#Hideo Shimada

[rehdhoodie]

shimada oh what a creature u are

[8bit-box]

I love you four eyes Shinichi I love you

[artblooger19moon]

Parasyte Movie Marathon

Parasyte part 1: November 29 2014

Parasyte part 2: April 25 2015

[murky-the-phantom-thief]

So like- it wasn’t Hideo Shimada- and I’m very disappointed

They had an opportunity and they failed.

This is Hideo’s body, while not everything is the same they share some key components. They both have a large and circular wound (only goes all the way through in the manga), relatively similar head structure, and a lot of the smaller wounds seem to mirror each other.

My last problem would be that they DEFINITELY modeled this parasites corpse after Hideo’s if anything.

AUGGGH I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I’m fi

Sorry I need to ramble about this- cause like- the similarities? Wtf??

Anyone else thinking about hideo shimada’s body being in the trailer for Parasyte : The Grey? Or is it just me

[slag0000]

3ヶ月ぶりに万物有情です。日程だけは決まっていたのですが、ひしょちさんとの2回の共演ののち、古川さんが抜け、ようやく詳細が決まった模様。今回参加の時岡さん、お名前は見かけるのですが、お会いしたことなく、フリー系の方、というくらいしか知りません。どんな感じになるのでしょう。

●2023-07-23(sun) 江古田 Cafe Flying Teapot “万物有情”

act: 時岡秀雄(sax) 橋本英樹(tp) 高橋直康(b) 島田透(dr) open 19:30 / start 20:00 charge 1500yen(+1d)

[diseasedcube]

i set this as my desktop wallpaper and maybe that was a mistake, his face is just, so sad, he keeps staring into my soul, and he's so....off model (damn he's out here looking like Gamo-chan with those droopy eyes)

[xchiyuki]

✧ Symbiosis; Chapter 1: Fear

series masterlist

Life was a series of heartbreaks, crushed dreams, and cruel curveballs. The normal things that one could expect never came to fruition, but the things that seemed outlandish, like  they would never happen, often came true.

That was the case for Kayoko Kenzaki as she watched death approach her, staggering on its unsteady legs, and welcomed it with open arms and a small smile.

The school bell rang loudly, making her jump in her seat as it shook her from her thoughts. She took a deep breath, sighing as she pressed her hand against her racing heart in an attempt to calm herself down.

“Kayoko!” called Akiho, the most rambunctious of her friends. With a wide grin, she waved at Kayoko from the doorway, where she stood with two others, waiting for Kayoko. “C’mon, let’s go! You said we could hang out today!” 

Kayoko smiled sadly. She hadn’t been able to spend time with her friends since her parents died almost two months ago, just two more victims of the mincemeat murders that were occurring across the country. Standing, she picked up her bag and approached Akiho, Satomi, and Yuko, who stood at the front door of the classroom, waiting for her.

“I can’t stay out for very long,” she said quietly, plastering a cheerful smile on her face, although her stomach swirled uncomfortably. “Hiroshi’s still pretty worried about me being out so late. He doesn’t want what happened to mom and dad to happen to me.” 

Akiho and Yuko both cooed at her boyfriend’s fierce protectiveness, but Satomi looked at Kayoko with what seemed like suspicion.

Ever since Kayoko moved in with Hiroshi, her older boyfriend of almost a year now, after the deaths of her parents, she hadn’t been making much time for the rest of her friends. Her excuse was always that Hiroshi was worried about her, given that her parents were murdered when Kayoko was out on a date with him, but Satomi thought otherwise.

Kayoko was too jumpy nowadays, even the smallest noise startling her enough to make her let out a strangled noise. She was always looking down, never making eye contact unless she was spoken to first. She even got scared when Shinichi, her childhood friend, put his hand on her shoulder, flinching away from his touch. Something was very wrong with Kayoko, and Satomi couldn’t figure out for the life of her what it was. 

But for now, it didn't matter. 

Kayoko was here, with her friends. She was away from Hiroshi, even if it was just for a little while. Whatever was wrong didn’t matter right now. 

