Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Stray Dog

Team Experience will be celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next five nights. Here's Lynn Lee...

It’s impossible to think of Toshiro Mifune without thinking of Akira Kurosawa—and vice versa.  Their partnership was unparalleled in its cinematic impact, spanning 16 films between 1948 and 1965 that included stone-cold classics like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, and Yojimbo.  While Mifune and Kurosawa did significant work independent of each other, it’s not exaggerating to say they made each other; both men would acknowledge as much even after their falling out.  In Mifune, Kurosawa found the perfect player to convey the outsize emotions and imposing physical presence of his most memorable protagonists—typically men of strong passions and even stronger will, whether turned to honorable or horrible ends...

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All hail the great Glenda Jackson!

by Cláudio Alves 

50 years ago, Ken Russell's Women in Love was released in US theaters after having already opened in the UK the year before. Accusations of obscenity and licentiousness followed the picture across the Atlantic and, as it usually happens, polemic was a good catalyst for popularity. Nowadays, such arthouse offerings rarely get mainstream attention but the America of 1970 was a different place as far as moviegoing was concerned. In a time of radical change in society and tastes, Women in Love's tale of bohemian affairs, sexual candor and class hierarchies in 20s England was warmly received by critics and audiences alike. The performance of Glenda Jackson was of particular fame and catapulted the actress to the pantheon of celebrity.

So much so that, by April of 1971, she won the Oscar for Best Actress. To this day, it's one of the weirdest victories in the category's history…

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The moment I fell for Kristen Stewart

by Cláudio Alves

Ten years ago, Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways was released. The film's a rock biopic and literary adaptation of Cherie Currie's autobiography - Neon Angel. It portrays her life in the late 70s when she became the vocalist for the all-female rock band for which the film is named. Influential and memorable, the Runaways burned too bright and too soon, dissolving after two years of fame, a modicum of success and a whole lot of controversy. Joan Jett, a rock icon and the Runaways' guitarist, helped produce the film and, maybe because of that, Sigsimondi's script makes her a coprotagonist.

Matters of shambolic narrative structure aside, I'm glad The Runaways is so entranced by the mythos of Joan Jett. Otherwise, I might have never woken up to the genius of Kristen Stewart…

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Greenberg's 10th and Gerwig as Muse

by Cláudio Alves 

Once upon a time, long before she was an Academy Award-nominated director and screenwriter, Greta Gerwig was the acting princess of mumblecore. Along with the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg, she helped solidify the identity of that often-maligned subgenre, full of naturalistic dialogue and very little in the ways of storytelling. The actress quickly transcended the limitations of mumblecore and became a starlet of the independent American cinema from 2010 to 2016, starring in such gems as Damsels in Distress, Jackie and 20th Century Women. 

Among her more frequent collaborators, Noah Baumbach stood out. She was his muse and he knew how to capture her talents like no other. Or was it the other way around? In any case, their first collaboration marked a turning point in both their careers. We're talking about Greenberg, which celebrates 10 years today…

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Luis Bunuel's "Tristana" is 50...

by Eric Blume

Fifty years ago director Luis Bunuel's Tristana, his second collaboration with Catherine Deneuve, opened. It went on to become  a 1970 Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee.  While it lost the statue to Elio Petri's excellent Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion from Italy, it's fascinating to look back at Bunuel's fourth-to-final film and see it still standing strong.

In many ways, Tristana is one of the more straightforward and accessible Bunuel films, but "straightforward Bunuel" is thankfully still pretty fucked up...

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