Tag Archives: the seven samurai

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Thinking About ‘Ugetsu’ and Other Flicks

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613I like Kenji Mizoguchi’s films. I think he’s a top-class director.

Is he greater than Akira Kurosawa, though? I’m not sure. I will admit, I’ve been thinking about Ugetsu more than The Seven Samurai recently, and I don’t know why.

There’s a haunting moment in the former flick that has stuck in my mind. After the potter Genjuro escapes from the clutches of the ghost of Lady Wakasa, he finds himself in a field bestrewn with the ruins of her mansion. A song she once sang for him is played as he wanders, stunned, among the skeleton of the house.

What a sad, wonderful, evocative moment. So eerie. It’s part of what makes Ugetsu the best ghost story put on film … next to Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan. But where the latter movie was daring in its use of color and sound, Ugetsu is relatively conservative, using stately, composed shots and wistful music to move the action, as well as provide tangible atmosphere.

I’ll be debating for a long time whether Mizoguchi is better than Kurosawa. With pictures such as Ugetsu, however, I wonder if there really is any debate.

From Skip and Setter’s Creator: I Liebster You, I Liebster You … Now Liebster Me Alone

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Blog Sketch of Me 092213Wildly good news, everyone — this humble blog has been nominated for a Liebster Award by the estimable Bill Meeker, aka Frisco Kid at the Movies (love the blog, Bill!). Many thanks!

This is my first such nomination, and I can’t help but be both pleased and slightly intimidated by the idea. The rules of the game are as follows:

  • Bloggers who have been nominated must link back to the person who nominated them.
  • Nominees must answer the 11 questions given to them by the one who nominated them.
  • Nominees must also nominate 11 of their favorite bloggers (who have less than 200 followers) and assign them 11 questions to answer.
  • You CANNOT nominate someone who has nominated you!
  • You are not, in any way, obligated to participate.

OK, let’s see. No. 1 — done. No. 2 … here are the questions that were provided, as well as my answers:

1. Why did you decide to start your blog?

I thought it would be a nice way to showcase my writing in a context that fit my style. What a boring answer, huh?

2. How do you get inspiration for your blog posts?

Mostly by thinking about movies and issues surrounding them. I also force myself to be inspired by writing even when I don’t feel like doing so. I have to write to stay alive!

3. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what would be the most important object that you would wish you had brought with you, but didn’t? No borrowing of Tom Hanks’ solution allowed.

A DVD of The Seven Samurai. And a DVD player that’s immune to breaking down from having too much sand in it.

4. Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?

What? Where? Am I being followed? Who Am I This Time?

5. What is the Matrix?

It’s the Circle of Life. No, it isn’t. It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want to. No, wait —

6. What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Do you mean an African or European swallow? AAAAAHHHHHH!

7. You’ve gotta ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

Well, to tell you the truth, I sometimes lose track myself in all this excitement.

8. Is it safe?

It’s perfectly safe. Oh, and the dentist told me I only have two cavities.

9. What’s your damage?

I’m wracking my brain trying to get this reference. I feel so … unworthy.

10. Who ya gonna call?

I miss Harold Ramis. 😦

11. You talkin’ to me?

I’m the only one here. Literally. I mean, I’m a blogger. Maybe I’m not here. Maybe I’m a figment of my own imagination. What a concept.

OK, No. 2 — done. That was easy. Now here are my Liebster nominations of 11 of my favorite bloggers (with less than 200 followers), followed by the questions I would like to posit to them should they be interested in answering:

digital didascalia

silence cunning exile … maple syrup

Shelly’s Retirement Adventure

Movie Fail

Reel and Rock

jjames reviews

Selective Viewing

The Counterfeit Writer

My Classic Movies

Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two

Lulu Loves Films

THE QUESTIONS:

1) What was the experience that led you to start blogging about movies and/or culture?

2) What’s your earliest movie memory, and how did it shape your tastes?

3) Bernard Herrmann or Georges Delerue?

4) How much worse was Troy than The Seven Samurai … and could the former have been improved by being magically transformed into hot, steaming soup?

5) What’s your favorite French film that has been remade into a terrible Hollywood movie?

6) Groucho, Chico, Harpo or Zeppo (Gummo has been disqualified for these purposes)?

7) Which movie(s) would you take with you to the moon … if we had the capacity to live there and DVD players didn’t fly away because of low gravity?

8) Are you Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo or Sauron?

9) Who’s less funny: Jerry Lewis or … Jerry Lewis?

