"Stray Dog" ( 1949 )
Posted on 08/01/2013 6:34:34 PM PDT by Kolath
A fun tribute to my favourite actor and the very embodiment of Japan: The legendary Toshiro Mifune.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Don’t doubt it. I once did a martial arts training where I kept my eyes closed for a whole 10 days, and my echo location became so powerful that I can even tell you your credit card number that is on your wallet. I also glow and can catch bullets with my teeth, like Bruce Leeroy from that documentary.
Yes it was IFC. After they quit coming on, I had just about unlimited Netflix rentals as my Daughter used to give them as birthday, Christmas etc. I watched a lot of Zatoichi from Netflix.
I finally told her I had seen everything I wanted to so she changed to gift cards.
Not Mifune but another great Japanese actor, Sessue Hayakawa.
>>Zatoichi used to come on one of the channels which played old movies and tv shows. I got hooked on them.
I think I’ve seen almost all the Zatoichi movies. When I lived in Kyoto they would play Hissatsu Shigotonin and Lone Wolf and Cub all the time and those were outlandish sometimes.
BTW - great music!
I wonder why they have to ruin a good fight scene with a distracting chintzy muzak soundtrack over it?
Shintaro Katsu’s Zatoichi is the fantastic. I think I have watched eighteen of the 26 films. “Zatoichi meets Yojimbo” included Toshiro Mifune recreating his most famous character.
The late Tonight Show scriptwriter Jack Douglas wrote how he had married a Japanese gal and didn’t like the Tokyo radio station she was listening to.
So she switched to another station featuring “an exotic little traditional Japanese Kabuki melody that to my delicate Western ears sounded like Sessue Hayakawa stapling two cats together”.
(I thought that was funny once but I’m a cat person now.)
Speaking of Japanese, does anyone remember the 60s hit “Sukiyaki”?
I could not understand a word of it but it was really good.
I think the singer was Kai Sakamoto, or something similar.
I watch Korean shows and movies all the time with subtitles.
[the 60s hit “Sukiyaki”?]
This was a hit song in Japan entitled, “Ue o mite aruko” which translates to: Looking up while walking....and the reason for looking up is that he is very sad and his eyes are full of tears.
The singer was very popular and his name was Kyu Sakamoto.
He died in an airplane crash when the commercial airliner hit very severe air turbulence between Osaka and Tokyo.
Dang ! You are right. How did I forget that! Thanks.
And Star Wars is a remake of The Hidden Fortress.
"Stray Dog" ( 1949 )
Thanks, I knew Sakamoto was deceased but that was about it.
I used to work at a Summer retreat which always hired around 50 Japanese students for about half the Summer. There would always be one or two really pretty Japanese girls. The pretty ones tended to be the little ones.
The Hidden Fortress is not a remake of Star Wars. Yes, there are similarities, but that does not make it a remake.
The Hidden Fortress is about three feuding clans. The princess of one clan escapes into the frontier of a neutral third class with a treasure hidden and then rescued by her General and his two unlikely confederates—a short and taller conscript who bear a comedic resemblance to two non human characters in the Star Wars saga.
No Death Star, no evil emperor, no Obiwan, no Darth Vader. No rebel alliance. Just some striking similarities.
We could argue if Lucas ripped off some plot elements and character dynamics (e.g. the comedic chorus of two).
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