Mishima (1985)

George worked more closely with Kurosawa on "Dreams" (1989), ILM did the VFX. Very interesting film. Kagemusha is my 2nd favorite Kurosawa film and it would literally not exist without GL, he got 20th Century Fox to front the money to get it made & distributed.

 

kagemusha is on netflix if anybody has it.

 

Just want to chime in here that Dreams is a very beautiful film. It may not be in my top 10, but I consider it a private favorite nonetheless. It stunned me when I saw it.

 

Are you kidding? I have the Criterion Collection DVD (Schrader's commentary track is pure gold), I have the Phillip Glass score, I have an entire book about Eiko Ishioka which has a VERY good section on her designs for that film (Eiko was a design god, you know).

So, basically... yeah. Big fan.

 

The film is good in any form, but I steongly recommend that you ignore this version and find the Criterion release instead. It is one of my favorite films of all time and I think that the Criterion version is far superior. I don't want to give anything away but the commentary track explains what was taken out and why, and it really does feel like they dumbed it down. A lot of the unspoken characterization shows how movies SHOULD be made. So much is communicated through the acting alone.

The only downside is that the Criterions are so hard to get ahold of sometimes. This one is definitely worth it though! Truly one of the only snobby trends that is actually worth the price of admission. Just go without Starbucks and buy paper notebooks instead of moleskins: you can afford it!


Oh yeah about Mishima: this is a really good movie. The subject was interesting and, I think, less nutty than he comes across in the film. One discrepancy is that the ending was not an act of desperation. He had planned to go out like that all along. He saw himself as a warrior poet and the modern age as corrupt and unmanly. The worst that can be said about Mishima was that he was hyper committed to his beliefs.

 

I have never heard of this, but this sort of project doesn't surprise me at all considering how much Japanese samurai culture inspired the Jedi Order. Since this is the case, I am wondering why he just didn't buy the rights to a certain favorite Hayao Miyazaki film (Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa) and spare us fans the hack job that was Warriors of the Wind.

 

Mishima was released on blu-ray in the US last month
https://www.criterion.com/films/588-mishima-a-life-in-four-chapters
https://kotaku.com/the-banned-in-japan-film-george-lucas-and-francis-ford-1826251807