Donald Richie 1924-2013

Donald Richie died last Tuesday. I was already planning to go to the Music Hall Tuesday night for their presentation of Ran; it seemed an excellent way to honor Mr. Richie’s memory, and so I raised a glass to him on my way to the theater. I learned of Mr. Richie’s work very recently – at a dinner at a brilliant friend’s place, I started talking Kurosawa with another brilliant friend (I’d just watched The Seven Samurai again and was full of enthusiasm). She pointed me at Richie’s book on the director as well as a bio of Kurosawa and Mifune by Stuart Galbraith IV and a fantastic novel, The Last Samurai, that uses The Seven Samurai as both an element in the characters lives and as an organizing theme.

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