"Patton" opened 50 years ago today

by Nathaniel R

Here's a timeline to marvel at. The war biopic Patton (1970) opened a half century ago today. The following Monday the Oscars celebrating 1969 were held. And an an entire year and a fortnight later, Patton would win Best Picture at the following Oscars. Isn't it crazy how slowly the movie world buzz used to turn? Now Hollywood never dreams of launching its big Oscar intendeds in the spring (not that they could at the moment but you understand). The only time we witnessed a long stretch from release to Oscar win like this in our moviegoing lifetimes was The Silence of the Lambs which won the Oscar in March 1992, a year and a month and a half after its initial release. 

Which nominee would you have voted for in 1970?

• Airport
• Five Easy Pieces
• Love Story
• MASH
• Patton

We would've been a MASH voter among those five but that's not a stellar vintage. We assume that Women in Love was in the dread sixth spot.

Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Red Beard

Our Toshiro Mifune centennial tribute has come to its final day. Here's Cláudio Alves...

Throughout his career Toshiro Mifune worked with some of the best Japanese directors ever, becoming the face of that country's cinema in the aftermath of World War II. He gave great support to Mizoguchi's leading ladies, provided emotional intensity to Naruse's deepfelt dramas, was perfect in Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion and utterly iconic in many a Hiroshi Inagaki production. Still, his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa remain the most important. From 1948 to 1965, they made 16 films together, ranging from crime thrillers to action spectacles, from melodrama to historical epics, and the great majority of them are either considered classics or should be.

While I find High and Low to be their best film and Throne of Blood to feature Mifune's greatest performance, when it came time to choose, I knew there was no other option than to write about Red Beard. Released in 1965, it was the last film the Emperor and the Wolf ever did together. It's also an absolute masterpiece that deserves much more love than it usually gets... 

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Beauty Break: Toshiro Mifune Centennial

by Nathaniel R

100 years ago on this very day Japan's most famous movie star Toshiro Mifune was born (in Qingdao, China, then Japanese occupied). He was "discovered" by accident, when friends entered him into a 'New Faces' competition. Word travelled all the way to Akira Kurosawa, that there was a young actor he had to see. Kurosawa was, in his own words, "transfixed" and the rest -- 16 films of a classic collaboration -- is history. For our Mifune Centennial celebration thus far we've covered Stray Dog, The Hidden Fortress, and Yojimbo but herewith a beauty break to bask in the photographic glory of this iconic masculine star...

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Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Yojimbo

Team Experience is celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next couple of nights. Here's Eric Blume...

When the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo was released in 1961, he and Toshiro Mifune already had collaborated on over a dozen films, and this collaboration is widely considered one of their greatest.  It essentially birthed the character of The Man With No Name, was remade three years later by Hollywood as A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood, and has had an enduring influence on films for almost sixty years...

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Toshiro Mifune @ 100: The Hidden Fortress

Team Experience is celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next few days. Here's Nathaniel R...

Raised as an American child (through no fault of my own) in the era when the original Star Wars trilogy first captured the world's hearts, it's perhaps unsurprising that I knew Star Wars before any of its influences. Though my innate interest in cinema led me eventually to "Akira Kurosawa's greatest hits" somehow The Hidden Fortress (1958), always escaped my eyes. I knew of it mainly only as 'that movie that everyone says inspired George Lucas's space opera.' 

It would be foolish to pretend with snobbish cinephilia that the original Star Wars film doesn't improve on its then 19 year-old inspiration, but The Hidden Fortress deserves more than this footnote status; minor Kurosawa is still Kurosawa...

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