American audiences remember Akira Kurosawa as the genius of the samurai epic, a past master who used the form both to revise and revive Western classics - Shakespeare with Ran and Throne of Blood, Dostoevsky with Red Beard and The Idiot, Gorky with The Lower Depths - and to give splendid and ultimately immortal life to new archetypes, as in The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo. But Kurosawa also made films of his own time. His masterpiece, in fact, was the quiet story of a gray Japanese bureaucrat dying in post-war Tokyo, and of his attempt to do something of lasting good before he leaves. The film is Ikiru ("To Live"; 1952).
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

Sherlock Holmes on Stage & Screen is a gallery of almost every significant actor who has ever played the great detective. Among their ranks are William Gillette, who was able to build himself a castle in Connecticut with the proceeds from his Holmes portrayal; Charlton Heston, who enacted a version of The Sign of Four onstage; Jeremy Brett, the superlative television Holmes; and, of course, Basil Rathbone, the South African actor whose name became synonymous with the role.
posted on Sep 25, 2006 - View this thread