zhang yimou Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The term remake has predominantly negative connotations, but once in awhile we see proof that a redo can be a good thing. Just look at Werner Herzog's new film, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which isn't quite a remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant so much as it's a stand-alone sequel or simply another filmmaker's take on the same sort of character explored in the original. It's enough to make me wish we could have seen what Spielberg and Will Smith's version of Oldboy would have looked like.

And here's another perfect example of a good remake: Zhang Yimou's version of the Coen Brothers' neo-noir cult classic Blood Simple, which Peter excitedly wrote about back in July. The film now has a title, The First Gun (aka Amazing Tales: Three Guns), and an international trailer, which shows us just how different Zhang's version is. The Chinese filmmaker, acclaimed for numerous Oscar-nominated films, whether recognized in the foreign, cinematography or costume categories, recently confirmed that he added a lot of things and changed the whole tone from the Coens' version.

"We brought in a lot of comedic elements and changed the relationship and personalities of the characters," Zhang told Chinese website Sina.com.

Yes, I have a knee-jerk negative reaction to remakes in general. Yes, I love Blood Simple, the Coen Brothers' debut feature, so much so that I wrote a long article about the film. Yes, I initially thought the prospect of a Chinese version set in a noodle shop was ridiculous.

On the other hand, we're talking Zhang Yimou, people! He's a world-class filmmaker who has demonstrated his artistry over many years, ranging from the delicate poetry of Raise the Red Lantern to the homespun humanity of Not One Less to the martial arts dramatics of House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. Do I want to see that guy remake Blood Simple in Chinese? Heck yes!

The new version will indeed be set in a Chinese noodle shop, but rather than Texas, the background will be "a sand dune-specked desert." The premise remains the same -- a married man's plot to kill his adulterous wife and her lover quickly spins out of control -- with a slight twist: these characters are more accustomed to knives and swords than guns.Sony Pictures Classics will release the picture, which is currently untitled; Anne Thompson has the press release. The Coen Brothers really have no reason to complain, since they had no compunction about remaking Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers.

If you have any doubts that Zhang can handle a thriller-comedy, may I refer you to Happy Times, which wrung deadpan laughs out of a dramatic situation that could have been smarmy and dreary. While he hasn't made a dark thriller before, he'd never made an action picture before Hero (the one with Jet Li) either, and that turned out pretty darn good. So I have every confidence that he'll make something distinctive, and definitely his own, out of Blood Simple.

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.

Leave it to Roger Ebert to compare the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to the Nazi propaganda doc Triumph of the Will. In a blog entry, Ebert wrote in part: "The closest sight I have seen to Friday night's spectacle, and I mean this objectively, not with disrespect, is the sight of all those Germans marching wave upon wave before Hitler in 'Triumph of the Will.'"

In context, Ebert was addressing the "astonishing" $300 million show featuring "thousands of painstakingly drilled performers" who had spent "four months in rehearsal. Eight hours a day." His fascinating article includes thoughts on the opening ceremony, the challenge for any nation to ever equal the ceremony, much less surpass it in spectacle, the individual vs. the collective, and China's capitalist leanings.

At heart, of course, Ebert is a film critic, and he notes the direction of Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers) and the costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka (Mishima, The Fall). Triumph of the Will may still be fresh in his mind as a point of comparison because he wrote extensively about it again in June as one of his "Great Movies."

I played sports before movies lured me to the dark side, so when I was younger I related to the Olympics as a budding athlete. That was a long time ago, but I did watch a little Olympic badminton * and cycling before heading out to see movies this weekend. Have the Olympics distracted you from movie watching?

* UPDATE: Spelling corrected and link added. Thanks to ML for the gently-worded comment.

As a lovelorn cop in Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express, he ate expired cans of pineapple; as a mute urban guerrilla in Wong's Fallen Angels, he broke into other people's businesses and forced passers-by to be his customers. Those were the first two films in which I saw Takeshi Kaneshiro; his brooding, romantic looks have served him well in a career that has ranged all over Asia -- aided, no doubt, by his broad appeal and multi-lingual talents. Born in Taiwan, he speaks Japanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

His highest profile titles in the West have probably been the Japanese science fiction action picture The Returner and Zhang Yimou's costumed martial arts epic House of Flying Daggers. He's one of the stars of the just released action epic The Warlords (which has done boffo box office) and will also be featured in John Woo's upcoming Red Cliff. Kaneshiro will also be starring in The Fiend With Twenty Faces (AKA K-20: Kaijin niju menso den), according to a recent story by Mark Schilling at Variety Asia Online.

Kaneshiro will play a master criminal plying his trade in a fictional Japanese city in 1949. The lovely Takako Matsu -- who is coming off a lead performance in the big fall hit Hero -- has been set to portray a victim of "The Fiend" and veteran Toro Nakamura will co-star as a detective. Shimako Sato will direct. Filming is scheduled to begin in January and Toho plans to release it in December 2008. I'm hard pressed at the moment to think of a role in which Kaneshiro has played someone that could be called a "fiend," so I'll be very interested to see what comes of a film that's been described as a mystery crime drama.

If you guessed California or Florida or Canada or Romania, you'd be off by a few thousand miles. The World's Largest Studio is a new documentary that promises to provide a picturesque view of Hengdian World Studios, located a few hours' drive south from Shanghai in the eastern part of China. Producer Charlie Moretti told Shanghai Daily that the film "looks at the lives of the businessmen who started the studios with just 2,000 yuan (US$261), the gardeners who tend the grounds, the actors and actresses and everyone else in between."

Construction on the gigantic studios, which now cover more than 800 acres, commenced in 1996 when director Xie Jin wanted to recreate 1850s Canton for his film The Opium War. Businessman Xu Wenrong got the job done in just three months and the filmmaker was so impressed he recommended the location to Chen Kaige for his next project, The Emperor and the Assassin. That film required a huge new palace set, and Xu was happy to oblige. "We used up more dynamite than this county had used in its whole history," he later told People's Daily Online. A few years after that, Ang Lee filmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the studios and Zhang Yimou shot Hero. It's notable that both Chen (The Promise) and Zhang (Curse of the Golden Flower) returned to work at Hengdian with their bigger-budgeted pictures.

The World's Largest Studio screened for the first time in Shanghai this week. According to Moretti, a 27-year-old Frenchman who co-directed with Matthew Clarke, "people should soon be able to watch the documentary on international channels. We are also exploring the possibility of making an extended DVD." A handsome-looking teaser, jammed with clips from films shot at the studio, is available on the production company's web site.

Earlier this month, I posted about a secret film debuting at the Cannes Film Festival. All that was known at the time was that it would be a compilation of 30 shorts, each about three minutes long and directed by an internationally respected filmmaker, and that it wouldn't be shown to the public. Now, thanks to an official press release, we learn that there are in fact 33 shorts from 35 filmmakers (including two pairs of brothers) and that the film, titled To Each his Own Cinema, will air on French television on May 20 following its premiere at the festival. So now I don't have to wish I could attend Cannes; I have to wish I got Canal +.

Also revealed are the names of the 35 participants, all of whom were supposed to be kept secret until the film's unveiling, and a few details about the project. Each director was assigned the task of filming, "their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theater." The only individual specifics mentioned in the press release, which was written by festival head Giles Jacob, are that Wim Wenders shot in the Congo, Tsai Ming Liang shot in Kuala Lumpur and David Cronenberg shot "in the ... toilet!" (probably meaning the bathroom, not the bowl). But anyone familiar with the directors involved can imagine the kind of diversity that will be seen in the film.

See the names of the 35 collaborators after the jump.

In the course of Hollywood history, movie genres have grown from the the lower regions, among the ticket buyers and popcorn munchers, in the Saturday matinees and with the dime store, penny-a-word trash classics. The Western was the first of these, making its movie debut as early as the movies themselves, with The Great Train Robbery (1903). Not fifty years had gone by before some wise guy had the idea to take this ground-level idea and turn it into an impressive, blue-ribbon pageant, a noble, tasteful new object worthy of respect. These came in the form of High Noon (1952) and Shane (1953), praised through word of mouth, as Westerns for people who don't ordinarily like Westerns. Critics ate them up. And, if you'll notice, the Western genre is more or less gone.

The same thing happened to musicals. As soon as pictures learned to talk and all through the 1950s, musicals ruled, and plenty of great, small ones crooned and tapped their way across screens, much to the unfettered joy of fans. But in the 1960s, the graceless, inflated, gargantuan West Side Story (1961) -- a musical for people who don't ordinarily like musicals -- came along. And now the musical is more or less gone (and, I'm sorry, but Dreamgirls doesn't count).

Because they just can't get enough Zhang Yimou, Sony Pictures Classics have picked up the North and Latin American rights to his latest project, Curse of the Golden Flower (you may have heard of it back when it was called The City of Golden Armor). Despite the distributor's history with Zhang (they've work with him on eight previous films, including House of Flying Daggers and Hero), in the face Hollywood's growing trepidation about the market strength of Chinese action-romance films, the fact that the buy has been made before the film is even finished shooting seems like a major vote of confidence, both for Zhang and the Chinese industry. That said, of course, the presence of stars Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li probably didn't hurt, either, since the pair of them are among the most recognizable stars in Asian cinema, at least to American eyes.

If you buy the press release blather about the film, it's apparently going to be the Best! Movie! Ever! "From Gong Li's stunning performance to Chow Yun Fat's commanding presence to opulence one has rarely ever seen on screen, this movie will have it all: Brilliantly executed action set pieces as well as compelling intimate drama against the most colorful historical canvas imaginable." Mmm ... hyperbole.

According to Asian film website MonkeyPeaches, a large group of American studio representatives were recently invited to the set of Zhang Yimou's latest epic, The City of Golden Armor (MP's extensive archive of stories on the film is here). In addition to representatives of eight American distributors, Zhang's guests included Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg -- this, my friends, is a hard freaking sell.

Press reports in China suggest that sales of high-profile Chinese action-romance films for American distribution -- sales that had, in the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, been fairly easy to broker -- are suffering because of the debacle surrounding Chen Kaige's The Promise. The experience of The Weinstein Company, which bought the rights the the movie based on its Cannes trailer only to decide the finished product wasn't strong enough for a wide release, has  apparently given American companies cold feet about the Chinese industry in general. In response, Zhang is opening his set up to those companies, in an effort to both sell his film and, one imagines, re-energize the market.

It seems as if Zhang is setting his film up as a sort of litmus test to see if Crouching Tiger and Hero-style films can still succeed here; it'll be fascinating to see if and when The City of Golden Armor sells, and how well it does in a possible American release.