Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.


December 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 74

Total Comments: 65


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Curse of the Golden Flower / Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia / Hong Kong / China / 2006

… vs. The Return of the Curse of the Creature’s Ghost!

Visually, Zhang Yimou’s new film follows a line of thought that extends all the way back to his DP work on Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earthat, vibrant symmetricality. The principal difference is that here the muted color pallette is blown out with downright psychedelic chinoiserie and blown up to Riefenstahl scale. I rather liked Zhang’s last overstuffed action epic, House of Flying Daggerss, if nothing else, tops that film with its wavy-gravy eye-candy. (Uh, my Chinese history is a little rusty, but which dynasty was into tie-dye and cleavage?) But here the plot is straight-up family drama (and not of a very credible variety), and all of the billions upon billions of soldiers, marching, lunging, and bleeding in dutiful synchrony, takes on a distinctly fascist (or state-socialist?) aspect that rather ruins one’s concern for Gong Li and her sewing.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Sony Pictures Classics DVD Screener
19 Dec 2006 11:49 AM | Submit Comment


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