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Roger Whittaker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roger Whittaker (Born March 22, 1936 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a British singer/songwriter and musician with worldwide record sales of more than 55 million. His music is of the folk/easy listening genre. In his early career, his trademark was his fantastic whistling ability.

Childhood and beginning

Married in 1964 to Natalie O'Brien, they have five children; Emily (May 28, 1968) and Lauren (June 4, 1970) are adopted [1], Jessica (February 14, 1973), Guy (November 15, 1974) and Alexander (April 7, 1978) are their natural children.

Whittaker's parents, Edward and Viola, were originally from Staffordshire, England, where they owned and operated a grocery shop. His father was involved in a motorcycle accident, and the family moved to a farm in Kenya because of the better climate. That Whittaker would eventually become a musician was no surprise, since his grandfather sang in various clubs, and his father played the violin. Roger learned to play the guitar.

Whittaker was drafted into national service, and he spent two years in uniform in the Kenya Regiment [2]. In 1956, he was demobilized and decided that it was time to concentrate on a career in medicine. He enrolled at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

After 18 months, he left the university and joined the civil service education department to try teaching.

Recording and performing career

To further his teaching career, Whittaker moved to Britain in September 1959. For the next three years, he studied zoology, biochemistry, and marine biology at the University of Wales, Bangor and received a B.Sc. He was one of the brightest students in his class. He continued to sing in local clubs, and released some of his songs on flexi-discs included with the campus newspaper, the Bangor University Rag. Shortly afterwards, he was signed to Fontana Records who released his first professional single, "The Charge of The Light Brigade", in 1962.

In the summer of 1962, he appeared at a professional gig in Port Rush, Northern Ireland. He landed his first major breakthrough when he was signed to appear on an Ulster Television show called "This And That". His second single, and the first to break into the UK Top 30 charts, was a Jimmy Dean cover of "Steel Men", released in June 1962.

In the spring of 1964, Roger met his future wife, Natalie, and they were married on August 15th.

In 1968, Whittaker had switched record labels, and in the autumn of 1969 EMI had released "Durham Town (The Leavin')", which became Whittaker's first Top 20 hit in Britain. In the spring of 1970, RCA Victor Records had released the uptempo "New World In The Morning" in the United States, where it became a Top 20 hit in the Easy Listening chart.

In the '70s and '80s, Whittaker had a lot of success in Germany, with songs produced by Nick Munro. Whittaker couldn't speak German, but sang the songs phonetically. He appeared on German and Danish TV several times [3], and was on the UK Top Of The Pops show ten times in the early to mid '70s.

In 1986, he published his autobiography, So Far, So Good, co-written with his wife.

Tours

In 1976, Whittaker undertook his first tour of the United States.

In 2003 he again toured Germany. After recovering from heart problems at the end of 2004, he started touring in Germany in 2005, and then in UK from May to July.

Awards

In his career to date, Whittaker has won over 250 silver, gold and platinum albums.

He was part of a successful British team that won the annual Knokke music festival in Belgium and won the Press Prize as the personality of the festival.

* Ivor Novello awards (twice) for songwriting in 1971-72 and for The Last Farewell in 1975-76 (?)(unconfirmed - e-mail query pending)

* Gold Badge Award, from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters in 1988 [4]

* Golden Tuning Fork (Goldene Stimmgabel in Germany) in 1986, based on record sales and TV viewer votes.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Whittaker

The Last Farewell :: Roger Whittaker

There's a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor
Tomorrow for old England she sails
Far away from your land of endless sunshine
To my land full of rainy skies and gales
And I shall be aboard that ship tomorrow
Though my heart is full of tears at this farewell

For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell

I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing
And the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising
Their guns on fire as we sail into hell
I have no fear of death, it brings no sorrow
But how bitter will be this last farewell

For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell

Though death and darkness gather all about me
My ship be torn apart upon the seas
I shall smell again the fragrance of these islands
And the heaving waves that brought me once to thee
And should I return home safe again to England
I shall watch the English mist roll through the dale

For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell

Andrew Lloyd Webber
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is a highly successful British composer of musical theatre. He has arguably been the most popular theatre composer of the late 20th century, with multiple showpieces which have run for more than a decade both on Broadway and in the West End. Throughout his career he has produced 16 musicals, two film scores, and a Latin requiem mass. He has also accumulated a number of honors, including seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Oscar, an International Emmy, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. Several of his songs, notably "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" from Evita, "Memory" from Cats, and "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.