The sight of the dark apartment caused Kayoko’s stomach to churn, especially since she knew what awaited her inside. It was six, much later than the time she normally came back. Even though she had texted him beforehand, he would still be angry.

“I’m… I’m home,” she called nervously, peering into the apartment as she closed the front door. The sound of the latch clicking caused her to swallow, and she reluctantly slid her shoes off and made her way inside.

A voice came from the living room, where the only light came from the television. “About time. You’re late, Kayoko.” She flinched, hearing the apathy in Hiroshi’s slurred words. She slowly crept into the living room, seeing the gruesome news about the mincemeat murders on the television. Hiroshi turned to look at her, a blank expression on his half illuminated face, although his angered eyes contradicted his façade of calmness. “Tell me why you’re so late.” His knuckles turned white as he gripped the beer bottle tighter.

She could feel dread creep down her spine as she shook. She wished she could be braver, but there was no way that she could even look at him without feeling some sort of fear. “I… I was late because I was with my friends. We went to Shibuya,” she replied, not bothering to argue.

There was a pause as he took a long sip of his beer. “Are these the… friends I met at your parents’ funeral?” Kayoko nodded slowly, fear lacing her heart. “I thought I told you that you don’t need them.”

Swallowing nervously, she summoned enough courage to look him in the eye. “But I missed them. I haven’t spent any time with them since the funeral…” She stopped herself as he stood sharply, his glare further darkening. As he approached, she stumbled backwards, right into the wall as he loomed over her.

“What did I say about talking back?!”

Kayoko felt the stinging pain in her cheek before she heard the sharp crack of his palm meeting her face. She whimpered softly, her hair whipping into her eyes from the force. Tears pricked her eyes as she fell to the floor, her body steeling itself for the pain that she knew was coming. She bit back her sobs as she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for it to be over.

She wondered when things had changed between them, trying to hide in the sweet memories of him before things had changed. Was it before her parents died? No, she remembered that the only reason she wasn’t with them that night was because of him.

Maybe things would’ve been better for her if she’d been with them.

Maybe they would’ve been alive. Or maybe she wouldn’t be. Either option was better than what was happening to her in the present.

Life truly was cruel.

The parasite didn’t know where it was, although that didn’t matter.

What mattered was one thing, and one thing only — it had to find a living host. It had to find something with a brain that it could take over. It had to find something that it could survive in.

A soft crying sound reached its receptors. It perked, somehow knowing that the sound was being made by a living being. A human. It could follow that sound.

From its pod, the parasite crawled, slipping through the night air until it found something, slipping into the human’s warm flesh, burrowing through its skull.

It knew that it would live.

Its consciousness began to blossom upon this realization, spurring itself into the fullest of sentient beings, with new knowledge filling its mind. It stood, looking down at itself, at its new body. Its hands were callused and rough, its knuckles missing skin as they bled through the poorly wrapped bandages. It was a male in its early adult stages. That was the first bit of information that the parasite absorbed.

Information from the being’s mind came flooding in. All of its knowledge, all of its memories… everything but the knowledge of emotion. The parasite registered that there were emotions, but could not register how they felt, unable to fully understand the breadth of these so-called feelings. But it — he — became aware of one very important thing. 

By human standards, the male he was inhabiting was a disgusting being. 

Human males treasured their significant others and treated them with respect. There was the idea that love was a powerful motivator, and that men should protect the women in their lives because of that love. Women were the reason that humanity survived as a species, and they were supposed to be repaid with love and respect. It was an important duty, just like the duty of survival the parasite held.

But this male, Hiroshi Yamanaka, ignored that duty. He did not respect his significant other. Instead, he treated her like she was worth nothing. 

The parasite felt his face twist into a frown. He moved slowly from the room he was in, nearly tripping as he adjusted to walking on these new legs. He looked through the living space. He heard the soft sobbing he had followed, and decided to follow it once more. His face, the face he had inherited from his host, began to split. His blades were sharp enough to kill, despite the fact that he had only just matured. He had to sustain himself somehow. He was a human, and he knew that humans were his food source.

