Constantine said:Man... Rashomon, one of those movies I’ve been dying to catch... 😢
It's all over the torrent sites, easy find. Anyway, the movie is actually based on this classic Japanese tale that is honestly incredible—way better than the film version, if you ask me!
Oh, let me tell ya about another killer Japanese story—this one is way better than the three movies they made from it—Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. It is absolutely brilliant, though it's a massive read, kind of a beast! The movies:
Samurai 1, 2, and 3 (they aren't sequels, per se—the story is just too huge to cram into one flick, even if they were being lazy). It's not an Akira Kurosawa film, but it stars Toshiro Mifune... which is awesome! The trilogy is solid, but the book is legendary. You really gotta watch all three back-to-back—like a total marathon—because they work best as one big epic saga, kind of like watching Lord of the Rings in one sitting:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047444/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048579/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049710/
So, it's based on this true story about a young delinquent, Shinmen Takez, who gets shown the right path by Zen master Takuan soha. He ends up changing his name to Miyamoto Musashi and becomes the greatest swordsman ever. The trilogy—just like the book—wraps up with the showdown against the other top-tier swordsman, Sasaki Kojir, but Musashi goes on to have this massive career afterward, writing "The Book of Five Rings" (a total masterpiece on tactics that expands on the art of war by Sun Cuove), and he even becomes a killer painter and poet. The movies are great, don't get me wrong, but the book dives so much deeper into his head—you see how Musashi evolves from a complete loser into a legend, step by step.
The whole Musashi saga is basically a pillar of Japanese culture—it's their national novel, sort of like how "The Great Gatsby" or some massive American epic defines a period. Characters like Musashi, Matachija, Otsu, Akemi, Takuan soha, Sasaki Kojira, and the rest have become these archetypes, and once you read it, you start seeing a million little nods and references to these characters scattered all through Akira Kurosawa's samurai films.
The book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...19572?v=glance
People always complain about translations, but honestly, I think the way they translate technical martial arts terms and weapon names works perfectly—I mean, if they used all the original Japanese terms, most people wouldn't have a clue what a wooden sword was even called!
Anyway, getting back to the movies—that final duel in the last part between Musashi and Kojir is hands down one of the best-shot samurai scenes ever filmed. Seriously, grab all three and do a marathon. They are so much better as a complete set than watching them one by one.
Just to give you a feel for the vibe, here's a screenshot:
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