Kurasawage

I had this sinking premonition that the Pats game wasn't going to go so well, and as such, I felt I needed to be away from my TV for that entire weekend. I went through a bunch of old invitations to see what I could do instead. I found an interesting one in George Lucas' Kurosawa fest at his big Star Wars themed ranch. I decided to RSVP and grab me a plane ticket to LAX.

Now you may be wondering why I would get an invite to so exclusive an event. First off, you should never wonder why I get invited to exclusive events, considering I'm me; and second, I actually am the foremost Caucasian expert on Iranian cinema here in North America, and I generally receive invites to these types of international film celebrations.

I can't lie, the festival was rather entertaining. He started Friday night with two greats: The Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress. Of course, after the second film, Lucas spent two and a half hours telling us how much it inspired his Star Wars series. Saturday gave us three films: Rashomon, and then Yojimbo, and its sequel, Sanjuro. The question was posed to me, in the discussion period after the last movie, is there anything like these coming out of Iran?

"No."

And that was that. He finished the weekend on Sunday with three more great movies: Ran, Throne of Blood, and Kagemusha. Many of you probably know that Ran and Throne of Blood are based on Shakespeare's King Lear and Macbeth respectively.

Normally I expect a film festival to go on a 2-3-2 schedule, and was ready to leave after the second film on Sunday. I should've. Kagemusha was a film brought to the US through money from Lucas and his homeboy Francis Ford Coppola. That meant about another 2 and a half hours of self-congratulatory back-patting and reminiscing after the film was over. I'd had enough, so I stood to leave.

"It's okay," Lucas yelled to me, "the Patriots have already lost, you can stay here with us."

"Yeah, the Pats may have lost, but I need to save what's left of my soul."

There was some uncomfortable laughing at first, and then an old guy stood and cheered. I have no idea who he was, but he was important, and the whole place joined him. Before I knew it, everyone was tossing verbal grenades at the two on stage about how horrible the last three Star Wars movies and The Godfather III were. I felt like a man again. Kurosawa and Abbas Kiarostami would have been proud.

I came home to find out the Pats had lost on a bad offensive pass interference call on Troy Brown in the second quarter, a call that was made in an attempt to keep the game close and the advertisers happy. Good Riddance.