On “New York Comeback,” the lead single from Songs from a Rock n Roll Heart, Lucinda Williams takes a well-deserved victory lap. Aided by backing vocals from none other than Bruce Springsteen, the Americana legend declares, “You wouldn’t want to miss my New York comeback,” atop anthemic, classic rock-style guitars and drums. We certainly wouldn’t.
Following a debilitating stroke in 2020, it seemed like there might not ever be another Lucinda Williams album. Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, then, is a triumph against the odds. It’s also Williams’s most lyrically conceptual album to date, centered around resilience, revival, and renewal. Admittedly, such forces have always animated Williams’s music, but the songs on this album exist in a particularly vivid and unified universe, with most directly addressing the healing and transformative power of music at its most evocative.
Songs from a Rock n Roll Heart’s anthemic opener,...
Following a debilitating stroke in 2020, it seemed like there might not ever be another Lucinda Williams album. Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, then, is a triumph against the odds. It’s also Williams’s most lyrically conceptual album to date, centered around resilience, revival, and renewal. Admittedly, such forces have always animated Williams’s music, but the songs on this album exist in a particularly vivid and unified universe, with most directly addressing the healing and transformative power of music at its most evocative.
Songs from a Rock n Roll Heart’s anthemic opener,...
- 6/26/2023
- by Tom Williams
- Slant Magazine
There will be spoilers for "Andor" Episodes I, II, III.
Starring Diego Luna in the title role, the first three episodes of "Andor" quite loudly says from the very first scene that this isn't the sort of "Star Wars" you're accustomed to. The first three episodes tell the beginnings of a story with Cassian Andor in two different timelines. In Cassian's early days, he's trapped with other children on an Imperial mining planet, the site of a disaster that has killed most of the folks there. In Cassian's present, he's on an industrial town just outside the jurisdiction of the Empire, working to find his lost sister and to make a score big enough to get off planet and away from the trouble he's in after accidentally murdering a pair of local corporate authorities.
As part of Cassian's plan, he steals an important bit of Imperial technology that would...
Starring Diego Luna in the title role, the first three episodes of "Andor" quite loudly says from the very first scene that this isn't the sort of "Star Wars" you're accustomed to. The first three episodes tell the beginnings of a story with Cassian Andor in two different timelines. In Cassian's early days, he's trapped with other children on an Imperial mining planet, the site of a disaster that has killed most of the folks there. In Cassian's present, he's on an industrial town just outside the jurisdiction of the Empire, working to find his lost sister and to make a score big enough to get off planet and away from the trouble he's in after accidentally murdering a pair of local corporate authorities.
As part of Cassian's plan, he steals an important bit of Imperial technology that would...
- 9/21/2022
- by Bryan Young
- Slash Film
"Andor" is a completely different sort of "Star Wars" show on Disney+. Where other shows feel like they are, first and foremost, a "Star Wars" property with the influences of a filmmaker laid on top of it, "Andor" feels a bit like it's the other way around. Tony Gilroy is the first and foremost influence on the show and it feels like "Star Wars" is secondary to that. For those that love the show, it's not a bad thing, it's definitely a different energy to "Star Wars" and there are some different film touchstones that might help aid in your enjoyment of the series. If nothing else, watching these will create enjoyment for you independent of "Andor," as every single one is a masterpiece worth checking out for its own merits.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
A great place to start getting ready for "Andor" is the film that...
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
A great place to start getting ready for "Andor" is the film that...
- 9/20/2022
- by Bryan Young
- Slash Film
Prior to performing a swerving version of Lucinda Williams’ “Drunken Angel” for an intimate dinner party in Nashville on Monday night, Jason Isbell remarked how some songwriters just can’t write a good song anymore. But Williams, he said, was so unfailingly talented that she could restart her career right now and in 10 years “we’d be right back here.” Here was the BMI Troubadour Award celebration, which honored Williams — the first woman to receive the award — for decades of songwriting greatness.
The BMI Troubadour dinner is one of Nashville’s most gloriously low-key events,...
