Watch the flicks

[muckefuck]

Bend It Like Beckham Pretty much exactly what I expected: Feel-good sports movie meets culture-clash comedy; wackiness ensues. I was particularly amused to see baldy-man Anupam Kher concealing his big shiny pate under a Sikh turban. (Note to the hair-challenged: It's never too late to convert!) The only thing that really left a bad taste in my mouth was the lesbophobia. Did we really need the scene of Juliet Stevenson (looking eerily like Michael Palin in drag, but with even more crackerjack comic timing) disrupting the wedding with charges of dykery? Or the underwhelming education scene following it (best summed up as "Y'know, lesbianism isn't that bad!")?

Also, for a few moments, I thought the filmmakers would actually have the gonads to give us a happy ending which doesn't require the female lead to be paired off with a male, but I guess that was simply too radical a departure from formula and I should be content that it wasn't felt necessary to assign a man to Keira Knightley as well. But my biggest disappointment was not being able to find out what all the Punjabi was. The closed captions simply say "[Punjabi]". I thought for sure some geeky Punj would've produced a web page similar to, say, the guide to Chinese dialogue in Firefly in the four years since the movie was released, but no joy.

活著 (To Live) For a while there, I made a point of watching pretty much every product of the collaboration between Zhang Yimou and Gong Li so I'm not sure how I missed this one. She was beautiful, of course, even when artfully aged and succumbing to some decorous wasting disease. Likewise, the whole film was beautiful, even when depicting awfulness that should've been unbearable. I'm not sure what I really got from it besides "Sucks to live in China", something that I kinda knew already.

All films are manipulative, of course; what we ask is simply that they not make it too obvious. But I felt that the melodrama was overdetermined in spots. (C'mon losing both children, respectively to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?) Moreover, the long takes of parental histrionics verged on emo-porn. If The Sweet Hereafter taught me anything, it's that depictions of grief can be so much more wrenching when they're quiet.

Next in the queue: Bollywood Dreams. Which reminds me that I really need a short list of recommendations from local Hindi movie musical maven mollpeartree. If anyone else has suggestions for films we simply must see, feel free to pile them on.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

King of Hearts (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060908/)

Also, if you add me as a friend on Netflix, you can see all the embarrassing movies I watch.

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

Must-see films? Hmmm. Let's see. Off the top of my head:

-- The Road Home (Zhang Yimou, Zhang Ziyi, pure love -- probably my all-time favourite film)
-- 2046
-- In the Mood for Love
-- El mar adentro (The Sea Inside)
-- Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes -- the original Vanilla Sky)
-- The Return (superb Russian drama)
-- Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Warrior and the Princess)
-- Heaven (Tom Tykwer, Cate Blanchett -- a match made in heaven)
-- Aro Tolbukhin: En la mente del asesino (Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Serial Killer)
-- L'appartement
-- Audition (not for the faint of heart)
-- Eureka (brilliant three-and-a-half-hour Japanese drama about trauma)
-- Nobody Knows
-- Hana and Alice
-- Oldboy
-- Whale Rider
-- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-- Sideways
-- Apocalypse Now
-- Dr Strangelove
-- Magnolia
-- Memento
-- Almost Famous
-- The Goddess of 1967
-- To Be or Not to Be (the 1942 version)

The first three Lukas Moodysson films: Fucking Amal (Show Me Love), Together and Lilya 4-ever.

And of course everything ever directed by Kim Ki-duk, if you're not familiar with his works yet (which as a Korea-lover you may well be). Start with Bin-jip (3-Iron) and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring and then work your towards his older, more gruesome stuff. Brilliant, original, heart-wrenching work.

Have fun watching!

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

活著 (To Live)... ...Likewise, the whole film was beautiful, even when depicting awfulness that should've been unbearable. I'm not sure what I really got from it besides "Sucks to live in China", something that I kinda knew already.... ...But I felt that the melodrama was overdetermined in spots. (C'mon losing both children, respectively to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?)
I agree with all your points - I really enjoyed it when I saw it, despite the melodrama and owing largely to the epic beauty. Given the impressively strong and not at all hidden anti-Communist message, how did the director manage to stay out of jail long enough to do the movie he did with Jet Li?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

To Live was banned in mainland China. IIRC, Zhang made two or three movies before Hero which the government wouldn't even allowed to be screened abroad. I think the only reason he's stayed out of jail is that the government doesn't want another embarrassing cause célèbre. Remember that, at the time, Zhang was coming off a string of major international art house (Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern) hits and his imprisonment would've caused an outcry around the world.

I think it also has something to do with the contemporary ideological trends, which I only hazily remember. The movie can always be viewed as more a criticism of Maoism than Communism, per se, and Maoism has gone in and out of favour in China.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Did we really need the scene of Juliet Stevenson (looking eerily like Michael Palin in drag, but with ever more crackerjack comic timing) disrupting the wedding with charges of dykery?
...Also, for a few moments, I thought the filmmakers would actually have the gonads to give us a happy ending which doesn't require the female lead to be paired off with a male, but I guess that was simply too radical a departure from formula and I should be content that it wasn't felt necessary to assign a man to Keira Knightley as well.

Thing is, the image of women football players over here is that they are *all* dykes. 75% of the audience will have been watching it expecting that Keira Knightley would try to pull Our Heroine. I was pleased that you get to see the homophobia of some of the relatives and neighbours (bear with me, it's a year since I saw the film) because it demonstrates rather well that the audience is making the same assumption - short hair and a liking for sport means she must be a lesbian, because REAL girls don't do that. To have Our Heroine (yes, yes, I've forgotten her name) pair up with Keira K or one of the other women on the team would play up to the stereotypes.
Mind you, it would have been more satisfying, and more realistic IME, if there was some lesbian representation on the team, I admit.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It wasn't that I wanted to see a lesbian romance, I just would've been happy not to see her paired off at all. They were doing so well--"Yeah, I'm crazy about you, but I've got lots else going on and this isn't a wise choice for me right now"--I wish they had just stayed there. I read it not as "See, she really isn't a lesbian!" Hadn't they established that (for both girls) sufficiently already? Rather it was the old-fashioned trope about a woman not being complete unless she's married. It doesn't matter how successful she is in any other area, if she can't get and hold a man as well, then she's a complete failure.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Ah ok, I misread you. In that case, I agree with you :)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I don’t know if any of these are must-see, exactly, but they’re currently my favorites. (Also, sensitivity to over-the-top-melodrama as well as sexism & homophobia must be set aside for these, but you know that already, eh?)

Devdas (2002)
Dil Se ...*
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam
Hum Tum
Koi … Mil Gaya
Mughal-e-Azam
Paheli
Sholay
Veer-Zaara
Also, Mother India, but you’ve seen that one already I think.

(*Note: Everyone at Bollython hated this one, mostly because they were troubled by the stalkerish & abusive aspects of Shah Rukh Khan’s character. Fair enough, but I thought it had very good music, unusual staging and cinematography, and an unusual degree of realism for a Bollywood musical.)

Hindi movies I haven’t seen that would be at the top of my rental list if I had Netflix:

1942: A Love Story
Bunty Aur Babli
Hum (1991)
Pakeezah
Umrao Jaan

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Now that you have Netflix, you can watch my favorite Gong Li film: God of Gamblers III. We just rented it, and it was all that I remembered and more, including the bun store dance number set to "Mambo Italiano" (with new, bun-praising lyrics).