Podcasts about Zhang Yimou

Welcome back to Heroes Three podcast! This week we discuss the worldwide hit film Hero from 2002, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, and Donnie Yen!Full cast and credits at HKMDBCheck out some H3 art and merch! - https://www.teepublic.com/user/kf_carlitoFind us online - https://linktr.ee/Heroes3PodcastEmail us! - heroes3podcast@gmail.comFull blogpost with gifs here!

Deux productions somptueuses au discours fuyant, une lettre d'amour au cinéma, un hilarant navet de propagande : la fin est définitivement proche. Avec Amandine et Flo. 5'16 : Shadow 19'44 : One Second 38'23 : Les Espions de l'Aube 58'39 : Snipers

CINEMA! E ANCORA CINEMA!Nuovo appuntamento con la mia rubrica "improvvisata" in cui esprimo opinioni su film visti da pochi minuti al Cinema per ricordarvi che il CINEMA è AL CINEMA!Torna Gabriele Mainetti con il suo cinema di genere da apprezzare e valorizzare tra i suoi difetti e pregi."La città proibita" mischia un certo cinema degli anni '70 con Luc Besson, Bruce Lee e un pochino anche di Zhang Yimou. Il risultato è un film non sempre impeccabile ma divertente e capace di parlare a tutti di temi riguardanti l'integrazione e soprattutto il tempo che non lascia scampo a nessuno.

Welcome to the latest episode of Heroes Three podcast! This week we are continuing our look at the works of Zhang Yimou with 1994's To Live, starring Ge You and Gong Li.Find us online - https://linktr.ee/Heroes3PodcastEmail us! - heroes3podcast@gmail.comCheck out some H3 art and merch! - https://www.teepublic.com/user/kf_carlitoTimestamps(0:00) Intro(1:01) Why To Live(15:05) Technical aspects of the film(20:55) Novel talk(22:46) A bit about puppets(25:34) Movie talk(41:50) Tanget on 90s alt comedy(42:41) Movie talk 2(1:07:59) Book ending and final thoughts(1:13:41) Plugs and Training for next week

China's animated blockbuster Ne Zha 2 continues to make waves at the international box office, with its massive earnings in Australia and New Zealand further boosting its success in Oceania.中国动画巨制《哪吒2》持续在国际票房掀起热潮，在澳大利亚和新西兰取得了大量票房收入，进一步推动了该影片在大洋洲的成功。The fantasy adventure film rose to second place in New Zealand's weekend total box office list by Sunday, according to the country's industry tracker Numero.据新西兰行业追踪机构Numero统计，截至2月23日，这部奇幻冒险电影已攀升至新西兰周末总票房榜第二位。In Australia, the film took third spot with at least A$1,504,128 ($948,879) in takings from the weekend.在澳大利亚，该片以不少于1,504,128澳元（948,879美元）的周末票房收入位居第三。James Curtis, an undergraduate student in Sydney who had watched the film, said he was impressed by its storyline and animation.在悉尼就读的本科生詹姆斯·柯蒂斯在观影后表示，该片的故事情节和动画效果给他留下了深刻印象。"I can understand why local and foreign moviegoers crowded the cinema for this," said the 20-year-old. "I do want to know more about these aspects of Chinese culture. It definitely helps build better understanding across our peoples."这位20岁的年轻人说：“我能理解为什么中国和外国观众都涌向影院观看这部电影。我确实想更多地了解中国文化的这些方面。这无疑有助于增进我们人民之间的理解。”Ne Zha 2, the sequel to the 2019 animation based on the eponymous childlike Chinese folk deity, recorded its second straight weekend as the third-highest-grossing feature in Australian cinemas, reaping more than A$5.2 million in the country, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.据《悉尼先驱晨报》报道，《哪吒2》作为2019年同名动画片的续集，以中国民间神仙为题材，连续两个周末成为澳大利亚票房第三高的影片，在该国收获了超过520万澳元的票房。Its first weekend per-screen average of A$25,000 is "the best of any film this year", putting Ne Zha 2 on track to surpass the $1.9 billion mark globally in its second week, the newspaper said.该报称，《哪吒2》首个周末的单银幕平均票房为2.5万澳元，是“今年所有影片中最高的”，这让《哪吒2》在第二周有望突破19亿美元的全球票房大关。The University of Adelaide communication and media studies researcher Hong Yanyan told China Daily that the film "breathes fresh life into traditional Chinese mythology and philosophy in a way that feels both modern and rooted" in Chinese culture.阿德莱德大学传播与媒体研究学者洪燕燕告诉《中国日报》，这部电影“以一种既现代又根植于中国文化的方式，为中国传统神话和哲学注入了新的活力”。"What made the film truly take off was simple: it delivered a solid, entertaining story with even more advanced and breathtaking visuals than Ne Zha, the first film in the series."“这部电影真正起飞的原因很简单：它讲述了一个扎实、有趣的故事，视觉效果比《哪吒》电影第一部更加先进和令人惊叹。”"The box office success of Ne Zha 2 shows that audiences, both Chinese and non-Chinese, are open to stories that reflect different cultural perspectives," Hong said.洪燕燕表示：“《哪吒2》的票房成功表明，无论是中国观众还是非中国观众，都乐于接受反映不同文化视角的故事。”"It's not just about nostalgia or national pride; it's about storytelling that feels universal while staying true to its roots."“这不仅仅关乎怀旧或民族自豪感；而是关于故事叙述，既要具有普遍意义，又要保持自身的根源。”She added that social media and streaming services have also played a significant role in increasing the film's impact.她补充说，社交媒体和流媒体服务也有力地扩大了该片的影响力。"Word-of-mouth spreads fast, and when a film like Ne Zha 2 gains traction, it doesn't just stay within Chinese-speaking communities, it reaches global audiences through fan discussions, reviews and digital platforms," Hong said.洪燕燕说：“口碑传播得很快，像《哪吒2》这样的电影一旦受到关注，就不仅仅停留在中文社区内，还会通过粉丝讨论、影评、数字平台传播给全球观众。”"This is an exciting time for Chinese animation and storytelling in general. As long as filmmakers continue to innovate while staying authentic to their cultural heritage, I think we'll see more and more Chinese stories making an impact worldwide," she added.她补充道：“总之，无论是对于中国动画还是故事叙述来说，这都是一个激动人心的时刻。我认为，只要电影制作人继续创新，同时保持对其文化遗产的真实呈现，我们会看到越来越多的中国故事在全球产生影响。”Ne Zha 2 was officially released in four Oceania countries, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, on Feb 13.2月13日，《哪吒2》正式在澳大利亚、新西兰、斐济、巴布亚新几内亚四个大洋洲国家上映。The Chinese embassy in Fiji held an event for audiences to view the film on Feb 22, amid celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Fiji.2月22日，中国驻斐济使馆举办庆祝中斐建交50周年活动，组织了《哪吒2》观影活动。Nearly 400 people, including local and Chinese officials, politicians, diplomats, overseas Chinese and Fijian citizens attended the event, according to an embassy statement.大使馆声明称，当地和中国官员、政要、外交官、旅斐侨胞及斐民众等近400人参加了此次活动。Audiences "lauded the film for its captivating traditional Chinese aesthetics, profound cultural connotations…the world-class special effects were also highly commended", it said.声明表示，观众“盛赞影片呈现了中国传统美学和深厚文化底蕴……精巧的特效技术堪称世界一流”。China's ambassador to Fiji, Zhou Jian, said in a speech that Ne Zha 2 brings "a visual feast of Chinese traditional culture to the world".中国驻斐济大使周剑在致辞中表示，《哪吒2》为“世界人民奉上了一场中华优秀传统文化的视觉盛宴”。"As this year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Fiji, we hope that the two countries will carry forward Ne Zha's spirit of bravery and hard work to create a bright future for China-Fiji relationship," he added.“今年是中斐建交50周年，希望两国能像电影中的哪吒一样，发扬勇敢拼搏精神，共创中斐关系美好未来，”他补充道。A diplomat from the embassy in Fiji told China Daily that impressed audiences remained glued to the screen for the post-credit scene of the film.驻斐济大使馆的一名外交官告诉《中国日报》，被电影吸引的观众在片尾字幕结束后仍目不转睛地盯着银幕。The embassy is also set to host a Chinese film week later this year as part of the anniversary celebrations.大使馆还计划在今年晚些时候举办中国电影周，作为周年庆祝活动的一部分。Zhi Feina, a professor at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, said that Ne Zha 2, which has been released overseas in subtitled versions, has not reached many foreign moviegoers who are more accustomed to watching films with English dubs.中国艺术研究院教授支菲娜表示，《哪吒2》在海外上映的是字幕版，许多更习惯观看英语配音电影的外国观众还没有接触到这部电影。Compared to director Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and director Zhang Yimou's Hero, the top-grossing Chinese films in North America, Ne Zha 2's cultural backdrop, involving knowledge of Taoism, may pose a challenge in engaging more foreign moviegoers.与导演李安的《卧虎藏龙》和导演张艺谋的《英雄》这两部北美票房最高的中国电影相比，《哪吒2》的文化背景涉及道教知识，可能在吸引更多外国观众方面面临挑战。Lynn Wu, a 43-year-old Chinese immigrant in Brisbane, recalled that she accompanied her two children to watch Ne Zha 2 in the opening week but found that it had limited screenings in nearby cinemas.居住在布里斯班的43岁中国移民吴琳回忆说，她在首映周陪两个孩子去看《哪吒2》，却发现附近影院排片有限。"We hope such an excellent Chinese film could have more promotions so that more locals could know about the movie," she said.她说：“我们希望这样一部优秀的中国电影能有更多宣传，让更多当地人了解这部电影。”nostalgian.对往事的怀念，怀旧

Welcome back to Heroes Three podcast! This episode we begin an arc discussing the work of Zhang Yimou, beginning with Raise the Red Lantern (with a touch of Red Sorghum for comparison) from 1991 starring Gong Li.Check out some H3 art and merch! - https://www.teepublic.com/user/kf_carlitoFind us online - https://linktr.ee/Heroes3PodcastEmail us! - heroes3podcast@gmail.comTimestamps(0:00) Intro(0:57) Why no Red Sorghum?(4:38) Zhang Yimou Background(7:51) Different kind of movie for Heroes Three(9:21) Matthew's limited Yimou experience(10:52) Gong Li and Red Sorghum(14:24) Movie Discussion(1:09:18) Final Thoughts(1:13:29) Plugs and Training for next week

Chanlee Luu—poet, friend, and author of The Machine Autocorrects Code to I—joins the podcast to discuss Zhang Yimou's HERO (2002), the wuxia classic that's full of stunning martial arts sequences, gorgeous colors, and timeless questions about truth, narrative, and political sacrifice. We also use the film as a springboard to discuss Chanlee's own writing, her background in science, and poetry as archive, comfort, and resistance.    Email your own musings and questions to tellmeimsorry@gmail.com Follow us: Instagram: @tellmeimsorry BlueSky: @tellmeimsorry.bsky.social Maggie's Instagram: @_saint_margaret_ Join our book club: See the links in our social media bios or copy this link to your browser: https://bookclubs.com/clubs/6062997/join/e74d1c Secondary texts referenced: The Machine Autocorrects Code to I by Chanlee Luu, available wherever books are sold. Visit bookshop.org to order a copy from your local bookstore!  “50 Years of HOPE and HA-HAs,” a Vietnamese American art exhibition in DC which features one of Chanlee's poems

Un remake des frères Coen, des portraits en creux de la Révolution Culturelle, des blockbusters faisandés : le brouillard de confusion s'épaissit. Avec Amandine et Flo. 3'01 : A Woman, A Gun And A Noodle Shop 19'20 : Sous l'Aubépine 36'25 : Sacrifices of War (via un détour par City of Life and Death de Lu Chuan) 1'14'48 : Coming Home 1'34'57 : La Grande Muraille

