MUBI: Three by Wong Kar-Wai

by Cláudio Alves

Happy birthday to Wong Kar-Wai. The Hong Kong auteur turns 65 today, the same day I say goodbye to 28 and welcome my 29th year –we're birthday twins! But of course, I've loved the director long before discovering we shared July 17th, having fallen for his cinema when I glimpsed Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung cross paths in slow-motion, saw the treacherous enchantment of a kitschy lamp lost in Buenos Aires, experienced a Nouvelle Vague color kaleidoscope to the sound of "California Dreamin'." It's only fitting to celebrate the date by pouring over some of Wong's most ravishing pictures, remembering his mastery as we mourn a decade since his last feature.

Join me as I consider three films MUBI has programmed specially for July, a collection they call As Time Goes By. A trio marked by lavish spectacle, they reach for the stars – a wuxia experiment, a sci-fi lament, and a martial-arts biopic like none other…

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First & Last 022

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

the answer and a few comments are after the jump...

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Doc Corner: 'Lakota Nation Vs. United States'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

If you ask me (and if you’re here, I would hope you hold my opinion in some sort of esteem), the best work of documentary so far this decade has been Raoul Peck’s four-part Exterminate All The Brutes from 2021. An epic feat of production, it brought a cinematic lens to a HBO doc-series that unflinchingly charted a history of white possession and genocide. I am hardly surprised it won a Peabody Award, but couldn’t make traction with mainstream awards bodies. Its content was tough, not made any easier as a viewing experience by the blunt-force storytelling of Peck that, maybe, people didn't expect from a multi-part doc series.

I bring this up to introduce Lakota Nation Vs. United States for a few reasons. For starters, they share an interest (if you can call it that) in the atrocities committed against Indigenous populations. It’s also very well made; beautifully shot and carefully edited with keen precision. A history book slicing a papercut into the viewer’s fingertip.

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Emmy Nominations - Who's Up and Who's Down?

By Christopher James

For the first time, all members of the Roy family earned Emmy nominations, including eldest brother Connor, played by Alan Ruck.

When the Emmys fall for a show, they fall hard. Despite having over 100 categories, the Television Academy nominates less and less series each year. As Abe covered Thursday night and Team groused about a bit in their reactions, four shows racked up over 20 nominations each this year (Succession, The Last of Us, Ted Lasso, The White Lotus), up from three last year. Three of those four shows won Series prizes last year. The fourth (The Last of Us) competes this year for its first season. A year over year increase is a strong sign that momentum is on a show’s side. You can defeat a previous winner or stage a coup if you can leverage a large nomination haul to gain a foothold and mount an aggressive campaign. But campaigning will be mostly out the window this year given the strikes. 

So what does the Emmy race look like now that nominations are out? Did any challengers emerge to overthrow incumbents Succession and Ted Lasso?

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First & Last 021

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

Okay, this is technically the end of the first shot (but the first image is non-descript... it's only trees shot from above -- hundreds of films begin with flying overhead shots of nature, so that's not even worth a guess). But do you recognize this town?

The last image after the jump will give it away...

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