent film, The Wrestler. The premise of The Wrestler is to explore the hardships of an obsolete wrestling star from the 80s in today's world. The same idea plays into The Wild Bunch. A group of old outlaws from the days of bank robberies are forced to watch as their wild west rapidly becomes modern. As horses are replaced by cars, rumors float around about a flying machine up North. From this world, the last real group of desperadoes heads South, looking for one last adventure.

A note on the dialogue of Reservoir Dogs

Tarantino has gained much fame simply for his screwball dialogues. The conversations about Madonna and Tipping in the restaurant at the beginning of the film are prime examples of Tarantino's excellence in comedic, yet logical conversations. The conversations in Pulp Fiction are equally excellent I might add. Many rank Tarantino alone for this type of dialogue. While Tarantino may be the best, and is certainly an innovator of character conversations, there was another before him. One of Tarantino's major influences was from Monte Hellman. Monte Hellman used the odd conversations of his characters in the 1971 classic film, "Two Lane Blacktop" about two young men on a cross country driving trip. Tarantino's dialogue may be yet another way in which he pays homage to cinema's greats.

Recommended Viewing for those who enjoyed Reservoir Dogs

If you liked Reservoir Dogs, you may also enjoy:

Pulp Fiction (1992)

Goodfellas (1990)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Dillinger (1945)

Jackie Brown (1997)

more on Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs was unique in its blend of chill music and smooth style with bloody shoot-outs and vicious torture. The infamous "ear" scene is perhaps one of cinema's most terrifying moments, while the discussion of Madonna is perhaps one of cinema's most hysterical. The juxtaposition of comedy and violence was quite original, but some of Tarantino's ideas were not. I view Tarantino as the Milton of our age. Just as Milton pulled out references from everywhere he could find in his tale, Paradise Lost, Tarantino pulls out references in Reservoir Dogs. The hacking off of the ear is actually a reference to the cult classic of 1966 Django, in which the villian's ear is cut off before he is killed. The use of colors as codenames (Ex: Mr. White, Mr. Pink, etc) comes from the classic film The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. The film ends with three charcters point guns at each other in what is known as a "Mexican Standoff". These standoffs were a staple in the spaghetti westerns of grindhouse theaters, and Tarantino's infusion of the mexican standoff is yet another tribute to the great films of the past. The choice of Lawrence Tierney as Joe may have been another reference to the gangster films of the fourties. Although Tarantino is an American Original, he certainly knows how to pay homage to the greats.

Film of the week, 9/6-9/13: "Reservoir Dogs"

Reservoir Dogs was filmaker Quentin Tarantino's first film. It was released to the shocked audiences of 1992. Reservoir Dogs was like nothing that anyone had ever seen before. The violent ganster flick was filmed on a low budget of around 3 million dollars. The film starred Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, and Lawrence Tierney. Harvey Keitel was a well established mafia actor from such films as, "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver". Aside from him, there was another well established gangster movie star. Lawrence Tierney was the star of the 1945 classic, "Dillinger" as well as several other gangster films of the fourties. Tarantino appears to be giving a tip of the hat to the gangster films of the past as he redefines the genre forever.

Welcome

The basic format of this blog will be that I will give a reccommended film of the week. Throughout the week I will discuss the film and its impact, as well as other recommended films. Enjoy!