He walked into a room that smelled like oil and smoke. It smelled like human food, and like blood. On the floor, her body curled into itself, was the girl he had seen in his host’s memories. The girl he was supposed to love, but didn’t. She was shaking and crying, her hand pressed into her midsection, where blood slipped past her fingers and dripped onto the floor.

She was already dying.

Upon hearing his footsteps, she slowly looked up. Her eyes met his. His blades pushed themselves forwards, poised threateningly near her body. One stopped near her neck, prepared to slice her thin skin open.

She smiled as she looked up. The parasite was taken aback, his blades pausing before they could cut into her.

According to his host’s memories, humans feared death. She should have screamed.

But instead, she pushed herself up so she could face him, that smile still on her face. His blade followed her almost curiously. She looked content, peaceful, despite the tears that stained her face. “Go ahead,” she muttered. “You’re going to kill me, right? That’s okay. Just, please, make it painless. I’m tired of hurting…” 

He remembered that his host had beat her that night. His host had beaten this girl until she bled, her face bloody and bruised from the violence, her voice shrill as she begged for mercy.

“Did you kill Hiroshi?”

She had cried and cried, yelling for him to stop. Tired of hearing her cry, he had grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the side. She’d gone limp afterwards, passing out on the kitchen floor.

“Good… I’m glad.”

The parasite wondered just what this girl was. She was human, but she had made peace with the possibility of death, something that haunted most humans, something they would do anything to avoid. She had accepted that she was weak. It was unusual, and it was something that he deemed worth studying.

Making a decision, he retracted his blades. His head reformed itself, but his face was different. He did not want to wear the face of the man who had hurt her. It would only scare her more. Instead, he chose a softer face, mimicking the one he had seen in his host’s memories, but he could not place where. 

Her eyes widened as he knelt before her. “Where does… it hurt…” he slowly managed, his words clunky as he spoke for the first time. His speech was broken, but she understood. She slowly, shakily, pointed to her side, where there was blood leaking through her shirt, spreading through the fabric.

“Hiroshi… did this,” she whispered.

The parasite stood, walking to the living room. He understood that there was information to be found on something called a “computer.” He recognized the small, thin, black rectangle that sat on a small block of wood. Opening it, he searched “stop bleeding.” 

There was more information than the parasite knew what to do with. His eyes scanned it, absorbing all of the words. He slowly stood after digesting as much of the words as he could and returned to the food room. 

He found a white cloth in one of the drawers. It was soft in his hands. He knelt near the girl again and pushed down on her side with the cloth. She winced, but didn’t move. He moved her hand to the cloth, pushing her hand down on her wound. She seemed to understand as she held her hand there, the white cloth slowly turning a deep red with each passing second. He stood walking to the counter, where he pulled a small box from another drawer. 

Inside, there was a roll of white, web-like cloth. It was called “gauze” according to his new information. There was also thin, brown cloth with a sticky side. He picked up both and returned to the girl. He gently pulled the bloody towel away from her, replacing it with a new towel from the same drawer as before. He wrapped the gauze around her, and held it down with the sticky fabric. Blood immediately seeped into the new towel, but it was less than before, he noted. He was well aware of her eyes on him.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked softly. 

He looked up at her, meeting her gaze once more. “Because I want to know… why you do not fear death.” His answer was a bit more put together than his previous sentences. Perhaps it was because he was beginning to understand the information he had inherited. 

The girl smiled a little. “You’re nicer than Hiroshi. I’m sure you could have killed me if you wanted, but you didn’t. Thank you… for saving my life.” She looked up at him, her warm eyes filled with the life that his were not. 

Somehow, he noted it was good that he kept that light from dying. 

Kayoko still didn’t know what had taken over Hiroshi’s body. She just knew that it was some sort of alien bug that infected and devoured his brain. It learned fast. Every day, it became more and more intelligent. It wasn’t a violent being, just a curious one, although its initial interaction with her should have told her otherwise. But after that first night, it hadn’t brought out its blades a single time.

Within two days, it had mastered human speech. Within a week, it’d learned how to hide itself as a human being. Within a month, it had become as human as she was. 