Welkom in het jaar van de Slang, beste luisssteraarssss, althans voor onze Chinese vrienden.  Op 29 januari wordt immers het Chinese nieuwjaar gevierd en dat staat elk jaar in het teken van een ander dier en dit jaar is dat dus de slang. Leuk idee om een podcast aflevering aan op te hangen, dachten we. In aflevering 52 evenwel geen slissende wezens. Net zoals Indy, zijn Poelie en Peer geen slangenliefhebbers. We vormden daarom onze Movie Matters Watchlist (onder lichte dwang van Poelie, als adept van de Chinese cinema) wat om en kozen drie Chinese (of afgeleide) films. Peer koos voor een Wo(o)nderlijke ervaring, met “BULLET IN THE HEAD” van John Woo. Poelie daarentegen koos een eigen favorietje van een favorietje, namelijk “HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS” van Zhang Yimou. Zwino liet zich tenslotte inspireren door de kenners uit Cannes en selecteerde de sluipmoordenaar “THE ASSASSIN”. Werd het een feest, of waren er toch dompers op de feestvreugde? Huilend en krabbend aan de deur, zo vonden we onze Cinemaat terug. Na enkele maanden afwezigheid, terug van weggeweest. En of we dat geweten hebben. Een Universal Monster reboot/remake/re-issue. Heet het beestje zoals u wilt, maar wij keken naar “WOLF MAN”.  Voor dit alles en nog meer lekkers, wees welgekomen in aflevering 52 van de Movie Matters Watchlist. jullie kunnen ons ook mailen naar moviematterspodcast@hotmail.com Volg ook onze socials: (1) Movie Matters Podcast Op facebook en op instagram: @_moviematterspodcast_ • Volg ons via Letterboxd: Zwino: ‎ThomasZwino's profile • Letterboxd Peer: ‎Lpereboom's profile • Letterboxd Tim:  ‎Tim Poelman's profile • en https://boxd.it/4Y95L En Join onze discord waar we samen gezellig over films kunnen praten: https://discord.gg/Krq6uXGWFm

A 2025-ös évet, hagyományszerűen, inverz vakfolttal nyitjuk meg, vagyis olyan filmekkel, amelyek nemhogy nem pótolnivalóink, hanem többször is láttuk őket, mint illene. Ezúttal két távol-keleti filmmel készültünk, illeszkedve az évadunk tematikájához, amik az ezredforduló környékén készültek: Ang Lee Tigris és sárkány (2000) című alkotását, illetve Zhang Yimou Hős (2002) című filmjét választottuk. A két műről egy-egy órában beszélünk. Milyen volt a két film fogadtatása a nemzetközi közönség előtt? Mitől látványosak és mennyire költőiek a harcművészeti jelenetek, és ezek hogyan viszonyulnak a cselekményhez és a drámához?  Milyen különbségeket lehet felfedezni Zhang Yimou és Ang Lee hozzáállásában az akciójelenetekhez? Kiknek köszönhetők a pazar koreográfiák? Beszélünk arról is, mennyire máshogyan ábrázolák a szerelmet, és mennyire más a léptéke a két filmnek. Különböző értelmezéseket nyújtunk a Tigris és sárkány fináléjára, és a Hős kalligráfia-metaforájára is. Ezekről és még sok másról beszélgetünk az adásban, tartsatok velünk! Ha tetszett az adásunk, támogass bennünket a Vakfolt Extrával! Csatlakozz a Facebook-csoportunkhoz is! Mostantól Vakfolt logós pólót és egyéb kellékeket is szerezhetsz magadnak a webshopunkból! További linkek A Vakfolt podcast Facebook oldala A Vakfolt podcast az Instagramon A Vakfolt podcast a Twitteren Vakfolt címke a Letterboxdon A Vakfolt podcast a YouTube-on A Vakfolt podcast a YouTube Music-on A Vakfolt podcast a Spotify-on A Vakfolt podcast a Google podcasts oldalán A Vakfolt az Apple podcasts oldalán A főcímzenéért köszönet az Artur zenekarnak Emailen is elértek bennünket: ezitt@vakfoltpodcast.hu  

This week we are discussing the 2002 wuxia epic: Hero (英雄). Join us as we talk about the stunning visuals, colorful chapters, understanding martial arts films, political readings, Indy's love of Tony Leung (and most of the cast, really), Chinese history, and a bunch of other things I've already forgotten.   I Love This You Should Too is hosted by Samantha and Indy Randhawa   Hero (Chinese: 英雄; pinyin: Yīngxióng) is a 2002 wuxia martial arts film[3] directed, co-written, and produced by Zhang Yimou, and starring Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen and Chen Daoming.[4] The cinematography was by Christopher Doyle, and the musical score composed by Tan Dun. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 75th Academy Awards. The historical background of the film refers to the Warring States Period in ancient China, when China was divided into seven states. In 227–221 BC, the Qin state was about to unify the other six states, assassins from the six states were sent to assassinate the king of Qin. One of the most famous incidents was Jing Ke's attempted assassination of the King of Qin.

Indy reviews Paul Tremblay's horror books including; A Head Full of Ghosts, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, Horror Movie, & others, Samantha recommends the historical fiction of To the Bone by Alena Bruzas, and we preview next week's deep dive, the 2002 Wuxia Historical epic: Hero!  I Love This You Should Too is hosted by Samantha & Indy Randhawa   Paul Gaetan Tremblay  is an American author and editor of horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction. His most widely known novels include A Head Full of Ghosts, The Cabin at the End of the World, and Survivor Song. He has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards and is a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards.   Hero (Chinese: 英雄; pinyin: Yīngxióng) is a 2002 wuxia martial arts film directed, co-written, and produced by Zhang Yimou, and starring Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen and Chen Daoming. The cinematography was by Christopher Doyle, and the musical score composed by Tan Dun. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 75th Academy Awards.

T-t-t, pas de politique dans mon blockbuster chinois et ma cérémonie d'ouverture des JO de Pékin, s'il vous plaît. Avec Amandine et Flo. 2'32 : Hero 31'54 : Le Secret des Poignards Volants 52'17 : Riding Alone : Pour un Fils 1'06'20 : La Cité Interdite 1'35'34 : la cérémonie d'ouverture des JO de Pékin en 2008

Al final del sendero un carro llega desde la ciudad, es el nuevo maestro de la escuela, al fin van a tener uno en la pequeña aldea. La joven protagonista de este poema de Yimou se quedará prendada de las lecciones en voz alta del maestro, la escuela aún en construcción, los alumnos repiten las letanías, las frases de todas las mañanas. Todos se irán cansando de acercarse a la escuela, todos menos nuestra heroína. Ella se hace la encontradiza en el camino, el maestro pregunta a los niños su nombre mientras la joven se aleja nerviosa, olvidando su cesto. Es la inocencia, el amor original, la pureza de uno de los más cautivadores films de Zhang Yimou, “El camino a casa”. La determinación femenina, la audacia de una chavala en la China de los años 50, la misma que mantendrá en el albor de su vida cuando se obstine en enterrar al marido siguiendo la tradición, así se lo pedirá al hijo que llega de la gran ciudad. Todo contado con un respeto a lo ancestral, a los mayores, así lo repiten los niños en la clase cada día, “respetar a los mayores”, eso que olvidamos en nuestras sociedades occidentales. Se idealiza el pasado rural sin cargar las tintas contra la represión del sistema maoísta, como sí hizo en “Vivir” o en “El regreso a casa”. Un aula presidida por un retrato de Mao, tan austera como la de Antonio Machado en Baeza, el sentimiento de la honestidad de un maestro que da su vida por enseñar es universal, por eso nos llega, el amor primero también lo es. Ese elogio de la docencia, enmarcado en una historia de amor en la China de Mao en una película que abre y cierra en blanco y negro, la tristeza de una mujer que acaba de perder a su compañero. El corazón del film en color es mágico y sensorial, reparando en objetos para transmitir la sencillez de un tiempo, la horquilla en el pelo, el cuenco roto y reparado por el artesano, las dos chaquetas de la campesina. Todo enmarcado en la sencillez expositiva y los colores prodigiosos de la fotografía de Yong Hou, los trigales, los campos de mijo, los verdes, los rojos, los naranjas y los amarillos de las verduras en la cocina humilde. Yimou se embelesa y nos enamora del rostro de Zhang Ziyi. Esta noche una anciana teje un paño rojo… Salvador Limón, Chari Medina, Raúl Gallego y Zacarías Cotán

Le mystère autour de la persona artistique du cinéaste chinois s'épaissit avec cette série de petits films sociaux entre drame, comédie et pétage de plombs à la hongkongaise. Avec Amandine et Flo. 1'29 : A Soul Haunted by Painting 18'25 : Keep Cool 37'06 : Pas un de Moins 1'00'21 : The Road Home 1'14'19 : Happy Times

Thad, Kara, and Jeremiah discuss Zhang Yimou's near Gothic-tale about how power corrupts.

À l'assaut de ce monument d'esthétisme ambivalent, en attaquant par ses primes collaborations avec Gong Li. Avec Amandine et Flo. 1'31 : Pourquoi Zhang Yimou, et surtout comment 10'55 : repères biographiques 18'02 : Le Sorgho Rouge 27'31 : Codename Cougar 39'09 : Ju Dou 51'14 : Epouses et Concubines 1'03'49 : Qiu Ju, une femme chinoise 1'18'06 : Vivre ! 1'38'33 : Shanghai Triad

Neste episódio, abordamos os dramas históricos e de artes marciais do realizador chinês Zhang Yimou, olhando para cinco dos seus filmes. Popularizado entre nós com filmes como ‘Herói' (2002) e ‘O Segredo dos Punhais Voadores' (2004), e com uma vasta carreira cheia de sucessos, os filmes de Zhang Yimou aqui analisados destacam-se por uma incrível exuberância visual onde à acção das artes marciais se juntam altíssimos valores de produção, resultando em belíssimos cenários, uso de riquíssimos guarda-roupas e de milhares de figurantes. Entre a tradição do Wuxia e o drama shakespeareano, Zhang Yimou não deixa de tecer um velado comentário à China actual. Mais episódios em universosparalelos.net.

In this episode of Heroic Purgatory, we discuss Zhang Yimou's 2004 wuxia love story, House of Flying Daggers, staring Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Andy Lau. We discuss the film's impressive visuals, anti-authoritarian themes, and its place in Yimou's expansive filmography. We hope you enjoy our discussion. Website link: https://www.heroic-purgatory.com/2024/08/s4e12-house-of-flying-daggers.html Follow the show on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeroicPurgatory Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/filmnohito

Una delle congiunture politiche più clamorose dell'epoca e un film con tutte le caratteristiche per compiacere giurie di festival fecero del 1991 l'anno della sconfitta di Lanterne Rosse, Belli e dannati e La leggenda del re pescatore. A cura di Gabriele Niola e Bianca Ferrari Trovate il podcast integrale qui https://www.badtaste.it/cinema/episodio/road-to-venezia-1991-come-che-urga-ha-battuto-zhang-yimou-terry-gilliam-e-gus-van-sant/

