According to Blu-ray.com, Optimum Home Entertainment will release Ran on Blu-ray on September 28. The UK release may be region-locked to Blu-ray region B. A discussion topic at Blu-ray.com forums More...
Would you be interested in seeing some twenty thousand pages of Kurosawa’s screenplays, photos, storyboards, drawings, notes, newspaper clippings, personal scribblings and other materials? If yes, head to the Akira More...
Criterion has announced an August 18 release for a blu-ray edition of Kagemusha. In terms of extras, the blu-ray edition is an exact copy of Criterion’s double DVD release. More information about the release can be found on Criterion’s product page.
New York Times film critic A.O. Scott has recorded a three-and-a-half-minute piece on Ran under his “Critics’ Picks” series. The video can be seen at YouTube. Although just a very More...
According to the Hokkaido Shimbun Press, a horse that formerly belonged to Kurosawa passed away on March 19. The horse, called Yumego, was 33 years old. According to the article, the American born horse appeared in Kagemusha and Ran, and after Kurosawa’s death was presented to the town of Ozora where Dreams was partly filmed.
Some forum talk has indicated that Criterion may have lost their rights to Ran. If true, this means that the DVD release is now out of print, and the planned More...
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has announced its 2010 lineup, which will also be the festival’s 75th season of Shakespeare productions. Among the more typical Shakespeare productions prepared for next year’s More...
So, Criterion’s new Dodesukaden came out earlier this week, and the reviews have been coming in accordingly. Below, you will find a handful of (semi-)professional reviews of the DVD release. More...
According to IMDb, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have recorded “emotional video messages” for the Cherry Blossom Gala in Los Angeles, which celebrates Kurosawa’s 99th birthday and the opening of the new Akira Kurosawa film school in Anaheim.
I’m a bit behind with this (not the only such thing (but I’ll try to catch up once I get back home later this week)), but it seems that the More...
Remaking Kurosawa: Translations and Permutations in Global Cinema is the title of a forthcoming Akira Kurosawa book written by Dr Dolores Martinez from the University of London School of Oriental More...
It’s official: Criterion’s first Blu-ray Kurosawa will be Ran. The single disc release will be available on 12 May 2009, and based on what I see on the product page, More...
Guardian reports that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s visitor centre at Stratford-upon-Avon is preparing a Hall of Fame dedicated to performers, directors and artists who were inspired by Shakespeare and championed More...
On December 11th, 2008 the Oxford English Dictionary went through its latest update, this one concentrating on the words within the range from ran to reamy. Among the new entries More...
According to a press release made available today, Anaheim University is to open what they call the Akira Kurosawa School of Film. The online programme is to launch on March More...
Whether this is connected to the rumoured Jim Sheridan remake of Ikiru, I do not know, but it has come to my attention that Stone Village Pictures, together with Dreamworks More...
Hiroyuki Nakano, who according to reports masterminded a Pachinko version of Seven Samurai last summer, is approaching the Kurosawa territory again with his next movie, Tajomaru. According to Tokyograph, the More...
So far, the only high definition Kurosawa release is the French HD-DVD version of Ran, released in 2007. This is, however, about to change in February with a range of More...
The Akira Kurosawa Online Film Club starts 2009 with the mouth watering offering of Seven Samurai, perhaps Kurosawa’s most well known work. The 1954 film, about a group of samurai More...
One of the many great things about running Akira Kurosawa NID is that I am time to time contacted by interesting people with connections to Kurosawa. Yesterday, I received a More...
Criterion has decided to give out its Christmas gifts early this year, with the company announcing the release of Dodesukaden on March 17th next year. After a few less than More...
The first of the AK100 events seems to already have started (actually not: see update below), with the exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris. Here is a short description More...
Variety reports that the often mentioned Hollywood remake of High and Low is once again moving forward, with Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, most recently Charlie More...