The BMI Troubadour dinner is one of Nashville’s most gloriously low-key events,...
- 9/13/2022
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Dr. Marcus Stiglegger is an Austrian film scholar, publicist, musician and occasional director. Over the years, he has made a name for himself with countless publications in the fields of film and media theory in German, but also in English. He has been part of commentaries and other extras for editions of movies published by Arrow Video, Capelight and many other publishers. Stiglegger is the author of books like “Terrorkino. Angst/Lust im Körperhorror” (Terror cinema. Fear and lust in body horror), “SadicoNazista. Geschichte, Film und Mythos” and “Grenzüberschreitungen. Exkursionen ins Abseits der Filmgeschichte” (Transgressions. Excursions into the marginalized areas of film history) among many others. Additionally, he has written many essays on directors such as Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg, William Friedkin and the western genre. His latest work includes the essay collection “Berlin Visionen. Filmische Stadtbilder seit 1980” (Berlin Visions. Cinematic images of urbanity since 1980) with co-publisher Stefan Jung and “Schwarz.
- 2/18/2022
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Tuppence Middleton, star of Fisherman’s Friends, Downton Abbey and Sense8, discusses some of her most memorable scenes.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Imitation Game (2014)
The Current War (2017)
Cinema Paradiso (1991)
Downton Abbey (2019)
Fisherman’s Friends (2019)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Rocks in My Pockets (2014)
My Life as a Courgette a.k.a. My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
13 Tzameti (2005)
13 (2010)
In Absentia (2000)
Eraserhead (1977)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Skeletons (2010)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Alien (1979)
Festen a.k.a. The Celebration (1998)
Abigail’s Party (1977)
Der Samurai (2014)
Under The Skin (2013)
Strasbourg 1518 (2020)
The Fall (2019)
The Wicker Man (1973)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
I Live in Fear (1955)
Drunken Angel (1948)
Throne of Blood (1957)
High and Low (1963)
Godzilla (1954)
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Possession (1981)
G.I. Blues (1960)
King Creole (1958)
Léolo (1992)
Other Notable Items
War and Peace miniseries (2016)
Giuseppe Tornatore
The Crown TV series (2016- )
Masterpiece Theatre TV series (1971- )
Upstairs Downstairs TV series (1971-1975)
Monty Python’s Flying Circus...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Imitation Game (2014)
The Current War (2017)
Cinema Paradiso (1991)
Downton Abbey (2019)
Fisherman’s Friends (2019)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Rocks in My Pockets (2014)
My Life as a Courgette a.k.a. My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
13 Tzameti (2005)
13 (2010)
In Absentia (2000)
Eraserhead (1977)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Skeletons (2010)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Alien (1979)
Festen a.k.a. The Celebration (1998)
Abigail’s Party (1977)
Der Samurai (2014)
Under The Skin (2013)
Strasbourg 1518 (2020)
The Fall (2019)
The Wicker Man (1973)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
I Live in Fear (1955)
Drunken Angel (1948)
Throne of Blood (1957)
High and Low (1963)
Godzilla (1954)
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Possession (1981)
G.I. Blues (1960)
King Creole (1958)
Léolo (1992)
Other Notable Items
War and Peace miniseries (2016)
Giuseppe Tornatore
The Crown TV series (2016- )
Masterpiece Theatre TV series (1971- )
Upstairs Downstairs TV series (1971-1975)
Monty Python’s Flying Circus...
- 7/28/2020
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Lucinda Williams isn’t into appointment songwriting. She stays up late, wakes up even later, and writes when the spirit moves her. She also holds on to everything: a possible lyric scribbled on a piece of paper here, a song title in a notebook there. Williams turned 67 in January, moved from L.A. to Nashville, and finally got organized.
“I put them all into files and named each one,” says Williams, calling from her new house in Nashville, which she shares with her husband, collaborator, and manager, Tom Overby. “I...
