Seven Samurai – Action through Drama

Its been on youtube for a couple of years, but I just came across this now – a very nice analysis I think of just how innovative Kurosawa’s technique was in filming Seven Samurai’s action.

Seven Samurai – Action through Drama.

This is a newer one too, quite interesting.

Seven Samurai’s Historical Perception.

Thanks Ugetsu! The Drama Through Action video explains really well why action scenes in most modern blockbuster films are so endlessly boring. There is no weight to them. I have fallen asleep more than once while waiting for a Marvel fight scene to end.

The other video was new to me so I added it to the Akira Kurosawa video essays page. Thanks!

I used to have scripts that notified me about new Kurosawa related content like this, but as the YouTubes, Twitters and Facebooks of the world have become increasingly insular and work to block such automated harvesting of content, I gave up maintaining them.

Partly due to this, it’s been a bit quiet here lately (my fault, really). I wonder if we should resurrect the film club but approach it a little differently this time around — maybe we could watch and discuss video essays. Any thoughts on that?

I’d certainly welcome something a little more regular to remind me to come back here. I do miss the film club.

I too miss the film club. I don’t, however, really miss the amount of work that went into preparing it, and then the silences that often followed. 🙂 Maybe the approach could be a little different. And maybe we should find new participants.

Yes, I think it would need a social media presence now to remind people to keep up to date with it.

It’s funny, I think of this Criswell video and the Every Frame a Painting one every time I’m watching a superhero movie now.

I would also like to get in on this film club action, as the previous one seemed to be wrapped up by the time I got cool enough to start snooping around. Though I am also skeptical about how much time I’ll have to sit down and really dig into something. I’ve got a lot of enjoyment out of the writing on this site, and discovered more than a few favorites, so I would love to be a part of the discussion in whatever form it takes.

Vili, Just a suggestion, perhaps you could pick on a film and we could discuss it on a more open ended basis (or even a general theme covered by more than one film), without confining ourselves to a particular month? We could just see how the discussion goes.

It’s good to hear that there is interest.

I guess what I should do is a “news” post about this and ask people here and on social media accounts to leave their thoughts if they’d be interested in taking part in a film club and what sort of a format they would prefer. Maybe I’ll put some money to promote that post to make sure it reached the people who follow us on social media.

I assume that if we want to attract a wider audience, we might need to start with Kurosawa’s more popular films. It’s unfortunate that their availability through streaming services is not great. But at least they are available in physical form, even if it’s an investment for many.

I wonder if I should also try to make this website a little more user friendly. Fix some bugs and maybe re-introduce email notifications, at least for new posts. Maybe make it possible to log in and comment here with social media accounts. I’ll have to see. That might be more work than I have time for, but it could help.

Right now, I’ll be quite busy for the rest of the month, so maybe the end of August might be a good time to shake the tree. I wouldn’t like to start something now and then disappear entirely for a while.

If you have any ideas, continue to post them here.

I have always enjoyed reading the film club discussions ( and most threads on here ) although I confess I didn’t contribute to the discussions often myself. It’s certainly good to see a few more posts on here again.