Venue: Sydney Film Festival
Sun-drenched and hormonally charged, the Australian surf movie "Newcastle" boasts an almost fetishistic amount of teenage skin. But dramatically it's a wipe out. Its musty dysfunctional-family storyline stands in stark contrast to the breezy fun of the visuals, although there's a hint of freshness in the casual integration of a gay teen.
Cinematographer Richard Michalak's gorgeous water-based action shots guarantee the young target audience will want to head straight out for surf lessons, but there's even less dramatic heft here than in the superior "Blue Crush".
The addition of a couple of beach babes to the testosterone-heavy cast of unknowns should lift commercial prospects when "Newcastle" is released domestically later in the year, ensuring there really is something for everyone in the way of eye candy.
Jesse (Lachlan Buchanan) is a particularly sulky teen who lives in the industrial city of Newcastle, a coastal paradise marred only by the coal tankers squatting on the horizon.
He sees victory in the upcoming Junior Surf Pro as a way of avoiding the fate that befell his bad-boy older brother Victor (Reshad Strik, ) a once-promising surfer now bitter divorced dad working on one of the ships.
An early setback provides the perfect excuse for a diversionary weekend away, so Jesse and his buddies round up some local girls and head for a remote beach to camp in the dunes.
Jesse's embarrassed to be joined by his emo twin brother Fergus (Xavier Samuels), who is self-consciously grappling with his sexuality, but all is soon forgotten in a wild spree of youthful flirting, surfing and horseplay.
Writer-director Dan Castle, making his feature debut, is mostly content to let the good times roll along in this fashion, rudely interrupted by a rogue wave and a tragedy, before winding things up with a classic sports-film cliche.
With its erratic pubescent mood swings, "Newcastle" is like an Antipodean episode of "The O.C"., albeit with big-screen production values and photography so tactile you can almost feel the saltwater on your skin.
Production companies: Film Finance Corporation Australia, IFF/CINV and Newcastle Pictures, in association with 3 Dogs & a Pony and Shadowfire Entertainment. Cast: Lachlan Buchanan, Xavier Samuel, Reshad Strik, Shane Jacobson, Barry Otto. Director/screenwriter: Dan Castle. Executive producers: Charles Hannah, Megumi Fukasawa, Satoru Iseki, Akira Ishii, Nick Carpenter. Co-executive producers: Mike Thomas, Jonathan Page. Producer: Naomi Wenck. Director of photography: Richard Michalak. Production designer: Marc Barold. Music: Michael Yezerski. Costume designer: Catherine Wallace. Editor: Rodrigo Balart. Sales: Icon Distribution.
No MPAA rating, 106 minutes.
Sun-drenched and hormonally charged, the Australian surf movie "Newcastle" boasts an almost fetishistic amount of teenage skin. But dramatically it's a wipe out. Its musty dysfunctional-family storyline stands in stark contrast to the breezy fun of the visuals, although there's a hint of freshness in the casual integration of a gay teen.
Cinematographer Richard Michalak's gorgeous water-based action shots guarantee the young target audience will want to head straight out for surf lessons, but there's even less dramatic heft here than in the superior "Blue Crush".
The addition of a couple of beach babes to the testosterone-heavy cast of unknowns should lift commercial prospects when "Newcastle" is released domestically later in the year, ensuring there really is something for everyone in the way of eye candy.
Jesse (Lachlan Buchanan) is a particularly sulky teen who lives in the industrial city of Newcastle, a coastal paradise marred only by the coal tankers squatting on the horizon.
He sees victory in the upcoming Junior Surf Pro as a way of avoiding the fate that befell his bad-boy older brother Victor (Reshad Strik, ) a once-promising surfer now bitter divorced dad working on one of the ships.
An early setback provides the perfect excuse for a diversionary weekend away, so Jesse and his buddies round up some local girls and head for a remote beach to camp in the dunes.
Jesse's embarrassed to be joined by his emo twin brother Fergus (Xavier Samuels), who is self-consciously grappling with his sexuality, but all is soon forgotten in a wild spree of youthful flirting, surfing and horseplay.
