Word has come my way that The 8th Samurai (see earlier coverage here and here) has won the BEST of FEST award at the LA Shorts Fest. This is significant, More...
Do you ever have the feeling that Seven Samurai is a little bit everywhere these days? Well, with last year’s Japanese Pachinko remake, the Weinsteins reimagination project, Irvine Welsh’s soccer More...
NipponCinema.com has the first teaser trailer for Hiroyuki Nakano’s forthcoming film Tajomaru. As reported earlier, the film follows the adventures of the titular rogue from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In More...
Well, the first on the list is being remade by the author of the second, set in the world of the last mentioned. Yes, you read it right. Irvine Welsh More...
From first-time writer/director Justin Ambrosino comes The 8th Samurai, a 28 minute comedy about Nanshu, a struggling actor who finally seems to have made a break in the film industry More...
In an interview for Malaysia’s Star Online, John Woo who is currently promoting his latest film, the $80 million martial arts extravaganza Red Cliff, mentioned that at some point in More...
Daily Yomimuri Online has a review of the new Hidden Fortress remake The Last Princess. Unlike the Mark Schilling review that I linked to earlier today, the Daily Yomimuri piece, More...
The Japan Times’s Mark Schilling, who has written extensively on modern Japanese film, gave us the first verdict of last year’s remake of Sanjuro, and he is at it again More...
Before its official May 10 opening in Japan, The Last Princess (the new remake of The Hidden Fortress) will have its US premiere in Los Angeles. The screening will take More...
The second teaser trailer for Shinji Higuchi’s remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, renamed The Last Princess, has been made available on the updated official website. The trailer is also More...
Famed Japanese rocker Tomoyasu Hotei, RnB singer Kreva and bassist Seiji Kameda (of the band Tokyo Jihen) have been announced as working on the theme song for Shinji Higuchi’s remake More...
Shinji Higuchi’s remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress now has a full trailer, available on the official website, as well as at YouTube. The trailer seems to put into question More...
Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s In a Bamboo Grove has been dramatised for the radio by the BBC. The short story, of course, worked as the primary source text for Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I More...
The first poster for the Shinji Higuchi directed remake of The Hidden Fortress, set for release in Japan on May 10, 2008, has been posted online. As a fresh, and More...
Japan Times has a review of Tsubaki Sanjuro by Mark Schilling. Schilling gives the movie 3 out of 5 stars, summing it up with: ‘A four-word review of “Tsubaki Sanjuro” More...
Apparently, there is a metal band that goes by the name Akira Kurosawa. Hailing from Victoria, Australia, they have a MySpace page with three songs and two YouTube live videos More...
Yoshimitsu Morita’s remake of Sanjuro opened in Japan yesterday, and Daily Yomiuri online has already posted a review. As the title of the review (”Kurosawa remake avoids worst scenario”) suggests, More...
Just when you thought that all those rumours about the planned Seven Samurai remake had died down and disappeared, Reuters writes that the Weinstein Company has launched a $285 million More...
This apparently broke almost a month ago, but somehow it went past my radar — a TV remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) is in More...
The first teaser trailer for the new remake of Tsubaki Sanjuro has been made available online. The 30 second clip shows a few scenes that are familiar from Kurosawa’s original. More...
The official website for the forthcoming Japanese Tsubaki Sajuro remake has posted a third poster. This time the poster depicts Mutsuta’s wife and daughter on the background, with a somewhat Mifune-like expression on the lead actor Yuji Oda’s face. Whether he gets it right is up to you to decide… Once again, thanks for the heads-up go to Twitch.
Swiss artist Ralph Schraivogel has won the 9th Tehran International Poster Biennial with a work titled “Akira Kurosawa”. Unfortunately, at this point a picture of the poster does not seem to be available online. Some of Schraivogel’s earlier works can, however, be seen here and here.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, here is the first Tsubaki Sanjuro poster for the Japanese remake that will open later this year: A bigger version can be seen More...
In a recent online poll the Japanese DIMSDRIVE Research asked what domestic movies the Japanese participants would recommend to foreigners. Altogether 5,537 members answered the question, voting Seven Samurai the More...
This has somehow slipped past my radar, but let it be known now that last October the music labels Colossus and Musea presented a progressive rock album called The 7 More...
There is an IMDb page for a 2008 Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot) movie that appears to be a remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru. I More...
This morning I stumbled upon two movies that are in no way connected to one another, except for both taking their inspiration from Kurosawa’s Rashomon. One is an art film More...
The Boston Globe has a two-page article on Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, a musical originally inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and further developed from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s More...
There are two new (and unrelated) YouTube videos taking inspiration from Akira Kurosawa. The first one calls itself a horror version of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, although I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps a more interesting entry, then, is this paper-cut animated Sanshiro video, where you can relive the final battle from Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata. Well, sort of.
Someone has uploaded the full first episode of Samurai 7, the anime series based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, to YouTube. In case you have been wondering how well (or how More...
The New York based post-punk rock band The Rapture have announced the forming of their new record label, called Throne of Blood Records. The reference seems to be to Akira Kurosawa’s Kumonosu-jo, which is sometimes also called The Cobweb Castle in the English speaking world. For more information, see the full news at Pitchfork Media.
Toho held a press conference on Sunday for the new Sanjuro remake, which has already started filming and is to be released in Japan in December 2007. Very little new More...
It is perhaps somewhat irrelevant, but I thought I might mention it anyway. A recent Sydney Morning Herald article/interview with Robert Altman mentions that Altman admires Kurosawa’s films. The article More...
Sorry about the gigantic title. It has recently come to my attention that a (region 2) DVD is to be released later this month collecting some of the works submitted 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...
While some of us are horrified by the recent rumours about a Seven Samurai remake, it is good to remember that it would not be the first time Kurosawa’s films More...
In a press release available at Yahoo! Financial News, Moto Sakakibara, the writer-director of a forthcoming film and TV series Monster Samurai, is quoted mentioning Akira Kurosawa as one of his influences. In case you are interested in the project, you can read an introduction and see some pictures at Sprite Animation’s showcase page.
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