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Posts Tagged ‘Kinji Fukasaku’

Legend of the Eight Samurai

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

I knew right away that LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI (1983) was gonna be interesting because the cosmic opening credits are backed by an English language rock song that would feel right at home in NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER. It’s called “White Light” and it was recorded specifically for the movie by John O’Banion, lead singer of Doc Severinsen’s band Today’s Children and winner on the pilot episode of Star Search.

The guitar solo starts over the director credit for Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY), then abruptly fades out and we get this beautiful matte shot of an army, a castle and a red sky…

 

…with a big orchestra playing something more like you’d expect in a period samurai movie. The music is credited to six different people and veers between styles, mostly to my taste except when it resorts to keyboard horn sounds vaguely mimicking themes from STAR WARS, which seems pretty cheap. Mostly this is an extravagant affair, though, a lushly produced fantasy epic with colorful costumes, huge crowds of armored extras carrying spears and banners, atmospheric sets built on four giant soundstages, and a wicked queen to put the one from SNOW WHITE to shame. (read the rest of this shit…)

Battle Royale II

Thursday, January 1st, 2004

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

Here he comes… one of my favorite online reviewers. It’s been too long, so it is a genuine pleasure to re-introduce the one and only Vern…

What’s up boys —

Vern here, still alive and ready to unveil my first “the ain’t it cool news” review for 2004. Unfortunately Seagal’s new picture with Ringo Lam is not done yet so instead I gotta review some movie about Battle Royale 2 by Kinji Fukasaku and son.

Previously on the Ain’t It Cool News: Battle Royale part 1 is a Japanese picture about a near future where school kids are put on an island by the government and forced to kill each other off. The survivor gets to live, so everybody has to decide whether to a) be all ethical and shit or 2) try to survive. It’s a pretty good movie and because it is brutally violent and not american, it has a big cult following here in my country of USA.

Battle Royale part 2 is the highly anticipated sequel, originally directed by Mr. Fukasaku again but he passed away and his son finished the job. It has been reviewed a couple times on here before by people who hated it and said to fuck it and etc. (read the rest of this shit…)