Personal history

Lloyd Webber was born on March 22 1948 in South Kensington. He is the son of composer William Lloyd Webber and piano teacher Jean Johnstone Lloyd Webber, and his younger brother is the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. He was a Queen's Scholar of Westminster School and went up to Magdalen College, Oxford but did not graduate.

His first wife was Sarah Hugill. They married on 24 July 1972 and had two children, Imogen (born 31 March 1977) and Nicholas (born 2 July 1979). Lloyd Webber and Hugill were divorced in 1983. He then married singer and dancer Sarah Brightman on 22 March 1984. He cast Brightman as the lead in The Phantom of the Opera; however, the marriage did not last, and they divorced in 1990, though remaining friends. He married his present wife, Madeleine Gurdon, on 1 February 1991, and had three more children: Alastair (born 3 May 1992), William (born 24 August 1993), and Isabella (born 30 April 1996).

He was knighted in 1992 and created a life peer in 1997 as Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Sydmonton in the County of Hampshire. (His peerage title is hyphenated, but his surname is not.) He is ranked the 65th richest Briton in the Sunday Times Rich List 2005, with an estimated wealth of £700m.

Politically, he has been an active supporter and promoter of the Conservative Party, even writing special music for a party political broadcast.

Lord Lloyd-Webber is an art collector with a passion for Victorian art. An exhibition of works from his collection was presented at the Royal Academy in 2003 under the title Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters - The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection.

Professional career

Lloyd Webber first gained success at the age of nineteen, when he and Tim Rice were commissioned to write Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a high school in 1968. The musical was a hit; a slightly rewritten version was soon produced by the Edinburgh Festival. Lloyd Webber and Rice continued to collaborate and later produced Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Evita (1976), both of which were released as albums before being brought to the stage and later to film. The two parted ways soon after, and Lloyd Webber's next large success was 1981's Cats. Lloyd Webber defied convention by writing the score to existing lyrics by a deceased author, rather than having a living collaborator provide the words. The lyrics were based on T.S. Eliot's 1939 Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which Lloyd Webber confessed was a childhood favourite. Interestingly, the lyrics to the show's monster hit "Memory" were mostly the product of director Trevor Nunn's reworking of an unrelated, non-Possum Eliot poem. Cats was the longest running Broadway musical, spanning a reign of more than twenty years. Next, he wrote Starlight Express, which was a commercial hit but panned by the critics. In 1986, he premiered his next musical, The Phantom of the Opera, inspired by the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel. Although met with mixed reviews in New York, it became a hit and is still running; in January 2006 it overtook Cats as the longest-running musical on Broadway. His many other musical theatre works include The Likes of Us, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Whistle Down the Wind, Song and Dance, The Beautiful Game and The Woman in White. While some of his works have had enormous commercial success, his career has not been without failures, especially in the United States. Song and Dance, Starlight Express, and Aspects of Love, all successes in London, did not meet the same reception in New York, and all lost money in short, critically panned runs. In 1995, Sunset Boulevard became a very successful Broadway show, winning seven Tony Awards, although owing to high weekly costs, it too lost a large amount of money. His subsequent shows (Whistle Down the Wind and The Beautiful Game) did not make it to Broadway, and his most recent musical The Woman in White was critically dismissed and closed after a very short run in New York.

Many of his stage musicals have been taken onto the big screen. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) was directed by Norman Jewison, Evita (1996) was directed by Alan Parker, and most recently The Phantom of the Opera was directed by Joel Schumacher (and co-produced by Lloyd Webber). He was asked to write a piece for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics entitled "Amigos Para Siempre".

He has also composed for film. In 1984, he took a different musical style, composing his Requiem in memory of his father, who had died in 1982.

