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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 45
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Reviews
The Go Master (Wu Qingyuan)
Dir: Tian Zhuangzhuang. Chi. 2006. 107mins.The latest feature from Fifth Generation Chinesefilm-maker Tian Zhuangzhuang,The Go Master is an austere, poeticstudy of one of the most famous 20th-century players of the Japanese board gameGo, considered the most complicated strategy game in the world. As reticent asits central character (played by Wong ...
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Reviews
Hoax
Dir: Lasse Hallstrom. US. 2006. 115mins.As struttingly confident asits main character, true-life literary fraudster Clifford Irving, The Hoax is far and away Lasse Hallstrom's best Americanfilm yet. Featuring a Richard Gere who has finallycast off his mid-term career doldrums to reveal himself as an actor ofMachiavellian charisma and authority, it ...
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Reviews
Napoleon And Me (Io E Napoleone)
Dir: Paolo Virzi. It-Fr-Sp. 2006. 110mins.The latest Eurozone attemptto find a new angle on the Napoleon story finally, Napoleon And Me allows Daniel Auteuil to pitch into a role which seems to have been cutout for an actor of his professional and physical stature. But this - and onesteamy love ...
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News
First Rome Film Fest adds more studio premieres
The Rome Film Fest hasannounced the line-up for its first edition, which runs from Oct 13-21. With atotal of 12 world premieres in its two main sections, the festival line-up hasgone some way towards disproving predictions that the newborn event would becrushed in the autumn festival logjam.In addition to opening ...
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News
Rome Festival sets 16 films for children's competition
The new Rome Film Fest (Oct 13-21)has announced its Alice in the City sidebar for children and young adults.The 16 feature films incompetition include Doug Atchison's spelling-bee drama Akeelah And The Bee, Jeremy Brock's UK coming-of-age story Driving Lessons and Michel Ocelot's animated fable Azur et Asmar. The selection alsoincludes ...
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Reviews
These Encounters Of Theirs (Quei Loro Incontri)
Dir/scr: Jean-MarieStraub and Daniele Huillet.It. 2006. 68mins.A profoundly uncommercialpiece of avant-garde filmmaking, Jean-Marie Straub and DanieleHuillet's TheseEncounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, thenhas them take turns in declaiming the DialoguesWith Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work. The result isfeature that has something of a cleansing (some would ...
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Reviews
The City Of Violence (Jjak-pae)
Dir: Ryoo Seung-wan. S Kor. 2006. 93mins.Action film-maker Ryoo Seong-wan takes a comparative step backwards from thepsychological complexity of last year's CryingFist with The City OfViolence, his latest outing, which pegs a series of appetisingly choreographedfight sequences onto a threadbare script.Co-produced by Korea's mainmartial arts school, the film seems more ...
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Reviews
Tales From Earthsea (Gedo Senki)
Dir: Goro Miyazaki. Jap. 2006. 114mins.Hayao Miyazaki has passed the director'smantle on to his son Goro for Tales From Earthsea,Studio Ghibli's latest feature-length 2D anime. Basedon the series of books by fantasy author Ursula Le Guin,this dragon and wizard yarn is drawn - at least as far as the backdrops ...
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Reviews
Bugmaster
Dir: Katsuhiro Otomo. Jap-US. 2006. 130mins.Japanese anime director Katsuhiro Otomomakes a curiously subdued, poetic foray into live-action cinema with his latestfeature, Bugmaster.Though the story's setting in the late Meiji era and its "invisible bug"infestation theme initially suggest a period horror along the lines of ShinyaTsukamoto's Gemini, the meditativepace, lonely but ...
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Reviews
Rob-B-Hood
Dir: Benny Chan. HK-Chi. 2006. 135mins.Jackie Chan returns to the broad Hong Kong comedyaction of earlier films like Meals On Wheels with the enjoyably ramshackle, fast-pacedbabysitting-crook yarn Rob-B-Hood.Laced with some classic stunts - a couple of them as inventive as anything Chanhas ever done - and action set-pieces, and canny ...
