'Ran'

Would William Shakespeare like it that more artists write books and movies that mirror King Lear more than the play is actually performed?

It has to be -- along with Hamlet -- one of the most reconfigured of Shakespeare's plays. I'm not quite sure if it makes King Lear good or if it makes it bad. I guess it's the most sincere form of flattery, either way.

The Japanese, I think, especially love Shakespeare's plays. Akira Kurosawa also aped Hamlet (The Bad Sleep Well) and Macbeth (Throne of Blood).

There's something very ... Asian about Shakespeare's plays, which are all ripped off from the Greeks, so maybe one Greek guy went west and the other went east. I guess when I think of Japanese folklore and fables, they tend to be quite a bit like every other culture's folklore and fables. All Shakespeare does in his plays is show how shitty or underhanded people are. He was more Aesop than Eurypides.

If you want a good read, type "Akira Kurosawa" into Google. The guy was prolific, and I'm selling him short there. He directed films in six different decades starting in the 1940s and not ending until the 1990s. Ran was one of his later works, being released in 1985.

I mentioned a few days ago about Paradise Now getting snubbed by the Academy Awards due to his political nature, the state of Palestine and all the bullshit politics that go into movie awards. As I noted, a foreign film must be entered by the home country. Although about, filmed in Japan, it was financed by the French. The grey area resulted in Ran not getting nominated.

Instead, Sidney Lumet led a campaign to get Kurosawa nominated for Best Director, which he lost. The lone Academy Award came for Custome Design.

Note: Kurosawa's wife during the filming of Ran. He took off the for the funeral and then returned to finish it.