Maybe Today Matinee

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Twenty-nineteen’s Parasite garnered extensive praise and four Academy Awards; today we look at one of the key films that inspired Bong Joonho’s work, Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film, The Housemaid.  In line with our remakes theme, we look at how Housemaid influenced Bong’s film as well as multiple other remakes, and we discuss how it handles the concepts of class struggle, materialism, and misogyny/rape culture.

Sources

Cole, Jake at Not Just Movies http://armchairc.blogspot.com/2011/01/housemaid-1960.html?m=1

Wikipedia

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The second film in our remakes theme, Sergio Leone’s 1964 movie, A Fistful of Dollars, is an unlicensed, beat-by-beat remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which we discussed last week.  What value can we find in a film that so closely followed its inspiration that it engendered a lawsuit?  What is the legacy of spaghetti westerns?

Sources

Bondanella, Peter: A History of Italian Cinema

Cumbow, Robert C.: The Films of Sergio Leone

Vlaanderen, Remco at Watch the Titles! https://www.watchthetitles.com/titlesequence/a-fistful-of-dollars/

Wikipedia

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Today in our first film in our remakes theme, we discuss Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai flick, Yojimbo.  What made this piece influential on global cinema, and why does it appear so ahead of its time?

Sources

Akirakurosawa.info https://akirakurosawa.info/yojimbo/

https://akirakurosawa.info/forums/topic/yojimbo-love-for-a-killer/

The Museum of Film History https://eng3122.wordpress.com/group-1/jenna-test/yojimbo/

Rogerebert.com https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-yojimbo-1961

Wikipedia