Ang Lee at 28. Ang Lee Now
Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 8:00PM Here is the two-time Oscar winner working on a Spike Lee documentary all the way back in 1982 when he was 28 years old!!!
(The woman he's with there is painter Ann Yen who posted the photo recently on a social network site, prompting some coverage in the Asian press. Yen and Lee are still friends - I hear that she played one of the Mahjong women in Lust, Caution (2007).
His whole life and career was (way) ahead of him. Ang was one year away from getting married to his charming wife who got a little air time this weekend at the Oscars. He was still ten years away from making his first feature as a director (Pushing Hands), still eleven years away from his first Oscar nomination (Best Foreign Film, The Wedding Banquet) and basically a whole lifetime away from becoming the legendary two-time Best Director Oscar winner (Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi) that he is today.
Well done, Ang Lee. Have a hamburger. You deserve it!
Reader Comments (25)
his wife was one of my favorite "discoveries" of the Oscarcast this year -- she was just SO happy for him and all the Life of Pi wins, it was delightful!
I'm sorry, but I just can't stand this sort of new tradition of taking pictures of Oscar winners holding an Oscar in one hand and a hamburger in the other. It is beyond tacky!
Hunky!
oh get over yourself, peggy sue.
I love this man so much. His films are so full of humanity. A deserving two time Oscar winner.
Hottie alert!
Love this man. His win was my favorite moment of the night. (And we owe it all to the Affleck snub.)
Best filmmaker working today.
Wow, In&Out probably got more out of Ang than Samsung got out of Tim.
One the most deserving two time winner indeed.
If I recall correctly, he was the first non-white director to win a Best Director Oscar. So even if "Brokeback" didn't win Best Picture (which, of course, it should have), it still made history. And now he's on a select list of directors with TWO Oscars! (Even Scorsese and Hitchcock didn't match that.)
I always loved Ang Lee the director, now I love Ang Lee the MAN.
I wish some people would give Life of Pi a second chance. Now I think it more than honors Yann Martel's original concept in a very beautiful way. I wish people would look further into this movie, to see it's way beyond new age preaching. To see that its vision of belief is all about freedom and choice to find the way that make us stronger, and to see it's never about find easy answers, but to recognize our human limitations of understanding and everything to be free to choose whatever we want.
The way he makes a very visual movie out of this difficult book is arresting.
More than its tricky structure, what stayed with me of Life of Pi is his beautiful ways to create illusion, beauty, nature and that storm, with Pi crying to his god and trying to survive. That is so humanistic, and beautiful, and touching.
To me, now, only Zero Dark Thirty is a better movie, and I was over the moon because Lee won. He deserved so much, because all the good things about Life of Pi are due to his talent as a filmmaker.
Best win of the night.
Love you, Ang,
I've seen all his movies and I must admit he's one of the most versatile directors around
Well, Martel's concept is not that original
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/08/bookerprize2002.awardsandprizes
Any one seen Ride with the Devil?? Nobody ever mentioned that film. Is it that there's nothing to talk about that film?
There are news circulating in China now state that Americans are banning Ang Lee courtesy of his winning over Spielberg, is it true?
Ang Lee just won his SECOND Oscar as Best Director... excuse me... He can do whatever the Hell he wants!
@lasttimeisaw - LOL WUT
@Syrax I've read all about this affair, and I've lived in Brazil and I've read the book in question, Max and the Cats. The idea the came from the book is the tiger and the boy alone in a boat (in Scliar's book the animal is a jaguar). The books are completely different, there is nothing in common between the books except this idea of the animal and the boy. In Max and the cats, the jaguar is only there for 19 pages, and the story is different, and this particular episode is neither central to the book nor as explored as in Life of Pi.
If you've read Martel's novel, you know that this tiger-and-boy is not the concept I'm talking about. I am talking about his libertarian take on belief and storytelling, and how storytelling (including belief, real or not) makes us stronger and make us survive. He is celebrating, above all things, art.
You can't find this concept or ideia nowhere in Max and the Cats, that is all about politics, the jaguar being a metaphore for nazism and the Brazilian dictatorship. Even Scliar read Life of Pi and stated that it had nothing to do with plagiarism.
Hey Cal, where in Brasil did you live and for how long? I'm from Rio!!!
I am so happy for him. His Oscar win was pretty damn great. I think Bigelow should have won, but she wasn't nommed. Of those nominated, I think he deserved it the most. Lincoln was mostly an actors' and screenwriter's film. Lee IS a genius.
I've lived in Salvador, 4 years
great post, cal
I'm thrilled that he won, and although I think a number of his movies are masterpieces, The Ice Storm might be my favorite... it may be time for a rewatch soon. I like the fact that man's relationship with nature is a recurring theme in so many of his films.
I remember the video of Hilary Swank sitting down at a burger joint after winning her second Oscar and all I could think was in that bareback dress how exposed she was to the level of germs at that table.