Change Your Image
nospam-567
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Bu san (2003)
The Death of the Cinema as collective experience
While this art film may seem simple, long, and boring, it actually captures a melancholy about the reality of the art of film. Using overlong shots, static moments in time, the director gives glimpses into the dissolution of the cinema as a collective human experience. Set in a large Taiwan movie theater which once, probably, was filled daily, the film shows the demise, the last gasp, of the art form of cinema. This cinema, showing the great King Hu film "Dragon Inn" on its last day (lying that it is just closing for a short time) is in decline. The only people who haunt the cinema now are lost souls, seeking far more real human experiences than what is offered from the screen. Life has become too difficult to enjoy the offerings of art. Oddly, the film makes me think of the French film "Irma Vep" which sees the cinema reduced to a way of getting French filmmakers off the unemployment roles. In contrast, Tsai Ming-Liang fixates on the other side of the screen, the audience. Today, most of the audience is staying home, relying on the video rental store or video-on-demand via cable, mail, or internet. Few still haunt the physical cinema for anything less than a big teen event movie.
Here, Tsai affectionately looks at what is left of the grand cinema. He has carefully constructed a set of characters who are lost in time. Foremost among them is the theater crew. Wonderfully fleshed out in a few moments is the performance of Shiang-chyi Chen (the beautiful star of "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" and "What Time Is It Over There?") as the lonely club-foot ticket seller. Her desire in life is to be noticed by the projectionist of the theater but lacks any ability to make her desire known. The young projectionist himself is too self-absorbed in the fact that the cinema is haunted, which is always true of theaters.
The audience is made up of two factions: those there for reasons other than the cinema and those who long for the true cinema experience of the old days. The cinema has always been a refuge for those who could not find their longings in reality. Here we have the Japanese tourist seeking a homosexual encounter and the peanut eating woman, seeking some kind of experience, sexual or otherwise, dominate the audience. Years ago, they would have blended in, hardly noticed. The child, chomping popcorn alone, becomes a potential victim of this. At one point an old man appears, sitting next to him, causing us to fear for his safety, though this man might be his grandfather, based on age. The third angle is the handsome older man who is only interested in the film being shown. In the end, the film makes us want to know more about these people, to wish they will find their heart's desire, while we are watching. To see some happy ending. Tsai refuses to give us this satisfaction.
While it is a challenge to watch, it is a short (82 minute) excursion into a world many of us enjoyed as young people and is losing ground in the world of home entertainment, a world which separates us from a communal experience which, for good or bad, brought us together and gave satisfaction in experiencing art and drama as a community.
SPOILER: Sort of a spoiler. Though you would have to know "Dragon Inn" since it is hard to catch from the film itself, the revelation that two of the audience members are actual actors from King Hu's epic film, seeing the film after many years, and waxing momentarily poetic on the fact that the film is as forgotten as they are, is poignant and painful. It leaves us with the fact that the cinema theater is gone, dead. The only person watching the film to watch the film was a child chomping on popcorn. What has happening to our world?
Chikan gifu: Musuko no yome to... (2003)
A haiku hidden in the pinku eiga genre
I found this at a video sale. The title was so intriguing and poetic I threw it in with my buys. The title (the addition of lonely probably an English invention) makes it all the more powerful, a haiku to balance the story. While the filmmaker probably got the money and the go-ahead to make a film based on the nudity and the sexual moments, he managed to surpass those elements to make a contemplative film about the sadness of life. Noriko, a young widow, just twenty-nine, fears facing the world again. She feels she is too old, perhaps the milk-less old cow of the story. It is obvious to all but herself that she is still vibrant. For a few years now she has hidden in the security of her father-in-law's farm. But he is aging and becoming senile. He panics at the loss of his beloved milk-cow Bessie. Afraid she will lose him and her haven from life, Noriko, each morning, makes believe she is Bessie so that the old man will continue to feel that all is right with his world. When his daughter, Noriko's sister-in-law, arrives to try to convince her father to sell the farm off to the developers, the game is broken and the world changes for Noriko and her father-in-law. And the truth about their shared horror is enhances with the revelation of just how Bessie died.
Daisuke Goto has managed to tell a powerful little tale while still managing the insert the required sexual elements. And he's had fun with them. The old local vet keeps a pretty assistant who he ravishes when he needs to. This is played out to a hysterical accompaniment of squealing pigs, requests to compare his manhood to that of a horse, and a nurse who plaintively bangs on the door talking about the pain the pigs are going through as their testicles swell outrageously. The other sexual encounters are between the farmer's daughter and the greedy land sales middleman. But even these manage to integrate into the story and reveal much about the lives of these rural people. The final sexual moment, that between Noriko and her father-in-law, is less about sex than human connection. It reminded me of Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart in that it was less about the act than about the emotional connection that needed to be made.
