狂ったブログ

Still Life (Jia Zhang-Ke, 2006)
[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On 35mm at the PFA during the 51st SFIFF with Lucía, Ben, and Sunny, on 6 May 2008, at 20:45.
This is exactly my kind of film. Among other things, it is the epitome of the concept of film as a means of travelling to other places. While […]

[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On projected video at the PFA during the 51st SFIFF with Lucía, on 6 May 2008, at 18:45.
The Judge and the General wasn’t a particularly good documentary (designed for network TV, I guess?), but the subject was so interesting that I had no trouble looking past that. The film is an exploration […]

Secret, or The Secret that Cannot Be Told (Jay Chou, 2007)
[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On 35mm at the Clay Theater during the 51st SFIFF with Lucía, on 4 May 2008, at 21:00.
At the other end of the spectrum from Tout est pardonné, we have the lush mainstream film from the massively popular Jay Chou. It’s probably […]

A Girl Cut in Two
[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On 35mm at the Clay Theater during the 51st SFIFF with Lucía, on 4 May 2008, at 18:00.
Quite removed from the ‘observationalist’ filmmaking of Le voyage du ballon rouge and Tout est pardonné, Chabrol’s latest, La fille coupée en deux is an engaging… thriller?, made by a mature director. […]

All is Forgiven
[imdb] - [wikipedia]
On 35mm at the Clay Theater during the 51st SFIFF with Lucía, on 4 May 2008, at 15:00.
Skipping over the three short-film series that I saw (a collection of animations, childrens’ animations, and films by teenagers), my first feature film at this year’s film festival was Tout est pardonné, the first […]

[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On DVD at home with Lucía, on 2 May, 2008, late in the evening.
C’mon Steven Spielberg, you can do better than that. The Terminal starts out fairly well and manages an amazingly consistent slide to bad, worse, terrible, unacceptable.

Too Bad She’s Bad, based on a story by Alberto Moravia called Il fanatico.
[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On DVD at home with Lucía on her birthday, in the evening.
A combination of great personalities (Alberto Moravia, Alessandro Blasetti, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Vittorio De Sica) resulting in a fairly forgettable film (or at least, fairly forgettable in comparison […]

[wikipedia] - [imdb]
On DVD at home with Lucía, on 18 April, 2008, late at night.
Nicholas Ray seems like a pretty inconsistent director. I’ve now seen at least five of his films. His films seem to be trying to break into Hollywood as much as they try to break out of Hollywood. He […]

[imdb] - [wikipedia]
On 16mm at the PFA with Lucía and Neil, on 30 March 2008, at 14 o’clock.
It’s been a while since I last saw a film (or play, etc.) with Shakespearian dialogue, and it always takes me some time and a fair amount of effort to get into the groove of understanding what the […]

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
[imdb] - [wikipedia]
On DVD at home with Lucía, on 29 March 2008, at around 23 o’clock.
Definitely not my favorite John Woo. I will have to ask Johannes why he prefers it over The Killer and Hard Boiled. I guess I’m not really that big an HK movie fan […]