10) Could Mozart beat up Beethoven with one hand tied behind his back?

11) If you could direct a sequel to any movie, which would it be?

OK, Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are done, done and done. Thanks in advance to all who participate, and here’s to the Liebster Award!

Setter’s ‘Spectives: Sometimes You Just Gotta Say, ‘Well, That Was a Horrible Movie’

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613And that’s exactly what I thought after watching Drive, He Said, director Jack Nicholson’s not-good 1971 relic about a womanizing college-basketball star and his bizarre counterculture roommate.

How did this film make basketball boring? I wondered, as the film meandered through then-hip out-of-focus shots and slo-mo passages. I was shocked to find myself wishing I had watched curling in the Olympics over these scenes. Bad sign, movie.

Then there was the problem of the film not being able to decide what it was about. The struggle to avoid the draft? Hippie dippiness? Who was it about, anyway, the basketball fella or his roomie? The movie couldn’t seem to decide. In fact, it followed them both in equal amounts, despite them both being unlikable characters.

Yuck. Turn it off, he said.

I think sometimes you’ve got to watch a bad movie once in a while to desire good movies more. I mean, right now, I could watch any portion of The Seven Samurai and be cleansed of the lousy-film experience. Boy, do I need a Kurosawa bath right now.

Maybe a bit of ice cream will rid me of the taste in my mouth. Yes, sometimes you’ve got to watch a bad movie once in a while. But even once in a while doesn’t feel good.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: The Shot Not Seen ‘Round the World

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613The best shot in all of cinema may be one that’s hardly remembered.

It’s one that I think about periodically when I ponder great filmmaking. Of course, it’s from The Seven Samurai, one of my favorite movies. But it’s not from a famous scene.

Instead, it’s an image from a sequence toward the beginning where a number of farmers are in town to recruit samurai. They’re staying at an inn and discover that most of the rice that they’re subsisting on has been stolen. If I remember correctly, one of the farmers–Rikichi (played magnificently by Yoshio Tsuchiya)–gets angry at his comrade, Yohei (Bokuzen Hidari), who was supposed to watch over it, and throws the last handful at him.

Then comes this great shot, where we see Yohei start to pick up the grains, one by one, from the floor.

Why is this so brilliant? It’s one small, short shot, but the impact is monumental. It tells you everything you need to know about the farmers–that they’re so desperate, poor and hungry that they’ll even try to save a few grains of rice to eat them … the last they have left. They can’t afford to waste any. And director Akira Kurosawa shows this horror by focusing his camera on the floor, as Yohei tries to retrieve the rice.

Absolutely compelling.

There may be more famous shots in the movies, but this is one of the few complete ones, an image that gives us all the information we need, plus a haunting picture, without telling us straight out why. No surprise, then, that I think about it often when I muse on all things cinema.

If only more directors would learn from shots such as this, the movies would be a better place.

Skip’s Quips: Bad Lines in Good Movies

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Blog Sketch 082813No film is perfect, and even great movies have scenes or lines that could be better.

I was thinking about this recently while watching Ghostbusters on TV. It’s hardly a masterpiece, yet it remains a terrific comedy and has held up well nearly 30 years after its debut. Still, despite a sharp, hilarious script, it contains a line toward the end that disappoints me to this day: “I love this town,” shouted by Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore after the ‘busters save New York City from a supernatural catastrophe.

Blah. Surely there was a funnier way to express triumph than a maudlin acknowledgement of Gotham’s greatness.

Of course, it’s not a movie-breaker, but it brings to mind other frustrating lines from the cinema’s greatest flicks. For instance: the immortal “leave me alone” in Lawrence of Arabia, spoken with great self-pity by Peter O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence in a dialogue with Jack Hawkins’ General Allenby—who, as if in recognition of this pathetic order, notes that it’s a “feeble thing to say.” I guess it’s hard to count this in the annals of bad lines completely, as it’s followed up in an organic way, though it still rings overdone. So does a much-revered scene in the otherwise extraordinary film The Seven Samurai where Toshiro Mifune’s Kikuchiyo, charged by a dying woman with saving her baby, collapses into the stream surrounding the village and cries along with the infant, lamenting how the same thing happened to him. It’s just a bit too much in a movie noted for its tight script, though it does give some insight into the reckless character’s origins.

These are just a few examples. They don’t ruin the films overall. Yet it’s interesting to see how high our estimation is of them … if we can carp about lesser lines within. Further proof of the merits of these justly praised pictures.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: A Modest Small-Screen Proposal

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613Any reason why we can’t have the all-Kurosawa channel?