Lloyd Webber produced Bombay Dreams with Indian composer A. R. Rahman in 2002. His most recent show is The Woman in White (2004).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber

Memory (Cats) :: Andrew Lloyd Webber

Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Every streetlamp seems to beat a fatalistic warning
Someone mutters, and a streetlamp gutters,
And soon it will be morning.

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
And I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smokey days
The stale cold smell of morning
The streetlamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning...

Touch me!
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun...
If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day
Has begun

Reese Witherspoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reese won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her leading role in Walk The Line on March 5, 2006.
Born
March 22, 1976
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA



Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon [1] (born March 22, 1976) is an Academy Award winning actress best known for her roles in Legally Blonde and Walk the Line.


Early life

Witherspoon was born Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in New Orleans[2] to John Witherspoon, a surgeon, and Betty Reese, a nurse and college professor. She is a direct descendant of Scottish-born John Witherspoon, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and sixth president of Princeton University, who was also a Presbyterian minister. Because her father worked for the US military in Wiesbaden, Germany, she lived there for four years as a small child. After returning to the United States, Witherspoon spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Nashville, Tennessee. She has an older brother, John, who works as a real estate broker. After graduating from the prestigious private all-girl's Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, she attended Stanford University as a literature major. After completing a year of her studies, she left Stanford to pursue her acting career.

Career

Witherspoon began her career in local commercials. Her first role was in a 1991 made-for-TV movie called Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton and starring Beau Bridges, William McNamara, and Patricia Arquette. That same year, at age 14, Witherspoon attended an open casting call for The Man in the Moon, intending to audition as a bit player. She was instead cast in the lead role, immediately capturing the attention of critics. Since, she has built up an impressive filmography, playing both comedic and dramatic roles, including performances as Vanessa in Freeway and Tracy Flick in Election. She was the voice of the animated character Greta Wolfecastle in an episode of The Simpsons. She achieved fame for her role as a fashion designer major who decided to become a law student to follow her ex-boyfriend in 2001's Legally Blonde, and became a leading environmental lawyer in its sequel Legally Blonde 2 for which she received a reported $15 million paycheck, making her one of Hollywood's top-paid actresses. She has garnered critical praise and awards for her turn as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line. Carter Cash, who died in 2003, personally approved of Witherspoon to play her. Witherspoon won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, NYFCC, the FFCC, the SFFCC Award for Best Actress, the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) for best actress in a lead role, the British Academy's BAFTA for best actress in a lead role, the "Favorite Leading Lady" at the 32nd Annual People's Choice Awards, and the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.

Production Company

Witherspoon runs a production company, Type A Productions, with partner Laura Siegel. The company is named after Witherspoon's childhood nickname "Little Miss Type A."

Salary

On February 28, 2006, it was reported that Witherspoon will beat Julia Roberts' record for the highest paid actress of all time when she is paid $29 million for an upcoming horror film Our Family Troubles, which will beat Roberts' $25 million 2004 salary for Mona Lisa Smile.

Personal life

Witherspoon met actor Ryan Phillippe at her 21st birthday party in March 1997, where she reportedly said to him, "You must be my birthday present." The pair were engaged in December 1998. Soon after, the couple starred together in the box office hit Cruel Intentions. They were married on a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina on June 5, 1999. They have two children together: daughter Ava Elizabeth, born September 9, 1999, and son Deacon, born October 23, 2003. Ava is named after Phillippe's grandmother, and Deacon after one of his distant relatives. Witherspoon and Phillippe have a pact that one of them will always be a full-time parent to the children, and they thus alternate filming schedules. Witherspoon is known for being a very hands-on mother, and she and her husband claim to have never employed a full-time nanny. The family resides in a gated community in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood.

Paparazzi

In September 2005, Witherspoon and her children were celebrating daughter Ava's sixth birthday at Disney's California Adventure theme park when they were approached by paparazzi photographer, Todd Wallace. After Witherspoon declined to pose for photos at close range, police say Wallace became enraged and pushed a child out of the way, while hitting another with his camera, in his efforts to photograph the actress.