“Kayoko,” it called one day as it watched a news report on the television. “These mincemeat murders on the news. Do you think that they’re caused by others of my kind?” It turned to look at her, its blank eyes trained on her figure. 

She’d been exposed to what the parasite could do early on. After its blades nearly ended her life, she was sure that there were others. She was sure that those things were what caused the murders that took up all of the daily news, was sure that those things were what had killed her parents.

She hesitated to tell him. There was no telling what it would do if it knew that there were more. But she nodded. “Yes. I’m sure there are others,” she replied, turning back to the countertop, forcing herself to focus on slab of meat on the cutting board in front of her. 

It hummed. “You knew?” She nodded again. “Then…” it appeared on the other side of the counter, leaning close to her face and distracting her as she cooked, “… why haven’t you called the cops on me? Aren’t you scared you’ll end up next?” it asked, staring at her.

She stared into its blank eyes, unflinchingly. “I’m not afraid,” she admitted, looking back down to the raw meat she was cutting through, her knife in her right hand. “We’ve been here for a month, and you’ve yet to kill me. Right now, at least, I’m not afraid.”

The parasite had a huge appetite. It claimed that because it was a superior being — at least physically — that it needed extra food. She accepted that as an easy solution, and always made sure to make him extra food whenever she could. Yet it always preferred near-raw meat, even after it tried many human foods. 

“Does that mean that you’re not afraid to die at my hands?” 

It always had a lot of questions, never hesitating to ask a single one of them. Some were easy, like “what is that” in reference to the television. Others were more difficult.

One time, it had asked her why she got so much enjoyment out of listening to music as she cooked. Another time, it asked her why she woke up screaming several nights. She hadn’t known how to explain night terrors to the creature, unsure of if it would understand the basic concept of fear, let alone the idea that her fears pursued her as she slept.

But to Kayoko, this question was easy. 

“I’m not.” She sighed as she placed the meat into a bowl of marinade. “The way I see it, you saved my life that first night. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t kill me, but you haven’t so far. I’m not afraid of you after all this time.” 

The parasite’s gaze fixed itself on her, even as she turned away, starting up the table grill. 

“You’re a strange one,” he finally said, returning its gaze to the television. “Most humans fear dying, don’t they? Isn’t that why they go to such lengths to extend their lives?”

She just laughed dryly. “Yeah, well, if you wanted someone who would beg for their lives, you found the wrong human,” she murmured.

The look of defeat and tiredness didn’t look quite right on Kayoko’s face as he studied her. The parasite decided that she needed to be happy or alive, needed to have the look he’d first seen that night. It wasn’t because he preferred it or anything like that.

It was simply what he deemed to be right.

next chapter

[the-monkey-ruler]

Lupin the 3rd Part II (1977) ルパン三世

Director: Noboru Ishiguro / Koichi Sasaki / Hayao Miyazaki / Kyosuke Miku / Hideo Nishimaki Screenwriter: Kaoru Miyazaki / Tsuji Yamatoya / Tadaaki Yamazaki / Takumi Konno / Hiroshi Kaneko / Masu Shiroyama / Tsune Mori / Yu Taue / Shunichiro Koyama / Shoichiro Okubo / Yu Sarata / Yuki Shimada / Kaoru Shichijo / Hiroyasu Yamaura / Yoshiyuki Okuyama / Tomoaki Takahashi / Ya Shiono / Kyoko Jono / Masayuki Tsuikawa / Akinari Takato / Mitsuo Yosomono / Tatsumasa Sugimura / Kiyohide Ohara / Yoshio Ura / Misaki Sugi / Kazuyuki Sugi / Takehiko Mokuno / Shigeru Komiya / Takao Hamada / Wataru Takao / Keizo Fujimoto / Ichiro Hakimoto / Keiko Sugie / Yoshihisa Araki / Hideo Takayashiki / Kuno Mishima / Issui Katsura / Maji Kondo Starring: Yamada Yasuo / Kobayashi Kiyoshi / Masuyama Eiko / Inoue Makio / Natani Goro Genre: Animation / Fantasy / Adventure Official website: http://lupin-3rd.net/index.html Country/Region of Production: Japan Language: English/French/Italian/Tagalog/Japanese Date: 1977-10-03 Number of episodes: 155 Single episode length: 30 minutes (155 episodes) Also known as: Rupan sansei: Part II / The New Lupine III / 鲁邦三世TV系列2 / TV第2シリーズ IMDb: tt0159192 Type: Appreciation

