Mao’s Last Dancer, the new film by Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), is this year’s Slumdog Millionaire — with a little Billy Elliot mixed in. The film, based on the autobiography of the same title, tells the true story of Li Cunxin, who was plucked from his rural peasant village as a child to be trained as a ballet dancer in Mao Zedong’s communist China. He dutifully navigated the years of training and the accompanying slogans of propaganda without any care for ballet because it was an escape from his inevitable fate as a peasant back home. But his talent garnered the faith of one of his teachers, and later caught the eye of American Ben Stevenson, then artistic director of the Houston Ballet. Li was brought to Houston on a scholarship and soon learned that the propaganda drilled into him by Mao’s China was full of lies. He was then faced with the choice of returning to his homeland or fighting to stay in the US, knowing his actions could send dire repercussions to his family in remote China. The film is peppered with fully produced ballet performances featuring Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Chi Cao in his first acting role. The film is a well-crafted delight. (more…)
Centurion is the newest film by Neil Marshall (The Descent) and it delivers on his legacy of action and gore. The film is based on the true story of Roman soldiers in 117 AD, who were fighting a losing battle to expand the Roman Empire into Britain. The legendary Ninth Legion was sent into Scotland for the final strike and was never heard from again. Marshall researched this ancient story and embellished the missing details to create the story of Centurion, a loyal soldier who rode out with the Ninth only to be one of few survivors fighting to return home. What starts off as a huge war epic quickly becomes a survival story of men running for their lives against all odds. The film is well written and well executed to give audiences their money’s worth, though it may be a bit too violent for the vast mainstream. (more…)
One of the most harrowing and compelling personal documentaries of our time, ‘Enemies of the People’ exposes for the first time the truth about the Killing Fields and the Khmer Rouge who were behind Cambodia’s genocide. More than simply an inquiry into Cambodia’s experience, however, ‘Enemies of the People’ is a profound meditation on the nature of good and evil, shedding light on the capacity of some people to do terrible things and for others to forgive them.
Winner of a dozen top documentary festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, this is a riveting film that takes audiences as close to witnessing evil as they are ever likely to get. It is also a personal journey into the heart of darkness by journalist/filmmaker Thet Sambath, whose family was wiped out in the Killing Fields, but whose patience and discipline elicits unprecedented on-camera confessions from perpetrators at all levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy. This is investigative journalism of the highest order.
Provocative, audacious and visionary, Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) pushes the boundaries of hallucinatory cinema with this exploration of sex, drugs, life and death. A brother and sister scratch out a living in Tokyo’s underworld–Oscar’s a small-time dealer, Linda (Paz de la Huerta, The Limits of Control) is an exotic dancer. One night, a police bust goes horribly wrong, and Oscar is shot. But as he lies dying,his spirit refuses to leave the world. Instead, it wanders through the city, its visions growing ever more distorted and nightmarish.
Directed by: Gaspar No
Opens Friday, September 24
NR, 137 Minutes, In English and Japanese with English subtitles.
France/Germany/Italy, 2010
Like a scene torn from The Color Purple or Capturing The Friedmans, this deeply personal and uncompromising documentary examines the complex levels of pedophilia and how it can manipulate and control an entire family for life. Family Affair is also a story about resilience, survival and understanding a child’s capacity to accommodate a parent’s past crimes in order to satisfy a basic longing for family. (more…)
This extraordinary documentary follows one family, the Zhengs, for two years–two exhausting holiday journeys and the time surrounding them. The Zhengs, like millions of other Chinese, have left their traditional, rural homes for the grinding struggle of life in industrial cities. When we first meet the parents, they have been unable even to secure tickets for their multi-day trip.
Yet when they do, the tickets still won’t assure them a place on the unreliable and overfull trains. The tense and harrowing scenes at the train station are indelible chapters in the story, as the camera crew and the viewer are swept up in the dangerous human tide. This ordeal is plainly the crucial allegory of the film: “If the family can’t be together for the New Year’s holiday,” Mr. Zheng says, “life would be pointless.” The astonishing power of Last Train Home, Lixin Fan’s award-winning debut feature documentary, is the ability to find the details of the individual that represent the condition of the society.
Friday, August 13
Rooftop Films, Hot Docs, Zeitgeist Films Present Venue: On the roof of the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd Street, Gowanus Brooklyn. 8:00pm: Doors Open 8:30pm: Live music by Mountain Man 9:00pm: Films 10:30pm: After party with complimentary drinks courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner
Coney Island revitalization: seaside salvation or Brooklyn boondoggle? Coinciding with the opening of a new Luna Park this summer, this timely documentary wrestles with the fate of “the world’s playground,” birthplace of the hot dog, and precious vestige of our nation’s past. Featuring interviews with longtime residents and key players on all sides of the recent scuffle, the film details the storied evolution of Coney Island and past and present plans to redevelop it.
I’m sure each person who is reading this post has a Facebook profile, but unlike you, I have a interest in finding out the behind the scene workings of companies and for Mark Zuckerberg being one of the youngest billionaires alive, why wouldn’t you not want to know the struggle that one goes to in order to gain 500 million friends.
On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history… but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.
From director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin comes The Social Network, a film that proves you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. The film is produced by Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, and Cean Chaffin and based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich. The film features an ensemble cast which consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Brenda Song, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara and Armie Hammer.
Todd Solondz presents the sequel to his 1998 film Happiness with Life During Wartime. The new twist? A new cast. You do not need to see Happiness before Life During Wartime in order to understand the events, but I would advise watching the former and skipping the latter.
The first scene of the sequel sets the tone for the film and revisits the first scene in Happiness. Joy, played by Shirley Henderson (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) sits at dinner with her husband Allen, played by Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire), and after a long pause, breaks into tears. What ensues is the funniest scene I’ve ever seen among two miserable people. The two rehash their problems as a couple and agree to separate. Joy visits her family in Florida and the film uses Joy’s travels to weave together the stories of the Jordan family. (more…)
Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker (The Devil’s Playground, Blindsight), the film features an array of important international statesmen, including President Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair. It makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal today.
The film was produced by Academy Award® winner and current nominee Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds, An Inconvenient Truth) and developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, together with World Security Institute. Participant collaborated with Magnolia on last year’s Food, Inc., recently nominated for an Academy Award®, and the upcoming CASINO JACK and the United States of Money. Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Bruce Blair and Matt Brown are the film’s executive producers.
