Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Asia-Pacific.)

Rating:
Summary: a relatively in-depth compendium into cinema history...
Review: the book is structured in a straight-foward manner. with it's frame-of-reference established from the very beginning, this text then progresses forward film-by-film in Kurosawa's career, and much of japanese cinema history and general japanese history. where this text adds and others deny is its dedication to pick at each film and argue and stress points, utilizing examples from films in a relativley-in-depth manner. Kurosawa's films are contextualized not only from humanities-type critique, but from literary and cinema theory, as well as an admirable effort into the muddled language of post-structuralism, etc. however, there are some disappointments when some films aren't covered heavily as compared to others, but this was probably to save on redundancy. This book is a necessary for those not familiar with Kurosawa's works and desire an extensive analysis, and it can also act as a good springboard into general literary and cinema theory.

Rating:
Summary: A 'vade mecum' for Kurosawa film studies and Japan as such
Review: You can turn to the chapter in this sweeping tome of a book on Kurosawa's body of work, focusing on the magnificently situated national/transnational film "High and Low" ([1962] 'heaven and hell,' class warfare within the corporatizing Japan of the postwar city); and read this chapter along with the film's narrative and carefully articulated cinematics of gaze, city, body, and spatial formation. Splendid, wry, compelling, Kurosawa studies are made new by this book, but more importantly postmodern and postwar Japan as such is made to register a whole range of globa/ local/nation-state re-structurations in the (existentially moralized) samurai-struggles and self-other obligated warfares of capital. "National Shoes" beats Andy Warhol's pink glitter versions of the post-Van Gogh-artisinal plight...

Rating:
Summary: A 'vade mecum' for Kurosawa film studies and Japan as such
Review: You can turn to the chapter in this sweeping tome of a book on Kurosawa's body of work, focusing on the magnificently situated national/transnational film "High and Low" ([1962] 'heaven and hell,' class warfare within the corporatizing Japan of the postwar city); and read this chapter along with the film's narrative and carefully articulated cinematics of gaze, city, body, and spatial formation. Splendid, wry, compelling, Kurosawa studies are made new by this book, but more importantly postmodern and postwar Japan as such is made to register a whole range of globa/ local/nation-state re-structurations in the (existentially moralized) samurai-struggles and self-other obligated warfares of capital. "National Shoes" beats Andy Warhol's pink glitter versions of the post-Van Gogh-artisinal plight...