The Screengrab : hou hsiao0hsien

DVD Digest for October 21, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a Japanese master gets the Eclipse treatment, and the first wave of 007 Blu-Rays hits the shelves.

DVD of the Week: To those who are getting acquainted with Japanese cinema, the three biggest names to know have long been Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. But while the first two directors have been getting the DVD treatment for years, only a handful of Mizoguchi’s best-known films (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) have been released on DVD. This week, Eclipse is taking steps to rectify this, by gathering four of the master’s greatest achievements in a lovely box set. Entitled Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women, the box set includes four of Mizoguchi’s finest and most poetic films about the plight of Japanese courtesans and geishas, a subject to which he’d return numerous times throughout his career. Two of the inclusions are pre-war titles- Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion- while the others came after World War II, those being 1948’s Women of the Night and his final feature, Street of Shame. One of the most interesting aspects of the box set is seeing the differences between how he observes his subjects pre-WWII and post-WWII. As for the films’ other (considerable) pleasures, I’ll leave those for you to discover.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD are headed up by two Universal releases which costar Liv Tyler, The Incredible Hulk (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and The Strangers (Universal, also Blu-Ray). But those more adventurous viewers out there shouldn’t require much persuading to watch Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first feature made outside of Asia, Flight of the Red Ballooni (Genius), starring the ever-enchanting Juliette Binoche. Also of note: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Universal), and Anaconda 3: Offspring (Sony).

On the classics front, Warner will be releasing two new DVD sets of Looney Tunes favorites: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 and Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 6. And Criterion will be represented this week with their new DVD pressing of Missing. Finally, James Bond is back with new “Collector’s Editions” of both versions of Casino Royale- both the late-sixties lark (MGM) and the lean, mean 2006 take on the story (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings the latest box set for the seemingly deathless animated phenomenon, Family Guy Volume 6 (Fox). Or if you’re looking for something less oppressively “hip”, today also brings a handful of old-school series: The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series (Universal), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series (Warner), and The Outer Limits: The Complete Series (Fox).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of the first six MGM-made James Bond titles in the format. James Bond Blu-Ray Box Set Volume 1 (Fox/MGM) includes Dr. No, Live and Let Die, and Die Another Day, while Volume 2 (Fox/MGM) contains From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and For Your Eyes Only. I suppose we’ll have to wait for volume 3 to get more of Connery’s classics, but it should prove worth the wait. Also this week, the bloody trio of Diary of the Dead (Weinstein), Halloween (2007) (Weinstein), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Paramount).

Cannes Rundown, Day 4

Paul Clark — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:06:00 GMT

Cannes continued today with a number of notable films, including the premiere of the latest film by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke, entitled 24 City. Here’s Time’s Mary Corliss on the film:

“24 City is eloquent testimony to a China that is vanishing with each swing of the wrecking ball. But the memories of the workers in their factory microcosm, and telling documentaries like these, keep the past alive, so that later generations will know what once was, and what's been lost.”

Also in competition is Linha de Passe, the latest film from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) and collaborator Daniela Thomas. ScreenDaily’s Jonathan Romney writes: “The sheer hustle of Sao Paolo comes across vitally in the traffic scenes, with Denis risking his neck - and eventually others' - on the city highways. Brazil 's polarity between rich and poor is subtly handled in the scenes set in the household where Cleuza works as a maid. Above all, the film comes across as a film about religion - that is, Brazil's true religion of football. Salles and Thomas use on-field action to urgent effect.”

Boyd van Hoeij on Moscow, Belgium- “Especially during its first hour, the Flemish boxoffice sensation toys with cliché material with such an assured sense of direction and such a strong screenplay that it simply is a pleasure to watch. The closing 40-odd minutes do not sustain this sense of wonderment over the near-perfect almost-familiar, but thanks in large part to a wonderful cast led by Barbara Sarafian the film is still something that might light up screens elsewhere in Europe.”

Finally, Variety’s Leslie Felperin on Soi Cowboy- “As it happens, "Cowboy" is chock-full of allusions to Clay's pantheon of auteur heroes, including not just Antonioni and Lynch and many other Europeans, but also notable and newer Asian helmers like Hou Hsiao-hsien… and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Although Clay manages, just about, to keep these references in service of his story, it not yet clear what his own directorial voice looks like, or what exactly it is he wants to say.”

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of April 4-6, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Think of the kinds of movies that are typically called "arthouse hits." I'm guessing that visions of cred-hungry stars working for peanuts, inspiring sports documentaries, and open-faced moppets of all ethnicities are popping into your mind. The last thing you'd imagine would be new films from the festival-feted auteurs of world cinema. Yet that's who topped the box-office charts this past weekend.

Competing for the top spot were the latest films from master filmmakers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai. Admittedly, both Hou's Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films) and Wong's My Blueberry Nights (Weinstein Company) had their opening weekend grosses bolstered by the presence of name stars- Juliette Binoche in the Hou, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman and Jude Law in the Wong. Still, a $17,611 per-screen average is mighty impressive for any film, especially one from a celebrated but not-exactly-popular auteur like Hou.

In second place, My Blueberry Nights came in with a strong $12,358 average. But even more surprising was the performance of #3 film Alexandra (Cinema Guild), the latest from Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov. Like Hou, Sokurov has long been a festival darling, but to see the film performing so well at the box office ($9,086 on one screen), in its second weekend no less, is quite the pleasant surprise.

Holdovers from last week's list include The Singing Revolution (Abramorama Entertainment), Embrem Entertainment's A Four Letter Word, and the documentary The Unforeseen (Cinema Guild). Jumping into the top ten in its second weekend of release is the Audrey Tautou vehicle Priceless (IDP/Samuel Goldwyn), which even if it's not looking like a hit of Amélie proportions, demonstrates that arthouse-goers still enjoy their frothy foreign comedies as much as they ever did.

Top 10, Weekend of April 4-6:
1. The Flight Of The Red Balloon [IFC Films] ($17,611 per screen)
2. My Blueberry Nights [The Weinstein Company] ($12,358)
3. Alexandra [Cinema Guild] ($9,086)
4. Jellyfish [Zeitgeist] ($6,338)
5. The Singing Revolution [Abramorama Entertainment] ($6,183)
6. A Four Letter Word [Embrem Entertainment] ($6,017)
7. Body of War [The Film Sales Company] ($4,942)
8. The Unforeseen [Cinema Guild] ($4,317)
9. Shelter [Regent Releasing] ($4,073)
10. Priceless [IDP/Samuel Goldwyn Films] ($4,018)

Source: IndieWire.

World Film Beat: "Flight of the Red Balloon"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The new Paris-set film The Flight of the Red Balloon has one of the odder background stories of recent films. It's the first movie directed in the West by the revered Taiwan-based filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, and is the first of a projected series of movies to be funded by the Paris museum, the Musée d’Orsay. It was reportedly the museum's idea that Hsiao-hsien "remake" Albert Lamorisee's 1956 children's classic The Red Balloon, a short (thirty-four minute) film in which the brightly colored title prop magically follows a small boy through the city. It turned out that Hsiao-hsien had never seen it. The movie he wound up making uses the city and the figure of a small boy and the image of a mysterious red balloon as a kind of tribute to Lamorisee, but mostly as a sort of homage to unversally shared memory, and overlapping creative imagination. In a scene towards the end, the boy--Simon, played by Simon Iteanu--is part of a group that visits the Musée d’Orsay and is shown an 1899 painting by Félix Vallotton’s called “Le Ballon,” which shows a child and a bright red ball; it could almost be itself a reference to the movie that Albert Lamorisee would make more than fifty years later.

The central characters besides Simon are his mother (Juliette Binoche), who works with a puppet theater and lives with her son in a cramped apartment overflowing with books and photos and a piano that needs tuning, and Son (Song Fang), Simon's nanny, a Chinese film student who is working on her own video tribute to Lamorisse, or at least to his city and subject matter. Five years ago, Hsiao-hsien made Café Lumière, another feature-length tribute to an earlier filmmaker, Yasujiro Ozu. Flight of the Red Balloon seems to me to be a much better movie, partly because it's less studied and freer but also because it takes the director farther out of his comfort zone. Hsiao-hsien likes a measured pace, and his films always suggest more than they show. Here, Simon and Song create a still, quiet pool at the center of the film that's pure Hsiao-hsien, but there's a storm forming at the edges in the unexpected form of Juliette Binoche. The delicate-featured Binoche has made her image and her career playing waifs, but she clearly saw this single-mother role as her chance to play, for lack of a better word, a broad, and she runs with it. (She's said that she took inspiration for the role from Gena Rowlands, and in tribute to that actress, she appears her with her dark hair dyed a frowzy-looking blond.) UNsure how to write dialogue or coach the performers in a language in which he isn't fluent, Hsiao-hsien worked in close collaboration with the actors on this picture, setting up the perimeters of scenes and then letting them improvise their way through, and Binoche turns out to thrive in this kind of working environment. She gets to show a new capacity for ferocity here, especially in her telephone monologues, which fill in some contextual back story about as fully and lucidly as it ever gets filled in during a Hsiao-hsien movie. Binoche looks as if she's having more fun than she's ever had in a movie before when she's rampaging around the apartment warring with the neighbors or providing funny voices backstage at the puppet shows. Her softer side is reserved for her son, whose unspoken adoration of her is fully believable. It's still early in the year, but Flight of the Red Balloon makes Juliette Binoche a prime contender for the Movie Mother of the Year award.