This year’s Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award has been given to Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov and Chen Kaige at the Tokyo Film Festival. The recipients were chosen by a panel that included costume designer and Akira Kurosawa’s daughter Kazuko Kurosawa. Variety has more about the recipients’ reactions.
UK’s Optimum Releasing is putting out a new Region 2 edition of Rashomon, coming out on October 13. Amazon.co.uk takes pre-orders (£11.98), while the film is also available from Optimum’s More...
A new Japanese DVD release of After the Rain appears to be on its way, with Amazon.co.jp indicating an October 24 release. In case you have no idea what I More...
What is perhaps the best of a sorry lot, Kino International’s Dersu Uzala DVD (Region 1) will be re-released on December 9 as part of a “Great Directors” box set. More...
Some further tiny news bits: An adaptation of Samurai 7, based on Seven Samurai, will be staged at the Shinjuku Koma Stadium in Tokyo in November this year. (source) Meanwhile, More...
To round up this week’s Akira Kurosawa related news, here’s two lighter news items: Kin Sugai, who over the years appeared in five Kurosawa films with minor roles (in High More...
Continuing with the AK100 related news (see my previous post), it has also been announced that Kurosawa Production together with Japan’s Lotus, America’s Lexicon Film Entertainment and Harbor Light Entertainment, More...
The AK100 project now seems to have an international website called AK100 World Tour. I must say that I am not fully certain how I personally feel about it. In More...
Listen to the World blog reports that the Japanese musician Yoshiki is lined up for the AK100 (Kurosawa’s 100th birthday) celebrations in 2010. The article does not say much (perhaps More...
Geeks of Doom has published an interview with screenwriter John Fusco, and although the bulk of the article centres on The Forbidden Kingdom, they also talk about the Seven Samurai More...
With Blu-ray having won the “high definition format war” last spring, and Criterion now finally starting to put out their Blu-ray releases, there has been discussion whether it makes any More...
The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has completed a digital restoration project to clean up Rashomon, and will be premiering the new print at the Samuel Goldwyn More...
The copyright saga about Kurosawa’s pre-1952 movies seems to have come to an end yesterday with a Japanese Intellectual Property High Court ruling that establishes the Tokyo District Court’s September More...
It is the first of August, which in Film Club terms means the beginning for the discussion of Kurosawa’s 1949 movie Stray Dog (”Nora inu”). While Stray Dog is considered More...
It seems that, somewhat out of the blue, a new Seven Samurai remake has been released in Japan. The film was directed by Hiroyuki Nakano (Samurai Fiction), and stars an More...
Criterion’s double-disc re-release of High and Low should now be available for purchase. Amazon.com stocks the item for $27.99. The release has received a very positive response from DVD critics. More...
DVD Beaver, who we know for excellent technical reviews of DVD releases, has given Criterion’s new High and Low disc a look, and updated their High and Low page. It More...
DVD Town has published what I think is the first review to surface for Criterion’s new double disc edition of High and Low, to be released on the 22nd of More...
So, July is here (has actually already been for a couple of days) and it is therefore time to turn our Film Club’s attention to Yojimbo. Consequently, and as always, More...
New York’s WNYC radio has recorded an interview with Tatsuya Nakadai, who is currently in the city for a Nakadai retrospective that celebrates his career. The 20-minute interview briefly touches More...
In the past couple of days there have been a few smaller Kurosawa related news bits that I have decided to put together into one news post. So, here we More...
Criterion continues their process of updating some of their oldest Kurosawa releases. Next in line is High and Low, which will get a new treatment on a double disc set More...
The “Thompson on Hollywood” blog on Variety reports about the latest developments with The Weinstein Co.’s Asian Film Fund. While most of the article is about The Forbidden Kingdom, the More...
Nikkei News has an article on The Last Princess, which as most readers should by now know is a remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress to be released in Japan More...
Screenwriter John Fusco has talked briefly to SciFi Wire about the Seven Samurai remake that he is currently working on under the Weinstein Co. He is quoted in the article More...
