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Seven Samurai
is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai drama film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story takes place in 1586 during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. It follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who hire seven rōnin (masterless samurai) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. At the time, the film was the most expensive film made in Japan. It took a year to shoot and faced many difficulties. It was the second-highest-grossing domestic film in Japan in 1954. Many reviews compared the film to westerns. Since its release, ''Seven Samurai'' has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of the greatest films in cinema history, such as the BFI's ''Sight & Sound'' and Rotten Tomatoes polls. It was also voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's 2018 international critics' poll. Its influence on the film industry has been unprecedented, and it is often regarded today as one of the most "remade, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film '' Sanshiro Sugata''. After the war, the critically acclaimed ''Drunken Angel'' (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. ''Rashomon'' (1950), which premiered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoshio Kosugi
was a Japanese actor. He appeared in more than 120 films from 1924 to 1967. Career First appearing on stage as a shingeki actor, he was initially recognized for his role as Yasha in ''The Cherry Orchard''. He made his film debut in the 1920s and appeared in a number of films by Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna .... Filmography References External links * * 1903 births 1968 deaths Japanese male film actors Japanese male stage actors Actors from Tochigi Prefecture {{japan-film-actor-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese History
The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inventions were introduced from Asia. During this period, the first known written reference to Japan was recorded in the Chinese ''Book of Han'' in the first century AD. Around the 3rd century BC, the Yayoi people from the continent immigrated to the Japanese archipelago and introduced iron technology and agricultural civilization. Because they had an agricultural civilization, the population of the Yayoi began to grow rapidly and ultimately overwhelmed the Jōmon people, natives of the Japanese archipelago who were hunter-gatherers. Between the fourth to ninth century, Japan's many kingdoms and tribes gradually came to be unified under a centralized government, nominally controlled by the Emperor of Japan. The imperial dynasty established at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sengoku Period
The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Various samurai warlords and Japanese clans, clans fought for control over Japan in the power vacuum, while the emerged to fight against samurai rule. The Nanban trade, arrival of Europeans in 1543 introduced the arquebus into Japanese warfare, and Japan ended its status as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of China in 1549. Oda Nobunaga dissolved the Ashikaga shogunate in 1573 and launched a war of political unification by force, including the Ishiyama Hongan-ji War, until his death in the Honnō-ji Incident in 1582. Nobunaga's successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed his campaign to unify Japan and consolidated his rule with numerous influential reforms. Hideyoshi launched the Japanese invasions of Korea (159 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drama Film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, teen drama, and comedy-drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject-matter, or else they qualify the otherwise serious tone of a drama with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline. All forms of cinema or television that involve fictional stories are forms of drama in the broader sense if their storytelling is achieved by means of actors who represent ( mimesis) characters. In this broader sense, drama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samurai Cinema
, also commonly spelled "''chambara''", meaning "sword fighting" films,Hill (2002). denotes the Japanese film genre called samurai cinema in English and is roughly equivalent to Western and swashbuckler films. ''Chanbara'' is a sub-category of ''jidaigeki'', which equates to period drama. ''Jidaigeki'' may refer to a story set in a historical period, though not necessarily dealing with a samurai character or depicting swordplay. Chanbara also refers to a martial arts sport similar to Fencing. While earlier samurai period pieces were more dramatic rather than action-based, samurai films produced after World War II have become more action-based, with darker and more violent characters. Post-war samurai epics tended to portray psychologically or physically scarred warriors.Silver (1977), p. 37. Akira Kurosawa stylized and exaggerated death and violence in samurai epics. His samurai, and many others portrayed in film, were solitary figures, more often concerned with concealing their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Film
Epic films are a style of filmmaking with large-scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply synonymous with big-budget filmmaking. Like epics in the classical literary sense it is often focused on a heroic character. An epic's ambitious nature helps to set it apart from other types of film such as the period piece or adventure film. Epic historical films would usually take a historical or a mythical event and add an extravagant setting and lavish costumes, accompanied by an expansive musical score with an ensemble cast, which would make them among the most expensive of films to produce. The most common subjects of epic films are royalty, and important figures from various periods in world history. Characteristics The term "epic" originally came from the poetic genre exemplified by such works as the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' and the works of the Trojan War Cycle. In classical litera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, distribution, and education. It is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and partially funded under the British Film Institute Act 1949. Purpose It was established in 1933 to encourage the development of the arts of film, television and the moving image throughout the United Kingdom, to promote their use as a record of contemporary life and manners, to promote education about film, television and the moving image generally, and their impact on society, to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom. BFI activities Archive The BFI maint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatrical Rental
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a synonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium. ''Box office'' business can be measured in the terms of the number of tickets sold or the amount of money raised by ticket sales (revenue). The projection and analysis of these earnings is greatly important for the creative industries and often a source of interest for fans. This is predominant in the Hollywood movie industry. To determine if a movie made a profit, it is not correct to directly compare the box office gross with the production budget, because the movie theater keeps nearly half of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist. History and overview Founded (in its present form) in 1957, the press publishes books of poetry and books on music, dance and performance, American Studies, and film. In 1965, Wesleyan sold its American Education Publications, a division of the press that published ''My Weekly Reader'', but the university retained the scholarly division. All editing occurs at the editorial office building of the press on the Wesleyan campus. Publishing (printing) now occurs through a consortium of New England college academic presses. The press is notable among prestigious American academic presses for its poetry series, which publishes both established poets and new ones. The press has released more than 250 titles in its poetry series and has garnered, in that series alone, awards including five Puli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toho
is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer and distributor of many '' kaiju'' and ''tokusatsu'' films, the Chouseishin ''tokusatsu'' superhero television franchise, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and the anime films of Studio Ghibli, CoMix Wave Films, TMS Entertainment and OLM, Inc. All nine of the highest-grossing Japanese films are released by Toho. Other famous directors, including Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi, and Mikio Naruse, also directed films for Toho. Toho's most famous creation is Godzilla, who is featured in 32 of the company's films. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla are described as Toho's Big Five because of the monsters' numerous appearances throughout the franchise, as well as spin-offs. Toho has also been involved in the pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asakazu Nakai
was a Japanese cinematographer born in Hyōgo Prefecture. He worked on several films with director Akira Kurosawa. In 1950, he won the Mainichi Film Award for Best Cinematography for '' Stray Dog''. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the film ''Ran'' (1985), being the oldest nominee ever in that category. Selected Filmography * 1943: ''The Song Lantern'' * 1949: '' Stray Dog'' * 1954: ''Seven Samurai'' * 1957: ''Throne of Blood'' * 1961: ''The End of Summer'' * 1963: '' High and Low'' * 1965: ''Red Beard'' * 1975: ''Dersu Uzala'' * 1985: ''Ran Ran, RaN and ran may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Ran'' (film), a 1985 film directed by Akira Kurosawa * "Ran" (song), a 2013 Japanese song by Luna Sea * '' Ran Online'', a 2004 MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) * ...'' References External links * Japanese cinematographers 1901 births 1988 deaths {{Cinematographer-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
