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Drunken Angel

7/3/2014

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by Peter Truax
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Akira Kurosawa’s 1948 film, Drunken Angel, is the eighth film by the Japanese director, and features two long-time Kurosawa collaborators: Takashi Shimura and Toshirô Mifune, the latter at the beginning of his work with the director. Set in post-war Japan, the film explores the relationship between wrongdoing and redemption from the point of view of its two main characters. A classic noir, Drunken Angel is a film about gangsters, dames, and mortality.
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Trylon Microcinema
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Producer: Sôjirô Motoki
Writers: Keinosuke Uekusa, Akira Kurosawa
Cinematographer: Takeo Itô
Editor: Akikazu Kôno
Music: Fumio Hayasaka
Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshirô Mifune, Reisaburô Yamamoto, Michiyo Kogure, Chieko Nakakita

Runtime: 98m.
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Countries: Japan
Premiere: April 27, 1948 – Japan
US Theatrical Release: December 30, 1959
US Distributor: Janus Films


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Dune

7/2/2014

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by Peter Truax
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As Virginia Madsen delivers in her monologue at the start of Dune, “a beginning is a very delicate time.” This is certainly true of transforming Frank Herbert’s novel Dune into a film. In fact, its first iteration, planned by the Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, failed completely. The film never left pre-production, leaving one crew member in a mental institution from duress, and no doubt disheartening a multitude of fans of the book, who had been eager to see Herbert’s opus put to film. What the straw was that broke the camel’s back is uncertain. Was it the run-time rivaling Wagner’s operatic Ring Cycle in length? Was it the choice to cast Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, to the tune of $100,000 an hour? Was it that the source work was simply too complex to translate off the written page? Run-time, cost, and the monumentality of Herbert’s novel combined to end a brilliant dream that now only exists as exactly that: a dream.
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Trylon Microcinema
Director: David Lynch
Producers: Dino DeLaurentiis, Raffaella De Laurentiis, José Lopez Rodero
Writer: David Lynch, based on Dune by Frank Herbert
Cinematographer: Freddie Francis
Editor: Antony Gibbs
Music: Toto
Cast: Francesca Annis, Linda Hunt, Brad Dourif, Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, Patrick Stewart, Max von Sydow Virginia Madsen, Everett McGill, Kenneth McMillan,Sting

Runtime: 137 minutes
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi
Country: USA/Italy
US Theatrical Release: December 14, 1984
US Distributor: Universal Pictures


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