Summary:

The series, based on the Lupin III manga written by Monkey Punch beginning in 1967, centers on the adventures of Lupin III, the grandson of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc's series of novels. He is joined by Daisuke Jigen, crack-shot and Lupin's closest ally; Fujiko Mine, the femme fatale and Lupin's love interest who works against Lupin more often than with him; and Goemon Ishikawa XIII, a master swordsman and the descendant of Ishikawa Goemon, the legendary Japanese bandit. Lupin is often chased by Inspector Zenigata, the dogged detective who has made it his life mission to catch Lupin.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupin_the_3rd_Part_II

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwJbP_mpnxw&list=PLj2Ugc-vxcWEvomV4nRhXY9ESB3XRLFiw

[parashiteposting]

Bored so I'm gonna overanalyze parasyte.

Through a certain viewpoint, the human characters of parasyte are an exploration of trauma (primarily due to all the murder) and how people react differently to it.

SHINICHI

Shinichi, as our main character, goes through a lot of hardships, ranging from being attacked by what looks like his mother, to having to hurt other "people", to witnessing horrific murders. His heart becomes harder in response, though he mistakes it for being parasitized, and he has a hard time telling other people like satomi of his problems due to the perception of danger.

Though his emotional capacity seems to have been diminished, in truth they're under guard, as seen when painful emotions like fear and panic still burst out of him when he witnesses something he didn't expect. Even his father thinks shinichi is emotionally stronger than him, almost like a robot (or "made of steel").

This sort of thing resembles people irl who are currently going through trauma and seem to stand strong despite it, but in actuality are only strong because there's nowhere to be safe and vulnerable, after which they break down.

SHINICHI'S FATHER

Shinichi's father's trauma is less extensive yet still terrible. His wife has died to something that seems almost impossible, a random freak accident he could never have imagined, and yet he can't tell anyone about it. The government has told him, personally, that there's nothing he can do to stop this from happening to other people, and he can't get the closure of a public funeral because she's likely still publicly a missing person case. He can't even commiserate with his own son because of how unbelievable it is (and he doesn't want shinichi caught up in that mess at all), but shinichi still depends on him as a parent.

With no power to change things for the better and no way to physically get away, he finds a temporary mental escape in alcohol and depression in his attempt to recover.

SATOMI MURANO

Satomi's trauma, despite also being the source of one of shinichi's traumas, is rarely focused on. However, it's one of the worst witnessed by regular humans; her class comes across hideo shimada during his rampage and is nearly all killed by him, blood and gore included. She in particular barely escapes with her life as the monster approaches, saved just in time by shinichi.

(frankly the survivor's guilt must be horrific.)

Having nearly lost everyone and everything, she understandably clings to shinichi and struggles with his changes, so different from the simpler happy days when they first got together. Unlike shinichi who shields himself from his trauma with mental and emotional distance, hers struck close to her heart and she is often reminded of it.

KURAMORI

Detective kuramori, in contrast, has lost everything. Unlike the previous three characters, his two loved ones are gone and there's nothing holding his resulting self-destructive urges back.

The combination of guilt for having gotten involved in something that killed them and the power to do something about the person he thinks is at fault (tamura) makes him go a little mad. He gives information to the police to take care of the others, then hares off to take more personal matters into his own hands regardless of his own safety.

AND OTHERS

There are several other not-well-adjusted humans involved in the story (the ones who don't die anyway), but there's less to write on them.

The baby had a terrible mother yet still cried when she died (reminiscent of shinichi's own mother-related trauma and his inability to hurt her even when parasitized).

Kana's boyfriend mitsuo lashes out after her death due to his own powerlessness, displaying a more conventional form of grief to contrast with shinichi's own trauma response.

Mamoru uda is another foil to shinichi, having been parasitized with his own life problems, yet despite frequently crying seems relatively well-adjusted and happy to help.

