Posts with tag JiaZhang-ke
SFIFF Review: Still Life
Filed under: Foreign Language », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie »
With only a handful of films to his credit, Sixth Generation Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke has become one of the world's great master filmmakers, and he has the lack of distribution to prove it. Like many other greats from Orson Welles to Hou Hsiao-hsien, he has struggled to get spectators and his movies together at the same place and the same time. His film Still Life won the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival and promptly sat on the shelf. It received a cautious and limited release in New York earlier this year, but since it never turned up on the West Coast, the San Francisco International Film Festival picked it up as an entry in the 51st fest (after failing to secure it for their 50th), and it opens at the end of this week at the Roxie Cinema. It's by far the best film I've seen in this year's fest, and it probably would have been the best of last year too.
SIFF Review: Platform
Filed under: Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Seattle »
You might have thought, based on my SIFF reviews thus far, that all my reviews of films at this festival were going to be unabashedly positive. And they might have been, had I not decided to screen Platform, a film being shown as part of SIFF's "Emerging Masters" series, by critically lauded Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke. I have nothing against Chinese film in general (heck, Farewell My Concubine is one of my favorite movies) or Jia Zhang-ke in particular - on the contrary, I was particularly excited about seeing both Platform and the film showing immediate after it, Jia's more recent film, The World.
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SDCC Update: Cinematical Has Seen 'Fanboys'!
SDCC Panel: Robert Rodriguez's 'Red Sonja'
Review: The X-Files: I Want To Believe
Live from SDCC: Preview Night Gallery!
Live from SDCC: Time to Get Our Con On!
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