During Thanksgiving weekend, I saw three films at the Pacific Film Archives featuring the collaboration between director Akiro Kurosawa and his favorite actor Toshiro Mifune:  Throne of Blood, Rashomon, and Drunken Angel.  Of course, Kurosawa and Mifune are unbelievably famous -- but I had never seen any of their films before Saturday night.

It was an amazing experience for me -- I'm hooked.  I hope to see the other eight in the series over the next two weeks.  It's a lot of films, and I do get a bit obsessive in my ways of jumping into some new cultural forms.  Perhaps it's the bloom of new love.  When I walked out of the theater on Sunday night, I thought to myself exactly what one man standing to me exclaimed, "Wow, wasn't that amazing." 

Chris and I talked about Kurosawa yesterday at lunch.  We agreed:  why do we watch other junk when we can see movies like this?

If you don't know anything about Kurosawa and are put off by some of the same stereotypes that I had of him ("Oh, he just makes incredibly violent Samurai films...." [I don't know how I got that idea!]), give the films a chance.  There aren't too many opportunities to see these films (with new prints) on the big screen.