Mayor hirokawa has no backstory, but a human-hating person like him can't possibly have lived a normal, happy life.

Uragami is unfortunately the kind of person who causes trauma.

I have little to say on yuko bc she was cut off immediately in the manga while a lot was added or changed for her anime depiction and I don't want to rewatch just for that.

[ogradyfilm]

2023: A Year in (Movie) Review(s)

Every cinephile has at least one Holy Grail. It's a common story: interest in said rare movie is piqued by a fleeting allusion in the pages of some neglected reference book or obscure magazine article. Gradually, curiosity evolves into infatuation, then obsession, manifesting as a desperate pursuit that might persist for decades, the search constantly hampered by the tragic fact that the White Whale in question remains stubbornly elusive—either out-of-print or never officially licensed or localized in the first place. And even if it is available (usually through sources of dubious legality), the image quality is always barely a step above an nth generation VHS transfer.

Well, in 2023, I managed to cross five such films off my personal “bucket list”—and despite the year’s numerous challenges (financially, in particular), I think that’s an accomplishment worth celebrating. Thus, in the interest of posterity, I’ve enumerated them below, along with brief descriptions and links to the corresponding reviews I wrote immediately after seeing them:

A Page of Madness: Of all the miraculous discoveries on this list, this one was undoubtedly the most unceremonious and anticlimactic. I randomly stumbled across this silent avant-garde masterpiece (of which I became aware way back in college) while nonchalantly browsing Amazon Prime’s digital library; suddenly, there it was, available to rent for a paltry three dollars. The movie itself was sublime, of course; after spending such a significant chunk of my life hunting it down, however, the relative ease with which I ultimately acquired it couldn’t help but feel a bit… underwhelming.

Samurai Wolf: Although Hideo Gosha’s lean, mean chanbara classic has never truly been out of reach to those “in the know,” my own research into the assorted bootlegs and unauthorized foreign imports available via various online marketplaces was… less than encouraging. Fortunately, Film Movement came to the rescue like a chivalrous ronin; the restoration on the company’s Blu-ray release is borderline pristine, enriching the director’s already bold compositions and dynamic camerawork. Nihilism and moral decay have seldom looked so beautiful.

Angel’s Egg: Home video copies of Mamoru Oshii’s surreal animated allegory tend to be obscenely, prohibitively expensive in the West, and tickets for the infrequent repertory screenings generally sell out almost instantly. Thankfully, a recent overabundance of free time afforded me the opportunity to experience the film’s haunting, hallucinatory magic under ideal circumstances—in a theater absolutely packed with fellow fans and aficionados. The Q&A with art director/character designer Yoshitaka Amano that followed the feature presentation (courtesy of Japan Society) was just icing on the cake.

Door: While Banmei Takahashi’s taut, suspenseful, claustrophobic thriller is the latest addition to this list (I learned of its existence roughly a year ago, through out-of-context clips shared between several Twitter accounts), you shouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating my enthusiasm for it—my desire to see it burned with the fiery passion of a spurned admirer. As luck would have it, my thirst was sated rather quickly compared to the previous entries on this countdown; the movie played at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival—perfectly scheduled to coincide with the Halloween season.

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis - When I initially encountered this ambitious, extravagant, and extremely expensive special effects extravaganza, the only viable way to view it was in twelve parts on YouTube, compressed to about 240p resolution—a format that hardly does the spectacle justice. Thank goodness for the fine programmers at Japan Society; the big screen really smooths out the movie’s minor flaws and superficial blemishes, and Kyusaku Shimada’s magnificent performance as the nefarious Yasunori Kato certainly benefits from a more expansive frame. Guess I can finally stop requesting the film in the feedback section of literally every post-screening survey…

And that essentially sums up my 2023; the satisfaction of enjoying so many films that had been taunting and tantalizing my imagination definitely took the sting out of the whole "prolonged unemployment" situation. With that said, I’d like to wish everybody a very Happy New Year! Hopefully, my adventures in cinema will continue in 2024. (For God’s sake, will some distributor please show Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Sweet Home the love it so richly deserves?!)

