What did you RECEIVE today? PHOTOS EDITION!

Patient-X said:
According to My Criterion I have 57 titles. I've got another 6 US titles in the post and I've just bought 6 UK titles as there's a 2 for £25 deal on at the moment (2 for £22.50 at Zoom with the SIGNUP10 code).
Click to expand...
I saw they were doing that promotion again. Here's My Criterion Not as many titles as you but I got lucky when they were going cheap on eBay and still haven't watched 90% of them.
 
Seven Samurai is such a laboriously long film. Sure it's a mastery of cinematography but as a watchable film it's not so good, most of Kurosawa's films are far longer than necessary. Magnificent Seven told the same story in under half the run time :p.
 
I mean it has an intermission for a reason. It was intended for cinema goers to take a break so that the film didn't seem as hard to watch. I personally don't have much issue with long films as long as they're interesting and SS is definitely a good watch.
 
Last edited:
serpantino said:
Seven Samurai is such a laboriously long film. Sure it's a mastery of cinematography but as a watchable film it's not so good, most of Kurosawa's films are far longer than necessary. Magnificent Seven told the same story in under half the run time :p.
Click to expand...
giphy.gif
 
HWR said:
I mean it has an intermission for a reason. It was intended for cinema goers to take a break so that the film didn't seem as hard to watch. I personally don't have much issue with long films as long as they're interesting and SS is definitely a good watch.
Click to expand...

But there's a large amount of time when not a lot happens. They get together, they prepare the town, they try to assault the enemy camp, they retreat, final battle defending town.

It feels like people are conditioned to have to like Seven Samurai and the usual excuse is to view it with a mind of comparable film in that era.... but we're not in that era, so it just seems like a weak cop out for a film that I don't think has stood the test of time so well.

That's not to say I don't like Kurosawa.... I enjoy Yojimbo, Rashomon, RAN (long run time but more content) & Kagemusha, along with some of his gangster flicks I haven't seen in some time & forgotten the names of off the top of my head. I've also yet to watch Sanjuro & Throne of Blood, despite having owned them for a while as I have to be in a particular mood to enjoy Kurosawa.
 
Last edited:
serpantino said:
But there's a large amount of time when not a lot happens. They get together, they prepare the town, they try to assault the enemy camp, they retreat, final battle defending town.

It feels like people are conditioned to have to like Seven Samurai and the usual excuse is to view it with a mind of comparable film in that era.... but we're not in that era, so it just seems like a weak cop out for a film that I don't think has stood the test of time so well.

That's not to say I don't like Kurosawa.... I enjoy Yojimbo, Rashomon, RAN (long run time but more content) & Kagemusha, along with some of his gangster flicks I haven't seen in some time & forgotten the names of off the top of my head. I've also yet to watch Sanjuro & Throne of Blood, despite having owned them for a while as I have to be in a particular mood to enjoy Kurosawa.
Click to expand...
I'm not conditioned to enjoy the film at all, I just like it in general. I do appreciate your opinion on the matter though, we can't all have the same view on everything after all. I think the film holds up fine, but that's just my view. I also enjoy Kurosawa's other works, still need to watch Dreams, which got a Criterion release.
 
HWR said:
I'm not conditioned to enjoy the film at all, I just like it in general. I do appreciate your opinion on the matter though, we can't all have the same view on everything.
Click to expand...

I wasn't referring to you personally, it just seems to be one of those films that a lot of people haven't even seen & yet still act like they have and insist on raving about because they like to be part of the pretentious artsy fartsy crowd; ironic given that Kurosawa wasn't making films catered to that crowd in the first place. I've always felt like Kurosawa was too enamoured with his own work to cut his films ruthlessly enough though, of course that was his choice to make (I've never seen the cut version of Seven Samurai).

On a related note: What's the advantage of Criterion's releases over BFI's? BFI did a couple of Akira Kurosawa boxsets both on dvd & Blu-ray that pack in a bunch of the films and are far cheaper than Criterion. (I have the Samurai Collection on Blu-Ray which I purchased for £25)
 
serpantino said:
I wasn't referring to you personally, it just seems to be one of those films that a lot of people haven't even seen & yet still act like they have and insist on raving about because they like to be part of the pretentious artsy fartsy crowd; ironic given that Kurosawa wasn't making films catered to that crowd in the first place. I've always felt like Kurosawa was too enamoured with his own work to cut his films ruthlessly enough though, of course that was his choice to make (I've never seen the cut version of Seven Samurai).

On a related note: What's the advantage of Criterion's releases over BFI's? BFI did a couple of Akira Kurosawa boxsets both on dvd & Blu-ray that pack in a bunch of the films and are far cheaper than Criterion. (I have the Samurai Collection on Blu-Ray which I purchased for £25)
Click to expand...
I know you weren't, just thought I'd clarify ;)
Criterion's releases usually have exclusive extras and a nice booklet with exclusive content. I don't know the exact differences between Criterion and BFI but the BFI Kurosawa releases are meant to be quite good. I don't own that many of his films so I might have to get them in the future.
 
Back
Top