Talking About Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu with our guest, production designer Yôhei TanedaIn this episode of Movies We Like, we are thrilled to have production designer Yôhei Taneda join us to discuss his fascinating career and one of his favorite films, Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 classic, Ugetsu. Taneda shares his journey into the world of production design, from his early days as an art student to his experiences working on both Japanese and American films, such as Kill Bill: Volume 1, The Hateful Eight, the Monster Hunt films, The Flowers of War, and When Marnie Was There.Throughout the episode, Taneda offers unique insights into the art of production design, discussing the intricacies of creating immersive worlds for both live-action and animated films. He delves into the challenges of balancing the director's vision with his own artistic sensibilities, and the importance of collaborating with other departments to create a cohesive visual experience.As the conversation turns to Ugetsu, Taneda explores the film's haunting aesthetic and the ways in which Mizoguchi's use of space and design elements contribute to its ghostly atmosphere. He draws comparisons between Ugetsu and other Japanese films of the era, highlighting the symbolic significance of water and the influence of Noh theater on the film's visual style.Ugetsu remains a timeless masterpiece, a testament to Mizoguchi's artistic vision and the power of cinema to transport audiences to otherworldly realms. Taneda's passion for the film and his deep appreciation for its craft make for a captivating discussion that will leave listeners eager to revisit this haunting classic. We had a wonderful time delving into the artistry behind Ugetsu and exploring Taneda's remarkable career in production design.A very special thanks to Hiroshi Tominaga for being our translator for this episode!Film SundriesFind Yôhei on Instagram or visit his websiteYôhei on IMDbBuy our Akira Kurosawa T-shirt!Watch this on Apple or Amazon, or find other places at JustWatchTheatrical trailerOriginal MaterialLetterboxdMore About Yôhei TanedaFor the past two decades, Yôhei Taneda has collaborated with filmmakers from across the globe, amassing an impressive list of accolades and credits, including Kill Bill: Vol. I with Quentin Tarantino, Flowers of War with Zhang Yimou, and the animated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence with Mamoru Oshii.  For The Flowers of War, an epic film about the Nanjing Massacre, Taneda recreated the period sets for the film in Nanjing. Released in 70 countries, the film was at the time one of the highest budgeted and most successful Chinese films ever made. Taneda's other international credits include the Keanu Reeves-directed Man of Tai Chi, Raman Hui's Monster Hunt, Tarantino's western The Hateful Eight, John Woo's Manhunt, and Wash Westmoreland's Netflix feature Earthquake Bird.Among Taneda's many notable non-English language productions are Swallowtail Butterfly, directed by Shunji Iwai; Sleepless Town, directed by Le Chi Ngai; The Wow–Choten Hotel and The Magic Hour, directed by Koki Mitani; and Hula Girls and Villain, directed by Sang-il Lee. Taneda's work helped foster the remarkable success of Koki Mitani's Ghost of a Chance (Suteki Na Kanashibari) and Wei Te-Sheng's Taiwanese film Warriors of the Rainbow, which earned the Best Film Award at the Tapei Golden Horse Festival.Taneda has also collaborated with Studio Ghibli on such animated films as the critically acclaimed When Marnie Was There, which earned among its many awards and nominations an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Film.  With Studio Ghibli, he also curated Karigurashi no Arietty x Yohei Taneda, an art exhibition giving the public an opportunity to view “film art” as a stand-alone presentation. Hosted by the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, the event attracted more than 700,000 people during its tour.In addition to an Art Directors Guild Award nomination in the U.S. for his work on Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Taneda has been awarded the prestigious Purple Ribbon Medal in Japan and the Incentive Award from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs.Beyond representing a substantial body of cinematic work, Taneda's artistic endeavors span art installations, stage art, special images, jacket designs for CDs and DVDs, and several books that he has authored. Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel's family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!Here's where you can find us around the internet:The WebLetterboxdCheck out poster artwork for movies we've discussed on our Pinterest pagePeteAndyWhat are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!You can buy our movie-related apparel, stickers, mugs and more from our MERCH PAGE.Or buy or rent movies we've discussed on the show from our WATCH PAGE.Or buy books, plays, etc. that was the source for movies we've discussed on the show from our ORIGINALS PAGE.Or renew or sign up for a Letterboxd Pro or Patron account with our LETTERBOXD MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT.Or sign up for

Le compagnon musical de cet été, de l'Inde à Michel Fugain en passant par le cinéma d'exploitation, sans oublier les virgules musicales fulgurantes du dernier Zhang Yimou. Tracklisting : 寻找线索 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Raak - Prashant Pillai (Malaikottai Vaaliban) Arjan Vailly - Bhupinder Babbal (Animal) 提审 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Kadharalz - Anirudh (Indian 2) Bhairava Anthem - Deepak Blue & Diljit Dosanjh (Kalki 2898 AD) 会面 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Firasat - Sundancer (24 Hours With Gaspar) Scorpio Red - The Holy Mackerel (La Morsure) Bang a Gong (Get It On) - T. Rex (Longlegs) 花火 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Everyday I don't - Anna Domino (Love Lies Bleeding) Dream Baby Dream - Suicide (Civil War) Challengers - Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (Challengers) Obsession - Animotion (MaxXxine) 摇摇晃晃 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Rumore - Raffaella Carrà (La Malédiction : L'Origine) Sarà Cosi - Gino Paoli (La Bête) 辨认 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Dana Dan - Bloodywood (Monkey Man) Cuando Acecha La Maldad - Pasco 637 (When Evil Lurks) 一别 - Han Hong (Full River Red) Fais comme l'oiseau - Michel Fugain & Le Big Bazar (Le Successeur)

Prendendo spunto dal grande successo di pubblico e critica di Inside Out 2, parliamo del cinema “fantasioso e quotidiano” della Pixar Animation Studios. Nella sezione delle notizie cominciamo a parlare della 81esima Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 2024. Prima vi aggiorniamo sulle notizie certe e poi facciamo qualche ipotesi sui film che potrebbero essere inseriti nei concorsi. La terza news riguarda il nuovo lavoro in Cina di Zhang Yimou.Qui l'indice della puntata.01:27 News. Mostra del Cinema 2024 (28 agosto - 7 settembre 2024). Per ora le uniche notizie certe riguardano il Leone d'oro alla carriera che sarà consegnato a Peter Weir; la presidente della giuria del concorso Venezia81 sarà Isabelle Huppert, mentre il film di preapertura sarà L'oro di Napoli di Vittorio De Sica. 04:46 News. Variety per ora è stata una delle poche riviste che ha ipotizzato quali potranno essere i film presentati al Lido a settembre. Vi racontiamo cosa riporta l'articolo e facciamo anche noi qualche ipotesi. 08:42 News. Il nuovo progetto filmico di Zhang Yimou sarà tratto dal libro Il problema dei tre corpi di Liu Cixin. Ma non è il primo progetto legato a questo film, quindi vi spieghiamo cosa c'è stato prima e poi quali film ha diretto il maestro Yimou prima di arrivare a questo nuovo film.11:47. La Luce del Cinema della Pixar Animation Studios. Questo il link al blog di Jon Negroni che illustra la Pixar Theory: https://jonnegroni.com/2013/07/11/the-pixar-theory/36:41 News. E il nuovo progetto di David Lynch? 

Pol, Bud, & Art talk about THAT clip, geeky accessibility, The Penguin, Liman & Damon back together again, and the great Donald Sutherland. Bud's Weekly Geek-out 18:57 – geeky accessibility Coming Soon 24:10 – Last week: Piece by Piece (Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg, in theatres October 11, article) 25:30 – Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (teaser, Netflix, winter) 26:14 – Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line (in cinemas July 4) 26:43 – The Killer's Game (in theatres September 13) 27:55 – Dragon Age: The Veilguard – trailer, gameplay (fall, PS4/5, Xbox X/S, PC) 28:13 – Every big announcement and trailer from Summer Game Fest 2024 (money) & Wholesome Games 2024 28:30 – This week: The Penguin 32:07 – Nosferatu (in theatres December 25) 35:29 – Paddington in Peru (in cinemas November 8) (Zoner Ewan) 36:47 – Pol & Art talk baseball while they relaunch the Zoom 37:58 – The Instigators (Doug Liman Apple TV+ film, August 9) 43:39 – Smile 2 (in theatres October 18) 46:03 – The Beast Within (in theatres July 26) 47:11 – Watchmen Chapters 1 & 2 (coming soon) 50:03 – Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition (Switch, PS4/5, Xbox X/S/One, PC, out TODAY, still waiting on 2, seven years later . . . still happening?) 52:24 – Production on a Freaky Friday sequel has started, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan (Zoner Mary) 53:10 – Megalopolis lands distribution from Lionsgate 58:36 – Spaceballs sequel in development at Amazon MGM with Josh Gad starring, Mel Brooks producing 1:01:17 – Scarlett Johansson begged to be in the Jurassic Park franchise: ‘I can get eaten by whatever!' Geek News Proper 1:04:40 – Donald Sutherland dies at 88 1:07:43 – SET PHOTOS: Superman and his long cape 1:12:37 – Workers sue Disney after moving for cancelled Florida project 1:14:34 – Zhang Yimou to Direct ‘Three-Body Problem' Movie Reviews and Recommendayshes 1:17:15 – Civil War redux Join The Geek-out Podcast's Facebook page (where we'll release new episodes, and where you can talk with us) and Facebook group (where fans of the podcast can gather and talk geeky stuff)! Questions? Comments? Corrections? Suggestions? e-mail geekout@TheZone.fm Subscribe to The Zone's Geek-out Podcast on Apple Podcasts. Or, copypasta this link to subscribe using your podcatcher of choice: https://omny.fm/shows/the-geek-out-podcast/playlists/podcast.rss And, get more Zone podcasty goodness at TheZone.fm/podcast

L'Australie dans la liste des pays bénéficiaires d'exemption unilatérale de visa chinois;Les astronautes chinois achèvent dans l'espace les tests de force et d'adaptabilité musculaire;Les prix des logements en baisse au mois de mai ;La Chine enregistre une baisse du taux de chômage urbain en mai;Le secteur de la livraison express marque une forte croissance en mai;Ouverture officielle du Centre régional du FMI à Shanghai;Publication à Bruxelles d'un rapport sur les constructeurs chinois de véhicules à énergie nouvelle ;Le réalisateur chinois Zhang Yimou réalisera une adaptation cinématographique du "Problème à trois corps";La semaine du film français se déroule à Shanghai;Un ordinateur quantique supraconducteur reçoit plus de dix millions de visites dans le monde

In this episode of Decoding TV, David Chen and Patrick Klepek run down what's going on in the world of TV and discuss the fourth episode of The Acolyte and the first three episodes of The Boys fourth season.Are fewer people watching House of the Dragon this year? Why did Jon Stewart leave Apple TV+ anyway? Are we excited about a film adaptation of Three-Body Problem? And has The Boys gotten too woke recently? Listen to hear us discuss all these questions and more!Homework for next week:The Acolyte Ep 5 (Disney+)The Boys Season 4 Ep 4 (Prime Video)Shownotes:00:02:30 - The Curse ending behind-the-scenes00:05:15 - House of the Dragon ratings00:15:50 - Jon Stewart's exit from Apple TV+00:24:17 - Zhang Yimou's Three-Body Problem movie00:30:00 - The AcolyteEpisode 4 - Day01:00:05 - The BoysEpisode 1 - Department of Dirty TricksEpisode 2 - Life Among the SepticsEpisode 3 - We'll Keep the Red Flag Flying HereLinks:Listen to Patrick's videogame podcast, Remap RadioSubscribe to Patrick's newsletter, CrossplaySubscribe to this podcast on YouTubeFollow this podcast on InstagramFollow this podcast on TiktokSubscribe to David's free newsletter, Decoding EverythingFollow David on InstagramFollow David on Tiktok Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) / To Live (1994) This week we're capturing a whole life as we tour a time-bending sanatorium with Wojciech Has and try to survive the people's republic with Zhang Yimou

