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The Idiot (1951 Film)
is a 1951 Japanese film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa. It is based on the 1869 novel ''The Idiot'' by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The original 265-minute version of the film, faithful to the novel, has been lost for many years. A nearly three-hour release, reflecting a 100-minute studio-imposed cut, survives as the most complete version of the film available for contemporary audiences. The film stars Setsuko Hara who plays the part of Taeko Nasu, the beautiful mistress of Tohata. The characters are involved in a weblike plot of intersecting relationships. Plot Part One: Love and Agony The action starts on a ship traveling from Okinawa. Kameda, who suffers from "epileptic dementia" (which he refers to as "idiocy"), is heading to Hokkaido. The movie explains that "Dostoyevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good man. It may seem ironic, choosing a young idiot as his hero, but in this world, goodness and idiocy are often equated. The story tells of the destruction of a pure soul by ... [...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] |
Chieko Higashiyama
was a Japanese stage and film actress. She appeared in more than 60 films from 1936 to 1967. Career Graduating from the girls' school at Gakushuin, she married a businessman in 1909 and spent eight years in Moscow. In 1925, at the age of 35, she decided to become an actress and began training at the Tsukiji Shōgekijō. She appeared in many stage productions, most famously as Madame Ranevskaya in ''The Cherry Orchard''. She also appeared in films, including ''Tokyo Story'', which was voted the best film of all time in a poll of film directors by ''Sight & Sound'' magazine. Sight & Sound magazine. Retrieved 4 July 2020. Selected filmography Honours * |
Russian Literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. In the second h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rashomon (film)
is a 1950 Jidaigeki psychological thriller/crime film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and Takashi Shimura as various people who describe how a samurai was murdered in a forest, the plot and characters are based upon Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story "In a Grove", with the title and framing story being based on "Rashōmon", another short story by Akutagawa. Every element is largely identical, from the murdered samurai speaking through a Shinto psychic to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows his or her ideal self by lying. The film is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative and contradictory versions of the same incident. ''Rashomon'' was the first Japanese film to receive a significant international receptio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city in Japan. It is the capital city of Hokkaido Prefecture and Ishikari Subprefecture. Sapporo lies in the southwest of Hokkaido, within the alluvial fan of the Toyohira River, which is a tributary stream of the Ishikari. It is considered the cultural, economic, and political center of Hokkaido. As with most of Hokkaido, the Sapporo area was settled by the indigenous Ainu people, beginning over 15,000 years ago. Starting in the late 19th century, Sapporo saw increasing settlement by Yamato migrants. Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Olympics ever held in Asia, and the second Olympic games held in Japan after the 1964 Summer Olympics. Sapporo is currently bidding for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The Sapporo Dome host ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapporo Snow Festival
The is a festival held annually in Sapporo, Japan, over seven days in February. Odori Park, Susukino, and Tsudome are the main sites of the festival. In 2007 (57th festival), about two million people visited Sapporo to see the hundreds of snow statues and ice sculptures at the Odori Park and Susukino sites, in central Sapporo, and at the Satoland site.The outline of the Sapporo Snow Festival An International Snow Sculpture Contest has been held at the Odori Park site since 1974, and 14 teams from various regions of the world participated in 2008. The subject of the statues varies and often features an event, famous building or person from the previous year. For example, in 2004, there were statues of |
Alex Cox
Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with ''Repo Man (film), Repo Man'' and ''Sid and Nancy'', but since the release and commercial failure of ''Walker (film), Walker'', his career has moved towards independent films. Cox received a co-writer credit for the screenplay of Terry Gilliam's ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' (1998) for previous work on the script before it was rewritten by Gilliam. As of 2012, Cox has taught screenwriting and film production at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Early life Cox was born in Bebington, Cheshire, England in 1954. He attended Worcester College, Oxford, and later transferred to the University of Bristol where he majored in film studies. Cox secured a Fulbright Scholarship, allowing him to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhapsody In August
is a 1991 Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa based on the novel ''Nabe no naka'' by Kiyoko Murata. The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies. American film star Richard Gere appears as Suzujiro's son Clark. The film was selected as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. ''Rhapsody in August'' is one of only three sole-directed Kurosawa movies to feature a female lead, and the first in nearly half a century. The others are ''The Most Beautiful'' (1944) and ''No Regrets for Our Youth'' (1946). However, Kurosawa also directed most of the female-led ''Uma'' (1941), on which he was credited as assistant director. Plot ''Rhapsody in August'' is a tale of three generations in a post-war Japanese fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Richie
Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was seventeen. Biography Richie was born in Lima, Ohio. During World War II, he joined the United States Merchant Marine and served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer. By then he had already published his first work, "Tumblebugs" (1942), a short story.''Introduction'' by Leza Lowitz, in ''Botandoro'' by Donald Richie In 1947, Richie first visited Japan with the American occupation force, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape from Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the ''Pacific Stars and Stripes''. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture, particularly Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie rev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masters Of Cinema
Masters of Cinema is a line of DVD and Blu-ray releases published through Eureka Entertainment. Because of the uniformly branded and spine-numbered packaging and the standard inclusion of booklets and analysis by recurring film historians, the line is often perceived as the UK equivalent of The Criterion Collection. History The line takes its name from a film website by the same name that was launched in 2001 and covered the work of well-regarded film directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Yasujirō Ozu. In 2004, the website began coordinating with Eureka Entertainment to offer a line of DVDs that focused on renowned filmmakers and films considered to be the best of their type. In 2008, the organization was sold to Eureka Entertainment and became a wholly owned label of the company. Collaborations In their effort to create definitive editions the line complements their releases with a collection of new or available scholarly material such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scandal (1950 Film)
is a 1950 Japanese film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film stars Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Shirley Yamaguchi. Plot Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune), an artist, meets a famous young classical singer, Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi) while he is working on a painting in the mountains. She is on foot, having missed her bus, but they discover they are staying at the same hotel, so Aoye gives Saijo a ride back to town on his motorcycle. On the way, they are spotted by paparazzi from the tabloid magazine ''Amour''. Saijo refuses to grant the photographers an interview, so they plot their revenge and are able to take a picture of Aoye and Saijo on the balcony of her room and print it along with a fabricated story under the headline "The Love Story of Miyako Saijo". Aoye is outraged by this false scandal and plans to sue the magazine. During the subsequent media circus, he is approached by a down-and-out lawyer, Hiruta (Takashi Shimura), who claims to share Aoye's an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspect Ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of its width to its height, and is expressed with two numbers separated by a colon, such as ''16:9'', sixteen-to-nine. For the ''x'':''y'' aspect ratio, the image is ''x'' units wide and ''y'' units high. Common aspect ratios are 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 in cinematography, 4:3 and 16:9 in television photography, and 3:2 in still photography. Some common examples The common film aspect ratios used in cinemas are 1.85:1 and 2.39:1.The 2.39:1 ratio is commonly labeled 2.40:1, e.g., in the American Society of Cinematographers' ''American Cinematographer Manual'' (Many widescreen films before the 1970 SMPTE revision used 2.35:1). Two common videographic aspect ratios are 4:3 (1.:1), the universal video format of the 20th century, and 16:9 (1.:1), universal for high-definition television and European digital television. Other cinema and video aspect ratios exist, but are used infrequently. In still camera photography, the most common aspect ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
