All the details I've found of it online have been less than forthcomibng, so I'll be examining the package carefully before I decide whether or not to pick it up.

Charles: I'll do my best to get back to you on everything else later this week, but to offer a brief, smaller tangent in the meantime, I'm curious: what do you feel makes Yojimbo a better film than A Fistful of Dollars? I like them both plenty, myself, but haven't put my finger on any particular reason to laud one over the other. Yojimbo of course is the original, but the thing is, unless I'm mistaken, Yojimbo was itself heavily influenced by American Westerns, and it plays very much like a Western when you watch it, just a Western with, you know, feudal Japanese and ex-samurais instead of cowboys and vigilantes. In this sense, A Fistful of Dollars almost feels like the more natural of the two; taking Kurosawa's intepretation of the American Western, and putting it back into its original genre context, but in new, stylishly minimal, more darkly dramatic way. Story-wise they are essentially the same and dramatically strike me as about equally effective; so, I wonder what you feel Yojimbo has that Fistful lacks. I've been wanting to watch them both side-by-side for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it yet.


K

Yeah, YOJIMBO was modeled on Westerns, but that's part of what's interesting and significant about it. Taking it and turning it into a Western is neither particularly significant nor interesting. I don't mean to dismiss Leone's version, which I love, but it's pretty much the same movie, down to characteristic lines, which helped to make up the Eastwood movie persona, coming from Mifune's mouth first. Although I'd like to see FISTFUL again to refresh my memory, I believe even the notable Leone close-ups are borrowed from Kurosawa. So most of what we think of as constituting the modern Western actually come from a Japanese film, not a ... erm ... Western one. I suppose there were some anti-heroic Westerns before YOJIMBO (Anthony Mann's films, Ford's THE SEARCHERS), but not to the extent that we see after YOJIMBO. Perhaps this took Leone's more literalized version of YOJIMBO, but that doesn't mean he should get the majority of credit.

This does call for a double-feature in my near future.

Did I mention the cool music that comes along with this film?

Film Philosophy has a discussion started on KILL BILL.

Gene, there's also a bunch of Jung influence on cinema stuff there.

And Metacritic's list of KILL BILL reviews .

Charles, about Yojimbo, I see your point, but while Leone may be the borrower, that says nothing about what makes Yojimbo work better as cinema overall. That you don't like Eastwood as well as Mifune (or feel Eastwood gets credit that should be Mifune's) doesn't in-and-of-itself make Yojimbo a more effective film. (Personally, I think Eastwood and Mifune have distinctly different vibes, but again, I will have to compare them in more detail when I get the chance.)

Not that I'm saying Fistful is the better of the two, mind you. But the more influential doesn't necessarily have to equal the more cinematically successful on its own terms, does it?


K

All things being equal, the film which defined the terms is more significant than the film which borrowed them. I think Van Zant's PSYCHO works on its "own" terms, but it doesn't strike me as particularly significant. While FISTFUL is certainly a more interesting remake than PSYCHO, I think the latter provides a clear example of what I'm talking about. I just don't see an argument to be made for FISTFUL being a more interesting or relevant film than YOJIMBO. I saw the former first, but it's been somewhat "tarnished" by my experiences with the latter. However, all of this is based on a fading memory of FISTFUL, and I've been curious for awhile now as to how much love for that film is actually based on what was laid down by Kurosawa. I suspect quite a bit. However, I know that in Yoshimoto's excellent study of the director's oeuvre, Kurosawa, it's suggested that the usage of space is quite different by the directors. Kurosawa always used space internally, any surrounding area being a reflection of the characters state of being, whereas Leone used space in a much more Fordian manner, as panoramic otherness. But, I haven't really determined the validity of this comparison for myself (sounds cool, though).

Interesting you should bring up Psycho, as I almost brought it up myself in my last post; it has always been an example of an extremely influential film that I personally get almost nothing out of. I realize that to true cinema lovers and historians this makes me look like quite the nincompoop, but, what can I say. I have never been able to summon an appreciation for Psycho which extends beyond the purely technical. Like: "So this way of cutting the scene was groundbreaking at the time, huh? Hmm, that's cool I guess." But I really don't get into the movie. (If memory serves me correctly, I did find The Birds mesmerizing, though.) It becomes a question of how much credit to give something for being "the first," so to speak, especially given that it's never really "the first" -- innovation is always a matter of degree and sometimes said innovations work better once they've been filtered through a few different artists' visions, than on first attempt always.

That's an interesting observation about the use of space; I could almost see it. Yeah; I'll have to watch these side-by-side sometime soon. It's been a while since I've seen either of them anyway.

K

Adam F:



Two thoughts have occurred to me regarding this:

First, you remind me of the letter’s column a couple years ago from the music magazine, Wire, where a series of hostile letters was printed following the appearance of Radiohead on the cover with their record, Kid A. Why cover such pop nonsense in a magazine that is for experimental music; all Radiohead is, so went the letters, is a superficial reworking of more daring, experimental artists. I guess the same might be true of Tarantino (did I finally spell it right?). But as a lover of pop music, it’s interesting when experimental music is made catchy (as Bowie did, as Iggy did, as VU did). It says something significant about the pop landscape that’s not necessarily said by having the avant garde over there and the pop world over here. Likewise, Tarantino’s idea to combine the New Wave with Blaxploitation or kung-fu grindhouse does do something different, just as the New Wave made quite a few entertaining films on the principle that modernism could be linked to classic Hollywood. I ran across the following in David Foster Wallace’s essay on LOST HIGHWAY, “David Lynch Keeps His Head”:



Whether that’s a bad thing or good thing is up each person who’s exposed to the New Wave (and, maybe, David Lynch – is he really as big an influence on Tarantino as Wallace goes on to suggest?). Clearly, Wallace thinks it’s a bad thing:



Me, I thought Kid A was one of the better rock records of the last few years and love to see a good ear slicing any chance I get. Like Kid A's sampling of techniques, Tarantino didn't just film it thinking of all the added revenue it would bring in; there's a lot of TLC with his butchery.

Second, Tarantino’s ideas and knowledge of film art are just as strong as most of the people mentioned in this thread. Maybe Tarantino doesn't know why film's important, or maybe he's all too aware that certain films (the vast majority) are important (if important at all) only relative to film history. And I'd rather have a director openly acknowledge this than pretend otherwise. After the Maoist revolution in France resulting from Godard's revolutionizing cinema (or should we simply call his cinema “the truth” ... no, wait, the truth was established by Truffaut’s work, with Doinel sneaking all those kisses ... Godard’s films were life itself! anyway ...) there’s not much left for Tarantino’s entertaining baubles to do.

K, all the suspense of PSYCHO was ruined for me before I ever saw the movie, but the movie only becomes greater every time I see it due largely to the way Hitchcock and the amazing Anthony Perkins portrayed one of best nihilistic heroes in cinematic history (and there's a lot of good ones*). That's just not my opinion, it's a fact, goddamnit.

I'm going to shut up about Hitchcock and Perkins now.

*Have you seen Louis Malle's LE FEU FOLLET ? If'n you love UN COEUR EN HIVER, this'll be right up your alley. Like most of Malle's early work, unfortunately, it's not on dvd.