Family and friends paid respects yesterday to director Akira Kurosawa, dressed for his private funeral at home in his trademark working garb of flat cap and sunglasses.
The perfectionist director of films such as The Seven Samurai (1954), To Live (1952) and Rashomon (1951) died of a stroke at home in Tokyo on Sunday, aged 88.
A public funeral is to be held at Kurosawa's studio in Yokohama south of Tokyo on Sunday. Guests could include US directors Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas and actor Richard Gere.
Known as the "emperor of Japanese cinema", Kurosawa often baffled domestic producers with his costly perfectionist movies but attracted a following among a generations of directors, including Coppola and Lucas. He left behind 30 films spanning half a century - and Japan's golden days of cinema which all but ended in December last year with the death of Toshiro Mifune.
A new species of butterfly from the only protected section of Andean forest in Ecuador has been named after a six-year-old girl from Hertfordshire.
Competition winner Isobel Talks will give her first name to the butterfly discovered by Dr Paul Toyne, an International Conservation Officer with the World Wide Fund For Nature. Toyne's discovery was made in the Podocarpus National Park in Ecuador. Normally new species are given the name of their discoverer, but Toyne decided to use his find as a fundraising opportunity and launched the competition.
Helena Bonham Carter has finally moved into a home of her own, at the age of 32.
The Wings Of The Dove actress has lived with her parents, Elena and Raymond, for many years after she became a star. She bought her home two years ago - but only now has moved from her parents' north London home, she told Tatler magazine.