We have action on demand. Drama on call.

Well, I want to snap my fingers and have The Seven Samurai appear on my TV instantly.

I get hankerings all the time for this glorious, seminal movie. And it seems to be rarely on. When it is, it’s often at a time when I’m not available–like at three in the morning or 18 billion, trillion o’clock in the afternoon.

Why don’t I just get the DVD and stop complaining? OK, I’ll tell you. There’s something really organic about turning on the telly and finding a movie you like. It’s satisfying.

Satisfying in the way that getting up to put a DVD in the player isn’t.

Fine, I’m lazy. But it doesn’t change the fact that I adore this Kurosawa classic. Which means I also scoff at the 1960 American remake, a poor imitation that removes the vital class distinctions pervading the original (samurai versus farmers) while adding more guns–weapons that make such a difference in its Japanese progenitor–and subtracting most of the character development.

If I could have The Seven Samurai broadcast to my brain personally on a 24-hour basis, I’d do it.

An all-Kurosawa channel, admittedly, might not make financial sense. But maybe … an all-jidai geki station? Bring me the popcorn.

I know I wouldn’t be the only audience member.

Setter’s ‘Spective: The Slo-Mo and the Furious

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613I blame you, Akira Kurosawa.

Remember: You started it. Or rather, you helped popularize the use of slow-motion photography in fight scenes–specifically via two different shots of villains dying in The Seven Samurai.

I adore your films, Akira. But I’m not happy with the seeds you’ve sown.

Ok, so you’re not responsible for all that ludicrous pseudo-Spartan posturing in 300. Or the (prolific) guts and glory in The Wild Bunch. But without those scenes in Samurai, we wouldn’t be so deluged with half-speed onscreen violence.

Granted, you used slow motion judiciously–and I think that’s what separates you from the rest. Peckinpah’s technique can hardly be called subtle, but his Bunch certainly packs a punch. Not so much all that silliness in 300, where the idea seemed to be showing how cool it is to kill ancient Persians with as much CGI blood as possible.

And I think that’s where all this slo-mo falls rather quickly on its face.

We’ve diluted its purpose, the whole point of its effectiveness. See it once in a while, and it’s as startling as a flower in snow. Yet watch it over and over again, and it loses its potential impact. Today, it seems to be de rigueur in “action” scenes, as if directors have forgotten how to film normally. So it has become showy instead of telling, obvious instead of shocking.

Frankly, I’d rather see My Dinner with Andre. That’s got more action than any Matrix pose-a-rama.

So Kurosawa, I’m going to take time out from praising you to gripe a bit, though with a heavy heart. Because I know as much as I loathe what slo-mo has become, without it we wouldn’t be what we are today.

Old man Sykes says in Peckinpah’s Bunch: “It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.”

I don’t think it should.

Setter’s ‘Spective: What a Piece of Work Is a Score

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Can lousy music ruin a perfectly decent film?

I asked myself this question during a recent viewing of The Unsaid, a 2001 Andy Garcia vehicle featuring a particularly tiresome original score. Mind you, I wasn’t mulling this idea because the movie was any good. Actually, it was dreadful: a dreary, overacted drama starring the usually reliable Garcia as a depressed, single-dad psychiatrist trying to help a disturbed youth (played by Mad Men stalwart Vincent Kartheiser, in an early role) who reminds him of his own, late son. The flick’s minimal interest value, however, ensured the presence of numerous lulls–enough time to think about the role of music and its interplay with onscreen action. If The Unsaid were a better movie, would the score have affected its quality?

Trying to think of great films with not-so-great soundscapes is difficult. Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha comes to mind immediately, but that obvious, brass-infused music, with all of its bombast, is surprisingly effective in certain scenes–particularly the end, where the destruction of the Takeda clan on the battlefield is shown in all of its waste. The truth is, most good movies are enjoyable because all of their parts work together; you can’t extract one from another and say it could’ve been better with a different piece. Maybe Fumio Hayasaka’s music for The Seven Samurai isn’t as magnificent as Sergei Prokofiev’s score for Alexander Nevsky, but I can’t imagine how TSS would be without it. These aren’t contemporary artworks where perception can change with the components. They’re completed, set in stone…and you either like them or you don’t.

So I guess I’ve answered my own question, though I wonder if I should keep asking it. Because if a movie like The Unsaid has me thinking along these lines, how can I be sure my cinematic tastes aren’t unsound?