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Rashomon turns 70, Stephen Prince discusses the film

Rashomon
On Tuesday, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon will turn 70 years old. Now, what better way would there be to celebrate this particular milestone than by listening to someone who knows their stuff talk about the film. If only we just had… wait… what is that! Lo and behold, through the greatest of coincidences (or the wittiest of news article openings, you decide), there is a brand new podcast episode over at CineVerse where you can listen to film scholar Stephen Prince and the host Erik Martin dicuss the film for about 50 minutes.

It’s amazing how the stars sometimes align so perfectly, isn’t it?

Stephen Prince, of course, is one of the few undisputed experts on Kurosawa’s works. Not only is he the author of an absolutely indispensable book on Kurosawa, but he is also that familiar voice that you have heard on many of Criterion’s Kurosawa commentary tracks. He has also written plenty on other film subjects and, let’s face it, is probably the coolest film scholar that you have ever heard of.

Speaking of cool things and writing on other subjects, in the podcast Stephen mentions his upcoming book Apocalypse Cinema, which is expected to come out sometime next year and sounds really interesting. He also talks about a course that he is currently preparing for his students where will compare Hitchcock and Kurosawa. What would we give to be a fly on the wall! Or a student at Virginia Tech! Well, probably quite a lot, based on what I have heard about American tuition fees…

Anyway, the Rashomon podcast is completely free and completely available, so head over to CineVerse for your listening experience.

And then come back here and let me know what you thought of the podcast and how you were personally planning to mark Rashomon‘s 70th birthday!


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Ugetsu

Thanks for this Vili, I’ll keep that broadcast to listen to on Tuesday.

I don’t know if its my imagination or the way algos are working, but it seems to me that Kurosawa’s name is coming up in popular culture more and more these days – maybe due to the interest generated by that video game. I have a feeling the word ‘Rashomon’ is going to get a new workout over the next few months as they gear up for an ‘election’ in the US this November.

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Vili Maunula

You are right, the video game has definitely increased the visibility of Kurosawa’s name online. YouTube is a good example, if you sort search results by most recent. Lots of recent videos about the game’s Kurosawa mode.

And Rashomon always starts to pop up every time there is an election somewhere, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing that happening again at the end of this year. It’s nice that his films stay culturally relevant.

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