A Japanese Western

This is quite a turn up for the books. I actually got my hubby interested in one of my projects this week. It happened like this.

I followed up an ad on the JustMarkets newsletter and was asked to submit some sample material on Akira Kurosawa, who was a Japanese film director with an international reputation. As part of my research I ordered a VHS of one of his old films from Amazon. It arrived yesterday.

When hubby asked me what it was, I was able to tell him it was called Seven Samurai, and it was the film that inspired the making of The Magnificent Seven, one of his all time favourites. So we sat down and watched it together this evening.

The story is virtually the same if you substitute cowboys for samurai and Mexican farmers and bandits for Japanese farmers and bandits, but Kurosawa's film was made in black and white in 1954, while the western version, directed by John Sturges, came out in full colour in 1960. The plot has been reused a number of times since, even the computer animated, A Bug's Life of 1998, is reminiscent of it.

This research has taken up quite a bit of my working week, which has also been eaten into by things like GP surgery visits, sorting out insurance and payments for our holiday and preparing the house for a viewing by potential buyers (sadly, still no takers).

The readership that the sample writing was for is 13 to 15 year old students in Taiwan who need shortish, simple or compound sentences in basic American English using words from a supplied list. Not so easy. Anyway, I finished it and sent it off and now have to wait to see if I get the lucrative assignment I'm hoping for, which might be to continue writing about this film director.

If not, the research won't be wasted. I'm half way into a different piece on him that I will showcase at Constant Content.