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For legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, Red Beard represented the end of an era. Not only was it the last film he would make in black-and-white but it represented the end of a 16-film collaboration with Toshiro Mifune. Across the lands...

Long before Keanu Reeves was stuck on board a speeding bus, Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, and Rebecca De Mornay were trapped on a runaway train. And, while there are significant differences between Jan De Bont's Speed and Andrei Konchalovsky's 1985 th...

The most popular cinematic export from Japan is inarguably the samurai movie. Whole books have been devoted to the genre, and more than one mail-order video business has made a tidy profit shipping samurai tapes and DVDs around the world. The mos...

Throughout his legendary career, Akira Kurosawa showed an affinity for the works of William Shakespeare. Three of his films in particular – The Bad Sleep Well, Throne of Blood, and Ran – owe a debt to The Bard even though not a line of Shakesp...

Of all the great foreign film directors to obtain U.S. releases for their movies, Akira Kurosawa can arguably boast the highest number of viewers. One of the reasons for this is that Kurosawa was heavily influenced by Hollywood - as can be seen in...