Writer-director Dan Castle, making his feature debut, is mostly content to let the good times roll along in this fashion, rudely interrupted by a rogue wave and a tragedy, before winding things up with a classic sports-film cliche.
With its erratic pubescent mood swings, "Newcastle" is like an Antipodean episode of "The O.C"., albeit with big-screen production values and photography so tactile you can almost feel the saltwater on your skin.
Production companies: Film Finance Corporation Australia, IFF/CINV and Newcastle Pictures, in association with 3 Dogs & a Pony and Shadowfire Entertainment. Cast: Lachlan Buchanan, Xavier Samuel, Reshad Strik, Shane Jacobson, Barry Otto. Director/screenwriter: Dan Castle. Executive producers: Charles Hannah, Megumi Fukasawa, Satoru Iseki, Akira Ishii, Nick Carpenter. Co-executive producers: Mike Thomas, Jonathan Page. Producer: Naomi Wenck. Director of photography: Richard Michalak. Production designer: Marc Barold. Music: Michael Yezerski. Costume designer: Catherine Wallace. Editor: Rodrigo Balart. Sales: Icon Distribution.
No MPAA rating, 106 minutes.
- 6/30/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cannes film review, In Competition Blindness
Do you suppose an apocalyptic fable would ever possess any lightness or even rogue humor? No, social disintegration and degradation are the order of the day, and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness is no exception.
There is an extraordinary visual plan and considerable cinematic challenges to overcome for the Brazilian filmmaker (City of God) in adapting Nobel laureate Jose Saramago's 1995 novel to the screen so there is much here to quicken the pulse and engage the mind. Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.
An appreciative critical response will be needed stateside for Miramax to market this Brazilian-Canadian-Uruguayan co-production. Other territories may benefit from the casting of an array of international actors with some boxoffice draw.
The script by Don McKellar bears witness to a mysterious plague of blindness, a "white" disease in which people's eyes suddenly see only white light. As a cosmopolitan city struggles to cope with the horrifying fallout, a panicked government orders the immediate quarantine of those infected. The herding of shunned people into prison-like camps clearly provokes images of any number of 20th-century atrocities.
The film follows a few characters into a filthy, poorly equipped asylum where social order swiftly breaks down into gang conflict between republicans and royalists, between democracy and dictatorship. The republicans have a ringer though. The wife (Julianne Moore) of a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) -- an eye doctor in a deliberate irony -- can actually see but tells no one.
As in Lord of the Flies or even Animal Farm, the order that establishes itself is elitist, corrupt and lethal. A bartender (Gael Garcia Bernal) in the next ward is soon demanding valuables, then sexual favors for the distribution of the food, which he unaccountably controls. His ringer is a nasty old man (Maury Chaykin), blind from birth, who knows how to navigate in the world of sightlessness.
First comes acquiescence by the other wards, then rapes, murders and finally rebellion. Only then do the prisoners discover the guards have long disappeared. The entire world is caught in the throes of this plague. The ragged survivors stumble into a city of starvation and brutality.
Meirelles bathes the screen in a kind of white overexposure and other times a blurriness to convey the terrifying sense of dislocation and fear. You see the characters -- and the digusting filth they do not -- yet feel their helplessness when the screen jars or distorts your vision.
For this part, screenwriter McKellar creates two points of view -- initially that of the sighted wife, who tries to create order without giving away her ability to see, then switching occasionally to a man with an eye-patch (Danny Glover), whose philosophical commentary on metaphorical blindness expresses an authorial point of view.
One considerable problem with the first viewpoint is the character's slowness to act. She could easily have prevented any number of murders and rapes (including her own). Her failure marks an inexplicable failure of both nerves and morals that warps this not always convincing fable. And Glover's intellectual postures amid such physical distress come off as slightly pompous, perhaps cruelly so.
This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles' film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action. (Only a Stevie Wonder song and a line about volunteers raising their hands draw laughs.) Even the eventual lifting of the state of siege, while a welcome ending, has the arbitrariness of an author who has made his point and simply wants to sign off.