“I put them all into files and named each one,” says Williams, calling from her new house in Nashville, which she shares with her husband, collaborator, and manager, Tom Overby. “I...
- 5/11/2020
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
While Akira Kurosawa did not always have the highest opinion of his 1949 effort “Stray Angel”, as he thought it was “too technical”, there is no doubt that his first collaboration with screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima has its rightful place among the great films made by the director (he would also change his opinion on the film later on in his life). Loosely based on an unpublished novel by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, it can be seen as a precursor for his later detective dramas such as “High and Low”. As with many of his features of that time, “Stray Dog” is also a portrayal of post-war Japan, of the deep wounds left by the war and the structure of its society which is revealed to a police officer after the loss of his gun.
After some practice on the shooting range with his colleagues, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro...
After some practice on the shooting range with his colleagues, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro...
- 5/10/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
On the April 8, 2020 Episode of /Film Daily, Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, senior writer Ben Pearson and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to discuss what they’ve been up to at the Water Cooler. Opening Banter: Brad is out sick today. At The Water Cooler: What […]
The post Water Cooler: Onward, The Platform, Happy Death Day, Better Call Saul, Sanjuro, Drunken Angel, The Mask of Zorro, The Count of Monte Cristo appeared first on /Film.
The post Water Cooler: Onward, The Platform, Happy Death Day, Better Call Saul, Sanjuro, Drunken Angel, The Mask of Zorro, The Count of Monte Cristo appeared first on /Film.
- 4/8/2020
- by Peter Sciretta
- Slash Film
by Vikram Zutshi
When Akira Kurosawa passed away in 1998, the tributes poured in endlessly. He had been a major influence on some of the most important directors in the history of cinema. It is not enough to say that Kurosawa was a legend. At the time of his demise, he was a colossus whose myth had inspired a number of artists considered legends in their own right. Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Coppola and George Lucas have all cited Kurosawa as one of their greatest influences.
“Let me say it simply” declared Martin Scorsese, “Akira Kurosawa was my master, and … the master of so many other filmmakers over the years.” Federico Fellini called him “the greatest example of all that an author of cinema should be” and Steven Spielberg declared “I have learned more from him than from almost any other filmmaker on the face of the earth.
When Akira Kurosawa passed away in 1998, the tributes poured in endlessly. He had been a major influence on some of the most important directors in the history of cinema. It is not enough to say that Kurosawa was a legend. At the time of his demise, he was a colossus whose myth had inspired a number of artists considered legends in their own right. Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Coppola and George Lucas have all cited Kurosawa as one of their greatest influences.
“Let me say it simply” declared Martin Scorsese, “Akira Kurosawa was my master, and … the master of so many other filmmakers over the years.” Federico Fellini called him “the greatest example of all that an author of cinema should be” and Steven Spielberg declared “I have learned more from him than from almost any other filmmaker on the face of the earth.
- 3/23/2020
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
Just before Christmas, Jesse Malin and Lucinda Williams teamed up to perform Malin’s latest album Sunset Kids in its entirety at a concert at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. Williams co-produced the album with Tom Overby and the performance marked the first time that the Americana queen and Malin, a fixture on the New York rock and punk scene, played the LP in full.
Despite the late night — the gig spanned 26 songs in full, including Williams’ “Drunken Angel” and “Changed the Locks” — Malin and Williams reunited early the next...
Despite the late night — the gig spanned 26 songs in full, including Williams’ “Drunken Angel” and “Changed the Locks” — Malin and Williams reunited early the next...
- 12/28/2019
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
One of the many consequences of the American occupation in Japan after WWII was the resurgence of Yakuza, particularly in areas where Us naval bases were situated, with its members profiting significantly from the black market, which was a direct result of the food rationing the occupational forces have decreed. Basing his script on a novel by Kazu Otsuka, Shohei Imamura uses the aforementioned setting to place the story of “Pigs and Battleships” in the small fishing port of Yokosuka, in an effort that went so much over budget that Nikkatsu decided to ban him from shooting movies for two years.
