Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958) – I TiVo’d “The Hidden Fortress”, which is a Japanese film from 1958 by the famous director Akira Kurosawa. I finally finished watching the thing last night. I’d read for years that this was, in some way, the inspiration for “Star Wars”. But having seen “Star Wars” enough times that I can almost recite the dialog from every scene, I have to say that the parallels between the two films are very sparse.