Wallace also allegedly shoved two theme park employees when they attempted to restrain him, and cursed at Witherspoon, causing several children to burst into tears. As a result of the altercation, Wallace was arrested and faced misdemeanor charges. However, before the case went to trial, Wallace was found dead in his apartment in Brentwood. Police are currently investigating the cause of death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reese_Witherspoon

4 miracles of a woman
1. Getting wet without taking a shower.
2. Bleeding without getting hurt.
3. Giving milk without eating grass.
4. Making boneless flesh hard.

Bob, time to up the medication!

LONG TALL SALLY
Johnson/Penniman/Blackwell

Gonna tell Aunt Mary bout Uncle John
He claims he has the misery but he's havin alot of fun
Oh baby,yes, baby, wooo baby ,havin' me some fun tonite, yeah

Well Long Tall Sally she's built for speed,she's got
Everything that Uncle John need
Oh baby,yes baby,woooo baby,
Havin me some fun tonite,yeah

Well, I saw Uncle John with a ball headed Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin and he ducked back in the alley
Oh baby,yes baby, woooo baby, havin me some fun tonite

Instrumental

Well Long Tall Sally shes built for speed,she's got
Everything that Uncle John need
Oh baby,yes baby,woooo baby, havin me some fun tonite, yeah

Well,I saw Uncle John with a ball headed Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin and he ducked back in the alley
Oh baby,yes,baby,wooo baby havin me some fun tonite,yeah

We're gonna have some fun tonite
Gonna have some fun tonite,wooo
Have some fun tonite
Everythings alright
Have some fun,have me some fun tonite

ARTIST: Hoyt Axton
TITLE: Never Been to Spain
Lyrics and Chords


[As performed by Three Dog Night]

Well I never been to Spain
But I kinda like the music
Say the ladies are insane there
And they sure know how to use it
They don't abuse it, never gonna lose it
I can't refuse it

Well I never been to England
But I kinda like the Beatles
Well, I headed for Las Vegas
Only made it out to Needles
Can you feel it, must be real it
Feels so good, oh, feels so good

Well I never been to Heaven
But I been to Oklahoma
Well they tell me I was born there
But I really don't remember
In Oklahoma, not Arizona
What does it matter, what does it matter

Well I never been to Spain...

Well I never been to Heaven...

Ah, Raggedy, thanks for the pictures, PA, and, of course, you were right again.

Well, my red tailed friend, we do know that you Loves Roger, and all of us here would like to hear YOU sing that song.

My, my. what an interesting observation about women. Love it!(it isn't all fun and games for us, you know)

Try, you and I do have something in common, 'cause I adore Three Dog Night.

Well, my friends, it has been a "hurry up and wait" day for Letty, so let's hear a little Tom Waits:

Artist: Tom Waits
Song: Virginia avenue
Album: Closing Time


Well, I'm walking on down Virginia Avenue
Trying to find somebody to tell my troubles to.
Harold's club is closing,

and everybody's going on home:
What's a poor boy to do?

I'll just get on back into my short,
make it back to the fort
Sleep off all the crazy lizards inside of my brain.
There's got to be some place
that's better than this
This life I'm leading's driving me insane

And let me tell you I'm dreaming...

Let me tell you that
I'm dreaming to the twilight,
this town has got me down.
I've seen all the highlights,
I've been walking all around
I won't make a fuss, I'll take a Greyhound bus,
carry me away from here:
Tell me, what have I got to lose?

'Cause I'm walking on down Columbus Avenue
The bars are all closing,
'cause it's quarter to two
Every town I go to is like a lock without a key
Those I leave behind are catching up on me,
Let me tell you they're catching up on me,
they're catching up on me
Catching up on me, catching up on me,
catching up on me.

Back later, listeners, to cover all of Bob's bios.

Letty, you know Three Dog Night. What a surprise I would not have thought anybody would have heard of them.