“Pigs and Battleships” is screening at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival 2019
The story takes place mostly around the red light district and the docks of the area, where the two main protagonists, Kinta and Haruko, try to build a future together, against all odds. Kinta is a low-level...
“Pigs and Battleships” is screening at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival 2019
The story takes place mostly around the red light district and the docks of the area, where the two main protagonists, Kinta and Haruko, try to build a future together, against all odds. Kinta is a low-level...
- 9/21/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The fourth annual Outlaw Country Cruise set sail this week from Tampa for the Bahamas, but for the 2,500 or so rabid fans onboard, the Norwegian Pearl could have just circled Tampa Bay — these folks were here for the tunes. Presented by cruise promoter Sixthman in conjunction with SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel, OCC4 boasted one of the journey’s most strong and varied lineups yet, with Lucinda Williams, Drive-By Truckers and Margo Price all headlining. From surprise jam sessions to special screenings of upcoming country-music documentaries and even an episode of cruise favorite Squidbillies,...
- 2/1/2019
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Lucinda Williams and her loose three-piece band have just kicked into “Right in Time,” the lead-off track to her 1998 breakthrough album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and the venue is, quite literally, rocking. Williams is somewhere in the Atlantic onboard the fourth installment of the Outlaw Country Cruise and as the ship bounces back and forth through some choppy water, the song is proving to be well-suited to the moment, her famously woozy voice matching the vessel’s uneasy sway.
Williams, who turned 66 on Saturday, has been celebrating the...
Williams, who turned 66 on Saturday, has been celebrating the...
- 1/29/2019
- by Joseph Hudak
- Rollingstone.com
Lucinda Williams had been knocking around the music business for two decades by the time she released Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in the summer of 1998. By that point she had released four other solo albums, but she was still best known as the writer behind the Mary Chapin Carpenter hit “Passionate Kisses.” It was a time when country was going in an aggressively pop direction thanks to the enormous success of Shania Twain’s Come On Over, and Top 40 was just beginning to be consumed by the likes...
- 11/2/2018
- by Andy Greene
- Rollingstone.com
“Red Beard” is a film that reminds one that the distance to be travelled is far longer than the distance that was already covered. Not only in the case of medical studies, which happened to be the professional field of the protagonist of the movie, but also in the whole gamut of activities of all people in this world: in their professions, in arts, in sports, in literature, in studies, in knowledge and in case of anything and everything, the unknown is several times more than the known and is spread like a vast ocean. This realisation is the essence of this Kurosawa Movie.
Buy This Title
Most humans are trapped in the notion that there is nothing more there to know and everything about them is perfect. It is nothing but a by-product of a form of emotional weakness. When the world is shrinking to one’s own self,...
Buy This Title
Most humans are trapped in the notion that there is nothing more there to know and everything about them is perfect. It is nothing but a by-product of a form of emotional weakness. When the world is shrinking to one’s own self,...
- 10/26/2018
- by Joby Varghese
- AsianMoviePulse
Never heard of Blaze Foley? You’re not alone. So why would Ethan Hawke decide to direct a film about a country singer and songwriter who died at 39 after a flirtation with fame that went nowhere? Maybe for just that very reason. Right up until that day in 1989 when he took a fatal gunshot to the chest from the son of a friend, Foley was making his own kind of music, this time in a dive bar in Austin, Texas called the Outhouse. Hawke keeps coming back to that recording,...
- 9/4/2018
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
A quintessential Americana artist before such a thing existed, Blaze Foley’s songs were, at various turns, plaintive, hilarious and darkly intense. Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett and John Prine were among those who recorded his songs, while Lucinda Williams and Townes Van Zandt wrote odes to Foley. And future Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich once reportedly referred to him as his “own Bob Dylan.” Yet, between two indisputable facts there is little about Foley that hasn’t been shrouded in mystery and duct-taped together in mythical fashion. These are...