Removing a fable from the comfort of the printed page to the photo-reality of film can sometimes lead to its own kind of blindness.
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya. Director: Fernando Meirelles. Screenwriter: Don McKellar. Based on the novel by: Jose Saramago. Producers: Niv Fichman, Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Sonoko Sakai. Executive producers: Gail Egan, Simon Channing Williams, Tom Yoda, Akira Ishii, Victor Loewy Director of photography: Cesar Charlone. Production designer: Tule Peake. Music: Marco Antonio Guimaraes. Costume designer: Renee April. Editor: Daniel Rezende.
Production companies: Miramax Films presents a Rhombus Media/O2 Filmes/Bee Vine Pictures production
Sales: Focus Features.
Do you suppose an apocalyptic fable would ever possess any lightness or even rogue humor? No, social disintegration and degradation are the order of the day, and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness is no exception.
There is an extraordinary visual plan and considerable cinematic challenges to overcome for the Brazilian filmmaker (City of God) in adapting Nobel laureate Jose Saramago's 1995 novel to the screen so there is much here to quicken the pulse and engage the mind. Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.
An appreciative critical response will be needed stateside for Miramax to market this Brazilian-Canadian-Uruguayan co-production. Other territories may benefit from the casting of an array of international actors with some boxoffice draw.
The script by Don McKellar bears witness to a mysterious plague of blindness, a "white" disease in which people's eyes suddenly see only white light. As a cosmopolitan city struggles to cope with the horrifying fallout, a panicked government orders the immediate quarantine of those infected. The herding of shunned people into prison-like camps clearly provokes images of any number of 20th-century atrocities.
The film follows a few characters into a filthy, poorly equipped asylum where social order swiftly breaks down into gang conflict between republicans and royalists, between democracy and dictatorship. The republicans have a ringer though. The wife (Julianne Moore) of a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) -- an eye doctor in a deliberate irony -- can actually see but tells no one.
As in Lord of the Flies or even Animal Farm, the order that establishes itself is elitist, corrupt and lethal. A bartender (Gael Garcia Bernal) in the next ward is soon demanding valuables, then sexual favors for the distribution of the food, which he unaccountably controls. His ringer is a nasty old man (Maury Chaykin), blind from birth, who knows how to navigate in the world of sightlessness.
First comes acquiescence by the other wards, then rapes, murders and finally rebellion. Only then do the prisoners discover the guards have long disappeared. The entire world is caught in the throes of this plague. The ragged survivors stumble into a city of starvation and brutality.
Meirelles bathes the screen in a kind of white overexposure and other times a blurriness to convey the terrifying sense of dislocation and fear. You see the characters -- and the digusting filth they do not -- yet feel their helplessness when the screen jars or distorts your vision.
For this part, screenwriter McKellar creates two points of view -- initially that of the sighted wife, who tries to create order without giving away her ability to see, then switching occasionally to a man with an eye-patch (Danny Glover), whose philosophical commentary on metaphorical blindness expresses an authorial point of view.
One considerable problem with the first viewpoint is the character's slowness to act. She could easily have prevented any number of murders and rapes (including her own). Her failure marks an inexplicable failure of both nerves and morals that warps this not always convincing fable. And Glover's intellectual postures amid such physical distress come off as slightly pompous, perhaps cruelly so.
This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles' film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action. (Only a Stevie Wonder song and a line about volunteers raising their hands draw laughs.) Even the eventual lifting of the state of siege, while a welcome ending, has the arbitrariness of an author who has made his point and simply wants to sign off.
Removing a fable from the comfort of the printed page to the photo-reality of film can sometimes lead to its own kind of blindness.
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya. Director: Fernando Meirelles. Screenwriter: Don McKellar. Based on the novel by: Jose Saramago. Producers: Niv Fichman, Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Sonoko Sakai. Executive producers: Gail Egan, Simon Channing Williams, Tom Yoda, Akira Ishii, Victor Loewy Director of photography: Cesar Charlone. Production designer: Tule Peake. Music: Marco Antonio Guimaraes. Costume designer: Renee April. Editor: Daniel Rezende.