Old-Fashioned Love Song

Just an old-fashioned love song playin' on the radio
And wrapped around the music is the sound
Of someone promising they'll never go
You swear you've heard it before
As it slowly rambles on and on
No need in bringin' `em back,
`Cause they're never really gone

Just an old-fashioned love song
One I'm sure they wrote for you and me
Just an old-fashioned love song
Comin' down in 3-part harmony

To weave our dreams upon and listen to each evening
When the lights are low
To underscore our love affair
With tenderness and feeling that we've come to know
You swear you've heard it before
As it slowly rambles on and on and
No need in bringin' `em back,
`Cause they're never really gone

Just an old-fashioned love song
Comin' down in 3-part harmony
Just an old-fashioned love song
One I'm sure they wrote for you and me
Just an old-fashioned love song
Comin' down in 3-part harmony
Just an old-fashioned love song
One I'm sure they wrote for you and me

To weave our dreams upon and listening to a song . . .

Love 'em all, Try.

Here's one that I haven't heard by them, but it is lovely:


Artist: THREE DOG NIGHT

Pieces of April


April gave us springtime and the promise of the flowers
And the feeling that we both shared and the love that we called ours
We knew no time for sadness, that's a road we each had crossed
We were living a time meant for us, and even when it would rain
we would laugh it off.

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, it's a morning in May

We stood on the crest of summer, beneath an oak that blossomed green
Feeling as I did in April, not really knowing what it means
But it must be then that you stand beside me now to make me feel this way
Just as I did in April, but it's a morning in May.

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, but it's a morning in May

I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, but it's a morning in May

In reading back over Bob's bio's, folks, I was surprised to find out that Stephen Sondheim wrote this great song:

A Little Night Music Soundtrack Lyrics



Artist: Lyrics
Song: Send in the Clowns Lyrics

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

Dear Landlord - B Dylan


Dear landlord,
Please don't put a price on my soul.
My burden is heavy,
My dreams are beyond control.
When that steamboat whistle blows,
I'm gonna give you all I got to give,
And I do hope you receive it well,
Dependin' on the way you feel that you live.

Dear landlord,
Please heed these words that I speak.
I know you've suffered much,
But in this you are not so unique.
All of us, at times, we might work too hard
To have it too fast and too much,
And anyone can fill his life up
With things he can see but he just cannot touch.

Dear landlord,
Please don't dismiss my case.
I'm not about to argue,
I'm not about to move to no other place.
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don't underestimate me,
I won't underestimate you.

Well, Texas. Again I must admit that's a Dylan song that I have not heard. Surprised? <smile>

It's time to say goodnight, my friends, so this is a song from Nat whom we will never forget:

Artist: Nat King Cole Lyrics
Song: I Remember You Lyrics

Was it in Tahiti?
Were we on the Nile?
Long, long ago,
Say an hour or so
I recall that I saw your smile.


I remember you,
You're the one who made
My dreams come true
A few kisses ago.


I remember you,
You're the one who said
"I love you, too," I do.
Didn't you know?


I remember, too,
A distant bell,
And stars that fell like rain
Out of the blue.


When my life is through,
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of them all,
Then I shall tell them
I remember you.

From Letty with love

Good morning, WA2K fans and contributors.

I think that I will open up this morning with a song dedicated to Walter. It's all in fun, folks:




DOWN IN THE BOONDOCKS

Down in the boondocks
Down in the boondocks
People put me down 'cause
That's the side of town I was born in
I love her she loves me but I don't fit in her society
Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks

Ev'ry night I watch the lights from the house up on the hill
I love a little girl who lives up there and I guess I always will
But I don't dare knock on her door
'Cause her daddy is my boss man
So I have to try to be content
Just to see her when ever I can

Down in the boondocks
Down in the boondocks
People put me down 'cause
That's the side of town I was born in
I love her she loves me but I don't fit in her society
Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks

Down in the boondocks
Down in the boondocks

One fine day I'll find the way to move from this old shack
I'll hold my head up like a king and I never never will look back
Until that morning I'll work and slave
And I'll save ev'ry dime
But tonight she'll have to steal away
To see me one more time

Down in the boondocks
Down in the boondocks
People put me down 'cause
That's the side of town I was born in
I love her she loves me but I don't fit in her society
Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks
Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks
Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks

Thanks, Letty - actually my favourite song ... the very first, I heard on my small own transistor, when I got it. (A different staion - WA2K wasn't on air in those days - namely Canadian Forces Radio CAE in Werl, Germany :wink: )

Well, Walter. Glad to see you back. It always takes a special song of dedication to get you Germans to respond.

