Kurosowa's The Hidden Fortress, and new comics!

After not being blown away by "The Seven Samurai," I finally got what Kurosowa fans love about him after watching "The Hidden Fortress," apparently one of the main inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars: A New Hope. A spunky teenage heroine probably helped endear the film to me, as did repetitive use of curse words and slapstick humor by the two peasant/clown characters - who were the models for C3PO and R2D2. He had a great eye, a good sense of humor, a way with scoring, and a way of making a movie visceral and satisfying. If you haven't seen it, "The Hidden Fortress" is a suprisingly fun popcorn flick. I also felt that, besides the resonances to A New Hope, I felt there were echoes of the film in Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

A new comic series called "Fables" has been called to my attention, in which different folk and fairy tale characters come to life in the contemporary world, and I finally got my hands on the last three Buffy comics (I've been living too far from any comics stores for six months now...) And I read there's going to be a Buffy/Fray crossover soon, which is good, since I became very attached to Fray's character.