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Feature Thousand Words

Visual Poetry: Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood

Inspired by William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Akira Kurosawa created, with Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jo, Japan, 1957), visual poetry: in black and white, light and shade, movement and immobility. Kurosawa does not try to put Shakespearean English into Japanese. Instead, image and rhythm replace words, pointing to the visual nature of Shakespeare’s language. In this way, Kurosawa, […]

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Feature Screengem

Screengem: Hannibal Lecter’s Half-Mask (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)

Many of the movies’ most memorable murderers wear masks. Those murderers, though, are generally the one-dimensional stalkers of slasher movies and those masks are usually worn for their benefit, not ours. Hannibal Lecter’s mask is forced upon him – for our protection. Transferred from one maximum security cell to another, Lecter is trussed inside a […]