Spring Festival ended on an uplifting note for the movie market this year as it shattered multiple previous records to become the highest-grossing Chinese New Year holiday in the history of domestic cinema.2024年春节档电影市场迎来了开门红，打破了多项纪录，成为国内电影史上票房最高的春节档。Statistics from the China Film Administration, the nation's top industry regulator, showed that during the holiday period from Feb 10 to Saturday, the country grossed a whopping 8.02 billion yuan ($1.12 billion) from 163 million tickets, surging 18.47 percent and 26.36 percent, respectively, compared with the same period last year.中国最高行业监管机构中国电影管理局的统计数据显示，2月10日至2月17日的假期期间，全国1.63亿张门票收入高达80.2亿元人民币（11.2亿美元），与去年同期相比分别飙升18.47%和26.36%。Seizing a lot of attention due to actress-director Jia Ling's weight loss of up to 50 kilograms in one year, YOLO — a comedy recounting Jia's portrayal of an oversized woman striving to become her better self — earned 2.72 billion yuan, topping the festival box-office charts.在喜剧电影《YOLO》中，导演兼演员贾玲饰演的超重角色努力成为更好的自己，一年减重50公斤，电影受到广泛关注，票房收入27.2亿元，位居春节档票房榜首。Pegasus 2, the sequel to a 2019 blockbuster racing film by writer-director Han Han, ranked second at the box office with 2.4 billion yuan. Boonie Bears: Time Twist, the latest installment in the Boonie Bears animated film series, took the third spot with 1.39 billion yuan, and Zhang Yimou's Article 20 ranked fourth with 1.33 billion yuan.由韩寒编剧兼导演的2019年赛车大片的续集《飞驰人生2》以24亿元人民币位居票房第二。《熊出没》动画电影系列的最新作品《熊出没之时空扭曲》以13.9亿元人民币位居第三，张艺谋的《二十条》以13.3亿元人民币位居第四。A report from Maoyan, one of the country's largest ticketing services, revealed that 39.2 percent of the audiences purchased movie tickets while returning to their hometowns or traveling, which was the highest in the past four years.中国最大的票务服务商之一猫眼的一份报告显示，39.2%的观众在回乡或旅游时购买了电影票，为过去四年来的最高值。Additionally, up to 58.9 percent of the total box-office revenue was earned in the third- and fourth-tier cities, the highest in five years.此外，三四线城市占总票房收入的比例高达58.9%，为五年来最高。Despite a total of eight movies opening simultaneously on the first day of the Year of the Dragon, four titles, or half of them, canceled screenings one after another starting on Feb 14, announcing that the screenings would resume at a more suitable time.尽管龙年大一共有八部电影同时上映，但从2月14日开始，有一半电影相继取消放映，并宣布将在更合适的时间恢复放映。Viva La Vida, a moving tale about two lovers fighting severe diseases, was the first to make the unusual decision, followed by Andy Lau-starring The Movie Emperor and the animated film Huang Pi: God of Money on Feb 16, and then another animated feature, Ba Jie, on Feb 17.讲述两个恋人与重病作斗争的感人故事《人生万岁》率先宣布撤档。随后刘德华主演的《红毯先生》和、2月16日上映的动画电影《黄貔：天降财神猫》，以及另一部原本预计2月17日上映的动画电影《八戒之天蓬下界》也做出了同样的决定。News and reviews about the highest-grossing blockbusters and the unprecedented scale of cancellations stirred widespread discussions online, accumulating a total of 46 billion clicks on related topics on the popular social media platform Sina Weibo.票房成绩最高电影的相关新闻和评论层出不穷。前所未有的停播规模也在网上引发了广泛讨论，热门社交媒体平台新浪微博上相关话题的点击量累计达460亿次。Yin Tengyu, a senior analyst with Maoyan's research division, said these instances served as a reminder for Chinese film companies to exercise greater caution when choosing appropriate screening times, as well as assessing whether the themes of the movies align with the holiday atmosphere.猫眼研究部高级分析师尹腾宇表示，这些事件提醒中国电影公司要更加谨慎地选择合适的放映时间以及评估电影主题是否与节日气氛相符。"However, the overall performance of the movie market was quite satisfactory. In addition to the box-office success, the ratings of the festival blockbusters were mostly high," said Yin, adding that the robust start of the Chinese New Year bodes well for the domestic film industry, which is expected to see faster and better recovery.尹腾宇表示：“不过，电影市场的整体表现还算令人满意，除了票房上的成功外，节庆大片的收视率也大多很高，农历新年的强劲开局对电影来说是个好兆头。国内电影产业有望更快更好恢复”。bode well for对...说是好兆头boxoffice票房

Maria Rita Masci"Mogli e concubine"Su TongOrientalia Editricewww.orientalia-editrice.comPrefazione e traduzione dal cinese a cura di Maria Rita Masci.Costretta ad abbandonare gli studi universitari per sfuggire alla rovina in cui è precipitata la famiglia, la giovane e orgogliosa Songlian decide di sfuggire al suo destino di povertà diventando la quarta moglie e concubina del ricco Chen Zuoqian. Ma l'opprimente logica che regola la vita di palazzo e che induce ognuna delle mogli e concubine a commettere meschini soprusi pur di guadagnare i favori e la considerazione del marito, si rivelerà ben presto in tutta la sua crudeltà e spingerà Songlian verso l'unica via di fuga che riuscirà a trovare.Con Mogli e concubine – divenuto subito un libro di culto, ancor prima che il regista Zhang Yimou ne traesse il film Lanterne rosse – Su Tong ha scritto una critica sociale implacabile contro l'oppressione dell'individuo, e in particolare della donna, nella Cina prerivoluzionaria.Su Tong (1963) è tra gli scrittori più noti in Cina e all'estero, e autore di numerosi racconti e romanzi di successo tradotti in diverse lingue. È stato insignito nel 2009 del premio Man Asian Literary Prize per il romanzo He'an (La riva del fiume).Tra i suoi libri pubblicati in italiano: Cipria (Theoria, 1993); I due volti del mondo (Neri Pozza, 2000); Spiriti senza pace (Feltrinelli, 2000); Quando ero imperatore (Neri Pozza, 2004); Vite di donne (Einaudi, 2008), Racconti fantastici (Elliot, 2017), La casa dell'oppio (Orientalia, 2018).IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarewww.ilpostodelleparole.itDiventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.

This year's combined Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday in China, from Sept 29 to Oct 6, saw a surge in consumption, as reflected in data.数据显示，今年9月29日至10月6日，中秋节假期与国庆节假期相连，消费激增。The extended Golden Week holiday showcased a vibrant travel and entertainment landscape with busy highways, crowded tourist spots and a thriving film industry.延长的黄金周假期里，高铁业务繁忙、景区游客爆满、电影业欣欣向荣，旅游与娱乐呈现出生机勃勃的图景。Chinese people made over 800 million domestic tourist trips and tourism-related revenue surpassed 750 billion yuan, reflecting sustained enthusiasm and growing numbers.国内旅游出游人数超过8亿人次，国内旅游收入超过7500亿元。人们的旅游热情持续高涨，出游人数不断攀升。These trends highlight people's desire for a better life and China's strong economic vitality.这样的趋势凸显了人们对更加美好生活的向往以及中国经济的强劲活力。This year's eight-day holiday showed a strong rebound in the domestic tourism sector, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.文旅部称，国内旅游业在今年的八天假期中显著回暖。During the holiday, spanning from Sept 29 to Friday, domestic attractions welcomed around 826 million visitors, marking a 71.3 percent year-on-year increase and a 4.1 percent growth compared to 2019 figures before the pandemic.自9月29日至10月6日，假期期间国内景点访客量8.26亿左右，同比增长71.3%，与疫情前2019年的数据相比上涨4.1%。Tourism-related revenue also surged, totaling about 753.4 billion yuan ($103 billion) over the eight days, a year-on-year increase of 129.5 percent and a 1.5 percent growth compared to 2019 numbers.旅游相关收入同样大幅攀升，八天内达到7534亿元（约合1030亿美元），同比增长129.5%，与疫情前2019年的数据相比上涨1.5%。National-level nighttime cultural and tourism hubs played a vital role in boosting nighttime consumer activity. From 6:00 pm on Sept 28 to 6:00 am on Oct 6, these 243 hubs attracted 112 million visitors, averaging 57,600 visitors per night, marking a substantial increase in foot traffic and economic activity.国家级夜间文旅中心在促进夜间消费活动中发挥了重要作用。自9月28日傍晚6时至10月6日清晨6时，243家国家级夜间文旅中心吸引了1.12亿旅客，平均每晚接待5.76万人，有力促进了步行交通和经济活动。According to the Ministry of Transport, on the Oct 6, or the final day of the combined holiday, China is expected to see a total of 59.89 million travelers across railways, highways, waterways and civil aviation, a 58.4 percent increase compared to the same period in 2022.交通运输部表示，双节假期的最后一日，即10月6日，全国预计有5989万旅客搭乘铁路、高速公路、水路及民航交通，较2022年同期增长58.4%。Specifically, a total of 18.8 million passengers were expected to be served by railways, which is a 156.1 percent jump from 2022.其中，预计有1880万旅客搭乘铁路交通，较2022年增长156.1%。Civil aviation accommodated 2.24 million passengers and national expressways hosted 57.85 million vehicles, representing a surge of 176.0 percent and 66.2 percent from the previous year, respectively.224万旅客选择民航出行，高速公路国道车流量达5785万辆，较2022年分别增加了176.0%和66.2%。Border inspection agencies across China saw more than 11.8 million entry and exit trips made during the eight-day holiday, with an average of 1.48 million trips per day, a 2.9-fold increase compared with the same period of 2022, according to the National Immigration Administration.国家移民管理局称，全国各地边境管理部门八天假期期间接待的出入境旅游人次增加了1180万，平均每日增加148万，较2022年同期增加2.9倍。Meituan, a popular service platform in China, published data on consumer spending during the Golden Week holiday on Oct 5.国内备受欢迎的服务平台美团于10月5日公布了黄金周假期的消费数据。It showed that daily average spending on services and retail across the country increased by 153 percent compared to the same period in 2019, making it the most prosperous Golden Week in five years.数据显示，全国服务与零售领域日均消费较2019年同期上涨153%，使得今年黄金周的繁荣程度成为过去五年之最。The top five cities in terms of spending during this holiday were Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shenzhen.假期期间全国消费额度最大的五个城市分别为上海、北京、成都、重庆和深圳。This year's holiday also saw a notable increase in dining out. Data showed that in-restaurant dining spending across the country grew by 254 percent compared to 2019.今年假期的外出餐饮消费同样大幅增加。数据表明，全国堂食消费额度较2019年上涨254%。The availability of high-quality dining options contributed to the boost in the restaurant industry during the holiday season.外出餐饮的高质量选项为黄金周餐饮业的发展提供了动力。As of 9:00 pm on Oct 6, the total box office earnings for the Golden Week holiday reached 2.72 billion yuan ($376.09 million), according to box office tracker Beacon.根据灯塔票房实时数据，截止10月6日上午9时，黄金周假期电影总票房达27.2亿元（约合3.7609亿美元）。The total number of moviegoers during this year's holiday period exceeded 65 million, with a total of 3.53 million screenings, marking a more than 70 percent increase in box office earnings compared to the previous year's holiday season.整个假期的观影人数超过6500万，放映场次达353万，票房收入较去年假期上涨70%。Zhang Yimou's crime suspense movie Under The Light secured the top spot with earnings of 880 million yuan, followed by The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan and The Volunteers: To the War in second and third place, respectively.张艺谋导演的《坚如磐石》以8.8亿元票房位居榜首，第二与第三位分别为《前任4：英年早婚》《志愿军：雄兵出击》。Golden Week holidayn.黄金周假期Cultural and tourism hubsn.文旅中心

