January Film Festival!

Every year, I start off by watching my favorite flicks. We'll see how many we get through this month, but I always start out with Sergio Leone, and so today, I'm revisiting:
A Fistful of Dollars ( UA sorta, 1964) Dir. Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as "The Man With No Name" though, he is called Joe by the friends he makes in this one. Sergio Leone had been struck by how American John Sturges had adapted Kurosawa's Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven. Leone felt he could do likewise and so adapted Yojimbo into Fistful. Leone, unlike Sturges, picked up more than a story from Kurosawa and I would argue, ultimately trumped Kurosawa's camera work over his ensuing masterpiece phase. Anyway, Kurosawa had sort of stolen the Yojimbo story form Dashiell Hammet to begin with. So here we are: the first of the Dollars Trilogy to appear, and the flick right before Sergio began his Masterpiece period. We'll try to watch all of them this week!