I had a pretty full day yesterday.

I met Candice at 11a.m. in Orchard Cineleisure to watch Zatoichi. We were supposed to watch Luther but she saw the Sunday Times review and had a change of heart. No biggie, really. I just wanted to know how the Catholic Church was going to be portrayed–it was, after all, a rather iffy moment in our history. Rather amused to discover that Alfred Molina (who plays Doc Ock in Spider-man 2) has a leading role as the man who directly convinced Martin Luther of the errancy of the Catholic Church.

But, back to Zatoichi, the new movie starring Takeshi Kitano (of Battle Royale fame), who also directed and wrote the script to the movie. Zatoichi is a cult series about the adventures of a blind masseuse who is also an expert swordsman. He wonders around the countryside helping people when possible. This film doesn’t seem to follow any of the previous installments of the Zatoichi series, but it’s good as a stand-alone.

The story combines elements of adventure, tragedy, comedy and several scenes of Stomp-inspired dance including the grand finalé. I personally enjoyed the “downtime” with the geisha dance sequence–highly moving.