Rashomon
Last night I watched some of the 1999 version of The Haunting, directed by Jan De Bont, and based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. It was previously filmed in 1963. The storyline basically involves a group of people (Catherine Zeta Jones, Lili Taylor and Owen Wilson) being brought into the manison of Hill House to ostensibly take part in research into insomnia. However, the professor in charge (Liam Neeson) really intends to conduct research into fear, with the help of various fake scares. However, it turns out that Hill House may be genuinely haunted. Both the book and the earlier film were known for the ambiguous and subtle nature of the scares, however the later film basically throws out any subtlety or ambiguity with a flood of over the top production design and CGI ghost effects. Interestingly, the film was originally intended as a collaboration between Steven Spielberg (as director) and Stephen King (as screenwriter) but the project was abandoned due to "creative differences".
Today I went out and got some groceries for the week. When I came home I watched the 1950 movie Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, on DVD. The film is based on the short stories "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The film is set in 12th Century Japan and opens with three men sheltering from a heavy storm in the ruins of Rashomon Gate. They pass the time discussing a court case which two of them had been involved in, in which a notorious bandit (played by Toshiro Mifune) is accused of brutally assaulting a samurai and his wife, resulting in the death of the samurai. As four different people give four contradictory accounts of the crime, the nature of memory, truth and lies, fact and fiction and even good and evil come into question. The movie is one of the acknowledged classics of world cinema and has been referenced endlessly, including once in an episode of The Simpsons (Marge: "C'mon Homer, you liked Rashomon". Homer: "Well, that's not how I remember it".)
I'm intending on just having a fairly quiet day in today.
Today I went out and got some groceries for the week. When I came home I watched the 1950 movie Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, on DVD. The film is based on the short stories "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The film is set in 12th Century Japan and opens with three men sheltering from a heavy storm in the ruins of Rashomon Gate. They pass the time discussing a court case which two of them had been involved in, in which a notorious bandit (played by Toshiro Mifune) is accused of brutally assaulting a samurai and his wife, resulting in the death of the samurai. As four different people give four contradictory accounts of the crime, the nature of memory, truth and lies, fact and fiction and even good and evil come into question. The movie is one of the acknowledged classics of world cinema and has been referenced endlessly, including once in an episode of The Simpsons (Marge: "C'mon Homer, you liked Rashomon". Homer: "Well, that's not how I remember it".)
I'm intending on just having a fairly quiet day in today.
posted by WildatHeart87 at 9:21 AM
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