HouHsiao-hsien Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you've ever seen a film by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, you might not initially think of him to direct an action movie, even of the slower, more poetic wuxia genre that includes films like Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's Hero and other recent works. But the master director has long confessed in interviews that he'd like to make a martial arts picture, and even as far back as 2002, Hou was attached to helm an adaptation of Pei Xing's 9th century fantasy novel "Nie Yin Niang," about a female assassin, which was then reportedly titled Xia Nü.

Six years later, following his first non-Taiwanese film (the Ozu tribute Café Lumiere), the triptych Three Times and his first Western project (Flight of the Red Balloon), Hou seems to finally be on track to making his wuxia dreams come true. Variety reports that his adaptation of "Nie Yin Niang," now titled The Assassin (or maybe The Hidden Heroine, or simply Nie Yin Niang), has received funding from the Taiwanese government's National Development Fund and is therefore moving forward with a pre-production start date of October 1 and shooting expected to begin in early 2009.

For its 60th year anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival will premiere new films from many past winners of the Palme d'Or. It isn't known how many of these winners will have new material this year, but apparently festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux tried to get many of the living "Golden Palm" vets -- winners and nominees, both -- to contribute to a special project.

Each participating filmmaker has directed a short film of 2-3 minutes in length that will be shown together as a feature-length film at a gala event on May 20. Variety reports that those known to be included are Ken Loach ('06: The Wind That Shakes the Barley), Gus Van Sant ('03: Elephant), Lars von Trier ('00: Dancer in the Dark), Theodoros Angelopoulos ('98: Eternity and a Day), Abbas Kiarostami ('97: Taste of Cherry), Chen Kaige ('93: Farewell My Concubine), Wim Wenders ('84: Paris, Texas) and non-winners (though often-nominated) Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Cimino, Amos Gitai, Manoel de Oliveira, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. There are 30 shorts in all, so obviously a lot of other contributors are as yet unknown. Only Pedro Almodóvar (also a non-winner, and never a nominee) is known to have declined the offer.

Walking into the theater on Thursday night, my girlfriend casually remarked that she had never even heard of writer/director Hsiao-hsien Hou before. I had to admit that I couldn't place him either. Apparently, we are the last ones to arrive at the party. Based on this one film alone, Hou shows himself to be a filmmaker steeped in the school of Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and other hugely talented directors who never let story get in the way of their visual poetry. There must be few filmmakers working today who have exhibited such unforced beauty in their work as exists in Three Times, or demonstrated such a clear understanding of how to tell a simple story through simple pictures, with no fat whatsoever. Most modern directors with money to burn want to demonstrate their complexity -- they want to inhabit the mind of the critic and outflank them. Hou, on the other hand, is a natural painter. Although I have no idea if its true, I imagine him shooting until all hours, torturing his actors and financiers, and indulging whatever maniacal perfectionism was necessary to create this beautiful film.

Three Times is a tone poem about the march of time and tide across the Taiwan Strait, seen though the eyes of a young man (Chen Chang) and woman (Qi Shu) who are forever there. In three self-contained vignettes, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1960s, and 2005, we see them living out their early-to-mid twenties and engaging each other in the style and speed of the day. In one era, they cautiously hover near an open doorway as the world races by outside. In another era, they are the ones racing, across a daunting highway on a rickety motorbike. In one era, they stand a respectable distance apart from one another when they speak. In another era, they pull each others' clothes off. As the world changes they remain young, but not necessarily youthful or unscarred. A self-confident and casual flirt in the laid-back atmosphere of the 1960s, the girl is hugely stressed and harried in 2005, and wears an epileptic's badge around her neck. It reads: "I suffer from epilepsy. Please do not call an ambulance. Just move me to a warm, safe place."

Comcast and IFC Entertainment will today announce their deal (first outlined by Karina a month ago) to simultaneously release independent films in theaters and on television, via video-on-demand. Kicking off on March 24 with American Gun, the agreement will have films in theaters across the nation (in IFC's theaters as well as in Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters; negotiations are on-going with other chains) while they are being offered to Comcast subscribers in 22 major markets for $5.99/viewing. Despite the fact that the agreement lacks a DVD element, Comcast's reach is dramatically greater than that of the HD Channel on which Bubble aired, and there's a good chance that Comcast/IFC's films will be seen by a much larger audience than Soderbergh's film.

Because VOD is very hard to pirate, and because Comcast could theoretically pick and choose the markets in which these films are offered, it's hoped that the Comcast/IFC approach will be less threatening to supporters of traditional distribution than the Bubble experiment. IFC actually quietly test the system with a day-date release for C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America this month, and the film, despite being available via VOD to Cablevision subscribers, has done record business in IFC theaters - this, too, should suggest to studios and theater owners that the approach is not necessarily a death knell for exhibition. Among the two dozen or so films IFC and Comcast will release are I Am a Sex Addict, Three Times (by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose work is virtually impossible to see in the US), and The Russian Dolls, which stars Amelie's Audrey Tautou).

Look, the fact is that fans of independent film want to see these movies - to some degree, this is going to work. Day-and-date releasing is not going away, and it's time for theater owners and studios to stop whining and, instead, figure out how they can get involved, and use the approach to their advantage. Times change. Deal with it.