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Reviews
The Missing Star (La Stella Che Non C'e)
Dir: Gianni Amelio. It-Fr-Switz. 2006. 107mins.Gianni Amelio treads waterwith The Missing Star, an anti-hero quest moviethat has moments of emotional engagement but is marred by its genrefence-sitting and the muddiness of its final message. It's one of those filmswhose fascination lies not so much in the drama, whichis structured like ...
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Reviews
Golden Door (Nuovomondo)
Dir/scr: Emanuele Crialese. Fr-It. 2006. 118mins.A moving but unsentimental film of mythic resonance aboutthe early years of mass Italian immigration to the United States, The Golden Door consecrates Sicilian directorEmanuele Crialese as a film-makerof global significance after his promising earlier features, Once We Were Strangers (1997) and Respiro (2002). Turningthe ...
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News
Jia's Still Life is surprise winner of Venice's Golden Lion
Still Life (Sanxia Haoren), thelast-minute competition entry by cult Chinese director JiaZhangke, was the surprise winner of the Golden Lionfor Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Added to the list of 21 competitionfilms halfway through the 12-day Italian festival, Zhangke'sfifth feature, with a slow pace and near absence of ...
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Reviews
The Magic Flute (La Flute Enchantee)
Dir: Kenneth Branagh. UK.2006. 137mins.Can filmed opera attract a multiplex audience'Probably not, but Kenneth Branagh's sumptuous newversion of The Magic Flute comes asclose to crossover as a meeting of these two great light-and-sound artforms ever will. Any exercise in this hybrid genre hasto deal with the question of how to ...
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Reviews
Inland Empire
Dir/scr: David Lynch. US-Fr-Pol. 2006. 189mins.Around 10 minutes into INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch's baffling new cinematic mindgame,a guy with the head of a rabbit drones: "I do not think it will be much longernow". Wrong, bunny: it will be another two hours and 50 minutes of improvisedplotting, rumbling sound effects ...
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Reviews
Dry Season (Daratt)
Dir/scr: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Fr-Bel-Chad-Aust. 2006. 95mins.The third feature from Mahamat-SalehHaroun, the director of Bye Bye Africa (at Venice in 1999) and Abouna (which wasat Cannes in 2002), is a pared-back revenge tale with a twist, set against thebackground of the long trail of civil and ethnic strife in Haroun'snative Chad.One ...
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Reviews
THE INLAND EMPIRE
Dir/scr: David Lynch. US-Fr-Pol. 2006. 189mins.Around 10 minutes into INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch's baffling new cinematic mindgame,a guy with the head of a rabbit drones: "I do not think it will be much longernow". Wrong, bunny: it will be another two hours and 50 minutes of improvisedplotting, rumbling sound effects ...
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Reviews
Paprika
Dir: Satoshi Kon. Japan2006. 90mins.Satoshi Kon proves againwith the teen- and adult-oriented feature Paprikajust why he is one of the most interesting anime Japanese directors right now.On the evidence here it's easy to see why his work, rather than the more conventionalTales Of Earthsea - directed by HiyakiMiyazaki's son Goro ...
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Reviews
The Hottest State
Dir/scr: Ethan Hawke. US. 2006. 116mins.Films about first love are a bit like films aboutdrugs: they risk being more interesting for those involved than for theaudience. But The Hottest State -which screened in Horizons at Venice - has the grace and resilience to charm audiences,grounding its potentially self-indulgent tale into ...
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Reviews
Bobby
Dir/scr: Emilio Estevez. US.2006. 119mins.Actor-director Emilio Estevez makes a convincing return to featuredirection with Bobby, an all-starchoral drama set in Los Angeles' Hotel Ambassador on the day Democraticcandidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated there. True, it is not one of those auteurist multi- strand films like Magnolia that provokes and challenges ...