The Moviegoer

I finished watching the Kurosawa documentary yesterday, and it was quite good. He lived an interesting life, particularly in his later years when box-office failures and shifting Japanese culture left him dependent on international benefactors (in both the Soviet Union and America) to finance his films (and the resulting bitterness is evident in his later films). It also made clear just how direct Kurosawa's influence was on American films (Westerns in particular), with interviews of James Coburn (The Magnificent Seven) and Clint Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars).

I don't often see films in the theatre, but my girlfriend and I went yesterday and saw The Whale Rider, a film set among the Maori people, indigenous to New Zealand. It was a stunning film, with one of the best performances by a young actress that I've ever seen. Highly recommended.