Who are the undisputed Kings of Cool? We take a look at the coolest actors to grace the silver screen… Some stars are pretty good at what they do. Maybe it’s hard work and in the case of being a tough guy, that means hours at the gym. Then there are gifts that just come […]
Akira Kurosawa’s Police Procedural Films
Tom Jolliffe looks at two classic crime thrillers from Akira Kurosawa, Stray Dog and High and Low… His reputation precedes him. Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest directors of all time. A master of cinema, who took a degree of influence from old Hollywood gangster films and Westerns and refined them in his own […]
Cinema’s Groundbreakers – Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon
Continuing a look back at some of the most ground-breaking films in cinema, Tom Jolliffe takes a look at Rashomon… When looking back through the work of Akira Kurosawa, it would be difficult to pinpoint only one film as particularly ground-breaking. The truth his, through his early career in a post-war boom for Japanese cinema […]
Macbeth on Film: The Many Cinematic Adaptations of the Shakespeare Tragedy
Tom Jolliffe on the many film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth… Shakespeare may have been the scourge of G.C.S.E students for many years, but it seems that the long standing fascination with his work is in no danger of passing. Whether its Hamlet, Othello, one of the Henrys, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear or many […]
Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo at 60
Chris Connor on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo… Akira Kurosawa was one of the pioneers of world cinema in the 20th Century directing countless well-loved films particularly within the Samurai genre including Seven Samurai, Ran, Rashomon and one of the main inspirations behind Star Wars, 1958’s The Hidden Fortress. Many of Kurosawa’s films have been adapted in […]
Blu-ray Review – Hell in the Pacific (1968)
Hell in the Pacific, 1968. Directed by John Boorman. Starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. SYNOPSIS: Hell in the Pacific is a curiosity, a movie that stars just two people, Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, who play opposing soldiers stranded on a deserted island during World War II. The ending in the theatrical release was […]
