Some Words

It has been an very warm early autumn in Minneapolis. Today I could walk around in short sleeves if I wanted to. It was raining, so I didn’t, but it was nice to tell myself that I had the option. Hopefully this will lead to a more even change of color on the trees (it won’t, I’ve been told that temperature has nothing to do with this).

After going on a short three day binge of video games things have gotten back to normal. I’ve been watching all the Akira Kurosawa movies that I’d never watched before. Today was the first half of Red Beard, a his last film with Toshiro Mifune. This is a film in which Mifune was forced to wear a red beard for the filming, despite the fact that it was done in black and white. This meant that he could not get other work, and Kurosawa dragged out the filming. When it was done, Mifune took a role in Shogun, because he was almost broke. Kurosawa held that against him for the rest of their lives, and they never worked together again. So yeah, Kurosawa, a bit of a dick.

Also, the Criterion Collection, by virtue of not having the principals do the commentary, actually manages to have commentary that doesn’t suck. Usually you get a bunch of stuff like, “Oh, that was filmed by Ted. He’s a really nice guy.” Movie critics can be a bore a lot of the time, but they seem to have bothered to learn most of the interesting stories about a movie.