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Missing Gun (2002)
Missing Gun is a film about a gun, but it is less about the gun itself than what it represents — power and (after it goes missing) the loss of power. For most of the film the weapon has power only in potentia and is used on just two occasions, so any puns about execution are really unjustifiable cheap shots (bam!), but it is undoubtedly director Lu Chuan’s work on this picture that sees it rise above a fairly slight … (read more)
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Beijing Bicycle (2001)
Beijing Bicycle is so much more than its synopsis indicates. Almost from the first frame it is a visual love affair with the humble bike, and images that most Westerners have come to associate with the high population Asian cities – that of teeming, treadling travellers choking city streets – do not so much crowd as flow across the screen. There are whole scenes just of this, a graceful, abstracted ballet of hundreds, if not thousands, of bicycles and their … (read more)
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Big Shot’s Funeral (2001)
What I thought about the film. Ahem.
Well, let’s start with what expectations I had coming into the film. Well I hadn’t seen the trailer though a number of my friends had raved about it during Japanime 02 and it was Rosamund Kwan (whom I hadn’t seen since the Once Upon a Time in China series) with a dead Donald Sutherland. So automatically, one thinks an East meets West scenario. And it is. There’s no denying it. However, normally these … (read more)
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The Road Home (1999)
Zhang Yimou followed his schoolroom drama Not One Less with this charming rural romance. The plot for this film could be neatly inscribed on a postage stamp – and by that, I mean to praise its elegance and simplicity.
The film begins in the present, and this section is shot in black-and-white. Luo rolls up in an incongruous four-wheel drive to his family property, somewhere in the boondocks, to help his mother make preparations for his father’s funeral. She insists … (read more)
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About Love (2005)
There is always a sense of fondness when looking at the short film. Part of that has to do with being exposed too often to ideas and stories forcibly drawn out to meet certain time expectations, so that when one comes across a short film that gets to its point and does it well, it’s always refreshing. Besides which, that sense of a bite of culture without the commitment of a full feature appeals to my capricious, contrary nature.
This … (read more)
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Uproar in Heaven (1965)
Vintage clothes are always in fashion it seems and just like vintage threads, old animation is always welcome.
Uproar in Heaven is pretty old and rare — produced through the years 1961 and 1964. A lot has progressed in the world of animation since then, the most notable of which is the use of the computer in animation but it’s also good to see many principles of animations hasn’t changed.
Animated by the Shanghai Animation Studio, this program is actually … (read more)
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Seafood (2001)
First filmic effort from novelist Zhu Wen was certainly, as the BIFF program states, “pushing the boundaries of film form and challenging the conventional norms of cinema”, however I found it a little too boundary-pushing and unconventional for my tastes as I struggled to find things to like. Beijing prostitute Zhang Xiaomei arrives in sleepy, off-season holiday destination Beidaihe and books into a hotel room with the intention of killing herself. As it turns out, she’s not the first, and … (read more)
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Blind Shaft (2003)
OK, I have to admit to not really paying much attention to the blurb before walking into this one. Latest flick from China that’s sitting on the banned list? Cool. Has some awards around some other film festivals? Even better.
So there I am watching the beginning of the movie knowing it had something to do with mining and having an expectation akin to a disaster movie with the tragedy of lives lost due to poor mining standards like some … (read more)
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