SUMMARY
OVERVIEW:
If you are a fan of Samurai movies, but don't know much about them,
then "Silver Screen Samurai" is exactly what you need!
With over a 120 movie posters along with brief articles on Samurai
movie history, "Silver Screen Samurai" is a great reference or coffee
table book for all to enjoy.
REVIEW:
Once again, the fine folks at Cocoro Books have presented us with a
fine publication. "Silver Screen Samurai" has really
opened my eyes to the wide and varied world of chanbara cinema.
Like it's companion book, "Anime Poster
Art", "Silver Screen Samurai" starts with a brief
introduction about this staple of Japanese cinema. Martin Foster
presents us with a "fans"view of chanbara (sword fighting)
cinema. It's very obvious that he has seen, and has vast knowledge
of these films. While the layout of the introduction is done well,
the busy background makes the black text a little hard to read.
Before we start looking at the posters, we get a brief education on
what "makes" a Samurai Cinema movie poster. It covers
everything, from why the text is blood red, to the real meaning in the
background picture.
Next up are the posters themselves. Many of them are full page
scans, showing a lot more detail than the two to three posters/flyers
crammed on to each page in "Anime Poster Art". Each blurb
provides quite a bit of information in just a few sentences.
Broken down into "eras", you can see how things have changed
over the last 50+ years. In the early days, many of the films were
carbon copies, churned out at in incredible rate. Now, many of the
films are "hipper" takes on the Samurai era, tackling
"taboo" subjects like homosexuality, or being nothing more than
"babes with swords. For me, I found the 1990~2003 era of the
most interest, as that was my introduction into Samurai Cinema. Many
of the films listed I have seen, and most are available in the US on
DVD. Cocoro Books must be the masters of "good timing".
With the success of films like "Princess Blade", and AnimEigo's
release of the "Zatoichi" series, this is the right time to
renew American interest in this grand form of pop cinema.
I found many of
the special features interesting and informative. For all you
Zatoichi fans, there is a brief overview of the history of this venerable
character. The feature I found the most interesting was "Women
of the Sword". Covering the range of ass-kicking heroines like
Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill" to Yumiko
Shaku in "Princess Blade", this section served to wet my
appetite for "girls with blades".
I was very please with Cocoro's "Silver Screen Samurai"
book. With it's wonderful pictures and informative articles, this is
a great book to add to your "Asian pop culture" shelf.
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