Well, buddy, name that favorite song and we'll play it for everyone.<smile>

Incidentally, listeners, our Sturgis is ill and we wish him the best. We are also glad to know that Lord Ellpus is feeling better after the death of a dear friend.

Good Day!

I just checked out today's birthdays and must admit I only knew a few.
I'm wondering what bios Bob will offer. Probably:

(1905-1977)


Maybe,
Richard Grieco


I think Alydar (195-1977) is cute:

Akira Kurosawa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born
23 March 1910
Ota, Tokyo, Japan
Died
6 September 1998
Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 Kurosawa Akira, also 黒沢 明 in Shinjitai, 23 March 1910 - 6 September 1998) was a prominent Japanese film director, film producer, and screenwriter.

Few filmmakers have had a career so long or so acclaimed as Akira Kurosawa, perhaps Japan's best-known filmmaker. His films greatly influenced an entire generation of filmmakers the world over, ranging from George Lucas to Sergio Leone.

His first credited film (Sugata Sanshiro) was released in 1943; his last (Madadayo) in 1993. His many awards include the Legion d'Honneur and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.


Early career

Kurosawa was born in Omori, Tokyo, the youngest of seven children. He trained as a painter and began work in the film industry as an assistant director to Kajiro Yamamoto in 1936. He made his directorial debut in 1943 with Sugata Sanshiro. His first few films were made under the watchful eye of the wartime Japanese government and sometimes contained nationalistic themes. For instance, The Most Beautiful is a propaganda film about Japanese women working in an armaments factory. Judo Saga 2 has been held to be explicitly anti-American in the way that it portrays Japanese judo as superior to western (American) boxing.

His first post-war film No regrets for our youth, by contrast, is critical of the old Japanese regime and is about the wife of a left-wing dissident arrested for his political leanings. Kurosawa made several more films which deal with contemporary Japan, most notably Drunken Angel and Stray Dog. However it was a period film Rashomon which made him internationally famous and won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival.

Characteristics

Kurosawa is best-known for his period pieces or jidaigeki (時代劇, jidaigeki?) like Seven Samurai and Ran, but several of his films dealt with contemporary Japan: for example Stray Dog, which looks at the criminal underworld just after the end of the war, and Ikiru, which deals with a Japanese bureaucrat who discovers that he is suffering from cancer but eventually steps out of depression and struggles against bureacratic inertia to leave his small contribution to the world in the form of a small community park before he dies.

Kurosawa had a distinctive cinematic technique, which he had developed by the 1950s, and which gave his films a unique look. He liked using telephoto lenses for the way they flattened the frame and also because he believed that placing cameras farther away from his actors produced better performances. He also liked using multiple cameras, which allowed him to shoot an action from different angles. Another Kurosawa trademark was the use of weather elements to heighten mood: for example the heavy rain in the final battle in Seven Samurai and the fog in Throne of Blood. Kurosawa also liked using left-to-right frame wipes as a transition device.

He was known as "Tenno", literally "Emperor", for his dictatorial directing style. He was a perfectionist who spent enormous amounts of time and effort to achieve the desired visual effects. In Rashomon, he dyed the rain water black with calligraphy ink in order to achieve the effect of heavy rain, and ended up using up the entire local water supply of the location area in creating the rainstorm. In Throne of Blood, in the final scene in which Mifune is shot by arrows, Kurosawa used real arrows shot by expert archers from a short range, landing within centimetres of Mifune's body.

Other stories include demanding a stream be made to run in the opposite direction in order to get a better visual effect, and having the roof of a house removed, later to be replaced, because he felt the roof's presence to be unattractive in a short sequence filmed from a train.

