Cheap Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Toshirô Mifune, Minoru Chiaki) (Akira Kurosawa) Price

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Customer Reviews of Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection

The 1957 film is full of fog, wind, rain and lightning -- sound and fury indeed -- reflecting the descent into madness of the film's Macbeth, Lord Washizu (Toshiro Mifune). It was the closest Kurosawa came to a horror film. A match for Mifune is the veteran actress Isuzu Yamada, arguably the most chilling Lady Macbeth of them all.

The black-and-white "Throne of Blood" retains some speckling and a few jumpy transitions, but looks considerably better than previous versions. The high-definition transfer comes from a fine-grain positive. The film comes in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Considerable work was done on the mono audio as well, benefiting its haunting score.

In a wildly unorthodox piece of packaging, the "Throne of Blood" DVD offers two separate sets of subtitles, both dramatically different in tone and translation. The authors explain their philosophies in the DVD's handsome booklet.

The academic approach continues in the commentary by Japanese film expert Michael Jeck, recorded last fall. Jeck's voice sounds like a cross between Casey Kasem's and Mr. Roger's, taking quite a while to get used to, but it's well worth the effort.

Macbeth goes Japan
My name is Simo and I'm a high-school student in Nagoya International School, Japan. I watched different movies based on Shakespeare's Macbeth play, Roman Polanski's version which settings are close to the book version. BBC has made a play which is placed in the 90's and it tells about the Scottish civil war. Finally I watched Akira Kurosawa's film Thorne of blood, which is settled in Samurai era in Japan. Polanski's and BBC's Macbeths follow the book quite accurately while Thorne of blood is much looser. Thorne of blood has the basic story line of the book but there is lots of differences and some details are adjusted to Japanese society and culture, for example; witches in Macbeth are changed to evil spirits because there are no witches in Japanese culture. In Macbeth there are three prophecies about Macbeth's death but in the Thorne of blood there are only two; the prophecy about killer who is not a women born is missing from Thorne of blood. Kurosawa is a master in cinematography and he uses camera perfectly. The movie has quite slow rhythm because it has lots of long shots, the BBC's Macbeth is more modern and it has faster rhythm because shots are shorter and there are more fast cuts than in Thorne of blood. Personally I liked the movie and I think that it is the best of the three movies that I have been talking about in this review.

I just read Macbeth in British Lit class
After reading Macbeth in Lit class, I wanted to watch a movie adaptation and I happened to run into this one, I had heard on amazon.com that this was a Japanese adaptation of Macbeth and I picked it up, I really enjoyed it, much more than I expected to. Akira Kurosawa did a great job in this, it is old and the technology is limited but I loved it, I showed it to my friends who had not read the book but they loved the film as well, especially the ending, if you have seen it, you'll know what I mean, I do not wish to ruin it for anyone, anyway, the DVD price is quite high but if you are thinking of buying it, I suggest trying to rent it somewhere or obtain it temporarily from somewhere or someone and then decide to buy it or not, good movie, enjoy.