I was not expecting such a deeply felt or artfully crafted film. It was a pleasant surprise. I didn't think this was what a "pink film" would be and may cautiously try another. But I do recommend the poetic "A Lonely Cow Weeps At Dawn" to the adventurous art film lover seeking a brief look into the human soul, Japanese style.
Bones: The Finder (2011)
Spin-off? Ouch
Sadly, this episode seems to be the wannabe spin-off version of "Bones." And it's a retread of the "The Glades" show, instead of an honest and interesting spin on a great show. Then again Criminal Minds just did their, ouch, a "C.S.I." spin-off (the leader stiffly played by Forest Whitaker using David Caruso's painful egoist drone, leading a semi-legal F.B.I unit with some foreign guy hoping American girls will find him as sexy as an Australian vacuum cleaner salesman).
The problem here is that Bones is a gem, expertly mixing two classic formulas against each other: the fish-out-of-water Special Agent Seeley Booth facing off with the fish-unaware-it's-fish Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan. Bones, as it is, is network programming at its best. But whoever came up this "pshyn-off" should be cowering in shame.
This proposed Bones spin-off offer is simply an I'm-So-Cool Iraq War vet Walter Sherman (played by shirt-shedding muscle boy Geoff Stults) with his bartendress/pilot/I'm-More-Than-Cool maybe-girlfriend Ike Latulippe (Ike? nickname for what?) (played by Brit model-maybe-actress/collagen-lip Saffron Burrows) and his lawyer(?) Leo Knox (ala Hunter Thompson's lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) (played by over-pumped-for-a-law-grad Michael Clarke Duncan). Ouch! Not exactly the delicate and develop-able character-driven intimacy of the original Bones crew. Now, I actually like Stults, Burrows, and Duncan as actors but this is stereotyping at its worst.
The preview of the spin-off is more like some bad pulp series of the 1980's. Sadly, based on this sneak peek, Geoff Stults, here, does not have the self-effacing intimacy that Mark Valley brings to "Human Target." The crew of Burrows and Duncan do not have the character depth to evolve and catch the viewers the way Bones itself has. Heck, Bones is six years of success and we're still waiting with bated breath as to what happens when Jack and Angela's child is born (and what Billy Gibbons' reaction will be - we actually care what a minor character thinks and fear his return).
While the USA Channel has the fish-out-of-water formula down to a tee, the networks are wading in the shallows with their programming. Even when they have a great formula like Bones, they don't know it and they don't know not to screw with it.
Actually, Emily Deschanel's sister Zooey's cotton commercial, shown during the show, held more interest than this episode. Then again, She and Him is a strange and fascinating variation off the typical pop collaboration.
Li Tong (2009)
Stunning new filmmaker
I saw Li Tong at Woods Hole Film Festival and was stunned. It is one of the best narrative features I've seen in years. It is a multi-leveled story which can be viewed from a number of different perspectives.
First it is a child's film. The length, 75 minutes, let's young viewers see the story of a little girl who loses her bus pass and must find her way across the city of Beijing to the new house her mother has just moved to. It's a bit scary and but certainly a wonderful journey. The feel was similar in many ways to "The Red Balloon" though not magical but very real. This girl has grown up alone much of the time with her mother working and her father off in America seeking a better life for them. She is not prepared for the world outside her own family yet. While she seems to be a city girl with parents who have money, her companion on much of her journey is a street boy from the country trying to survive in the city. Together they maneuver the pitfalls and wrong turns to finally get her home.
But that is the first level of this film and if a child sees the film, that is what they see. But if you look deeper into the film, there is an adult story hidden there. This is the beauty of the narrative writer/director Nian Liu has woven. The film is from a Communist country and it is likely that the hidden story is hidden for a reason.
Not to get too detailed but... When seen by an adult, one begins to wonder about the girl's real parental situation - why is the father really away and why does mother have such a large collection of balloons and who was the man who answered the phone? Why aren't any men in uniforms willing to take the plight of a child seriously and help? Why are there so few people on the streets of the city? Why do the young couple she comes across, even with the Olympics approaching, dream of leaving China? Why does a migrant worker bring his son to the city instead of leaving his home with his family in the country instead of leaving her home with her mother? All of this starts to add up to a view which our little heroine and her companion don't see but will someday have to grow up and face. Will they want to leave as well or will they find a place in modern China? The film begins to reveal a hidden meaning which says much more about the state of China than it may be allowed to.
Technically the directing, acting, cinematography, pace, and choice of location is stunning. Look for the moment of a sidewalk lined with Chinese lions overshadowed by the scaffolding of the updated of the street. The city and its inhabitants are so smoothly integrated into keeping the story going that the appearance of the Panda walking doesn't seem to surprise. The only flaw is a short interior piece in the opening which reveals the digital film-making. Otherwise, the film is a gem.
A beautiful winner by a bright and up-coming filmmaker.