Some time ago I mentioned the “AK100 Project” initiative, which is set to begin later this year in order to celebrate and remember Kurosawa through “exhibitions of Kurosawa’s work, newly More...
Those of you in Tokyo at the end of the month may not want to miss an event that the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan is organizing on the 31st More...
While trying to find more information about the recent press announcement regarding unfinished Kurosawa footage, I stumbled upon a Japan Today article from December 29 last year. The article in More...
The Screen Daily correspondent Jason Gray writes in his blog about a Kurosawa Production press conference, according to which footage from an unfinished 1983 documentary by Kurosawa, as well as More...
Criterion’s February 2008 newsletter has a “top ten Criterions” list from the Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch. Four of the ten films on his list are Kurosawa titles, with Seven More...
According to the official website, the DVD for Yoshimitsu Morita’s remake of Sanjuro will be out on 23 May, 2008. The release will have two different versions, a basic DVD More...
As Master Thief pointed out a few days ago in the comments to Amazon’s new Kurosawa offerings, the Australian Madman Entertainment’s Eastern Eye series put out a host of new More...
The Amazon.com exclusive Criterion Collection Director Series: Akira Kurosawa that I wrote about recently turns out to consist of Criterion’s new version of Yojimbo, Seven Samurai and Sanjuro (as well More...
January 7 quietly saw the All Regions DVD release of Rashomon by a company called Triad Productions. Based on the item description on the Amazon website, according to which the More...
Reviews of the Postwar Kurosawa set have started to fly in. As usual, DVD Talk gives us a good general overview of the box set, while the DVD Beaver review More...
The Hidden Fortress remake now has a teaser trailer that can be viewed on the official website. It of course doesn’t reveal all that much about the finer details, but More...
The Indian film company Palador Pictures has announced the release of an Akira Kurosawa DVD Box Set comprising five of the director’s best known films. The box set is exclusively More...
University Press of Mississippi’s book Akira Kurosawa: Interviews has been published and is now available for purchase. The listed retail price is $20, but Amazon.com currently sells the 224 page More...
Thanks to a tip from a reader (whose name I’m not all that certain about, but I’d guess either “Christopher” or “Julie”!), I’ve found out that Amazon.com now lists a More...
The guys over at DVD Beaver have taken a look at the new Drunken Angel from Criterion. They compare the print to BFI’s Region 2 release, and note that the More...
Stuart Galbraith IV has written yet another excellent review of a Kurosawa DVD for DVD Talk, this time for the to-be-released Drunken Angel by Criterion. His assessment of Criterion’s latest More...
Variety has an article about the new Hidden Fortress remake that was announced by Toho. The article adds the following to what we already know: In a departure from the More...
Since many of you can’t probably keep up with all the Kurosawa remakes that are happening at the moment, I decided to compile a list of titles in planning or More...
Tokyo Graph reports that a remake of The Hidden Fortress is on its way. Directed by the special effects specialist turned director Shinji Higuchi, the movie will star Jun Matsumoto, More...
It has been announced that Criterion, as part of its new Eclipse series, is releasing a Kurosawa collection that gathers some of the director’s less available works from the immediate More...
Yume Pictures has released a Region 2 DVD of Madadayo. This is very good news for those in Europe, as there has so far been no viable option for an More...
Criterion has set November as a release date for a Drunken Angel DVD. Newly digitally restored, the film comes with a 30-minute commentary by Donald Richie, a 30-minute “making of” More...
The second poster for Yoshimitsu Morita’s remake of Kurosawa’s Tsubaki Sanjuro has been made available on the movie’s official website. Here it is: A bigger version can be seen at the official site. As the poster points out, the film is to be released on December 1st. Thanks to Twitch for the heads-up.
The Weinstein Company has announced three new DVD labels with one of them, the Miriam Collection, being devoted to “restorations, prestige and foreign pics”. The first title to be released More...
