From Worldometer (new COVID-19 deaths yesterday):
DAY USA WORLD Brazil India South Africa
- Better, but not good.
- Planning on a vacation to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean?
- Population of just about 100,000.
- 115 islands of paradise.
- Yesterday they had 2192 new COVVID-19 cases. That is 22,141 new cases/million population.
- The World was at 459 new cases/million.
- Also, Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic: 766 new cases, 15,832 new cases/million.
- Denmark: 47,914, 8261 new cases/million. Not the time to go to Noma, which is back to being #1 in the Pellegrino Best Restaurants of the world.
- Slovenia: 14,220 new cases, 7110 new cases/million.
- USA: 497, 351 new cases (#1 in the world), 1489 new cases/million.
- New Zealand: 97 new cases, 19 new cases/million. However, the whole country remains in lockdown. They were supposed to begin opening up last week, but that has been pushed back to late February.
- China: 62 new cases, 0.04 new cases/million.
- But how accurate is this?
- Anyang and Tianjin are still closed, and Xian is finally partially open after a month. More than 30 million live there.
- Just heard that Xiongan, city of 1.3 million, was closed off this past week.
- Located 66 miles outside of Beijing, and is known as their progressive city of the future.
- Lockdown kept very quiet, almost secretive.
- Why? The Winter Olympics begin on Tuesday.
More recently, though, I have abandoned samurai films, as I also have comic book, animated, zombie, vampire and similar releases. You would think that nothing much is left, but no, I must have several dozen series awaiting my viewing on Netflix and Prime. Maybe 500 hours of stuff to see.
At one time samurai films, also known as chanbara or chambara, were more about the story and relationships. Since World War II, as the western world has gravitated towards action flicks, so did Japan.
Here is a Westerner's view of 10 essential samurai movies. It even includes a Tom Cruise version (Last Samurai got 66/83 scores from Rotten Tomatoes), so clearly, afficianodos from Japan might disagree. That film, incidentally, was made just about two decades ago.What I will do today is focus on a noteworthy samurai event, working in two films I just watched. Chushingura is an example of a title used for just one incident, found in kabuki plays, television series and films. Movies? 1907, then 1928, 1934, 1938, 1939 (where Akira Kurosawa was an assistant director), the to-be-mentioned 47 Ronin in 1941, 1947, 1959, 1961, 1962, and more. In addition, there were 21 separate television productions.
There are, of course, many other great samurai in the history of Japan. Watch who they are, but I can't leave this subject without mentioning Zatoichi, perhaps the most popular samurai hero in Japan:
- A fictional character.
- Blind samurai who travels and fights by sound.
- Makes money by gambling on dice and is also a masseur.
- Wandering and sentimental drifter who protects the innocent and helpless.
- Tries to do the decent thing.
- Can catch a fly with chopsticks. So did Miyamoto Musashi.
- Set in the late Edo period, 1830's and 1840's.
- Shintaro Katsu, actor, made 26 films from 1962 to 1989.
- Amazingly enough, here is the entire (2 hours) #26 from 1989!
- There was also a television series from 1974-9 with 100 episodes.
- More recent versions starred other actors.
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