Light sabers=samurai swords.

Lucas should've sued the shit outta Kurosawa.

disney owns all swords now

Lucas apparently took the idea of C3PO and R2D2 from the two peasants in Hidden Fortress.

Even the GZA?
http://youtu.be/KBr_rAfAZQw

I was fucking around. Lucas took a lot. But he has always fessed up to it. A "homage."

Lucas needs to fess up to that hideous goiter he carries around

Yeah I know. I was replying to el Symbols talking about the stuff with the princess.

As you say, whatever else Lucas may be, he's pretty up front about his influences.

i just read somewhere (i googled) that for lucas (per his criterion confessions) "the story is told from the point of view of the lowest characters" and he took that as inspiration, but that has been the trademark of comedy since its inception, as opposed to tragedy which tells of noble characters (this since aristotle, yeah?)

the cool thing about hidden fortress is that it juxtaposes both worlds, so you have this feudal high drama while the peasants bicker along, so it's full of pathos and at the same time incredibly hilarious. but tragicomedy wasn't invented by kurosawa-- or even shakespeare whom he admired. still he (they) did it brilliantly though. lucas goddamn illiterate fucktard. alec guiness hated that movie for good reasons-- number one reason was that he read decent books and couldn't stand his crummy lines.

This was a weird movie. I enjoyed many aspects, and cringed at many aspects, but it was good.

Alec Guinness comes from a long tradition of respected British actors (see also Olivier and Anthony Hopkins), happy to accept the Hollywood $ so long as they can bitch about how beneath them it all is afterwards. He could've always stayed in the theatre or stick with the made for TV films and series his career was reduced to in the years leading up to making Star Wars. As for the crummy lines, didn't he read the script before accepting the role?

actors are whores, of course. they don't have to love their johns. btw, watching hopkins play odin in the latest thor movie was a sad thing.

and i get that star wars was a huge success. i get why, too--it gave magic to children who had already given up santa claus. and it gave nerds a new ersatz religion. in that sense it is very well done of course-- the first one, anyway, made good use of joseph campbell's ideas. but my favorite lucas movie is thx1138.

Star Wars is in that category of uber-cult movies (alongside stuff like Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music, Jaws, Titanic, ET, Casablanca, etc) that almost transcend criticism. Not saying they can't be critiqued but it's hard knowing what criteria to use, given they now represent so much more than just movies.

the last 3 star wars destroyed any true cultism around Star Wars. Now it is just merchandise fixations

Never enjoyed this when i first saw it in the 90's. My girlfriend bought it the other day for 50p and it wasn't as bad as i first thought. Surprised to see Sheryl Lee in it.

I have alot of Kurosawa's films recorded and ready to watch, Hidden Fortress being one of them. Also working my way through every Ghibli.

Have you stumbled into Pom Poko yet?
Sheer magic.

^^Not yet, i'm maybe 2 to 3 films from it, i'm proceeding in the order they were released. I loved Laputa.

That's my all time favorite (aside from Castle of Cagliostro). I think both that and Cagliostro are the perfect cross section of his Disney/Hitchock influences, with Laputa having more of his unique vision.

wait wait-- who is the "he" of "his vision"?

laputa was miyazaki

pom poko wasn't. was it? imdb sez other name!

kindly explain.

I like the weirdness that was Paprika

Pom Poko was made by the same studio (Ghibli). At this point I was talking about Laputa and Castle of Cagliostro