News

Sword of Doom

Written by Shinobu Hashimoto

Directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Japan, 1966

Teenager Omatsu (Yoko Naito) and her grandfather walk atop a hill in the Japanese countryside on a beautiful day. While Omatsu leaves for a few moments to fetch water, her grandfather is discovered and ruthlessly struck down by a renegade samurai named Ryunosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai). The latter’s actions are but a sampling of his psychotic streak which leaves his underserving victims in the dust. Ryunosuke is a madman, but one gifted with glorious samurai skills, thus making him a highly coveted tool despite his staunchly anti-social personality. His actions on the hilltop thrust into motion a series of events that will see Ryunosuke’s sanity put to the test. He will go on to kill the brother of a young but highly skilled swordsman named Hyoma Utsuki (Yuzo Kayama), the latter whom will fall in love with the beautiful Omatsu.

The list of great samurai films is long and it would probably consume a person's entire lifetime if they were to seek them all out in an attempt to satisfy any measure of a comprehensive list. Several of the known greats I have yet to see and most likely those that are new to the genre will start in the most obvious of places, that being the films of Akira Kurosawa, most specifically Seven Samurai and then probably Yojimbo, two films that will certainly be included on my Best Movies list before all is said and done along with several others, but as I said, the list is long. That said, I didn't want my first samurai entry on my Best Movies list to be an entirely obvious one, though fans of samurai films will no doubt be familiar with Kihachi Okamoto's The Sword of Doom. The first film...

Cinema is a kind of uber-art form that’s made up of a multitude of other forms of art including writing, directing, acting, drawing, design, photography and fashion. As such, film is, as all cinema aficionados know, a highly collaborative venture.

One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and actor.

This article will examine some of the great director & actor teams. It’s important to note that this piece is not intended as a film history survey detailing all the generally revered collaborations.

There is a wealth of information and study available on such duos as John Ford & John Wayne, Howard Hawks & John Wayne, Elia Kazan & Marlon Brando, Akira Kurosawa & Toshiro Mifune, Alfred Hitchcock & James Stewart, Ingmar Bergman & Max Von Sydow, Federico Fellini & Giulietta Masina/Marcello Mastroianni, Billy Wilder & Jack Lemmon, Francis Ford Coppola & Al Pacino, Woody Allen & Diane Keaton, Martin Scorsese & Robert DeNiro...