The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Hi everybody, it’s Tim, using the impending release of Pacific Rim as a bald-faced excuse to talk about one of the greatest guilty pleasures in the whole of cinema: THE GIANT MONSTER MOVIE.
Guillermo del Toro’s extravagant, costly tentpole picture is, of course, a well-publicized love letter to the Japanese genre known as kaiju eiga: the giant monster movies born from the iconic 1954 Godzilla. These quickly descended from the relative sincerity and social messaging of that film (or the contemporaneous American production Them!) into trashy action films that further descended into silly matinee pictures, borne on the wings of the legendarily awful Baby Godzilla, and his soullessly googly eyes. [more...]
For those of you who still miss Maggie Cheung (i.e. all people with good taste who've seen anything she's done) you should know that she's been named the Ambassador for the 50th anniversary of the Golden Horse Awards (one of three major Oscar-like awards for Chinese language films). She's a good choice since she's won five (!) of them (from six nominations, only losing for Dragon Inn from 1992), the most of any actor. Nominations are announced in October with a November 23rd ceremony in Taipei.
Since it's the 50th anniversary they're pulling out all the stops and famous actors and directors are talking about what the awards meant to your career. In this promo video you can see TFE favorite Tony Leung Chiu Wai (only one of the great living movie stars) as well as other recognizable faces like director Ang Lee and hotties like Aaron Kwok and Shu Qi (which...where's she been lately?)
The best news is that elusive Maggie has shot a one minute commercial (though we hope it's more like an abstract short film) with the acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-Hsien and cinematographer Lee Ping Bing (the cinematographer of In the Mood for Love!). It's not available yet but stay tuned...
I had so many different ideas with which to celebrate today that I didn't manage to get any of them done. It's a typical problem when you have more ideas than time and when indefatigable ambition meets easily exhaustable execution. So herewith... a few off the cuff LISTS celebrating actresses that work primarily outside of the English language that are every bit as good and sometimes a whole lot better than their American/English/Aussie counterparts who get the bulk of attention in the global market.
The gold standard here is always Deneuve. "Catherine Deneuve"... go ahead, sound it out. The name itself just reverberates with glamour but the razzle dazzle of her international celebrity is hardly the reason she's the gold standard. She's also got a filmography that would be the envy of any actor who cares about cinema beyond their own image and though she'll turn 70 this fall, she's still challenging herself. Frankly, if you look at some of the work she did in the past dozen years or so (Dancer in the Dark, Potiche, Pola X, Beloved, 8 Women, A Christmas Tale, etcetera) other actresses her age are slacking...
10 Foreign Film Actresses Most Likely To Get Me in the Movie Theater
It seems like we've been hearing about Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster for about a decade now. But it finally exists as a "completed" project. No more tinkering. The movie will premiere at Berlinale next month. With a running time of 2 hours and 10 minutes (or 2 hours and 13 minutes depending on which report you read). The movie has now been screened and press conferenced... in China. Here are the stars earlier today at that first post-screening press conference.
Chang Chen, Zhang Ziyi, and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai meet the press
The entire team at the press conference. Wong Kar Wai, cast, and key crew
Tony, a frequent overseas correspondent among TFE readers, writes...
Very enthusiastic first wave of response! Apparently more straightfoward, no fragmented, mosaic-style narrative structure. Every frame is desktop picture pretty (obviously). Zhang Ziyi's performance singled out. More than one critic mentioned the first 2/3 of the movie is especially fantastic."
Hmmm. I worry about the last sentence. Generally you have to end strong to not win mixed reviews. Let's end with a newish picture of Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (aka one of the greatest movie stars in the universe) in the title role.
Can't wait! Wong Kar Wai and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai haven't made a movie together in so long and with so many masterpieces and/or damn strong pictures behind them (2046, In the Mood for Love, Happy Together, Chungking Express, etcetera...) it'll hopefully be a worthy reunion
Today's Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese-Taiwanese Oscars, spread the wealth. Superstar Andy Lau (A Simple Life, Infernal Affairs, House of the Flying Daggers) had the honor of presenting Best Picture. It went to Beijing Blues but Beijing hardly dominated. Every BP Contender took home at least one prize and some of them major.
I watched a bit of the ceremony live on the web even though I speak no Cantonese, Mandarin or Taiwanese. Awards shows are -- you'll never believe this -- a source of endless fascination to me. Yes, even if I have no clue what's going on.
I was told at one point though that the producers were asking the hosts to ad lib more since the ceremony was running short -- imagine it! Otherwise awards ceremonies speak a universal language. Consider the Best Actress category: silly presenter banter, 5 nominees, a mix of teary and elegant and 'why did they pick that?' clips, tense multi-camera grid as the winner is announced, and a tearful young beauty winning the big prize.
Also, just like it would happen at the Oscars, her equally pretty young male co-star (Joseph Chang) lost the counterpart male category to a mature and well respected character actor who'd paid his dues. The gender rules of awardage appear to be universal, too!
THE WINNERS Best PictureBeijing Blues (pictured left) is a drama about a detective catching thieves Audience ChoiceGf*Bf (a popular youth-oriented romantic drama) Best Director Johnny To Life Without Principle (Hong Kong's Oscar submission) Best Actress Gwei Lun-Mei Gf*Bf Best Actor Ching Wan Lau Life Without Principle Best Supporting Actress Liang Jing Design of Death Best Supporting Actor Ronald Cheng Vulgaria Best New Performer Qi Xi Mystery
Thursday, July 11, 2013 at 10:30PM 
