Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa's birth, Turner Classic Movies is showing nearly every Kurosawa film except for the late period films Dreams, Rhapsody in August, and Madadayo and a couple of his 1940s films. I think a few of the movies have never been released on R1 DVD. I've seen a lot of these movies, but there are a few that I've never seen, so I'm looking forward to this (Just for the heck of it, I might have also included Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train [1985] since it was based on an unmade film that Kurosawa planned to make in Alaska in the 1970s).

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=297465

*: This is a movie I would particularly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it

Tuesday March 9:

Ikiru (1952) *
Throne of Blood (1957) * (Adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth)
Hidden Fortress, The (1958) * (Semi-remade as Star Wars, may be Kurosawa's most Usagi Yojimbo-like film)
Hakuchi (1951) (aka The Idiot, based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Lower Depths, The (1957) (Adaptation of the play by Maxim Gorky, previously filmed by Jean Renoir in 1936)

Tuesday March 16:

Bad Sleep Well, The (1960) (Loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet with a contemporary setting)
High And Low (1963) * (Based on the novel by Ed McBain)
Red Beard (1965) (The last B&W Kurosawa film and last Kurosawa film with Toshiro Mifune; also last Kurosawa film made inside Japanese studio system)
I Live In Fear (1955)
Scandal (1950)

Tuesday March 23 (Kurosawa's birthday):

Sanshiro Sugata (1943) * (Kurosawa's solo directing debut)
Most Beautiful, The (1944)
Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, The (1945)
Sanshiro Sugata Part 2 (1945)
No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) (First post-WWII Kurosawa film)
One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
Drunken Angel (1948)
Stray Dog (1949) *
Rashomon (1950) * (Based on the story "In a Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa)
Seven Samurai (1954) * (What are you doing here if you haven't seen this one?)
Yojimbo (1961) * (Remade as A Fistful of Dollars and an influence on a few UY stories)
Sanjuro (1962) (Sequel to Yojimbo. Not remade as For a Few Dollars More even though some will tell you otherwise)
Dodes 'Ka-Den (1970) (Kurosawa's first color film)

Tuesday March 30:

Dersu Uzala (1975) * (The only Kurosawa film made outside of Japan, story was previously filmed in Russia in 1961)
Kagemusha (1980) (Last film with Takashi Shimura)
Ran (1985) * (Loose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear)

TCM Schedule for March:

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/month/

I know what I am doing Tuesdays!

For those who don't have the premium cable channels, YOJIMBO is available for free viewing via COMCAST ON-DEMAND under Free Movies / TCM section thru at least mid-April. Subtitled and Letterboxed.

First time watching it, and I found the experience quite surreal... Almost like a live-action Usagi story, except with real people!

khyron82 wrote:For those who don't have the premium cable channels, YOJIMBO is available for free viewing via COMCAST ON-DEMAND under Free Movies / TCM section thru at least mid-April. Subtitled and Letterboxed.

First time watching it, and I found the experience quite surreal... Almost like a live-action Usagi story, except with real people!

I thought I would also mention that Yojimbo (along with Sanjuro) just came out on Blu-Ray from Criterion. I would highly recommend picking it up to those here who are equipped to watch Blu-Ray discs.

If you want to see another Kurosawa movie that's a bit reminiscent of Usagi Yojimbo, I would also recommend The Hidden Fortress. It reminds me a bit of one of the longer UY story arcs such as "The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_fortress

Dang!!! I missed them.

I was very busy with classes last month, but I managed to record all of the ones I haven't seen before - but I still haven't got around to watching most of them!