MADRID — Takeshi Kitano’s “Zatoichi” took the top prize at the 36th Sitges Catalonia Intl. Film Festival, which wound down Saturday with a well-received screening of “11.14,” toplining Hilary Swank ...

“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 ...

Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano’s “Zatoichi,” the story of a mythical blind swordsman, and Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions” took top awards at the Toronto International Film Festival. Based ...

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 ...

Nobody can make you like this stuff if you don't want to. So although there's no doubt that "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi" is the summer's most rousing action picture, it's also hard as nails, bloody ...

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 ...

Japanese director Junji Sakamoto has started shooting Zatoichi The Last, starring SMAP member Shingo Katori in the lead role of the famed blind swordsman, for Japan's Sedic International and Toho ...

Most of you probably haven't heard of Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (yet), but if you know anything about Japanese cinema you'd recognize him as an iconic character from Japan's longest-running and ...