summer palace Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

Call me an optimist, but I'm always hoping for Oscar reform. I've been rather excited about recent rumblings that the Academy is finally, finally considering changing its rules regarding foreign film consideration. I saw one of the new nominees last week, The Counterfeiters, and I have to say that there were at least 20 or 30 other, better foreign language films last year. In fact, I'd have to say that The Counterfeiters is a contender for my worst list of 2008; it takes on an interesting story, but cinematically it's sheer amateur hour. The only reason it got nominated is because it takes place in a concentration camp. I also need to mention that the director, Stefan Ruzowitzky, made one of the worst films I have ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2002), starring Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Izzard as soldiers who go undercover as drag queens in WWII.

Did anyone notice that though La vie en rose earned three nominations (Best Actress, Costume, Makeup) it didn't get nominated for Foreign Language Film? Likewise, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (205 screens) -- filmed almost entirely in French -- was nominated for four awards (Best Director, Editing, Screenplay, Cinematography), but not Best Foreign Film. Why? Diving Bell doesn't count as foreign because it has an American director. Not to mention that each country is only allowed to submit one film, and France's choice, Persepolis (100 screens) was not nominated either. Instead, it was nominated for Best Animated Film! This type of thing happens all the time. In 2002, the foreign film committee rejected the Brazilian film City of God. It was released in 2003 to great critical acclaim and success, and was nominated the following year for four Oscars in other categories. In 2000, Taiwan chose to submit the hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, rather than arguably the greatest film of the past decade, Edward Yang's Yi Yi. Why couldn't both be nominated?

With his previous two features, Suzhou River (2000) and Purple Butterfly (2003), Sixth-Generation Chinese director Lou Ye has earned mostly unfavorable comparisons to Wong Kar-wai. However, he finally gets away from that with his new film, Summer Palace, which, instead, moves closer to seminal works by his own countrymen. Summer Palace is a tormented romance set between 1987 and 2001 in which a country girl, Yu Hong (Hao Lei), goes to school in Beijing, meets Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), and gets caught up in a whirlwind of romantic and social changes. Two other Chinese filmmakers have attempted historical dramas of this type, set against a backdrop of real, fairly recent events. The best of the Fifth Generation team of filmmakers, Tian Zhuangzhuang, made The Blue Kite (1993), and the best of the Sixth Generation team, Jia Zhang-ke, made Platform (2000).

Quite frankly, Lou's work pales next to these twin masterworks, but Summer Palace also comes with its own collection of beautifully dislocated moments. At times the film feels forced, or squeezed, to include certain events. Somehow, during the course of this timeline, our heroes manage to make it to Berlin in time for the Wall to come down in 1989, and to Hong Kong in time for the handover in 1997. Far more appropriate is the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Yu Hong, Zhou Wei and their friends join the fray in high spirits, thrilled to be a part of something so big, perhaps without realizing just how far it stretched and what it all meant. It could be argued that they saw it as a giant party, and a chance to sing, dance, and perhaps meet someone and get laid.

This is the kind of news item that burns through my guts: according to Variety, producer Fang Li and co-production company Beijing Laurel Films have been banned from any involvement in the film business for two years by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT, AKA Film Bureau) in China. The Film Bureau is responsible for censoring materials that might be objectionable to the Mainland Chinese government or cultural standards.

The reasons for the ban are related to director Li Yu's Lost in Beijing. (That's her in the photo with Fang Li.) Monika Bartyzel first wrote about the story nearly a year ago when the Film Bureau banned the film from screening at the Berlin film festival. As Monika noted, Lost in Beijing "involves a relationship between the boss of a Beijing massage parlor (Tony Leung) and his female worker (Fan Bingbing)." The filmmakers refused to edit the film and screened it anyway; in his review, Erik Davis said the picture includes scenes "that shed a negative light on China," but overall the material was "far from risky," at least from the perspective of an American audience member. He thought Lost in Beijing was "good but not great."

The controversy appeared to have died down by the time the film hit Chinese theaters on November 30, but the ban has just now been handed down. Variety says that the crux of the ban is the charge that the filmmakers illegally distributed "unapproved and pornographic clips online," according to the Film Bureau. Producer Fang told Variety that one of their "unprocessed, unedited images was stolen and distributed on the Internet." He said that he was shocked by the ban and will meet with the Film Bureau next week to discuss the whole mess. Fang also produced Lou Ye's Summer Palace; that film screened at Cannes without permission, resulting in Ye being banned from the industry for five years.

For your hump day:

• Back in September of 2006, Lou Ye was banned from making films in China for 5 years because of Summer Palace, a film that mixed the Tiananmen Square massacre with a sexually explicit love story. Without China's permission, he'd screened the movie at Cannes and had scored himself another filmmaking ban (he'd previously had one for Suzhou River). Now the film is getting new life through Palm Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The company has picked up the North American theatrical and DVD rights, planning to release the film in late January. According to Palm, Ye can still do publicity for the film, and I guess his lust isn't getting stopped by caution.
• Nic Balthazar's Ben X has been riding the waves of success. It scored the top prize at Montreal's film fest this year, and is also Belgium's candidate for the foreign-language Oscar. To top that off, Variety reports that the director is planning to make an English-language remake of the film, which he will adapt into an American setting. The plan is to get a distributor and private investors to bring together the picture, with a budget between $8 and $12 million. X is about a mildly autistic teen who is withdrawn in real life and a warrior in online fantasy games, and I imagine it could be a pretty popular movie if they right people become involved.
• Finally, there's a new, Spanish social thriller on the way called Rabia, according to Variety. To be headed by Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero, the film will focus on "an immigrant couple who fall in love in a hostile mileu. Jose Maria, a construction worker, kills his foreman, and hides for a long time at the mansion where his girlfriend, Rosa, serves as a maid." While this may just sound like your ordinary thriller, there's a few things going for it. Actors Gustavo Sánchez Parra (Amores perros) and Leonor Watling (Paris, je t'aime) are attached, and the film comes from a book by Sergio Bizzio, who wrote the story on which the great XXY was based.

Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye did a bad, bad thing. He showed his movie Summer Palace at Cannes earlier this year, and he did so without permission from the Chinese government. Now the director is not permitted to make another film in his home country for five years. Sure, for some filmmakers (like Terrence Malick and the late Stanley Kubrick, were he alive), this wouldn't be that horrible a punishment, except that the whole consequence part includes the government's confiscation of the film and seizing of any income it has generated. Lou Ye has already been the victim of a filmmaking ban; he made Suzhou River without the authorization to do so in 2000 and then couldn't make another film for two years. The producer of Summer Palace, An Nai, has also been put on a five-year suspension.

Summer Palace is a sexually explicit film set in 1989 amidst that year's pro-democracy demonstrations, which ended with the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre. And, according to Lou, it is somewhat autobiographical. Now, while you may be happy to not be living in a communist country, like Lou Ye, surely there are some directors out there that you wish could be given such a ban. My pick: Shawn Levy.

[via Fark.com]