40 Years a Dragon

Hey all, it's Tim. The twin altars of worship at The Film Experience are Actresses and the Oscars, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I take a moment to go as far as possible in the opposite direction from either of those points, all the way to the land of grind houses and the classic age of chop socky martial arts film. For this weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the U.S. release of the iconic Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon, and with the imminent North American debut of Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster, the story “of the man who trained Bruce Lee”, as the ads insistently proclaim, it seems the ideal moment to visit a legendary film that, to my shame, I had never seen before.

Stories don’t get a whole lot more basic: Han (Shih Kien) the shadowy crimelord owner of an island just barely grazing the edge of Hong Kong’s territorial waters has proclaimed a martial arts tournament, and among the many fighters in attendance are three whose private reasons for attending are revealed to us: Lee (Bruce Lee) has been sent by the British government, hunting for illegal arms and primed to get revenge for the life of his sister, killed by Han’s goons; Roper (John Saxon) is hoping to scare up a lot of money immediately before the mobsters he’s in debt to break his legs; Willam (Jim Kelly) is on the run from… racism? Anyway, he’s there too, and he’s old war buddies with Roper. In between scenes of the competitors fighting in the tournament, there are scenes of them fighting in the shadow recess of Han’s palace, attempting to take down his empire of evil. [more...]

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Let us now praise Japanese monsters

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...]

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Maggie Cheung & The 50th Anniversary of The Golden Horse Awards

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...

It's International Women's Day !

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 

Paprika Steenmultiple actressy lists after the jump!

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"The Grandmaster"'s First Screening / Press Conference

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