{"id":5,"date":"2007-02-07T17:43:19","date_gmt":"2007-02-08T00:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/2007\/02\/07\/happy-belated-blog-post-yojimbo\/"},"modified":"2007-02-07T17:52:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-08T00:52:00","slug":"happy-belated-blog-post-yojimbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/2007\/02\/07\/happy-belated-blog-post-yojimbo\/","title":{"rendered":"happy belated blog post, Yojimbo!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long overdue, yes. My apologies (it&#8217;s my own fault, sorry about that, but if I can get this youtube thing to work *fingers crossed* it might just be worth everyone&#8217;s time). I&#8217;ll start off by saying that Yojimbo was (not sure if this is blog appropriate, but here goes) <em>badass<\/em>. I went into it thinking, &#8220;Okay, samurai gangster film&#8230;first of all, not my *genre* (that just pops up in and out of class, doesn&#8217;t it?) and secondly, how much can this possibly relate to <\/p>\n<ul>The Glass Key<\/ul>\n<p>?&#8221; Oh, myself of little faith. Not only did it have much in common w\/ our current book, but also with the entire *genre* (there it is again) of the Western. I was also blown away by the acting, cinematography, and eventually, yes, even the theme music (which initially was, admittedly, congruent w\/ my expectations of the silly 1960s samurai gangster film I <em>thought<\/em> it would be). Now I freaking love that suite. &#8220;But I digress,&#8221; as Prof. Campbell would say.<br \/>\nI found that with the black and white in Yojimbo, as with other movies in b&amp;w I have seen, it is much easier to contrast the archetypal themes (such as the scene we discussed in class where Yojimbo &#8216;Mulberry Fields&#8217; is crawling between shadow and light, or death and life). Although color can be striking and impact a movie greatly (I always love Wes Anderson&#8217;s color choices, myself) I honestly love black and white for its aesthetic qualities, namely shadows. (Somehow it seems like that could reflect somehow on my psyche, doesn&#8217;t it?)<br \/>\nIn terms of Yojimbo&#8217;s relation to The Glass Key, I found that there were more archetypal characters and less genre (uggghhh) folk (in my mind, I&#8217;m comparing the old helpful man of Yojimbo to well, I suppose&#8230;no one in The Glass Key, really because there was no one like that in there). There are more &#8220;stock&#8221; characters as Professor Campbell said, in genre movies&#8230;there were almost none in Yojimbo, save the big bumbling idiot of a gangster brother with that horribly unattractive smile. (Okay, so that was a little harsh.) There were quite a few similarities in themes too. Although Yojimbo (&#8216;Mulberry Fields,&#8217; laugh, laugh) himself did not gamble, the town&#8217;s problem began with that issue, and, more specifically, most scenarios (such as our protagonist being beaten to a pulp and then watched by two guards, one small, one ridiculously large, and then him escaping) still stand.<br \/>\nOver all, I felt Yojimbo was much more fun, and that theme music is so 60&#8217;s and hilarious&#8230;unfortunately, also catchy. I&#8217;ll leave you with this clip (if it will work) that I found on youtube of a horrible (but laughingly so) rendition of essentially one fight scene in yojimbo called &#8216;Yojimbo 2&#8217;&#8230;looks to be done by high schoolers(?) but the homemade theme music is what caught my eye&#8230;it&#8217;s also funny to see how many derogatory comments were left under the video if you look up the actual web page on youtube.<\/p>\n<p>Enjoy!<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/HO0x9CyLFz0\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/HO0x9CyLFz0\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long overdue, yes. My apologies (it&#8217;s my own fault, sorry about that, but if I can get this youtube thing to work *fingers crossed* it might just be worth everyone&#8217;s time). I&#8217;ll start off by saying that Yojimbo was (not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/2007\/02\/07\/happy-belated-blog-post-yojimbo\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/mordecai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}