Sunday, August 25, 2013

After Yesterday's Ifukube Lovefest

Yesterday's post was one long love letter to Japanese composer Akira Ifukube. I have to confess, though, as much as I love Ifukube's work, my favorite classic Japanese movie soundtrack is Satô Masaru's more jazz-inspired score to one of my all-time favorite movies, Akira Kurosawa's 1961 Yojimbo, a brilliant, bloody film that Sergio Leone remade as A Fistful of Dollars. With no further ado, here's the opening theme to Yojimbo:





If you haven't seen the movie, you really need to get your hands on a copy of it now. The movie is a blackly humorous, violent period piece about an amoral man who manipulates two factions of even worse men into a conflict so that he can profit from the ensuing chaos. If you have an entire day to fritter away watching movies, a Yojimbo/Fist Full of Dollars double feature would give you an entire month's recommended allowance of badassery.

A while back, I envisioned Paula Deen playing her fans' stomachs off against their pancreases in order to make money. I think one more coffin is needed for her career.

4 comments:

  1. As long as you're investing all day, add "Last Man Standing", a '96 Walter Hill recreation of Yojimbo.

    The gunplay is uniformly dumb, (the Bruce Willis character carries a pair of 1911s and uses them both at once, a tactical approach that wastes massive amounts of ammunition and makes reloading an awkward and slow process. The Christopher Walken character has an odd tommy-gun fixation, even when highly inappropriate.

    Nonetheless, I find I enjoy this film for the post-noir sensibility and the rough Prohibition-era Mexican borderlands setting...

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  2. The drums make me think of the Yo Yo Ma thing from Crouching Tiger as they flit across the rooftops.

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  3. I was a sucker for all the bad kung fu and other assorted martial arts movies back in the 80s. Back when video rental stores were a thing in Manhattan.
    ~

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  4. As long as you're investing all day, add "Last Man Standing", a '96 Walter Hill recreation of Yojimbo.

    Oddly enough, for a guy who gets told all too often that he looks like Bruce Willis, I really don't dig the guy's acting.

    The drums make me think of the Yo Yo Ma thing from Crouching Tiger as they flit across the rooftops.

    ...gotta do a comparison listen.

    I was a sucker for all the bad kung fu and other assorted martial arts movies back in the 80s. Back when video rental stores were a thing in Manhattan.

    Five Deadly Venoms is one of my all-time favorite movies. I love that it's as much of a "mystery" movie as a kung-fu movie.

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