The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’

-
From franchise hits to historical epics, joyous musicals to autobiographical family sagas: Steven Spielberg has done it all. As his latest sci-fi film Disclosure Day is released, film-makers, authors and Guardian critics reveal which of his movies means the most to them Steven Spielberg is often described as the inventor of the “event movie” – or as the creator of our new age of IP supremacy, in which the genre property is more important than any above-the-title film star. But that isn’t quite it. He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it. In fact, he synthesised both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent. He availed himself of the subversiveness of the new wave, and yet was classically oriented, drawing upon his love of – and alienation from – the all-American suburb, making him the Edward Hopper or the Andrew Wyeth of the movies. Tellingly, it was François Truffa...
Post a Comment

Chang’an review – animated Chinese tale of poet-warriors is spectacular work of art

-

The historic capital of China is rendered in gloriously intricate detail, but this animated feature feels like a state-sponsored history lesson

The first thing you need to know about this animated feature from China is that it is 168 minutes long, or two hours and 48 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend watching a story about Chinese poet/warriors from the eighth century, celebrated via a screenplay that’s dense with historical incident drawn from the subjects’ biographies. If you know nothing about this period of history, which unfolds during the Tang dynasty, you’ll certainly learn a lot, but you’ll need to pay close attention to the welter of journeys to far-flung provinces, battles fought in mountain passes, and characters of note met along the way.

The two main characters are governor and general Gao Shi (voiced as a young man by Yang Tianxiang, as an elder by Wu Junquan) and poet Li Bai (Ling Zhenhe and then Xuan Xiaoming). The latter was considered one of the greatest poets in Chinese history, and the film honours him and his work by featuring dozens of his poems, often declaimed lustily by the character in various states of inebriation (he was a legendary drinker). Gao Shi was also a poet of some note apparently, but the film makes it clear he was not in Li Bai’s league. Instead, Gao Shi gets to basically narrate the story of his and Li Bai’s entwined lives in one long flashback, told to a visiting luminary over the course of a single night before a decisive battle. (Surely the storytelling could wait so that the elderly Gao Shi could have a good sleep before the fight?)

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/QwJ0Yki
via IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment