The hundred episodes of the TV series followed 1970s TV dynamics: Zatoichi was (mostly) unchanging from one episode to the next, and the 45-minute episodes (allowing for 15 minutes of advertisement ...

For years, the Japanese cinema cranked out samurai adventures about a blind swordsman named Zatoichi. As a job description, “blind swordsman” does not sound reassuring, but it’s a gimmick that has ...

The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen’s great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a ...

The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen’s great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a ...

On CNET's I'm So Obsessed podcast, Wright discusses season 2 of Snowpiercer on TNT and the burden of starring in The Americans, one of the best TV shows of all time. Patrick Holland has been a phone ...

When I was in high school 20-something years ago, I would get up early every Saturday to watch Zatoichi movies on cable. One of Japan’s longest-running film series (seriously, think the Marvel movies ...

For all their considerable charms, the Zatoichi films are the epitome of genre filmmaking at its most formulaic. By contrast, since branching out from TV, director-editor-writer-actor Takeshi Kitano ...

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” the latest entertainment from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, isn’t your average blind masseur-gambler-swordsman movie. Based on a series of popular genre standards ...

What separates “Zatoichi” from other swordfight movies is that the eponymous hero, played, of course, by Kitano himself, is blind. Like the many other directors of films featuring this well-known ...

The great Bruce Lee twirled his limbs around with such fearsome speed and control that he seemed to be slicing through time itself. His whirling, precision chop kills weren’t just fast — they were ...