[byneddiedingo]

Takashi Shimura in Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa,1954)

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Seigi Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Bokuzen Hidari, Yukiko Shimazaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Keiko Tsushima, Kokuten Kodo, Yoshio Kosugi. Shinpei Takagi, Eijiro Tono, Tatsuya Nakadai. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai. Production design: Takashi Matsuyama. Film editing: Akira Kurosawa. Music: Fumio Hayasaka. 

It's a truism that silent movies and talkies constitute two distinct artistic media, and to judge the one by the standards of the other is an error. But it's almost impossible to watch films made by older directors, especially those who came of age when silent films were being made, without noticing the efforts they make to tell their stories without speech. It's true of John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks, even though they, especially Hawks, became masters of dialogue in their films. And it's true of Kurosawa, who although he didn't begin his career in films until 1936 and directed his first one in 1943, was born in 1910 and grew up with silent movies. I think it helped him learn the universals of storytelling that are independent of language, so that he became the most popular of all Japanese filmmakers. Others rank the work of Ozu or Mizoguchi more highly, but Kurosawa's films manage to transcend the limitations of subtitles more easily. Of none of his films is this more true than Seven Samurai, which is also generally regarded, even by those with reservations about Kurosawa's work, as his masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly, but having sat enthralled through the uncut version, three hours and 27 minutes long, last night, I'm willing to endorse it. It's an exhilarating film, with none of the longueurs that epics -- I'm thinking of Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) and Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) -- so easily fall into. I don't know of any action film with as many vividly drawn characters, and that's largely because Kurosawa takes the time to delineate each one. It's also a film about its milieu, 16th-century Japan, although as its American imitation, The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), shows, there's a universality about the antagonism between fighters and farmers. Kurosawa captures this particularly well in the character of Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), the would-be samurai who reveals in mid-film that he was raised as a farmer and carried both a kind of self-hate for his class along with a hatred for the arrogant treatment of farmers by samurai. Mifune's show-off performance is terrific, but the film really belongs to Takashi Shimura, who radiates stillness and wisdom as Kambei Shimada, the leader of the seven. There are clichés to be found, such as the fated romance of the young samurai trainee Katsushiro (Isao Kimura) and the farmer's daughter Shino (Keiko Tsushima), but like the best clichés, they ring true. Seven Samurai earned two Oscar nominations, for Takashi Matsuyama's art direction and Kohei Ezaki's costumes, but won neither. Overlooking Kurosawa's direction, Shimura's performance, and Asakazu Nakai's cinematography is unforgivable, if exactly what one expects from the Academy.

[rehdhoodie]

Hi guys *throws this at you* bye guys *runs away and trips atleast 7 times*

[wolfchild48]

Ayakashi Soushi (あやかし草紙)

Ishikawa, Hideo (石川英郎) x Kishio, Daisuke (岸尾大輔); Toriumi, Kousuke (鳥海浩輔); Shimowada, Hiroki (下和田裕貴); Miyata, Kouki (宮田幸季); Chiba, Isshin (千葉一伸); Houki, Katsuhisa (宝亀克寿); Fukuyama, Jun (福山潤) Copyright Fifth Avenue 2004 Mangaka: Shimada Manami (嶋田まな海) Illustrator: Koujima Naduki (こうじま奈月) Genre: Romance, Yaoi, Multiple Couples Date: 27 January 2010 Company: Fifth Avenue (フィフスアベニュー) Website:…

[idontlikemanga]

[cave35]

Akira Ishida 

 Saiyuki (TV) as Cho Hakkai Gintama as  Kotarō Katsura Parasyte -the maxim- (TV) as Hideo Shimada Pandora Hearts (TV) as Xerxes Break One Piece (TV) as Cavendish Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV) as Kaworu Nagisa Natsume's Book of Friends (TV ) as Shuichi Natori Naruto (TV) as Gaara of the Desert NANA (TV) as Shinichi "Shin" Okazaki

See more at ANN

[musicaddictartist]

Something I drew on Ibispaint X a long while ago. I did okay with shading and better with the blending and coloring.