The Message from Akira Kurosawa: For Beautiful Movies has now been uploaded to YouTube in its entirety. I am not entirely sure what to make of this in terms of More...
University Press of Mississippi has been kind enough to provide me a copy of the table of contents to be included in the Akira Kurosawa: Interviews book that I wrote More...
In December 2007, University Press of Mississippi will publish a book titled Akira Kurosawa: Interviews. The 224-page book, available both in hard cover and paperback, will be made available as More...
Someone seems to have uploaded to Youtube two chapters from the A Message from Akira Kurosawa: For Beautiful Movies interview series that was done in the early 1990s. These are More...
The Japanese television network TV Asahi is reportedly currently filming a TV remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1952 movie Ikiru. Production of the television drama, which stars the popular kabuki More...
Yet another somewhat cryptic message has been posted over at YouTube regarding the making-of footage shot during the filming of Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’. Do take a look.
deconstruct notes at the forum that Variety has slightly more information about the reported lawsuit Toho launched on Monday against Cosmo Contents at the Tokyo District Court regarding the company’s More...
I have finished an update regarding the website design. Now, you may ask “why bother?” or “what was wrong with the old design?”. Well, there was nothing terribly wrong with More...
Thanks to Master Thief, I have corrected an error on the “Akira Kurosawa’s Movies on DVD” page — the BFI release of High and Low is 2.35:1, not 2.55:1 More...
May 2nd, 2007 will see the Region 4 DVD release of Sanshiro Sugata II by Eastern Eye. Unless they have completely messed up the release, this DVD should become the More...
Noel Megahey at DVD Times has reviewed the region-free release of Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala by Artificial Eye. While I personally think that the film review makes a little bit More...
Studio Canal seems to be about to release a High Definition (HD) DVD of Kurosawa’s Ran on March 5th, 2007. I may be wrong here, but this might just be More...
Master Thief has kindly brought to my attention the fact that March 7th, 2007 will see the release of two region 4 Akira Kurosawa DVDs from the Australian company Madman More...
As reported earlier, Japanese movies made before 1953 are in public domain. The Internet Archive, which archives Internet and multimedia resources, has now added a downloadable version of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. More...
Someone has recently posted a 5-minute long video on YouTube that shows behind-the-scenes activity from the shooting of Kurosawa’s late classic movie Ran. As the documentary-like film plays, and narrator More...
This is just a reminder to those of you who live in the US that Criterion’s new Yojimbo and Sanjuro DVDs will be available on Tuesday. The new high More...
There is a word going around that BFI, which has put out several quality releases of Kurosawa’s movies, is considering releasing Dodesukaden, The Most Beautiful, They Who Tread on The More...
Miki Odagiri, who played Toyo Odagiri (the girl in Watanabe’s office) in Ikiru is reported to have passed away on the 28th of November. She was 76 years of age, More...
Here’s little something I took a photo of last summer when in Cannes, and remembered only now. For those who do not know, the pedestrian areas in the park More...
As most of you probably know, Kagemusha comes in a number of lengths, most importantly the original Japanese 179 minute version, and the so-called “International Cut” that runs for 162 More...
Like some of the online streams of Kurosawa’s movies that I have liked to recently, the following will be something that is strictly speaking not entirely legal. Bear that in More...
Microsoft’s new gaming console XBox 360 apparently comes with an online downloads store, one part of which is the so-called XBox Live Video service that allows users to rent digital More...
I was just reading through last month’s posts on the IMDb’s Kurosawa forum, and saw a link to this Criterion Collection discussion forum, which lists the titles expected to be More...
Someone has uploaded Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Sanjuro and Yojimbo to vidiLife, a service much like Youtube. While the earlier Google Video versions of Sanshiro Sugata and Rashomon may or may More...
Optimum Releasing is putting out a new region 2 DVD version of Ran on November 20 this year. MovieMail.co.uk indicates that the double disc release will include the documentary “A.K.” by Chris Marker, but does not seem to have any of the other extras present in the region 1 Criterion Collection DVD.
