Okay, so it's looking like
Rashomon and
Hero will be on the slate for Friday night. Tentative start time will be 11pm EST (0400 Saturday morning GMT):
11pm-12:30am:
Rashomon12:30-12:40: Intermission
12:40-2am:
HeroIt helps that both of these movies are pretty short (88min. for Rashomon, 99min. for Hero). This should make for not-too-late viewing for Americans (especially West Coasters) and not-too-horribly-early viewing for Europeans (especially for Hero)...it's like Saturday morning cartoons only with swords and blood!
Things to note:Both movies utilize a very similar narrative structure: Most of the "present-day" is simple dialogue scenes connecting seperate "flashbacks" which are the same story told from different POVs. (Zhang Yimou has acknowledged
Rashomon as an influence in writing and directing
Hero).
One big contrast/comparison is the use of lighting. Kurosawa deliberately shot
Rashomon in black and white, to go along with his theme of the truth of the story lying somewhere in a "grey area" in between the three tellings.
Hero, by contrast, is shot in vivid color, with each character being essentially color-coded (green for Long Sky, red for Flying Snow, black for the Qin army and King, etc.)
Rashomon was filmed on an extremely tight budget, and as a result it's a minimalist film. There are only 3 settings in the entire film: the city gate (from whence the film takes its name), the temple courtyard and the woods, and only 8 characters.
Hero, on the other hand, had one of the largest budgets of a mainland Chinese film ever at that point (about 250 million yuan) and a cast and crew of hundreds, with lush location shots and meticulously constructed sets.