Rashomon Effect

Just like Kurosawa I make mad films,
Ok, I don’t make films
But if I did they’d have a samurai

Fabulous! The Academy Film Archive has slaved painstakingly for years to restore Rashomon, one of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest films, to its original splendor. The restored version will be shown on Thursday, that’s right, this Thursday, two days from now, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Film Critic Kenneth Turan will lead a discussion on Kurosawa’s work immediately preceding the film.

(I wish I could be there. However, I’ve already promised to attend the Aztec Dance performance at my daughters’ school that same night. Darn.)

I have loved this film ever since grad school when my whole world snapped into a beautiful, jumbled house of cards of relative perspectives with my discovery of Narrative Theory.

Man, I went to grad school with some great people. I remember how the intellectual discourse would whirl through the room.

One fellow student, an ex-cop, shared how true to life Rashomon’s competing stories felt to him. He said that, in the case of rape, the bewildered husbands would come to him in confidence to ask, What did my wife say happened to her?

Oh, all the world’s a story…

Spin Can Be Good

I wrote about whirling dervishes a few days ago. Serendipitously, a whirling dervish performance will be part of the World Festival of Sacred Music, Los Angeles. Forty-one musical events in sixteen days, starting tomorrow, September 13!

But, like me, you’re intrigued by the twirling. Seeker of Truth: Sufi Music, Dance, and Poetry from Pakistan and Turkey will be performed by Yuval Ron Ensemble and Guests on Thursday, Sept. 25 at 8 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Wow. If that doesn’t say fun, I don’t know what does!

I wonder if I can get tickets…