- 8/31/2018
- by Stephen L. Betts
- Rollingstone.com
To see Ben Dickey at all is to spot him from a country mile away. The 41-year-old musician is milling about something called the Gibson Showroom in Austin, a sort of multi-purpose space decorated in vigorous 21st-century guitar chic, and clocking in well over six feet tall, the Little Rock, Arkansas, native dominates whatever square footage he is in. The dude is big, and a little husky. But you wouldn’t call him intimidating. In fact, when you watch Dickey in Blaze, Ethan Hawke’s semi-biopic about singer-songwriter Blaze Foley...
- 8/25/2018
- by Joe Gross
- Rollingstone.com
Even Blaze Foley’s closest friends didn’t know much about him. The eccentric, burly Texas songwriter – who wrote country classics such as “If I Could Only Fly” and “Clay Pigeons” before he was shot dead at 39 years old in 1989 – was known to embellish the story of his background, and his death was clouded in mystery. “I heard he got shot at the unemployment office taking a bullet for another homeless guy,” says Ethan Hawke. “I remember waxing poetic about that one night. . . . Then we found out that’s actually not true.
- 8/1/2018
- by Patrick Doyle
- Rollingstone.com
In the upcoming Ethan Hawke-directed film Blaze, musician and first-time actor Ben Dickey pulls off nothing short of an astonishing feat as he inhabits the lead role of singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. A character steeped in myth and legend long before a blast from a .22 rifle ended his life at just 39 years old on January 31st, 1989, Foley has been paid posthumous tribute in song (Lucinda Williams’ “Drunken Angel”), and his songs, including “If I Could Only Fly” and “Clay Pigeons” have been covered, respectively, by Merle Haggard and John Prine,...
- 7/25/2018
- by Stephen L. Betts
- Rollingstone.com
Above: a 1959 West German poster for Rashomon (1950) by Hans Hillmann and a 1960 Polish poster for Drunken Angel (1948) by Wladyslaw Janiszewski.If you are lucky enough to be in Tokyo this summer you have a treat in store at the newly renamed National Film Archive of Japan (formerly the National Film Center at the National Museum of Modern Art). Kurosawa Travels around the World: The Masterworks in Posters from the Collection of Toshifumi Makita is an exhibition of 84 posters from 30 different countries for 25 different films and is a glorious testament to the global appeal of the films of Akira Kurosawa. As the exhibition foreward says, “Kurosawa often said that ‘film is a kind of international plaza,’ where people from every country—beyond Europe and North America—can come together. We hope you enjoy these dynamic and audacious interpretations of his films by designers and painters from each country focusing on the...
- 6/29/2018
- MUBI
When you see Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, which opened in a limited run and will go wide this weekend, you will undoubtedly be bowled over by the sheer imagination and technical chops on display. You will thrill to the extraordinary stop-motion animation – the director's first return to the form since his 2009 near-masterpiece Fantastic Mr. Fox – which not only makes sure each strand of fur seems tactile but lets you see the soul behind its canine characters' eyes. You may shudder at the way the movie portrays a futuristic dystopia in which,...
- 3/27/2018
- Rollingstone.com
Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” is officially less than one month away from opening in select theaters, and if the ecstatic first reviews out of the Berlin Film Festival weren’t enough to get you excited, then the official soundtrack reveal certainly should. In addition to Alexandre Desplat’s original score, the “Isle of Dogs” soundtrack includes songs used by none other than Akira Kurosawa in films like “Seven Samurai” and “Drunken Angels.”
Anderson had said form the very beginning that Kurosawa would be a heavy influence on his second stop-motion effort, and the official soundtrack really takes that to heart. Desplat’s involvement on the soundtrack is featured prominently. “Isle of Dogs” marks the fourth collaboration between the director and the composer following “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Desplat won the Oscar for the latter in 2015 and was nominated for “Fantastic Mr. Fox...
Anderson had said form the very beginning that Kurosawa would be a heavy influence on his second stop-motion effort, and the official soundtrack really takes that to heart. Desplat’s involvement on the soundtrack is featured prominently. “Isle of Dogs” marks the fourth collaboration between the director and the composer following “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Desplat won the Oscar for the latter in 2015 and was nominated for “Fantastic Mr. Fox...
