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JAPAN
12/1/61
KUROSAWA'S
MACBETH
*
No doubt about it now:
Japan's Akira Kurosawa must be numbered
with Sergei Eisenstein and D.W. Griffith
among the supreme creators of cinema.
"Rashomon" (1952) introduced him to U.S.
audiences as a powerful ironist. "Seven
Samurai" (1954) demonstrated his mastery
of movies as pure movement. Ikiru (1960),
one of the screen's great spiritual
documents, revealed him as a moralist both
passionate and profound.
"Throne of Blood", a
resetting of Macbeth among the clanking
thanes and brutish politics of 16th
century Japan, is a visual descent into
the hell of greed and superstition, into
the gibbering darkness of the primitive
mind.
It is a nerve-shattering
spectacle of physical and metaphysical
violence, quite the most brilliant and
original attempt ever made to put
Shakespeare in pictures.
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CHINA
2/23/59
RED HIT PARADE
*
Radio Peking last week
announced three top tunes on the Chinese Communist
Hit Parade: "We Will Not Allow U.S. Imperialists to
Ride Roughshod over the People", "The People's
Communes Are Good" and "Long Live Mao
Tse-tung".
JAPAN
2/8/63
THE GIANT BIRD
*
One of the highest-paid
athletes in Japan weighs in at 303 lbs., and his
stomach is roughly the size and shape of a medicine
ball. Yet Koki Naya, known professionally as Taiho
(loosely, "Giant Bird"), makes upwards of $50,000 a
year for practicing his specialty. At 22, Taiho is
the youngest grand champion in the history of sumo
wrestling.
The son of a Russian father and a
Japanese mother, Taiho was recruited when he was 16
and weighed a mere 155 lbs. To toughen his bulk, he
trained four hours a day, doing knee bends and
backbends, slamming into a wooden pillar with his
stomach, chest and head. Now a 6-ft., 2-in.
mountain of fat and muscle, Taiho can usually
outmuscle his opponents. "If he stays in shape and
doesn't let fame go to his head," says a rival
wrestler, "Taiho can be the greatest sumo champion
of all time."
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