flight of the red balloon Tagged Articles at Cinematical

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

With awards season in full bore, I thought I would go back and look at some of the year's most wonderful sleepers, the films that "fell through the cracks" and are not appearing in awards lists or on top ten lists -- one reason being that they came out earlier in the year and were not issued on "for your consideration" Academy DVD screeners. I'd like to start with one of the most overlooked great films of the year, one that was virtually ignored by both the press and the public: The Dark Knight.

Just kidding. Let's start by looking at The Violin, which is very much worth tracking down. 2006 was the year of the much-publicized "Mexican New Wave," and most writers focused on three major films (Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and Babel), while passing over of the terrific smaller ones, like Duck Season and Battle in Heaven. Directed by Francisco Vargas, The Violin was made at around the same time, but didn't surface until 2007 in film festivals, and then early in 2008 for a tiny theatrical release. At the risk of cheapening the film with a cursory plot summary, it's the story of an aged, one-handed man who -- more or less -- helps his guerrilla son by serenading a sensitive but sinister military captain (he has to strap the violin bow to the stump of his hand). Vargas shoots in gorgeous black-and-white, cannily switching between hand-held and still shots.

Above: Incredible Hulk, Flight of the Red Balloon, The Strangers

Incredible Hulk
"There once was an angry young man..." sounds like a fairy tale, but the rebooted Hulk got a huge leg up with the casting of the intense Edward Norton as the scientist who turns green with rage. This Hulk has narrative problems, but as a straight-ahead action picture it keeps a pretty good beat as it rocks along, and definitely benefits from Norton and Tim Roth as his nemesis; Liv Tyler and William Hurt also star. Scott examined all the features of the 3-disk Special Edition on DVD; also available in a single-disk DVD edition and on Blu-ray. Buy it.

Flight of the Red Balloon
Juliette Binoche hires a Taiwanese film student as nanny for her son, and magical moments begin. Jeffrey M. Anderson said Binoche was "simply miraculous" and that the film itself "could be one of those magic moments that people could appreciate if only they would take the time." Now's the time, people! Hou Hsiao-Hsien is an amazing filmmaker and this a perfect alternative to Hulk's smash/bang. Available on what looks like a bare-bones DVD. Rent it.

The Strangers
It's Liv Tyler week! She and Scott Speedman play a troubled couple besieged by masked strangers in their own home. Writer/director Bryan Bertino takes a commendably low-key approach to their night of terror, but there were far too many cheap scares and telegraphed thrills for me. Eugene Novikov was much more impressed, however, so decide for yourself. Available on DVD and Blu-ray; both include R-rated and unrated versions. The unrated cut includes about five minutes of additional footage, mostly near the climax. Rent it.

After the jump: Indies on DVD (Go-Getter! B-Ballers! Ben Stein!), Blu-ray (James Bond!), and Collector's Corner (Looney Tunes! Gangsters!).

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.

Here's one of my dirty little secrets: I love lists and I keep track of my year's ten best movies all year long. Most other critics hastily assemble their lists at the last second, which is partly why so many December movies dominate; critics can't remember what they've seen earlier in the year. My list shows that 2008 has had a pretty poor first half, but I do have some contenders for listhood. Two movies are currently competing for the top spot, though I need to see them both again to be sure. Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon (6 screens) is one; it has a lovely, laid-back, observant quality and feels less severe than some of Hou's other recent films. But I haven't yet decided if the film is a comedy or a tragedy. It all feels pretty light and insignificant, except for the saddest thing: no one seems to notice the red balloon of the title, drifting around Paris, unable to find a boy like Pascal to love it. The film also contains the year's most vibrant performance: Juliette Binoche playing a frenzied single mom working with a puppet troupe.

In describing today's best directors, three terms are generally used (and overused): Maverick, Genius and Auteur. A "maverick" is now used to describe virtually anyone who makes a movie without using Hollywood money. An "auteur" is used to describe anyone who writes as well as directs. And "genius" is used to describe anyone who makes a halfway decent film. I'm taking these words back. In reality, a "maverick" should be a button-pusher. It's a filmmaker who is so radical and daring that even high-minded, forward-thinking critics sneer at their work, people like Vincent Gallo or Catherine Breillat. These people are so dangerous that they have trouble making and distributing films. Harmony Korine, director of Mister Lonely (5 screens) is very much a maverick. Korine has pushed many buttons and many envelopes over the years and though I love his work, he's someone I wouldn't want to invite to my house. (He scares me.)

Werner Herzog, director of Encounters at the End of the World (1 screen), is also a maverick (and, incidentally, a buddy of Korine's). His physically dangerous films have probably had insurance companies slamming the door in his face, and his co-workers have included people who might not be fit for polite society. (At the very least, most of them would turn heads.) Some of his actors have reportedly threatened to kill him. It cracks me up that, because Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man was such a hit, Herzog was allowed to make his new film for the Discovery Channel. I'd really love to have been in on that board meeting. Did they really know who they were dealing with? At the same time, Herzog is also an auteur: all of his films have the same roaming curiosity, fearlessly exploring man's tenuous connection to nature, from Aguirre navigating the Amazon looking for El Dorado, to Timothy Treadwell seeking to befriend the bears.

Four of the most exciting movie stars in the world are currently appearing in two of the least interesting new movies, taking a back seat to less interesting stars. Jackie Chan and Jet Li are master martial artists, Chan with a comedian's touch and Li with an appealing stoic quality. They team up for the first time in The Forbidden Kingdom (105 screens), a movie about a white kid and his attempt to beat up some bullies. Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh team up for the second time in The Children of Huang Shi (43 screens), about a British journalist (not played by Chow) and an Australian nurse (not played by Yeoh) saving some orphans.

Chow had a suave, cool quality that could have turned him into the next James Bond or Cary Grant, and Yeoh is a beautiful martial artist who could have become a groundbreaking feminist action star. It's a sad state of affairs, but I guess these films are the final proof of the cold, dead corpse of the Hong Kong New Wave.

A Taiwanese filmmaker's tribute to a celebrated French short soared easily to the top of the indie charts this weekend. Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, averaged $17,450 at the two screens where it played in Manhattan, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote: "Like Hou's more recent work, Flight of the Red Balloon moves a little more toward international accessibility and away from his early, uniquely Taiwanese stories." Juliette Binoche stars as a frazzled writer and performer with a troupe of puppeteers who hires a Taiwanese film student as a nanny for her young son.

Surprisingly, My Blueberry Nights (The Weinstein Co.) finished #2 for the weekend, grossing an average of $11,380 per screen at six locations. Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film met with lukewarm reaction at Cannes last year; the director tinkered with the editing, but the end result is still not very satisfying, according to Nick Schager. He wrote that the "lovelorn dilemmas [of the female characters] ... consistently come off as precious and trifling, which is dispiriting considering that Wong and [director of photography Darius] Khondji make everything look and feel so rapturous and enticing that one wants to believe the proceedings are of consequence." Nora Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman are featured.

Astonishingly, the master Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien and the brain-dead American comic Dane Cook now have only one degree of separation between them. Juliette Binoche jumped from her role opposite Cook in the awful Dan in Real Life to a starring role in Hou's new film, the wonderful, whimsical Flight of the Red Balloon. In 1999, the Village Voice critics' poll chose Hou as the director of the decade, and three of his films placed in the decade's top 100: Flowers of Shanghai (#3), The Puppetmaster (#16) and Goodbye South, Goodbye (#61). That same year, a touring retrospective of Hou's work had the critical community all abuzz, and apparently sold a great many tickets. But Hou's films never found U.S. theatrical distribution until 2004, when his Millennium Mambo opened, with little fanfare, three years after it was made. And then, it was probably due more to beautiful star Shu Qi (The Transporter) than to Hou. Yet I somehow doubt Hou's new brush with fame will help him become any less obscure.

With hundreds of titles playing at the Toronto festival, which ones will emerge as critical or popular favorites? One way to build popular word of mouth is by screening selected titles at other fall festivals. Festival buzz often leads to sales for films without distribution, and that same buzz can increase awareness of films in advance of a theatrical release.

For example, this week AFI Fest announced another 15 titles, according to indieWIRE, of which 11 are screening in Toronto. Bruce MacDonald's The Tracey Fragments and Paprika Steen's With Your Permission will have their US Premieres at the fest, while other buzz titles include Telluride fave Juno, the animated Persepolis, the Romanian 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (which was pulled earlier this year from the Los Angeles Film Festival), biopic The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages and Austrian Oscar entry The Counterfeiters. As an Asian film fan, I'm excited to see Hao Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine in the lineup. Two documentaries will world premiere: Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome and 1000 Journals. The fest will open with the North American Premiere of Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs; it runs from November 1-11 in Los Angeles, California.

Starting in less than two weeks, Fantastic Fest is filled with exciting titles for genre fans -- I'm going and my schedule is already overflowing. They've just announced their opening night film will be George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, with director Romero in person. The film premiered Friday night as part of Toronto's Midnight Madness program. Other recently-added films include Flash Point (another Midnight Madness title), The Backwoods (starring Gary Oldman) and Nacho Vigilando's Timecrimes. Look for a BIG Cinematical preview coming next week. The craziness begins September 20 and lasts until September 27 in Austin, Texas.

Wednesday marks the kick-off of the 60th anniversary of the film festival in Locarno, located on Lake Maggiore in the southern part of Switzerland (nearest to Italy). The signature event of the festival is the Piazza Grande program, where up to 8,000 people can watch one or two movies each night on a giant screen in the open air. If, like me, you're stuck at home, they have a webcam set up to make you jealous. The picturesque setting looks like a really fun way to see Knocked Up, The Bourne Ultimatum, or Hairspray. Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's full blown 105-minute version of his Grindhouse segment, will be shown, along with a warning: "Some scenes might hurt spectators feelings." But there are also screenings of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, Luchino Visconti's 1951 Bellissima, the world premiere of Kenneth Bi's The Drummer, documentaries, short films and other non-Hollywood fare.

Of the 19 films in the International Competition, 13 are world premieres and 11 are by first or second-time filmmakers. I've already written about Thieves, from Spain; there's also Anthony Hopkins' intensely personal Slipstream, George Ratliff's critically-berated Joshua and Masahiro Kobayashi's newest, The Rebirth. Extraordinary Rendition, from the UK, has an explosive subject: the kidnapping of terrorist suspects by the CIA. Argentine director Sandra Gugliotta, who previously made the starkly affecting drama A Lucky Day, returns with another personal drama, Las Vidas Posibles. In the other sections, stand-outs include Chris Fuller's exciting youth drama Loren Cass, which played at CineVegas and earned a rave review in Variety. With so many world premieres and generally less-heralded films in the program, I'm hoping that a few more will break out and get some good reviews so we can learn more about them. The Locarno festival runs from August 1-11.