The Hidden Fortress- Alpine Lakes Wilderness (historylink.org)
The Alpine Lakes Wilderness covers more than 414,000 acres within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests in the northern Cascade Range of Washington. The wilderness includes parts of Chelan, Kittitas, and King counties. It is bordered by Snoqualmie Pass to the south, by the town of Leavenworth to the east, and by Stevens Pass to the north. The Alpine Lakes Wilderness got its name from its more than 600 ponds and lakes, which offer scenic grandeur and abundant water. The wilderness was created in 1976 by President Gerald Ford and expanded in 2014 by President Barack Obama. Most challenging for its future sustainability, it lies only an hour or two from the heart of Seattle.
- The Hidden Fortress: Three Good Men and a Princess (criterion.com)
The Hidden Fortress was Akira Kurosawa’s first hit after 1954’s Seven Samurai, four years and four films earlier. It won even bigger at the box office and scooped up a handful of Japanese and international awards, proving that its director was not merely an art-house auteur but could fill theaters as well. The film’s popularity in Japan was instrumental in securing financial guarantees for Kurosawa’s own production company, which supported all his subsequent films up to 1970. The pacing and characters of The Hidden Fortress, its landscapes and epic feel, make it a great action film, and as Kurosawa’s first use of widescreen, it is one of his most stylish movies. With this film, the director’s artistry and humanist ideology spectacularly fused with the entertainment values of adventure films and comedies.