We finally complete our mini-series on the 1980s movies released by Miramax Films in 1989, a year that included sex, lies, and videotape, and My Left Foot. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we complete our look back at the 1980s theatrical releases for Miramax Films. And, for the final time, a reminder that we are not celebrating Bob and Harvey Weinstein, but reminiscing about the movies they had no involvement in making. We cannot talk about cinema in the 1980s without talking about Miramax, and I really wanted to get it out of the way, once and for all.   As we left Part 4, Miramax was on its way to winning its first Academy Award, Billie August's Pelle the Conquerer, the Scandinavian film that would be second film in a row from Denmark that would win for Best Foreign Language Film.   In fact, the first two films Miramax would release in 1989, the Australian film Warm Night on a Slow Moving Train and the Anthony Perkins slasher film Edge of Sanity, would not arrive in theatres until the Friday after the Academy Awards ceremony that year, which was being held on the last Wednesday in March.   Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train stars Wendy Hughes, the talented Australian actress who, sadly, is best remembered today as Lt. Commander Nella Daren, one of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's few love interests, on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Jenny, a prostitute working a weekend train to Sydney, who is seduced by a man on the train, unaware that he plans on tricking her to kill someone for him. Colin Friels, another great Aussie actor who unfortunately is best known for playing the corrupt head of Strack Industries in Sam Raimi's Darkman, plays the unnamed man who will do anything to get what he wants.   Director Bob Ellis and his co-screenwriter Denny Lawrence came up with the idea for the film while they themselves were traveling on a weekend train to Sydney, with the idea that each client the call girl met on the train would represent some part of the Australian male.   Funding the $2.5m film was really simple… provided they cast Hughes in the lead role. Ellis and Lawrence weren't against Hughes as an actress. Any film would be lucky to have her in the lead. They just felt she she didn't have the right kind of sex appeal for this specific character.   Miramax would open the film in six theatres, including the Cineplex Beverly Center in Los Angeles and the Fashion Village 8 in Orlando, on March 31st. There were two versions of the movie prepared, one that ran 130 minutes and the other just 91. Miramax would go with the 91 minute version of the film for the American release, and most of the critics would note how clunky and confusing the film felt, although one critic for the Village Voice would have some kind words for Ms. Hughes' performance.   Whether it was because moviegoers were too busy seeing the winners of the just announced Academy Awards, including Best Picture winner Rain Man, or because this weekend was also the opening weekend of the new Major League Baseball season, or just turned off by the reviews, attendance at the theatres playing Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train was as empty as a train dining car at three in the morning. The Beverly Center alone would account for a third of the movie's opening weekend gross of $19,268. After a second weekend at the same six theatres pocketing just $14,382, this train stalled out, never to arrive at another station.   Their other March 31st release, Edge of Sanity, is notable for two things and only two things: it would be the first film Miramax would release under their genre specialty label, Millimeter Films, which would eventually evolve into Dimension Films in the next decade, and it would be the final feature film to star Anthony Perkins before his passing in 1992.   The film is yet another retelling of the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson story The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, with the bonus story twist that Hyde was actually Jack the Ripper. As Jekyll, Perkins looks exactly as you'd expect a mid-fifties Norman Bates to look. As Hyde, Perkins is made to look like he's a backup keyboardist for the first Nine Inch Nails tour. Head Like a Hole would have been an appropriate song for the end credits, had the song or Pretty Hate Machine been released by that time, with its lyrics about bowing down before the one you serve and getting what you deserve.   Edge of Sanity would open in Atlanta and Indianapolis on March 31st. And like so many other Miramax releases in the 1980s, they did not initially announce any grosses for the film. That is, until its fourth weekend of release, when the film's theatre count had fallen to just six, down from the previous week's previously unannounced 35, grossing just $9,832. Miramax would not release grosses for the film again, with a final total of just $102,219.   Now when I started this series, I said that none of the films Miramax released in the 1980s were made by Miramax, but this next film would become the closest they would get during the decade.   In July 1961, John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when the married Profumo began a sexual relationship with a nineteen-year-old model named Christine Keeler. The affair was very short-lived, either ending, depending on the source, in August 1961 or December 1961. Unbeknownst to Profumo, Keeler was also having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attache at the Soviet Embassy at the same time.   No one was the wiser on any of this until December 1962, when a shooting incident involving two other men Keeler had been involved with led the press to start looking into Keeler's life. While it was never proven that his affair with Keeler was responsible for any breaches of national security, John Profumo was forced to resign from his position in June 1963, and the scandal would take down most of the Torie government with him. Prime Minister Macmillan would resign due to “health reasons” in October 1963, and the Labour Party would take control of the British government when the next elections were held in October 1964.   Scandal was originally planned in the mid-1980s as a three-part, five-hour miniseries by Australian screenwriter Michael Thomas and American music producer turned movie producer Joe Boyd. The BBC would commit to finance a two-part, three-hour miniseries,  until someone at the network found an old memo from the time of the Profumo scandal that forbade them from making any productions about it. Channel 4, which had been producing quality shows and movies for several years since their start in 1982, was approached, but rejected the series on the grounds of taste.   Palace Pictures, a British production company who had already produced three films for Neil Jordan including Mona Lisa, was willing to finance the script, provided it could be whittled down to a two hour movie. Originally budgeted at 3.2m British pounds, the costs would rise as they started the casting process.  John Hurt, twice Oscar-nominated for his roles in Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, would sign on to play Stephen Ward, a British osteopath who acted as Christine Keeler's… well… pimp, for lack of a better word. Ian McKellen, a respected actor on British stages and screens but still years away from finding mainstream global success in the X-Men movies, would sign on to play John Profumo. Joanne Whaley, who had filmed the yet to be released at that time Willow with her soon to be husband Val Kilmer, would get her first starring role as Keeler, and Bridget Fonda, who was quickly making a name for herself in the film world after being featured in Aria, would play Mandy Rice-Davies, the best friend and co-worker of Keeler's.   To save money, Palace Pictures would sign thirty-year-old Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones to direct, after seeing a short film he had made called The Riveter. But even with the neophyte feature filmmaker, Palace still needed about $2.35m to be able to fully finance the film. And they knew exactly who to go to.   Stephen Woolley, the co-founder of Palace Pictures and the main producer on the film, would fly from London to New York City to personally pitch Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Woolley felt that of all the independent distributors in America, they would be the ones most attracted to the sexual and controversial nature of the story. A day later, Woolley was back on a plane to London. The Weinsteins had agreed to purchase the American distribution rights to Scandal for $2.35m.   The film would spend two months shooting in the London area through the summer of 1988. Christine Keeler had no interest in the film, and refused to meet the now Joanne Whaley-Kilmer to talk about the affair, but Mandy Rice-Davies was more than happy to Bridget Fonda about her life, although the meetings between the two women were so secret, they would not come out until Woolley eulogized Rice-Davies after her 2014 death.   Although Harvey and Bob would be given co-executive producers on the film, Miramax was not a production company on the film. This, however, did not stop Harvey from flying to London multiple times, usually when he was made aware of some sexy scene that was going to shoot the following day, and try to insinuate himself into the film's making. At one point, Woolley decided to take a weekend off from the production, and actually did put Harvey in charge. That weekend's shoot would include a skinny-dipping scene featuring the Christine Keeler character, but when Whaley-Kilmer learned Harvey was going to be there, she told the director that she could not do the nudity in the scene. Her new husband was objecting to it, she told them. Harvey, not skipping a beat, found a lookalike for the actress who would be willing to bare all as a body double, and the scene would begin shooting a few hours later. Whaley-Kilmer watched the shoot from just behind the camera, and stopped the shoot a few minutes later. She was not happy that the body double's posterior was notably larger than her own, and didn't want audiences to think she had that much junk in her trunk. The body double was paid for her day, and Whaley-Kilmer finished the rest of the scene herself.   Caton-Jones and his editing team worked on shaping the film through the fall, and would screen his first edit of the film for Palace Pictures and the Weinsteins in November 1988. And while Harvey was very happy with the cut, he still asked the production team for a different edit for American audiences, noting that most Americans had no idea who Profumo or Keeler or Rice-Davies were, and that Americans would need to understand the story more right out of the first frame. Caton-Jones didn't want to cut a single frame, but he would work with Harvey to build an American-friendly cut.   While he was in London in November 1988, he would meet with the producers of another British film that was in pre-production at the time that would become another important film to the growth of the company, but we're not quite at that part of the story yet. We'll circle around to that film soon.   One of the things Harvey was most looking forward to going in to 1989 was the expected battle with the MPAA ratings board over Scandal. Ever since he had seen the brouhaha over Angel Heart's X rating two years earlier, he had been looking for a similar battle. He thought he had it with Aria in 1988, but he knew he definitely had it now.   And he'd be right.   In early March, just a few weeks before the film's planned April 21st opening day, the MPAA slapped an X rating on Scandal. The MPAA usually does not tell filmmakers or distributors what needs to be cut, in order to avoid accusations of actual censorship, but according to Harvey, they told him exactly what needed to be cut to get an R: a two second shot during an orgy scene, where it appears two background characters are having unsimulated sex.   So what did Harvey do?   He spent weeks complaining to the press about MPAA censorship, generating millions in free publicity for the film, all the while already having a close-up shot of Joanne Whaley-Kilmer's Christine Keeler watching the orgy but not participating in it, ready to replace the objectionable shot.   A few weeks later, Miramax screened the “edited” film to the MPAA and secured the R rating, and the film would open on 94 screens, including 28 each in the New York City and Los Angeles metro regions, on April 28th.   And while the reviews for the film were mostly great, audiences were drawn to the film for the Miramax-manufactured controversy as well as the key art for the film, a picture of a potentially naked Joanne Whaley-Kilmer sitting backwards in a chair, a mimic of a very famous photo Christine Keeler herself took to promote a movie about the Profumo affair she appeared in a few years after the events. I'll have a picture of both the Scandal poster and the Christine Keeler photo on this episode's page at The80sMoviePodcast.com   Five other movies would open that weekend, including the James Belushi comedy K-9 and the Kevin Bacon drama Criminal Law, and Scandal, with $658k worth of ticket sales, would have the second best per screen average of the five new openers, just a few hundred dollars below the new Holly Hunter movie Miss Firecracker, which only opened on six screens.   In its second weekend, Scandal would expand its run to 214 playdates, and make its debut in the national top ten, coming in tenth place with $981k. That would be more than the second week of the Patrick Dempsey rom-com Loverboy, even though Loverboy was playing on 5x as many screens.   In weekend number three, Scandal would have its best overall gross and top ten placement, coming in seventh with $1.22m from 346 screens. Scandal would start to slowly fade after that, falling back out of the top ten in its sixth week, but Miramax would wisely keep the screen count under 375, because Scandal wasn't going to play well in all areas of the country. After nearly five months in theatres, Miramax would have its biggest film to date. Scandal would gross $8.8m.   The second release from Millimeter Films was The Return of the Swamp Thing. And if you needed a reason why the 1980s was not a good time for comic book movies, here you are. The Return of the Swamp Thing took most of what made the character interesting in his comic series, and most of what was good from the 1982 Wes Craven adaptation, and decided “Hey, you know what would bring the kids in? Camp! Camp unseen in a comic book adaptation since the 1960s Batman series. They loved it then, they'll love it now!”   They did not love it now.   Heather Locklear, between her stints on T.J. Hooker and Melrose Place, plays the step-daughter of Louis Jourdan's evil Dr. Arcane from the first film, who heads down to the Florida swaps to confront dear old once presumed dead stepdad. He in turns kidnaps his stepdaughter and decides to do some of his genetic experiments on her, until she is rescued by Swamp Thing, one of Dr. Arcane's former co-workers who got turned into the gooey anti-hero in the first movie.   The film co-stars Sarah Douglas from Superman 1 and 2 as Dr. Arcane's assistant, Dick Durock reprising his role as Swamp Thing from the first film, and 1980s B-movie goddess Monique Gabrielle as Miss Poinsettia.   For director Jim Wynorski, this was his sixth movie as a director, and at $3m, one of the highest budgeted movies he would ever make. He's directed 107 movies since 1984, most of them low budget direct to video movies with titles like The Bare Wench Project and Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade, although he does have one genuine horror classic under his belt, the 1986 sci-fi tinged Chopping Maul with Kelli Maroney and Barbara Crampton.   Wynorski suggested in a late 1990s DVD commentary for the film that he didn't particularly enjoy making the film, and had a difficult time directing Louis Jourdan, to the point that outside of calling “action” and “cut,” the two didn't speak to each other by the end of the shoot.   The Return of Swamp Thing would open in 123 theatres in the United States on May 12th, including 28 in the New York City metro region, 26 in the Los Angeles area, 15 in Detroit, and a handful of theatres in Phoenix, San Francisco. And, strangely, the newspaper ads would include an actual positive quote from none other than Roger Ebert, who said on Siskel & Ebert that he enjoyed himself, and that it was good to have Swamp Thing back. Siskel would not reciprocate his balcony partner's thumb up. But Siskel was about the only person who was positive on the return of Swamp Thing, and that box office would suffer. In its first three days, the film would gross just $119,200. After a couple more dismal weeks in theatres, The Return of Swamp Thing would be pulled from distribution, with a final gross of just $275k.   