because he's not afraid to let the world know that Toshiro Mifune could kick his ass

All day today and this evening, I have to rethink my deep-set hatred of Ted Turner. Because a channel he created, TCM, is demonstrating why it might be the best television channel ever allowed to grace our flatscreens.

In honour of the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa's birth, all this month on consecutive Tuesdays TCM is running Kurosawa movies for the entire day, back to back to back to... well, you get the idea. I think this is astonishing. Right and correct, since Kurosawa is one the world's greatest directors, but astonishing nonetheless.

Last week, they showed High and Low, Kurosawa's take on an Ed McBain novel. A big-shot capitalist's son gets kidnapped for ransom... only the kidnapper has grabbed the chauffeur's son by mistake. And that's only the first 15 minutes. There's no Mel Gibson kind of revenge action, just incredibly human confusion and doubt. Sure it's Japan in the early '60s but it feels incredibly contemporary.

Rashomon has become cultural shorthand for conveying the idea that different people will have different stories to tell about exactly the same event; perspective is everything. It may not be the first movie to ever contain that premise, but it's maybe the most powerful. It's been a while since I've seen it, so I may well be forgetting about work tonight and sitting down in front of a TV.

Then Seven Samurai – yes, I know, it starts at 9:30 and runs until 1 in the morning, but it's worth staying up. It's mesmerizing. The Magnificent Seven was a nice little Western rip-off, but Seven Samurai is one of the great movies ever made. Not in the way that, "like, Die Hard is, dude, like a classic." I mean that Seven Samurai is a terrific action movie full of duels, sword fights and battles, that also happens to give us a real, human sense of who its characters actually are, as well as boring down to some of the basic human truths we don't often like to face. It's one of the few movies that will be still be watched 100 years from now.

Next week, Kurosawa's later movies are featured. Unfortunately Ran will be on the overnight slot; it's King Lear meets a little bit of Macbeth, crossed with an un-hip level of theatricality. But it is epic tragedy, hideous and inevitable to watch, and because it's Kurosawa it also has some of the greatest battles scenes ever filmed.

I've never seen Dersu Uzala or Kagemusha, but next Tuesday I know what I'm doing.

Hating Ted Turner. And loving TCM.