what

Shimura was a criminally underused actor—he is famous in the West because of his work in Kurosawa movies and Godzilla, but he really didn't do much outside of that.

Zatoichi is sort of the Rambo of Japan—the first one is a meditative, quietly tragic film and the sequels got more and more campy as the series went on. That's why Takeshi's version is so brilliant, because it captures both feelings.

They submitted it to the Venice Film Festival, which you don't do with a movie you don't think will go over. It is just that there had never really been an Asian movie released in the West and they weren't really expecting it to be so succesful. This is in contrast to the common story that nobody in Japan watched or…

I loved the way he played being a grandfather in that film—like a giant dog acting very carefully around a puppy. He manages to perfectly convey strength and tenderness.

Eh, they existed, they just don't tend to be exported. Japan was stingy with its exports in the best of circumstances (although it's a bit overblown in the popular imagination—the story of executives not wanting to distribute Rashomon is a myth) and they tended not to distribute schlock internationally. Probably the…

Favorite reversal of this: In Hamlet, Laurence Olivier was a good eleven years older than Eileen Herlie, who played Gertrude. Obviously Shakespeare adaptions operate under their own rules so this doesn't detract from the larger point, but I think it is funny.

As soon as I read that, I knew somebody would make this post.

Phantom Menace wasn't superfluous—its point was to tell a self contained story (like Star Wars!) while introducing the world of the Old Republic and getting some balls in motion. I also don't really know which plot points you mean?

The first time I watched this I was down with a nasty fever, which only made the narrative oddities even stranger. I called it an alien movie—it is clearly following some sort of logic, I just don't know what. The lack of resolution and all of the hanging threads has the affect of transforming it into a sort of…

It is pretty easy to be worse than the prequels, which really weren't that bad and II and III were actually pretty good. They were uneven, but they weren't the sort of factory manufactured blockbusters we see today.

Hey now, Ted Turner was and is awesome.

Oh good, I have been running low on ironic gifts to give to people.

Damn. When did the internet deem Cooper unworthy? I missed the memo.

Honestly, after the bullshit with Orsino in the end of DA2 I'm pretty much pro-mage genocide.

"While I can't bring myself to side with the Templars…"

I agree with you in general, but I think Han and Boba Fett bumping into each other would make sense, and actually flesh out their interactions in the original trilogy.

I don't think you can actually say Sandler is overpaid, he is essentially head and frontman of an entire sub-industry. I mean, he is one of the few actors who is literally irreplacable, because he is pretty much the one and only draw to his movies.

Eh? Charities tend to go into overdrive during Christmas, I believe that Christmastime smashes every other part of the year for donations.

"All other sources" being Josephus? Because beyond the odd inscription, a brief mention by Tacitus, and Josephus, I don;t think we have any other details of him than the gospel accounts (that were all written well before Constantine).