20th Century Fox is putting out a new region 2 release of Kagemusha under their ‘Cinema Reserve’ series. The double DVD is to be released on November 27. The More...
We have not yet properly managed to get over the brilliance of Criterion’s Seven Samurai, and now the company is putting out information about their upcoming Yojimbo and Sanjuro More...
My personal DVD website of choice, DVD Times, has published a review of Criterion’s Seven Samurai, and like all the reviews before it praises the DVD set as not More...
Update: These films are now available with English subtitles. Some of you may remember my earlier post about pre-1953 Japanese films being in public domain. While I am still a More...
This somehow almost slipped past my radar unnoticed. While we were all concentrated on Criterion’s Seven Samurai release, BCI/Ronin entertainment has meanwhile put out a DVD of The Quiet More...
September 12th marks the Cinema Day in Iran, and this year it is Akira Kurosawa who will be honoured at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall. Some of Kurosawa’s colleagues will give speeches on their memories of the late director, as well as reflecting on his cinematic style and technique. There will also be an exhibition of posters and manuscripts. Source: Mehrnews
DVD Verdict has reviewed Criterion’s new Seven Samurai release and given it full points. Includes some screenshots. You can read the review here
The new region 1 Criterion version of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which spans three whole DVDs, is going to be relesed on September 5th. DVD Talk has taken a look More...
An exhibition of Akira Kurosawa’s paintings opened yesterday at the Meguro Gajoen centre in Tokyo. The event, which lasts until the 13th of August this year, is titled “Hundred-stepped Stairway More...
Malaysia Star quotes Donnie Yen, who in a press conference yesterday confirmed that the Weinstein Company’s project for a Hollywood remake of Seven Samurai is still in its very early More...
The Japan film news blog Ryuganji reported today that a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 film Tsubaki Sanjuro (or “Sanjuro” in English) is being prepared in Japan. The film, which More...
Update: Copyright law is complicated, and it now seems that Kurosawa is still very much under copyright. See this news item. Original post: News are emerging that a Tokyo District More...
Further details about Criterion’s Seven Samurai restoration process have emerged. See this Livejournal entry for details. Criterion appears to have gone all the way to preserve the film, so kudos to them for that.
On September the 5th this year Criterion will release a new edition of Seven Samurai, and this one looks like it will finally be the definite one. Certainly better than More...
Reports are flying in that John Fusco has been attached to write the script for the much-talked-about Seven Samurai remake. The choice is not entirely odd considering that Fusco has More...
Guardian Unlimited’s film section adds to the ‘Seven Samurai’ rumours by noting that Zhang Ziyi “is reportedly interested in playing the part of a peasant girl who hides from bandits More...
A Twitchfilm article has pointed out that what Donnie Yen has actually said about his conversations with Harvey Weinstein at Cannes could be first of all interpreted as not necessarily referring to a Seven Samurai remake but a remake of some Kurosawa film in general, and secondly that nothing concrete really has yet been decided.
This comes a bit late, but as reported by Hoga News which in turn refers to a Japanese article found here, it appears that the confusion with the planned More...
Hong Kong’s The Standard reports that Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen is to star in the planned Hollywood remake of the Seven Samurai alongside George Clooney and Zhang Ziyi. The project, which has been around for years now, currently appears to be under the care of the Weinsteins.
This post marks the opening of this website. Some work still remains to be done, but as matters stand now, it is open for visitors. Note that I have also included links to some older DVD reviews of Kurosawa’s films, hence the news articles stretching back to 2001.
Mainichi Daily News reports that the Akira Kurosawa film school has closed without ever actually opening its doors.
Kurosawa Productions is opening a film school in Japan, with some of Kurosawa’s old regular actors, assistant directors, technicians, and other people who helped him to create his films involved. Here is the news article.
News