Strand Releasing has picked up the U.S. Mifune Valentine Mifune - The Last Samurai 2016 Japan Directed by Steven Okazaki Screening as part of the London Film Festival - October 15th 2016. Mifune: The Last Samurai, the well-assembled documentary on the life of actor Toshir With a softly- spoken narration by Keanu Reeves and talking heads from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, as well as the sons of both Mifune and Kurosawa, Mifune offers a personal and professional tribute to an actor who reinvented the hero for a post- World War II age. Mifune, the preeminent Japanese actor of his generation, had starring roles in some of the iconic samurai movies of the country’s golden age – including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Yojimbo – and influenced a host of American icons from Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name to Darth Vader (Mifune was supposedly offered Obi- Wan Kenobi in Star Wars). Director Steven Okazaki suggests that his power, the way he “energized everything around him” came from hard- hitting personal experiences. Born in mainland China to Japanese missionaries, he first came to Japan during the second World War, when he was stationed as a tutor to young kamikaze pilots, a time that lit a personal consciousness and a belated sense of injustice. After 1. 94. 5, he found work at Tokyo’s Toho studios as a photographer, before Akira Kurosawa discovered him and cast him in the lead in 1. Drunken Angel. Through Mifune, Kurosawa found a way to channel his own rebellious streak, after the director had been forced to make propaganda pictures in the early 1. Mifune gave Kurosawa the palette to create a new type of traditional Japanese hero, especially through the character of the ronin, a figure from Japanese chanbara stories who are fuelled by their own sense of justice. And Mifune and Kurosawa’s first major samurai movie Rashomon was a huge success – or as the documentary rather flippantly says it put “Japanese cinema on the map” – and led to a sixteen- film collaboration. Okazaki, who won a short film documentary Oscar in 1. Mifune’s collaborators – including Kyoko Kagawa,Haruo Nakajima and stunt choreographer Kanzo Uni (who claims he was . We’re told that despite being a notoriously exacting director, Kurosawa didn’t give Mifune acting instructions, instead allowing the actor to shape his characters from inside out (or “from the earth,” as one collaborator puts it). And that Mifune did the final scene of Throne of Blood – in which he’s shot at by real archers – without insurance because of a sense of duty and that he was indebted to Kurosawa for his career. But these moments, in which Okazaki reflects on Mifune’s choices through the actor’s own experiences, are the best parts of the film. For much of the documentary, however, the director falls back on a casual run- down of the actor’s work, and singularly fails to draw much from Mifune’s personal life. His relationship with his wife and his children, one of whom is interviewed for the film, is glossed over. Mifune: The Last Samurai Review. This is best movies of all time. L'histoire du film est tr Mifune: The Last Samurai, a new film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, explores the accidental movie career of Toshiro Mifune, one of the true giants. The film opens arrestingly, with a thumbnail history of Japanese cinema and excerpts from silent films that have largely vanished. Steven Okazaki's documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai will begin it's theatrical run in the U.S. On November 25th it opens in New York at the IFC Center. The influence of female figures, for instance, is almost totally overlooked. Still, for newcomers to Mifune’s work, or to Japanese cinema more generally, this should be fine taster. Mifune: The Last Samurai screened at the London Film Festival and opens on November 2. B- See More: Mifune: The Last Samurai, Steven Okazaki. Short Film Premiere: Iva Gocheva’s Sunday Oct 19, 2016. He’s like a caged animal,” says Martin Scorsese in the (above) trailer for Mifune: The Last Samurai. Doing the rounds of this year’s film festivals and screened at this year’s British Film Institute’s London Film Festival is MIFUNE: THE LAST SAMURAI - Trailer VOSTEN. Kurosawa and Mifune transformed the chanbara film, the period sword fighting movie.
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