Fun fact: The Return of Swamp Thing was produced by Michael E. Uslan, whose next production, another adaptation of a DC Comics character, would arrive in theatres not six weeks later and become the biggest film of the summer. In fact, Uslan has been a producer or executive producer on every Batman-related movie and television show since 1989, from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan to Zack Snyder to Matt Reeves, and from LEGO movies to Joker. He also, because of his ownership of the movie rights to Swamp Thing, got the movie screen rights, but not the television screen rights, to John Constantine.   Miramax didn't have too much time to worry about The Return of Swamp Thing's release, as it was happening while the Brothers Weinstein were at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. They had two primary goals at Cannes that year:   To buy American distribution rights to any movie that would increase their standing in the cinematic worldview, which they would achieve by picking up an Italian dramedy called, at the time, New Paradise Cinema, which was competing for the Palme D'Or with a Miramax pickup from Sundance back in January. Promote that very film, which did end up winning the Palme D'Or.   Ever since he was a kid, Steven Soderbergh wanted to be a filmmaker. Growing up in Baton Rouge, LA in the late 1970s, he would enroll in the LSU film animation class, even though he was only 15 and not yet a high school graduate. After graduating high school, he decided to move to Hollywood to break into the film industry, renting an above-garage room from Stephen Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker best known as the father of Jake and Maggie, but after a few freelance editing jobs, Soderbergh packed up his things and headed home to Baton Rouge.   Someone at Atco Records saw one of Soderbergh's short films, and hired him to direct a concert movie for one of their biggest bands at the time, Yes, who was enjoying a major comeback thanks to their 1983 triple platinum selling album, 90125. The concert film, called 9012Live, would premiere on MTV in late 1985, and it would be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.   Soderbergh would use the money he earned from that project, $7,500, to make Winston, a 12 minute black and white short about sexual deception that he would, over the course of an eight day driving trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, expand to a full length screen that he would call sex, lies and videotape. In later years, Soderbergh would admit that part of the story is autobiographical, but not the part you might think. Instead of the lead, Graham, an impotent but still sexually perverse late twentysomething who likes to tape women talking about their sexual fantasies for his own pleasure later, Soderbergh based the husband John, the unsophisticated lawyer who cheats on his wife with her sister, on himself, although there would be a bit of Graham that borrows from the filmmaker. Like his lead character, Soderbergh did sell off most of his possessions and hit the road to live a different life.   When he finished the script, he sent it out into the wilds of Hollywood. Morgan Mason, the son of actor James Mason and husband of Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle, would read it and sign on as an executive producer. Soderbergh had wanted to shoot the film in black and white, like he had with the Winston short that lead to the creation of this screenplay, but he and Mason had trouble getting anyone to commit to the project, even with only a projected budget of $200,000. For a hot moment, it looked like Universal might sign on to make the film, but they would eventually pass.   Robert Newmyer, who had left his job as a vice president of production and acquisitions at Columbia Pictures to start his own production company, signed on as a producer, and helped to convince Soderbergh to shoot the film in color, and cast some name actors in the leading roles. Once he acquiesced, Richard Branson's Virgin Vision agreed to put up $540k of the newly budgeted $1.2m film, while RCA/Columbia Home Video would put up the remaining $660k.   Soderbergh and his casting director, Deborah Aquila, would begin their casting search in New York, where they would meet with, amongst others, Andie MacDowell, who had already starred in two major Hollywood pictures, 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, and 1985's St. Elmo's Fire, but was still considered more of a top model than an actress, and Laura San Giacomo, who had recently graduated from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh and would be making her feature debut. Moving on to Los Angeles, Soderbergh and Aquila would cast James Spader, who had made a name for himself as a mostly bad guy in 80s teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, but had never been the lead in a drama like this. At Spader's suggestion, the pair met with Peter Gallagher, who was supposed to become a star nearly a decade earlier from his starring role in Taylor Hackford's The Idolmaker, but had mostly been playing supporting roles in television shows and movies for most of the decade.   In order to keep the budget down, Soderbergh, the producers, cinematographer Walt Lloyd and the four main cast members agreed to get paid their guild minimums in exchange for a 50/50 profit participation split with RCA/Columbia once the film recouped its costs.   The production would spend a week in rehearsals in Baton Rouge, before the thirty day shoot began on August 1st, 1988. On most days, the shoot was unbearable for many, as temperatures would reach as high as 110 degrees outside, but there were a couple days lost to what cinematographer Lloyd said was “biblical rains.” But the shoot completed as scheduled, and Soderbergh got to the task of editing right away. He knew he only had about eight weeks to get a cut ready if the film was going to be submitted to the 1989 U.S. Film Festival, now better known as Sundance. He did get a temporary cut of the film ready for submission, with a not quite final sound mix, and the film was accepted to the festival. It would make its world premiere on January 25th, 1989, in Park City UT, and as soon as the first screening was completed, the bids from distributors came rolling in. Larry Estes, the head of RCA/Columbia Home Video, would field more than a dozen submissions before the end of the night, but only one distributor was ready to make a deal right then and there.   Bob Weinstein wasn't totally sold on the film, but he loved the ending, and he loved that the word “sex” not only was in the title but lead the title. He knew that title alone would sell the movie. Harvey, who was still in New York the next morning, called Estes to make an appointment to meet in 24 hours. When he and Estes met, he brought with him three poster mockups the marketing department had prepared, and told Estes he wasn't going to go back to New York until he had a contract signed, and vowed to beat any other deal offered by $100,000. Island Pictures, who had made their name releasing movies like Stop Making Sense, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, The Trip to Bountiful and She's Gotta Have It, offered $1m for the distribution rights, plus a 30% distribution fee and a guaranteed $1m prints and advertising budget. Estes called Harvey up and told him what it would take to make the deal. $1.1m for the distribution rights, which needed to paid up front, a $1m P&A budget, to be put in escrow upon the signing of the contract until the film was released, a 30% distribution fee, no cutting of the film whatsoever once Soderbergh turns in his final cut, they would need to provide financial information for the films costs and returns once a month because of the profit participation contracts, and the Weinsteins would have to hire Ira Deutchman, who had spent nearly 15 years in the independent film world, doing marketing for Cinema 5, co-founding United Artists Classics, and co-founding Cinecom Pictures before opening his own company to act as a producers rep and marketer. And the Weinsteins would not only have to do exactly what Deutchman wanted, they'd have to pay for his services too.   The contract was signed a few weeks later.   The first move Miramax would make was to get Soderbergh's final cut of the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, where it would be accepted to compete in the main competition. Which you kind of already know what happened, because that's what I lead with. The film would win the Palme D'Or, and Spader would be awarded the festival's award for Best Actor. It was very rare at the time, and really still is, for any film to be awarded more than one prize, so winning two was really a coup for the film and for Miramax, especially when many critics attending the festival felt Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was the better film.   In March, Miramax expected the film to make around $5-10m, which would net the company a small profit on the film. After Cannes, they were hopeful for a $15m gross.   They never expected what would happen next.   On August 4th, sex, lies, and videotape would open on four screens, at the Cinema Studio in New York City, and at the AMC Century 14, the Cineplex Beverly Center 13 and the Mann Westwood 4 in Los Angeles. Three prime theatres and the best they could do in one of the then most competitive zones in all America. Remember, it's still the Summer 1989 movie season, filled with hits like Batman, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Parenthood, Turner & Hooch, and When Harry Met Sally. An independent distributor even getting one screen at the least attractive theatre in Westwood was a major get. And despite the fact that this movie wasn't really a summertime movie per se, the film would gross an incredible $156k in its first weekend from just these four theatres. Its nearly $40k per screen average would be 5x higher than the next closest film, Parenthood.   In its second weekend, the film would expand to 28 theatres, and would bring in over $600k in ticket sales, its per screen average of $21,527 nearly triple its closest competitor, Parenthood again. The company would keep spending small, as it slowly expanded the film each successive week. Forty theatres in its third week, and 101 in its fourth. The numbers held strong, and in its fifth week, Labor Day weekend, the film would have its first big expansion, playing in 347 theatres. The film would enter the top ten for the first time, despite playing in 500 to 1500 fewer theatres than the other films in the top ten. In its ninth weekend, the film would expand to its biggest screen count, 534, before slowly drawing down as the other major Oscar contenders started their theatrical runs. The film would continue to play through the Oscar season of 1989, and when it finally left theatres in May 1989, its final gross would be an astounding $24.7m.   Now, remember a few moments ago when I said that Miramax needed to provide financial statements every month for the profit participation contracts of Soderbergh, the producers, the cinematographer and the four lead actors? The film was so profitable for everyone so quickly that RCA/Columbia made its first profit participation payouts on October 17th, barely ten weeks after the film's opening.   That same week, Soderbergh also made what was at the time the largest deal with a book publisher for the writer/director's annotated version of the screenplay, which would also include his notes created during the creation of the film. That $75,000 deal would be more than he got paid to make the movie as the writer and the director and the editor, not counting the profit participation checks.   During the awards season, sex, lies, and videotape was considered to be one of the Oscars front runners for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and at least two acting nominations. The film would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress by the Golden Globes, and it would win the Spirit Awards for Best Picture, Soderbergh for Best Director, McDowell for Best Actress, and San Giacomo for Best Supporting Actress. But when the Academy Award nominations were announced, the film would only receive one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. The same total and category as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which many people also felt had a chance for a Best Picture and Best Director nomination. Both films would lose out to Tom Shulman's screenplay for Dead Poet's Society.   The success of sex, lies, and videotape would launch Steven Soderbergh into one of the quirkiest Hollywood careers ever seen, including becoming the first and only director ever to be nominated twice for Best Director in the same year by the Motion Picture Academy, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America, in 2001 for directing Erin Brockovich and Traffic. He would win the Oscar for directing Traffic.   Lost in the excitement of sex, lies, and videotape was The Little Thief, a French movie that had an unfortunate start as the screenplay François Truffaut was working on when he passed away in 1984 at the age of just 52.   Directed by Claude Miller, whose principal mentor was Truffaut, The Little Thief starred seventeen year old Charlotte Gainsbourg as Janine, a young woman in post-World War II France who commits a series of larcenies to support her dreams of becoming wealthy.   The film was a modest success in France when it opened in December 1988, but its American release date of August 25th, 1989, was set months in advance. So when it was obvious sex, lies, and videotape was going to be a bigger hit than they originally anticipated, it was too late for Miramax to pause the release of The Little Thief.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City, and buoyed by favorable reviews from every major critic in town, The Little Thief would see $39,931 worth of ticket sales in its first seven days, setting a new house record at the theatre for the year. In its second week, the gross would only drop $47. For the entire week. And when it opened at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles, its opening week gross of $30,654 would also set a new house record for the year.   The film would expand slowly but surely over the next several weeks, often in single screen playdates in major markets, but it would never play on more than twenty-four screens in any given week. And after four months in theatres, The Little Thief, the last movie created one of the greatest film writers the world had ever seen, would only gross $1.056m in the United States.   The next three releases from Miramax were all sent out under the Millimeter Films banner.   The first, a supernatural erotic drama called The Girl in a Swing, was about an English antiques dealer who travels to Copenhagen where he meets and falls in love with a mysterious German-born secretary, whom he marries, only to discover a darker side to his new bride. Rupert Frazer, who played Christian Bale's dad in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, plays the antique dealer, while Meg Tilly the mysterious new bride.   Filmed over a five week schedule in London and Copenhagen during May and June 1988, some online sources say the film first opened somewhere in California in December 1988, but I cannot find a single theatre not only in California but anywhere in the United States that played the film before its September 29th, 1989 opening date.   Roger Ebert didn't like the film, and wished Meg Tilly's “genuinely original performance” was in a better movie. Opening in 26 theatres, including six theatres each in New York City and Los Angeles, and spurred on by an intriguing key art for the film that featured a presumed naked Tilly on a swing looking seductively at the camera while a notice underneath her warns that No One Under 18 Will Be Admitted To The Theatre, The Girl in a Swing would gross $102k, good enough for 35th place nationally that week. And that's about the best it would do. The film would limp along, moving from market to market over the course of the next three months, and when its theatrical run was complete, it could only manage about $747k in ticket sales.   We'll quickly burn through the next two Millimeter Films releases, which came out a week apart from each other and didn't amount to much.   Animal Behavior was a rather unfunny comedy featuring some very good actors who probably signed on for a very different movie than the one that came to be. Karen Allen, Miss Marion Ravenwood herself, stars as Alex, a biologist who, like Dr. Jane Goodall, develops a “new” way to communicate with chimpanzees via sign language. Armand Assante plays a cellist who pursues the good doctor, and Holly Hunter plays the cellist's neighbor, who Alex mistakes for his wife.   Animal Behavior was filmed in 1984, and 1985, and 1987, and 1988. The initial production was directed by Jenny Bowen with the assistance of Robert Redford and The Sundance Institute, thanks to her debut film, 1981's Street Music featuring Elizabeth Daily. It's unknown why Bowen and her cinematographer husband Richard Bowen left the project, but when filming resumed again and again and again, those scenes were directed by the film's producer, Kjehl Rasmussen.   