Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Following up on his critically acclaimed, blood-splattered epic Ran, master director Akira Kurosawa looks inward with this collection of eight brightly colored dreams. The first section centers on a young boy (Mitsunori Izaki), who witnesses a forest wedding procession of fox spirits in spite of his mother's (Mitsuko Baisho) warning. The second section concerns the same lad who converses with peach-tree spirits after the trees have been cruelly cut down. This is followed by a party of mountain climbers struggling to make it back to base camp in the midst of a terrible blizzard. The fourth dream deals with a man (Akira Terao) -- a Kurosawa stand-in complete with the director's trademark floppy white hat -- who encounters ghosts of Japan's militaristic past in a forlorn tunnel. In the following dream, the same man ventures into a Van Gogh painting called The Crows and meets the artist himself (Martin Scorsese). The sixth and seventh dreams venture into nightmare territory -- one deals with a nuclear meltdown that threatens Japan while the other concerns post-nuclear mutants. In the final dream, Kurosawa meets a 103-year-old man (played by Ozu regular Chishu Ryu) in a utopian rural village. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Surround
• Screen: Soft-Matted WSE for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: Japanese, English, Spanish, French
• Features:
  • • cc Interactive menus
    • Director film highlights
    • Scene access
    • Languages: Japanese
    • Subtitles: English, Français, Español, Portugués, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, & Korean

AWARDS

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Foreign Language Film - 1990

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Akira Kurosawa

• Screenwriter:

  Akira Kurosawa

• Cinematographer:

  Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda

• Composer (Music Score):

  Shinichiro Ikebe

• Editor:

  Tome Minami

• Production Designer:

  Shinobu Muraki

• Art Director:

  Yoshiro Muraki, Akira Sakuragi

• Co-producer:

  Mike Y. Inoue, Hisao Kurosawa

• Associate Producer:

  Seikichi Iizumi

• Set Designer:

  Koichi Hamamura

• Costume Designer:

  Emi Wada

• Makeup:

  Tameyuki Aimi, Norio Sano, Shoshichiro Ueda

• Special Effects:

  Industrial Light & Magic

• Choreography:

  Michiyo Hata