Free Republic

Perhaps because it came out the year I was born, I have a hard time imagining a world without A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western. It's easy to forget how much this single film changed not just the western but the movie hero, whose credibility forever afterward came with stubble and unkempt hair, abundant sarcasm and an implacably bad attitude. It became an article of faith that the only honest way to look back at the world arrayed against the hero was through a squint. By the time I actually understood what a western was, Leone...

If you ask film buffs which is Akira Kurosawa's greatest film, most would say Seven Samurai. However, if you ask them which is Kurosawa's most popular film, they would point to Yojimbo, a 1961 film that gave a new definition to the samurai film genre. This entry discusses the Kurosawa film and its two remakes, one of which became a classic in its own right.

CARTAGENA, Colombia — A Secret Service agent preparing for President Obama’s arrival at an international summit meeting and a single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night’s intercourse. “I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’ ” the woman said in her first public comments on a spat that would soon spiral into a full-blown scandal. The dispute — he offered $30 for services she thought they had agreed were worth 25 times that —...