Because Bowen was not a member of the DGA at the time, she was not able to petition the guild for the use of the Alan Smithee pseudonym, a process that is automatically triggered whenever a director is let go of a project and filming continues with its producer taking the reigns as director. But she was able to get the production to use a pseudonym anyway for the director's credit, H. Anne Riley, while also giving Richard Bowen a pseudonym of his own for his work on the film, David Spellvin.   Opening on 24 screens on October 27th, Animal Behavior would come in 50th place in its opening weekend, grossing just $20,361. The New York film critics ripped the film apart, and there wouldn't be a second weekend for the film.   The following Friday, November 3rd, saw the release of The Stepfather II, a rushed together sequel to 1987's The Stepfather, which itself wasn't a big hit in theatres but found a very quick and receptive audience on cable.   Despite dying at the end of the first film, Terry O'Quinn's Jerry is somehow still alive, and institutionalized in Northern Washington state. He escapes and heads down to Los Angeles, where he assumes the identity of a recently deceased publisher, Gene Clifford, but instead passes himself off as a psychiatrist. Jerry, now Gene, begins to court his neighbor Carol, and the whole crazy story plays out again. Meg Foster plays the neighbor Carol, and Jonathan Brandis is her son.    Director Jeff Burr had made a name for himself with his 1987 horror anthology film From a Whisper to a Scream, featuring Vincent Price, Clu Gulager and Terry Kiser, and from all accounts, had a very smooth shooting process with this film. The trouble began when he turned in his cut to the producers. The producers were happy with the film, but when they sent it to Miramax, the American distributors, they were rather unhappy with the almost bloodless slasher film. They demanded reshoots, which Burr and O'Quinn refused to participate in. They brought in a new director, Doug Campbell, to handle the reshoots, which are easy to spot in the final film because they look and feel completely different from the scenes they're spliced into.   When it opened, The Stepfather II actually grossed slightly more than the first film did, earning $279k from 100 screens, compared to $260k for The Stepfather from 105 screens. But unlike the first film, which had some decent reviews when it opened, the sequel was a complete mess. To this day, it's still one of the few films to have a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and The Stepfather II would limp its way through theatres during the Christmas holiday season, ending its run with a $1.5m gross.   But it would be their final film of the decade that would dictate their course for at least the first part of the 1990s.   Remember when I said earlier in the episode that Harvey Weinstein meant with the producers of another British film while in London for Scandal? We're at that film now, a film you probably know.   My Left Foot.   By November 1988, actor Daniel Day-Lewis had starred in several movies including James Ivory's A Room With a View and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He had even been the lead in a major Hollywood studio film, Pat O'Connor's Stars and Bars, a very good film that unfortunately got caught up in the brouhaha over the exit of the studio head who greenlit the film, David Puttnam.   The film's director, Jim Sheridan, had never directed a movie before. He had become involved in stage production during his time at the University College in Dublin in the late 1960s, where he worked with future filmmaker Neil Jordan, and had spent nearly a decade after graduation doing stage work in Ireland and Canada, before settling in New York City in the early 1980s. Sheridan would go to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where one of his classmates was Spike Lee, and return to Ireland after graduating. He was nearly forty, married with two pre-teen daughters, and he needed to make a statement with his first film.   He would find that story in the autobiography of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, whose spirit and creativity could not be contained by his severe cerebral palsy. Along with Irish actor and writer Shane Connaughton, Sheridan wrote a screenplay that could be a powerhouse film made on a very tight budget of less than a million dollars.   Daniel Day-Lewis was sent a copy of the script, in the hopes he would be intrigued enough to take almost no money to play a physically demanding role. He read the opening pages, which had the adult Christy Brown putting a record on a record player and dropping the needle on to the record with his left foot, and thought to himself it would be impossible to film. That intrigued him, and he signed on. But during filming in January and February of 1989, most of the scenes were shot using mirrors, as Day-Lewis couldn't do the scenes with his left foot. He could do them with his right foot, hence the mirrors.   As a method actor, Day-Lewis remained in character as Christy Brown for the entire two month shoot. From costume fittings and makeup in the morning, to getting the actor on set, to moving him around between shots, there were crew members assigned to assist the actor as if they were Christy Brown's caretakers themselves, including feeding him during breaks in shooting. A rumor debunked by the actor years later said Day-Lewis had broken two ribs during production because of how hunched down he needed to be in his crude prop wheelchair to properly play the character.   The actor had done a lot of prep work to play the role, including spending time at the Sandymount School Clinic where the young Christy Brown got his education, and much of his performance was molded on those young people.   While Miramax had acquired the American distribution rights to the film before it went into production, and those funds went into the production of the film, the film was not produced by Miramax, nor were the Weinsteins given any kind of executive producer credit, as they were able to get themselves on Scandal.   My Left Foot would make its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on September 4th, 1989, followed soon thereafter by screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th and the New York Film Festival on September 23rd. Across the board, critics and audiences were in love with the movie, and with Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Jim Sheridan would receive a special prize at the Montreal World Film Festival for his direction, and Day-Lewis would win the festival's award for Best Actor. However, as the film played the festival circuit, another name would start to pop up. Brenda Fricker, a little known Irish actress who played Christy Brown's supportive but long-suffering mother Bridget, would pile up as many positive notices and awards as Day-Lewis. Although there was no Best Supporting Actress Award at the Montreal Film Festival, the judges felt her performance was deserving of some kind of attention, so they would create a Special Mention of the Jury Award to honor her.   Now, some sources online will tell you the film made its world premiere in Dublin on February 24th, 1989, based on a passage in a biography about Daniel Day-Lewis, but that would be impossible as the film would still be in production for two more days, and wasn't fully edited or scored by then.   I'm not sure when it first opened in the United Kingdom other than sometime in early 1990, but My Left Foot would have its commercial theatre debut in America on November 10th, when opened at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City and the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times would, in the very opening paragraph of her review, note that one shouldn't see My Left Foot for some kind of moral uplift or spiritual merit badge, but because of your pure love of great moviemaking. Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times spends most of his words praising Day-Lewis and Sheridan for making a film that is polite and non-judgmental.    Interestingly, Miramax went with an ad campaign that completely excluded any explanation of who Christy Brown was or why the film is titled the way it is. 70% of the ad space is taken from pull quotes from many of the top critics of the day, 20% with the title of the film, and 10% with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis, clean shaven and full tooth smile, which I don't recall happening once in the movie, next to an obviously added-in picture of one of his co-stars that is more camera-friendly than Brenda Fricker or Fiona Shaw.   Whatever reasons people went to see the film, they flocked to the two theatres playing the film that weekend. It's $20,582 per screen average would be second only to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, which had opened two days earlier, earning slightly more than $1,000 per screen than My Left Foot.   In week two, My Left Foot would gross another $35,133 from those two theatres, and it would overtake Henry V for the highest per screen average. In week three, Thanksgiving weekend, both Henry V and My Left Foot saw a a double digit increase in grosses despite not adding any theatres, and the latter film would hold on to the highest per screen average again, although the difference would only be $302. And this would continue for weeks. In the film's sixth week of release, it would get a boost in attention by being awarded Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle. Daniel Day-Lewis would be named Best Actor that week by both the New York critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, while Fricker would win the Best Supporting Actress award from the latter group.   But even then, Miramax refused to budge on expanding the film until its seventh week of release, Christmas weekend, when My Left Foot finally moved into cities like Chicago and San Francisco. Its $135k gross that weekend was good, but it was starting to lose ground to other Oscar hopefuls like Born on the Fourth of July, Driving Miss Daisy, Enemies: A Love Story, and Glory.   And even though the film continued to rack up award win after award win, nomination after nomination, from the Golden Globes and the Writers Guild and the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review, Miramax still held firm on not expanding the film into more than 100 theatres nationwide until its 16th week in theatres, February 16th, 1990, two days after the announcement of the nominees for the 62nd Annual Academy Awards. While Daniel Day-Lewis's nomination for Best Actor was virtually assured and Brenda Fricker was practically a given, the film would pick up three other nominations, including surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Jim Sheridan and co-writer Shane Connaughton would also get picked for Best Adapted Screenplay.   Miramax also picked up a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for sex, lies, and videotape, and a Best Foreign Language Film nod for the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, which, thanks to the specific rules for that category, a film could get a nomination before actually opening in theatres in America, which Miramax would rush to do with Paradiso the week after its nomination was announced.   The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony would be best remembered today as being the first Oscar show to be hosted by Billy Crystal, and for being considerably better than the previous year's ceremony, a mess of a show best remembered as being the one with a 12 minute opening musical segment that included Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary to an actress playing Snow White and another nine minute musical segment featuring a slew of expected future Oscar winners that, to date, feature exact zero Oscar nominees, both which rank as amongst the worst things to ever happen to the Oscars awards show.   The ceremony, held on March 26th, would see My Left Foot win two awards, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, as well as Cinema Paradiso for Best Foreign Film. The following weekend, March 30th, would see Miramax expand My Left Foot to 510 theatres, its widest point of release, and see the film made the national top ten and earn more than a million dollars for its one and only time during its eight month run.   The film would lose steam pretty quickly after its post-win bump, but it would eek out a modest run that ended with $14.75m in ticket sales just in the United States. Not bad for a little Irish movie with no major stars that cost less than a million dollars to make.   Of course, the early 90s would see Miramax fly to unimagined heights. In all of the 80s, Miramax would release 39 movies. They would release 30 films alone in 1991. They would release the first movies from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. They'd release some of the best films from some of the best filmmakers in the world, including Woody Allen, Pedro Almadovar, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Steven Frears, Peter Greenaway, Peter Jackson, Neil Jordan, Chen Kaige, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Lars von Trier, and Zhang Yimou. In 1993, the Mexican dramedy Like Water for Chocolate would become the highest grossing foreign language film ever released in America, and it would play in some theatres, including my theatre, the NuWilshire in Santa Monica, continuously for more than a year.   If you've listened to the whole series on the 1980s movies of Miramax Films, there are two things I hope you take away. First, I hope you discovered at least one film you hadn't heard of before and you might be interested in searching out. The second is the reminder that neither Bob nor Harvey Weinstein will profit in any way if you give any of the movies talked about in this series a chance. They sold Miramax to Disney in June 1993. They left Miramax in September 2005. Many of the contracts for the movies the company released in the 80s and 90s expired decades ago, with the rights reverting back to their original producers, none of whom made any deals with the Weinsteins once they got their rights back.   Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23 year prison sentence in upstate New York after being found guilty in 2020 of two sexual assaults. Once he completes that sentence, he'll be spending another 16 years in prison in California, after he was convicted of three sexual assaults that happened in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2013. And if the 71 year old makes it to 107 years old, he may have to serve time in England for two sexual assaults that happened in August 1996. That case is still working its way through the British legal system.   Bob Weinstein has kept a low profile since his brother's proclivities first became public knowledge in October 2017, although he would also be accused of sexual harassment by a show runner for the brothers' Spike TV-aired adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Mist, several days after the bombshell articles came out about his brother. However, Bob's lawyer, the powerful attorney to the stars Bert Fields, deny the allegations, and it appears nothing has occurred legally since the accusations were made.   A few weeks after the start of the MeToo movement that sparked up in the aftermath of the accusations of his brother's actions, Bob Weinstein denied having any knowledge of the nearly thirty years of documented sexual abuse at the hands of his brother, but did allow to an interviewer for The Hollywood Reporter that he had barely spoken to Harvey over the previous five years, saying he could no longer take Harvey's cheating, lying and general attitude towards everyone.   And with that, we conclude our journey with Miramax Films. While I am sure Bob and Harvey will likely pop up again in future episodes, they'll be minor characters at best, and we'll never have to focus on anything they did ever again.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 119 is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Hello pals! Our Series of Coen-cidences continues this week with a trip to China. That's right, the Coen influence knowns no international limits. In 2009, Zhang Yimou remade Blood Simple setting it in a much different time and locale, but still tapping into the same primal themes in A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop. We talk adaptation, translation, the Coen Brothers and more in this week's show. Join us now! TIMESTAMPS 00:30 - Introductions and Synopsis 05:21 - Quick A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop Reviews 15:07 - Expanding the Syllabus 29:24 - Analysis 45:40 - Shelf or Trash 47:30 - Wrap Up and Next Week's Film

