Before I start a new stint at Dell, on the 4th of May, I have an ample bit of time to indulge. Reminds me of the one month break before I started my job at Cisco, when I watched movies with the fervor of a man who realized that his world is ending in a month. Important time that, started a whole new appreciation for cinema. In that line, I watched two more Kurosawa movies yesterday, Sanjuro (a sequel to Yojimbo) and Red Beard, completing all of his movies I was interested in.

I was surprised at Red Beard, somehow didn’t expect it to be as good as his other movies, probably because I saw it so late, but nevertheless, it was brilliant. I’m still not good enough for my examination to be qualified an adequate critical appreciation, but suffice to say that it’s one of his best movies, in the cinematic elements as well as the storyline. And he has been given ample time to explore his creativity too, with a running time of 185 minutes. Mifune is superb, heck, everybody is superb… pity that this is Mifunes last movie with Kurosawa. Apparently, the author of the book on which the movie was based on told Kurosawa that Mifune got the character wrong (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Beard) which led Kurosawa to question Mifune’s abilities. What a pity, as there was no later movie of his, which had a strong gravitative pull from the central character, they were great on the account of the movies they were, but not as great stories of great characters. Take Ran, Kagemusha, whichever you like… I like them primarily because of the quality of the movies, but they don’t leave the strong impression that a Kurosawa – Mifune can. And to think that he severed ties, after 16 movies together, is quite incredible. I knew this piece of information before I saw the movie, so was obviously critical, from the word go, about Mifune’s performance, and even with all that prejudice, I thought he did a great job. I haven’t read the book however, so my perspective is obviously blurred.

On the other hand, Sanjuro is the typical Kurosawa flick, where he absolutely cannot go wrong. I liked Yojimbo more, as it had more character. Sanjuro seems like a fast paced action flick, with not much emphasis on the characters themselves, much different from what Yojimbo was.

On a completely different thread, I watched ‘the protector’, the sequel to ‘ong bak’. Horrendous storyline, worse direction, but man, the action sequences are tremendous. Absolutely tremendous. Anyways…