- 2/28/2018
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
In their feature films, directors Josh and Ben Safdie have always walked a fine line between fact and fiction. Not quite documentaries and not quite traditional narratives, their work takes on an air of alarming spontaneity, threatening to jump off the screen at you. Between Daddy Longlegs and Heaven Knows What, the Safdies captured a gorgeously grainy snapshot of their home city of New York, both painfully truthful and deeply impacting.
Their latest, Good Time, returns to New York City, this time bringing a pulp edge to their naturalistic aesthetic. After a botched bank robbery lands his brother Nick (Ben Safdie) in jail, Constantine (Robert Pattinson) is forced out of Queens into the city to bring his brother home, at any cost.
Our review describes Good Time as “in parts a heist movie (iconic masks included) and a chase movie, but not an homage in any sense — more an evolution,...
Their latest, Good Time, returns to New York City, this time bringing a pulp edge to their naturalistic aesthetic. After a botched bank robbery lands his brother Nick (Ben Safdie) in jail, Constantine (Robert Pattinson) is forced out of Queens into the city to bring his brother home, at any cost.
Our review describes Good Time as “in parts a heist movie (iconic masks included) and a chase movie, but not an homage in any sense — more an evolution,...
- 8/14/2017
- by Tony Hinds
- The Film Stage
Over the course of his legendary acting career, Toshiro Mifune was a samurai, a stray dog, and a shoe tycoon. He was a muse for one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th Century, a beacon for Japanese cinema, and a howling ambassador for the entire country and its culture. He was a feral force of nature who prized combustion over control, a wild gust of wind whose energy only a precious few collaborators knew how to harness. He was even, according to his daughter, almost Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The one thing that Toshiro Mifune wasn’t — wasn’t even capable of being — was boring. At least not on screen. At least not until now.
A thin, dull, and by-the-numbers biography that fails to capture its subject’s irrepressible spirit or properly contextualize his importance, Steven Okazaki’s “Mifune: The Last Samurai” might have made for a solid bonus feature on a Criterion Collection DVD,...
The one thing that Toshiro Mifune wasn’t — wasn’t even capable of being — was boring. At least not on screen. At least not until now.
A thin, dull, and by-the-numbers biography that fails to capture its subject’s irrepressible spirit or properly contextualize his importance, Steven Okazaki’s “Mifune: The Last Samurai” might have made for a solid bonus feature on a Criterion Collection DVD,...
- 11/25/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Mifune: The Last Samurai, the well-assembled documentary on the life of actor Toshirô Mifune, the long-time Akira Kurosawa collaborator, should be a worthy introduction to one of Japanese cinema’s greatest icons, if a little light on more revelatory findings. With a softly-spoken narration by Keanu Reeves and talking heads from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, as well as the sons of both Mifune and Kurosawa, Mifune offers a personal and professional tribute to an actor who reinvented the hero for a post-World War II age.
Mifune, the preeminent Japanese actor of his generation, had starring roles in some of the iconic samurai movies of the country’s golden age – including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Yojimbo – and influenced a host of American icons from Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name to Darth Vader (Mifune was supposedly offered Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars). Director...
Mifune, the preeminent Japanese actor of his generation, had starring roles in some of the iconic samurai movies of the country’s golden age – including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Yojimbo – and influenced a host of American icons from Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name to Darth Vader (Mifune was supposedly offered Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars). Director...
- 10/20/2016
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
Some actors and directors go together like spaghetti and meatballs. They just gel together in a rare way that makes their collaborations special. Here is a list of the seven best parings of director and actor in film history.