In this episode we sit down to have a pretty in-depth conversation about Zhang Yimou's colorless classic, Shadow. We ask, "Who is the shadow in Shadon?" and discuss the film's many subtexts and metaphors. We also ask, "What's up with that final scene?" Later on we answer listener movie questions and you, the listeners, finally get to hear exactly what Devan and Cyrus look for in a film. Enjoy! **WARNING - There may be an audio issue on this episode where we sound overly loud. Sorry about that. Please adjust your volume accordingly!**

Isabel's cultured-serial-cat-dad friend Isaac Cheung Jr. stays for another episode to talk about underrated Asian cinema classics directed by Asian filmmakers including Bong Joon-ho, Zhang Yimou, Akira Kurosawa, and Johnnie To. Isaac also tells us about that time someone called him "oriental". ------------------------------------------------------- Stay Connected with Proudly Asian: Website - ⁠⁠https://proudly-asian.com⁠⁠ Instagram - ⁠⁠https://instagram.com/proudly.asian⁠⁠ Youtube - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@proudlyasianpodcast⁠ Send us a voice message - ⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/proudlyasian/message⁠⁠ Support us - ⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/proudlyasian⁠ Email us - ⁠⁠proudlyasianpodcast@gmail.com⁠

We discuss the work of, arguably, Mainland China's most famous director and focus on his films RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO and ONE SECOND. Join the Patreon now for an exclusive episode every week, access to our entire Patreon Episode back catalogue, your name read out on the next episode, and the friendly Discord chat: patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub Subscribe, Review and Rate Us on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-…ub/id1067435576 Follow the Podcast: twitter.com/ImprtCinemaClub Follow Will: twitter.com/WillSloanESQ Follow Justin: twitter.com/DeclouxJ Check out Justin's other podcasts, THE BAY STREET VIDEO PODCAST (@thebaystreetvideopodcast) and NO SUCH THING AS A BAD MOVIE (@nosuchthingasabadmovie), as well as Will's MICHAEL AND US (@michael-and-us)

COVER VERSIONS OF YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES! NOW AVAILABLE IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES FROM MULTIPLE COUNTRIES!   Don't worry, you didn't select the wrong language track on your DVD Player, you're just watching familiar movies with an unfamiliar twist. You've seen plenty of Hollywood remakes of Hollywood hits – The Ring, The Grudge, One Missed Call, Pulse, other examples that aren't Japanese horror movies – but what about the opposite thing? Join Gabe and returning guest Tyler Foster for a look at the Turkish version of Rocky, the Niger version of Purple Rain, the Bollywood Silence of the Lambs, the Russian version of 12 Angry Men, the Hong Kong version of Cellular, the Chinese version of Blood Simple, and the Japanese version of Unforgiven. This one went a little longer than usual, but it was worth it!   00:00 Intro 07:15 Çetin Inanç's Black Lightning (Turkish Kara Simsek, 1985) 23:48 Christopher Kirkley's Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It (Tuareg: Akounak tedalat taha tazoughai, 2015) 38:06 Tanuja Chandra's Sangharsh (1999) 58:27 Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 (2007) 1:21:16 Benny Chan's Connected (Cantonese: Bo chi tung wah, 2008) 1:43:23 Zhang Yimou's A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop (Mandarin: San qiang pai an jing qi, 2009) 1:56:24 Lee Sang-il's Unforgiven (Japanese: Yurusarezaru mono, 2013) If you are in a position to make the world a better place, please consider the following fundraisers: Atlanta Solidarity Fund: https://atlsolidarity.org/ Equality Florida: https://www.eqfl.org/ Donations 4 Abortions (state by state abortion funds): https://donations4abortion.com/funds-by-state Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund: https://www.transgenderlegal.org/

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live and Tian Zhuangzhuang's Blue Kite (discussed more in one of Ying's earlier books) From the 2000s: Li Yang's Blind Shaft (analyzed in one of Ying's articles) From the 2010s: Feng Xiaogang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (explored in Hollywood in China) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Love! Tragedy! Kung fu! We cover it all on this week's episode as we reveiw our first ever Zhang Yimou film. Devan sings us a ditty and reveals her newfound love of Andy Lau, Cyrus surprises us with some sweet kimono action and I ask, "Whatever happened to Zhang Ziyi?" We also get all fancy and discuss both the film's themes and some of its more obvious metaphors. Look at us! Later on, we tackle listener questions and I try Kool Aid for the first time. Enjoy!

A real mongrel of a show this week starting out with the third thing you think about whenever the island of Jersey is mentioned after millionaire tax dodgers and Henry Cavill which is of course cows. Let's hope you know your Ox from your Buffalo as we chew the filmic cud whatever that means. Zhang Yimou is a Chinese director who first caught my attention when I was going through a Jet Li phase with HERO and then again with 2005's HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and I remember enjoying his mix of historical fiction and martial arts so when Netflix suggested I watch 2016's THE GREAT WALL I thought why not. Well the people who would tell you why not would point to Matt Damon's laughable Irish accent, lack of chemistry with sidekick Pedro Pascal and a plot where the climax is one of those endless horde of CGI monsters swarming a tower while our heroes demonstrate some improbable skill type deals. Of course, if you are unfailingly optimistically forgivable and don't mind those tropes like me and enjoy Zhang's artistic trademarks like soldiers in detailed and colourful armour arranged in formation, flying arrows etc. combined with a swords and sandals style script and big blockbuster special effects then you might just enjoy it but it's safe to say the general conclusion from the Dads was that this was cinematic bilge. Former shock video maker Stevin John who once filmed himself stood on a toilet backwards and defecating on a friend while naked and wearing a bicycle helmet's cynical kids advertising construct BLIPPI has a new friend this week with spin-off to the Blippiverse MEEKAH. Similarly exploitative, empty-calorie style product, lacking any educational or artistic value and featuring a brightly dressed moron with an almost psychopathic sense of charm and wonder engaging in some of the most mundane activities you've ever seen. Complete garbage, the human race is worse for having created it.We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

0:00 - Intro & Summary2:00 - Movie Discussion52:54 - Cast & Crew/Awards57:55 - Pop Culture1:04:00 -  Rankings & Ratings To see a full list of movies we will be watching and shows notes, please follow our website: https://www.1991movierewind.com/Follow us!https://linktr.ee/1991movierewind Theme: "sunrise-cardio," Jeremy Dinegan (via Storyblocks)Don't forget to rate/review/subscribe/tell your friends to listen to us!

Estrenos en plataformas, en salas, series que no se pueden dejar de ver, el Festival de Huelva de Cine Iberoamericano. Muchos temas, muy variados, todos interesantes. comenzamos con Joaquín Sabina, Fernando león de Aranoa y Leiva, con ellos. Hemos estado para hablar de "Sintiéndolo Mucho", el documental que llega a las salas tras quince años de trabajo. El retrato de ese Joaquín Sabina que conocemos, de voz rota con el cigarro en mano y el bombín y el que desconocemos, la cara B del personaje, sus intimidades, sus miedos y debilidades. Otro de los títulos muy esperados es La nueva película escrita y dirigida por Pilar Palomero, La maternal. Concha de Plata a Mejor interpretación en el pasado festival de San Sebastián. Una historia de superación y de valentia, también de incomunicación y miedo. Con sus protagonistas Carla Quiílez y Ángela Cervantes y su directora Pilar Palomero charlamos de este retrato de la maternidad en la adolescencia.Una de las películas de estas navidades es Reyes contra Santa que adelanta su estreno en noviembre.  Con sus majestades, Melchor, Karra Elejalde, Baltasar, Matías Janick, y por supuesto Paco Caballero, su director, comentamos en el Festival de Sevilla, esta comedia que nos va hacer pasar 106 minutos de película.Si todavía no se han decidido que ver muy atentos, Armageddon Time, la nueva película del aclamado James Gray,con el que charlamos de esta produción ambientada en el Queens de los 80, basada en la infancia del director y protagonizada por un increíble Anthony Hopkins, un gran Jeremy Strong y una impecable Anne Hathaway.Otro título interesante, ambientada en la China invadida por el ejército japonés a principios de los años treinta, es Cliff Walkers,una vertiginosa película de espionaje, dirigida por Zhang Yimou con 7 nominaciones en los premios nacionales de China, Golden Rooster Awards. Con Elio Castro nos detenemos en esta cinta que pasó hace unas semanas por el Asian Film Festival de Barcelona. y de un festival a otro el de Huelva, desde allí Teresa Montoro nos comenta las últimas noticias y se detiene con Manuela Martelli, directora y actriz chilena de 1976, la película que cerrará las proyecciones de la 48 edición, como película de clausura y que llega esta semana a la cartelera.Uno de los títulos que llega a Netflix y no se pueden perder es, The Wonder, EL PRODIGIO, Un drama basado en la novela de Emma Donoghue, dirigido por el prestigioso Sebastián Lelio. Un thriller psicológico del siglo XIX que tiene lugar en las Midlands irlandesas.Todo esto además del resto de la cartelera, las mejores series con Pedro Calvo esta semana, el drama de época 'The Crown', la vida alegre con nuestro colaborador Luis Alegre, las secciones habituales y su participación.Escuchar audio

You probably wouldn't expect to see the Cultural Revolution in Chinese films, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Tiananmen Square protests. But for a certain generation and a certain corner of the Chinese film industry, these were actually common themes to deal with. Their films weren't always welcome to the censors, but they weren't always banned, either.  Cindy Yu recently wrote a column for The Spectator on Chinese cinema, and the golden age it experienced just after the end of the Cultural Revolution. You'd be surprised at the amazing political – and social – subversiveness of directors like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. On this episode, Cindy talks about that golden age and also about what has come after, where, depressingly, it's now films like Wolf Warrior 2 that dominate the box office. Joining her is Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies at Kings College London who specialises in Chinese cinema. They talk about how their trauma of living through the Cultural Revolution drove the so-called 'Fifth Generation' directors; the bold portrayal of queer characters which got them into trouble with the censors; and how commercialisation has changed the landscape for Chinese directors who are now dictated by the box office. Pictured here is Leslie Cheung in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, where Cheung portrays a queer Beijing opera singer.

You probably wouldn't expect to see the Cultural Revolution in Chinese films, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Tiananmen Square protests. But for a certain generation and a certain corner of the Chinese film industry, these were actually common themes to deal with. Their films weren't always welcome to the censors, but they weren't always banned, either.  I recently wrote a column for The Spectator on Chinese cinema, and the golden age it experienced just after the end of the Cultural Revolution. You'd be surprised at the amazing political – and social – subversiveness of directors like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This episode is all about that golden age and what has come after, where, depressingly, it's now films like Wolf Warrior 2 that dominate the box office. Joining me is Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies at Kings College London who specialises in Chinese cinema. We talk about how their trauma of living through the Cultural Revolution drove the so-called 'Fifth Generation' directors; the bold portrayal of queer characters which got them into trouble with the censors; and how commercialisation has changed the landscape for Chinese directors who are now dictated by the box office. Pictured here is Leslie Cheung in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, where Cheung portrays a queer Beijing opera singer.

This week we watched and reviewed the 1991 film Raise the Red Lantern. It was directed by Zhang Yimou and stars the beautiful Gong Li who plays a young woman who becomes the newest concubine to a wealthy man.  Check out the trailer here https://youtu.be/x8kwb4qFrT4 

Book Vs. Movie: Raise the Red LanternSu Tong's 1990 Novel Vs. the 1991 Zhang Yimpou's 1991 FilmThe Margos are celebrating AAPI month with a look at the author Su Tong and his work which has earned him millions of fans all over the world with his writing. His 1990 novel Wives and Concubines won great praise and was adapted into the 1991film Raise the Red Lantern by writer Ni Zhen and directed by Zhang Yimou. The story takes place in China in the 1930s where 19-year-old Lotus needs to become a concubine for a married man (his fourth mistress) when her father loses his fortune and dies by suicide. Old Master Chen Zuoqian is 50 years old and is “afraid of women” which makes babymaking with him a challenge for Lotus. She also has three other wives who hate her to contend with. There is also who 20-something son Feipu who knows how to play the flute. Gradually she loses her mind and we are left wondering if she ever winds up in the “haunted well.” The novella is translated by Michael S. Duke who brings the story to life as we dive right into the story and feel compassion for Lotus while questioning the motive of her Master. The 1991 film was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and is a visual and musical delight. The setting is placed in the 1920s with the role of the Master set in the margins. We never see him and just hear his voice. The center of this tale is on the women and how they fight for supremacy and agency. It won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival in September 1991. In this ep the Margos discuss:The author's background and the controversy surrounding the sexuality of this novellaThe work of director Zhang YimouThe setting of the story (the 1920s Vs the 1930s)The cast: Gong Li (Songlian,) Ha Saifei (Meishan,) Cao Cuifen (Ahuoyun,) Ma Jingwu (Master Chen,) and Kong Lin (Yan'er).Clips used:Raise the Red Lantern trailerThe Third Mistress, Meishan, sings opera Siskel and Ebert review the film in 1992Gong Li loses her sense of selfMusic by Zhao JipingBook Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page to help support the show! https://www.patreon.com/bookversusmovie Book Vs. Movie podcast https://www.facebook.com/bookversusmovie/Twitter @bookversusmovie www.bookversusmovie.comEmail us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.comMargo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine