three times 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.

Between the hoards of self-conscious message movies and piles of garbage that didn't screen for the press, I saw, about two dozen films in 2006 that showed any kind of cinematic artistry. The movies that made my top ten list are movies that don't hand over any easy answers and have thus largely gone ignored this year. Moreover, these were films that used the form in a visual way, rather than simply unfolding a story on film like a big book-on-tape. The cinema isn't dead; it's just hiding...

I should note that my two favorite movies this year, Terrence Malick's The New World and Claire Denis' The Intruder officially count as 2005 movies, even though they opened in most theaters in 2006. So, with a broken heart, I leave them off the list. I also want to include a caveat that the year's most anticipated movie, David Lynch's Inland Empire, has only opened in New York and Los Angeles. No press screenings or screener DVDs have been available in any other city, so I have not been able to see it.

1. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
One of the world's greatest filmmakers has been working for over twenty years. Yet only two of his films have received U.S. distribution. Each starred the beautiful Shu Qi (known in this country for her role in The Transporter) and each lasted about a week in theaters. Three Times, a triptych about two lovers in the 1960s, the 1920s and the present day, isn't one of Hou's very best films, but the first segment alone -- set in the Vietnam era -- is arguably his most heartbreakingly lovely achievement. It towers over everything else released this year.

When I go through each week's new film releases for my website, I have a template that lets me fill in the blanks. One line reads: "Language: [blank] with English subtitles." Lately I've noticed that I've often been deleting that line, which means that most of the new releases have been in English. This is not a new development, but it's a distressing one nonetheless. The downside is that we just don't know what we're missing. During World War II -- understandably -- the United States did not import any Japanese or German films; in the 1980s, it did not import any Iranian films. And to this day, the number of Vietnamese films shown here can be counted on one hand.

In the 1960s, however, a period of intellectualism prevailed and there was an air of excitement over the latest imports: College students, writers and journalists became entranced with the latest films by Godard, Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Truffaut, Renais, Satyajit Ray, Chabrol, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Bresson, etc. The list goes on. To read some of the reviews and essays of the time, you sense that it was truly believed that these artists could change cinema and convert it into a genuine art form, perhaps for the very first time.

Most people know the rest of the story. The 1970s ushered in the so-called "American Renaissance," with its band of young maverick filmmakers. When we talk about the 1970s, we talk about Altman, Bogdanovich, Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Malick, Penn, etc., but rarely do we hear mentioned the great achievements from other countries: Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee, Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Bresson's Lancelot du Lac, Tarkovsky's Solaris, Bunuel's last three films and a dozen Fassbinder films. ...

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.