7: Tim Burton & Johnny Depp:
Edward Scissorhands; Ed Wood; Sleepy Hollow; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Corpse Bride; Sweeney Todd; Alice in Wonderland; Dark Shadows
Of all the parings on this list, these two make the oddest films. (In a good way.) Tim Burton is one of the most visually imaginative filmmakers of his generation and Johnny Depp was once the polymorphous master of playing a wide variety of eccentric characters. They were a natural combo. Depp made most of his best films with Burton, before his current ‘Jack Sparrow’ period began. The duo had the knack for telling stories about misfits and freaks, yet making them seem sympathetic and likable.
7: Tim Burton & Johnny Depp:
Edward Scissorhands; Ed Wood; Sleepy Hollow; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Corpse Bride; Sweeney Todd; Alice in Wonderland; Dark Shadows
Of all the parings on this list, these two make the oddest films. (In a good way.) Tim Burton is one of the most visually imaginative filmmakers of his generation and Johnny Depp was once the polymorphous master of playing a wide variety of eccentric characters. They were a natural combo. Depp made most of his best films with Burton, before his current ‘Jack Sparrow’ period began. The duo had the knack for telling stories about misfits and freaks, yet making them seem sympathetic and likable.
- 9/5/2016
- by feeds@cinelinx.com (Rob Young)
- Cinelinx
“Japan’S Unsung Acting Genius”
By Raymond Benson
The works of famed director Akira Kurosawa are mostly associated with the samurai film—pictures set in the time of feudal Japan, and usually starring the brilliant actor Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, among others). However, Kurosawa made other kinds of movies that are probably not as well known in the West except to film historians and true cinephiles—and fans of the excellent DVD and Blu-ray label, The Criterion Collection. Some of Kurosawa’s early work was made up of film noir gangster and crime pictures (e.g., Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well), but also, surprisingly, heartfelt social dramas set in contemporary Japan—about ordinary people. Ikiru is one of the latter, and it’s a movie that Roger Ebert once called Kurosawa’s “greatest film.”
Ikiru is set in Tokyo in the early fifties.
By Raymond Benson
The works of famed director Akira Kurosawa are mostly associated with the samurai film—pictures set in the time of feudal Japan, and usually starring the brilliant actor Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, among others). However, Kurosawa made other kinds of movies that are probably not as well known in the West except to film historians and true cinephiles—and fans of the excellent DVD and Blu-ray label, The Criterion Collection. Some of Kurosawa’s early work was made up of film noir gangster and crime pictures (e.g., Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well), but also, surprisingly, heartfelt social dramas set in contemporary Japan—about ordinary people. Ikiru is one of the latter, and it’s a movie that Roger Ebert once called Kurosawa’s “greatest film.”
Ikiru is set in Tokyo in the early fifties.
- 12/2/2015
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Yoidore tenshi / Drunken Angel (1948) Direction: Akira Kurosawa Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Keinosuke Uekusa Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Reisaburo Yamamoto, Michiyo Kogure, Chieko Nakakita By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: Watching Akira Kurosawa’s 1948 black-and-white effort Yoidore Tenshi / Drunken Angel is an interesting experience, for he clearly had not mastered the art form, yet. Even so, there is so much that is good in Drunken Angel — touches that would become great in just a few years. It’s like looking at a fetus and seeing distinguishable characteristics of its parents, though none is fully formed. Additionally, the same could be said of the director’s budding partnership with leading man Toshiro Mifune, partly because Mifune is not the film's main character. After all, the 'drunken angel' is played by Takashi Shimura, one of the best actors in film history – just watch Ikiru – and Kurosawa’s leading male actor until Mifune asserted [...]...
- 11/13/2010
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
The Aviator team of Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and screenwriter John Logan are in early negotiations to develop a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1948 classic Drunken Angel for Warner Bros. Pictures. DiCaprio is attached to star in the picture, which would be produced by Barbara DeFina with Scorsese and DiCaprio through the latter's Appian Way production shingle, which is based at Initial Entertainment Group. Logan would pen the project, which is being discussed as a potential directing vehicle for Scorsese. Kurosawa's film, which was set in postwar Japan, centered on a young criminal who is being treated for tuberculosis by an alcoholic doctor.
- 2/10/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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