criterionforum.org

Michael Kerpan wrote:Given the low price for this release, I don't see how one can go wrong. If a markedly better one comes out eventually, it shouldn't be that hard to justify double dipping. As it is, this is the best looking Jia DVD I've seen so far (except maybe for The World).

Grimfarrow wrote:THE WORLD was 35mm.

yoshimori wrote:

Grimfarrow wrote:THE WORLD was 35mm.

Really? The World looks distinctly HD to me.

And here's a link to an interview with the DP at the Hong Kong Film Fest that suggests the project was shot in HD.

But perhaps the interview was a hoax!

Grimfarrow wrote:Interesting - the biggest topic in China right now is the feud between Jia Zhangke/Zhang Weiping, Zhang Yimou's producer. Weiping/Yimou accused Jia of winning Venice only because Marco Muller is the producer (TOTALLY not true), and Jia is very upset over it. So in the latest volley of public words, after another round in which Yimou's camp has been slagging Jia off publicly, Jia had a long interview article with the Beijing Youth Daily in which he "reviewed" all of Zhang Yimou's entire filmography. Would love to read that! Hahaha.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Jia Zhangke made his first film in 1995. Or, rather, a great deal of water has been banking up behind the Three Gorges dam in Sichuan, for that is the subject of Jia's 2006 film Still Life and its companion piece Dong. There's a synergy here: his career almost exactly mirrors the span of the construction project.

When Still Life and Dong were first shown at the Venice Film festival in 2006, most critics found them works of considerable maturity from one of China's least known but most significant directors. The former's gentle refinement won out against The Queen and Black Book for the Golden Lion that year.

As with many auteurs, Jia uses a small and trusted band of actors including Zhao Tao, Han Samning and Wang Hongwei. As with all auteur-actor relationships, their ageing process onscreen becomes an integral part of the whole pattern of Jia's vision. In Still Life Zhao Tao plays a woman from Shanxi which is Jia's home province and the location of his earlier films. Shen Hong is visiting the vast demolition and construction site of the Three Gorges dam in search of her husband who abandoned her two years earlier. He is now something of a shifty entrepreneur, profiting from the get-rich-quick ethos of modern China (how far away that last throb of Maoist China recorded in Platform now seems). Zhao only appears 40 minutes into the film, slightly ghostly, as translucent as the water she constantly drinks from a bottle.

Another central character is yet another stray from Shanxi, a working-class former miner who has come to town looking for his runaway wife, despite her perfectly reasonable desire to leave him, since she had been bought and sold as a chattel. This individual, a clenched muscle of inexpressible male misery, is played by Han Samning, who played the same character in Platform and The World (2004).

As well as his escaped wife, Han is also looking for his 16- year-old daughter - keep an eye out for the teenager in a green t-shirt whom Sheng Hong meets on the road. Jia's characters are usually never 'alienated' in the western sense. They are translocated. They are being erased like the landscape so tellingly depicted on the Chinese currency Han holds up in one particular scene; this is all about money, Jia seems to be saying.

Jia announces some of his actual 'still lives', his dedicated images, with the words Tea, Liquor and Toffee, and indeed his eye is very much drawn to objects and the lee they leave in people's lives - the patterns of rust in a decayed industrial site, for example, are all palimpsest and elision.

Jia has made no bones about his interest in design, art and visual constructions; see his recent Wuyong (Useless) (2007) about fashion design, and the companion piece to Still Life, Dong, the 66-minute documentary which records the painter Liu Xiaodong as he prepares two large-scale works around the demolition workers at the Three Gorges project. That said, the original Chinese title of Still Life translates as the rather more down-to-earth 'The Good People of the Three Gorges', so it may be wise not to read too much into the English-language title.

What next for Jia? Still Life is only the second film he has made to be officially sanctioned by the Chinese Film Bureau - remarkable considering its less than flattering portrait of much of the bureaucracy and greed. Why did they do this? At the time of writing, in late November 2007, the Chinese government has been forced to face the possibility that much of the Three Gorges project is in fact geologically unsound after a landslide in Hubei province resulted in loss of life. It is perhaps no coincidence that in September last year, mere weeks after Jia won the Golden Lion for Still Life, the Chinese Government reversed twelve years of consistently upbeat pro-dam propaganda to warn of a potential environmental 'catastrophe'.

Almost overnight, an intensely personal vision of people's eroded lives is entwined with the fate of Mao's hydroelectric dream and a generic matter of Chinese national pride. It's a curious, rather fascinating postscript to such an understated and beautiful film.

SalParadise wrote:Sadly, Dong (which means 'East') doesn't have any subtitles whatsoever, so that's a big bummer!

Skritek wrote:Does anybody own this release of Dong? It seems to have English subtitles.

Skritek wrote:Thanks, I didn't realize Dong was going to be included.

22. (C) The Ambassador also asked Secretary Xi [Jinping] about his recent movie viewing, recalling that Xi had told him in their meeting one year ago that he had recently seen and tremendously enjoyed "Saving Private Ryan." Had Secretary Xi seen other recent American movies that he had enjoyed? Xi replied that he already owns the "Flags of Our Fathers" DVD, but hopes to view it during the Lunar New Year holidays had gone unfulfilled. He had seen and enjoyed "The Departed." Xi said he particularly likes Hollywood movies about World War II and hopes Hollywood will continue to make them. Hollywood makes those movies well, and such Hollywood movies are grand and truthful. Americans have a clear outlook on values and clearly demarcate between good and evil. In American movies, good usually prevails. In contrast, "Curse of the Golden Flower," a recently popular Chinese movie directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li (she of "Miami Vice" movie stardom) had been confusing to Xi. Some Chinese moviemakers neglect values they should promote.

23. (C) America is a powerful nation in terms of culture because Americans say what they should say, Xi elaborated. Too many Chinese moviemakers cater to foreigners' interests or preconceptions, sometimes vulgarly so. He criticized Zhang Yimou by name as well as the kungfu action movie genre. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Wu Ji" [The Promise] and imperial palace intrigues -- all are the same, talking about bad things in imperial palaces. Most are not nominated for Oscars or other awards, so to some extent it can be said that such movies are not worth very much. The Ambassador noted that a Chinese film about HIV/AIDS orphans had just garnered the Oscar for best short documentary. Xi expressed awareness of the movie, noting that the director is a female overseas Chinese (but Xi never said whether he had seen that documentary). Xi recalled that a low cost, very good Chinese movie by the director Jia Zhangke had recently won a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.