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Feature Thousand Words

Thousand Words: A Journey into the Heart of Frontier America (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 2005)

Rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) kidnaps Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), a young officer of the U.S. Border Patrol, who accidentally shot Perkins’ Mexican friend Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) and quickly buried the body without reporting the death. The body was discovered, identified and reburied in a cemetery, but the local sheriff did not investigate […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Thousand Words: How to be a Human Being (Ikiru, 1952)

The first shot in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru shows an X-ray. A voiceover reveals that this is the stomach of Watanabe, the film’s central figure, who is terminally ill with stomach cancer. An ordinary man suddenly confronted with death and the futility of his existence, he is desperately trying to find a meaning in life. Kurosawa […]