Beat of the Drum

The rain poured down today so it was perfect timing for an afternoon in the Cameo which is having a season of Japanese movies.  The Seven Samurai was voted by critics in a BBC Culture Poll as the greatest foreign language film.  It has been highly influential, re-made and reworked down the years not least as The Magnificent Seven in 1960.  

Aware of its reputation we've wanted to see it for a while although you can't help but wonder what you're letting yourself in for - a black and white movie made in 1954, subtitled, 3.5 hours long, set in war-torn 16th century Japan......  But it was quite brilliant.  Pathos and humour - we were gripped for the entire time rooting for the villagers and the samurai they hired to fight the bandits.  

In the evening we were at the monthly lecture of the Open History Society that we joined this year.  It's held in The Royal Scots Club established at the end of the Great War to honour the memory of Royal Scots who had been killed.  The lecture was on Scottish Miners in the Twentieth Century by Dr Jim Phillips of the University of Glasgow.  He gave a very interesting and entertaining talk covering the period from "the village pits" of the 1820s through to the "cosmopolitan pits" of the 1980s.