Influences

A notable feature of Kurosawa's films is the breadth of his artistic influences. Some of his plots are adaptations of William Shakespeare's works. The Bad Sleep Well is based on Hamlet, Ran is based on King Lear and Throne of Blood is based on Macbeth. Kurosawa also directed film adaptations of Russian novels, including The Idiot by Dostoevsky and The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky. Ikiru was based on Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. High and Low was based on King's Ransom by American crime writer Ed McBain. Stray Dog was inspired by the detective novels of Georges Simenon. The American film director John Ford also had a large influence on his work.

Despite criticism by some Japanese critics that Kurosawa was "too Western", he was deeply influenced by Japanese culture as well, including the Kabuki and Noh theaters and the jidaigeki (period drama) genre of Japanese cinema.


His influence

Kurosawa's films had a huge influence on world cinema. Most explicitly, Seven Samurai was remade as the western The Magnificent Seven, science fiction movie Battle Beyond the Stars, and Pixar's A Bug's Life. It also inspired two Hindi films, Ramesh Sippy's Sholay and Rajkumar Santhoshi's China Gate, with similar plots. The story has also inspired novels, among them Stephen King's fifth Dark Tower novel, Wolves of the Calla.

Yojimbo was the basis for the Sergio Leone western A Fistful of Dollars, the Coen Brothers film Miller's Crossing, and the Bruce Willis prohibition-era Last Man Standing.

The Hidden Fortress had an influence on George Lucas's earliest Star Wars film, especially in the characters of R2-D2 and C3PO.

Rashomon not only helped open Japanese cinema to the world but virtually entered the English language as a term for fractured, inconsistent narratives as well as influencing other works, including episodes of television series and many motion pictures.

Collaboration

During his most productive period, from the late 40s to the mid-60s, Kurosawa often worked with the same group of collaborators. Fumio Hayasaka composed music for seven of his films; notably Rashomon, Ikiru and Seven Samurai. Many of Kurosawa's scripts, including Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai and Ran were co-written with Hideo Oguni. Yoshiro Muraki was Kurosawa's production designer or art director for most of his films after Stray Dog in 1949 and Asakazu Naki was his cinematographer on 11 films including Ikiru, Seven Samurai and Ran. Kurosawa also liked recycling the same group of actors, especially Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune. His collaboration with the latter is one of the greatest director-actor combinations in cinema history. It began with 1948's Drunken Angel and ended with 1964's Red Beard.


Later films


Red Beard marked a turning point in Kurosawa's career in more ways than one. In addition to being his last film with Mifune, it was his last in black-and-white. It was also his last as a major director within the Japanese studio system making roughly a film a year. Kurosawa was signed to direct a Hollywood project, Tora! Tora! Tora!; but 20th Century Fox replaced him with Kinji Fukasaku before it was completed. His next few films were a lot harder to finance and were made at intervals of five years. The first, Dodesukaden, about a group of poor people living around a rubbish dump, was not a success.

After an attempted suicide, Kurosawa went on to make several more films although arranging domestic financing was highly difficult despite his international reputation. Dersu Uzala, made in the Soviet Union and set in Siberia in the early 20th century, was the only Kurosawa film made outside Japan and not in Japanese. It is about the friendship of a Russian explorer and a nomadic hunter. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Kagemusha, financed with the help of the director's most famous admirers, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, is the story of a man who is the double of a medieval Japanese lord and takes over his identity. Most important was Ran, Kurosawa's version of King Lear set in medieval Japan. It was the great project of Kurosawa's late career, and he spent a decade planning it and trying to obtain funding, which he was finally able to do with the help of the French producer Serge Silberman. The film was a phenomenal international success and is generally considered Kurosawa's last masterpiece.

Kurosawa made three more films during the 1990s which were more personal than his earlier works. Dreams is a series of vignettes based on his own dreams. Rhapsody in August is about memories of the Nagasaki atom bomb and his final film: Madadayo is about a retired teacher and his former students. Kurosawa died in Setagaya, Tokyo, at age 88.

Trivia

Kurosawa was a notoriously lavish gourmet, and spent huge quantities of money on film sets providing an uneatably large quantity and quality of delicacies, especially meat, for the cast and crew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa