Park City, Ut. | Filmmaker Bao Nguyen didn’t mince words when we sat down in a house not far from where his documentary about Bruce Lee, called “Be Water,” premiered at Sundance this week. Nguyen idolized Lee as a young man because there were rather few Asian and Asian-American actors on U.S. television and in movies in those days. When Lee was trying to get his start in Hollywood, World War II ... more >
FESTIVALS
SUNDANCE / INTERVIEW : “The face of the Asian was very much the face of the enemy in America” (Bao Nguyen, director of “Be Water”)
[U.S. Documentary Competition]
CANNES FESTIVAL – Winners announced, the Bong Joon-Ho-directed PARASITE wins top honors
(CANNES, France) - A family of grifters hustles the perfect family in Bong Joon-Ho's meticulously-directed "Parasite." And they go all the way to Cannes gold! This is the beauty of the Cannes Festival, the jury and the results can be full of surprises--even bad ones. This is a year, also, when the press and the jury are aligned--on who should win top gold. For the rest, who knows what went on in ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – Three members of the Cannes press corps give their forecast for the winners, MALICK and ALMODOVAR among the favorites
The Cannes Festival closes today
(CANNES, France) Laurence Salfati has been a part of the Cannes Festival press corps for nearly twenty years. She works for Lyon-based Radio Judaica and has interviewed all of France's greatest film stars. René Chiche has been coming to Cannes for about as long as his aforementioned colleague. Chiche is a writer, a TV producer and a journalist. He owns a news agency that's based in Paris and runs ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – “OH MERCY!” (“Roubaix, une lumière”)
This film is competing for the Palme D'Or
The town of Roubaix in France, located near the Belgian border, is rather like the Detroit of France. Yesterday’s city of industry has become a broken shell of a town. In the film's opening as local police chief Inspector Daoud (Roschdy Zem) cruises by a burning car he calls it in, the fire foreshadowing tragedy. Daoud is a fictional character who was added in by director Arnaud Desplechin. His ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – Matthias and Maxime
This film is competing for the Palme D'Or
Matthias and Maxime have been friends since childhood. Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, in his second role for the big screen) tries to gain a foothold in the business world while Maxime makes a living as bartender, caring for his mother, a recovering addict. The two young men give off slight reticence, an awkwardness, it becomes clear quickly that these two aren’t just involved in a ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – A very tarantinesque UPON UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD came and went (Best Acting Prize to Leonardo DiCaprio, please!)
This film is competing for the Palme D'Or
This year, there was a before- and an after-Tarantino Cannes Festival. Quentin Tarantino's new film “Once upon a time in Hollywood” was the marker. And it was also the most anticipated film of the 2019 festival. What a party! There is no other American auteur who can command the kinds of huge crowds like the ones seen yesterday in Cannes, when he and the cast walked the red carpet. The Croisette ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – The grifter family versus the perfect family in the entertaining PARASITE
This film is competing for the Palme D'Or
“Parasite,” directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is a comedy that glistens with irony about an elaborate con. The covetous greed of the poor is pitted against the dull indulgence of the wealthy in a manichean duel for supremacy, to realistic effect. Will the world one day see an all-out war between the classes? Occupy Wall Street, the Yellow Vest movement, are those harbingers? These movements have come and ... more >