JUNKFILM

The late Japanese film maker, Akira Kurosawa, is being honored by having 5 of his master piece films restored from the either the original negatives or highly cleaned original prints of his films: “Kagemusha,” “Seven Samurai,” “Ran,” “Rashomon,” “Yojimbo” and “Dersu Uzala.”

The film getting the most attention it would seem is “Rashomon.”  It seems that there is no original cut on film of the film since 1970 when Japan outlawed the harbinging and storing any explosive devices.  The film was made of nitrate thus designated “combustible nitrate” and outlawed, and sadly destroyed.   A world wide hunt began trying to find elements of the film to piece together.

“Criterion had put out a DVD that had been made from a fine-grain negative . . . but it hadn’t been made from the original negative,” says academy archivist Mike Pogorzelski.  “I was expecting to see a really long list of archives of elements, but there weren’t that many copies.”

In 1962, the Japanese film commission made a print of the film and kept it in storage.  It would appear that the film print had never been used.  Pogorzelski says, “It became apparent that this print was as close to the original negative as we were going to get.”

The films will be shown for the public at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills…and any lucky sonuvabitch who gets to go know that I am jealous as hell, Kurosawa has been my favorite director since the first time I watched “Seven Samurai.”  The screening series coincides with the academy’s latest exhibition, “Akira Kurosawa: Film Artist,” in its two galleries. The exhibition, which begins Friday and continues for the next three months, features the late director’s original artwork, posters, scripts, memos, photographs and even his trademark sunglasses.

Anyone feeling generous and want to fly me out?   Maybe the blog site will be cool and give me a plane ticket to go and review the scene.