Production companies: Miramax Films presents a Rhombus Media/O2 Filmes/Bee Vine Pictures production
Sales: Focus Features.
- 5/14/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than Silk has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid The Red Violin) stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than Silk has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid The Red Violin) stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival
BUNCHEON, South Korea -- Two long-lost brothers from Korea face off on a Japanese TV cooking program in "The Yakiniku Movie: Bulgogi" ("Za Yakiniku Moubi Purukogi") -- a sizzling comedy/drama that will make you rush out to the nearest Korean restaurant as soon as credits stop rolling.
First-time director Gu Su Yeon has stirred in ingredients from two hit factors in mainstream Japanese entertainment. One of them is the long existing body of food-themed films, TV drama and manga, such as the classic "Tampopo", "Shoutai's Sushi" or the recent "Udon". The other is a new boom in films with Zainichi (Koreans resident in Japan) as a subject, like "Pacchigi!" and "Pacchigi! Love and Peace," "Blood and Bones" and "Dear Pyongyang". With proper marketing, Gu's fusion film could be billed as hearty family entertainment from Seoul to Sao Paolo.
Gu has no qualms about using the tried and true formula of David versus Goliath, which translated into this film's context becomes tripe versus prime beef, humble family-run eatery versus giant national restaurant chain and traditional recipes versus nouvelle cuisine.
Shot in a style that mimics and parodies Japanese TV gourmet shows, with snappy editing, exaggerated zoom-ins and loud commentary, the narrative is strung together by amusing episodes of culinary encounters that tantalize and educate, such as an anatomy lesson on a cow's various edible insides, or the secret recipe for making pickled perilla leaves. The scenes in the final showdown live up to gastronomic expectations, and endures -- no, demands -- repeated viewing. Instead of finishing at the climactic moment, the story stretches a bit longer to deliver a rather quaint message at the end: That what really matters is not what you eat, but who you eat with.
The two main characters, Tatsuji and Torao, embody different schools of cuisine and radically different values. Ryuhei Matsuda, who is gradually emerging from the shadow of being the son of the late Yuusaku Matsuda, one of Japan greatest actors, is suitably cast to play a grungy small-town lad who feels he could never live up to his adopted grandpa's cooking skills. Ex-model Arata is a perfect foil as the haughty cooking champion manipulated by an avaricious Japanese mother, and cut off from his Korean heritage.
Vegetarians get a bashing in this pro-meat entertainment, with cult actor Taguchi Tomorowo especially funny as a meat-loathing, weasel-like yakiniku chain manager, who buys out small proprietors with banknotes and bulldozers.
Gu Su-yeon, who is an ethnic Korean born in Japan, obviously drew from personal experiences of this immigrant eating culture. Unlike other films about Zainichi, which focus on the hardships and discrimination they endure, "Bulgogi" stays clear of racial tension and social issues. But then, so what? If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then a juicy piece of salt-marinated tripe crackling on the grill can also be a gateway to understanding how ethnic culture survives even when transplanted to a sometimes hostile foreign land.
THE YAKINIKU MOVIE: BULGOGI
Phantom Films/Cinema Investment/Tokyo Eizo Kobo/Pyramid Film/Eisei Gekijyo/Pyramid Film/Artist Film/Asahi Koukokusha/Pony Canyon
Credits:
Director: Gu Su Yeon
Producer: Kimio Kataoka
Written by: Mitsunori Guu
Based from the manga by: Haroma
Producers: Kimio Kataoka, Masahiro Harada, Akira Ishii, Keisuke Konishi
Executive producer: Katsue Kobayashi
Director of photography: Hideyuki Mushu
Production designer: Tomoharu Nakamae
Music: MaMiMery
Editor: Kazuhisa Takahashi
Cast:
Ryuhei Matsuda: Tatsuji
Arata: Torao
Yu Yamada: Yori
Taguchi Tomorowo: Harada
Kaori Momoe: Kataoka
Running time -- 116 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BUNCHEON, South Korea -- Two long-lost brothers from Korea face off on a Japanese TV cooking program in "The Yakiniku Movie: Bulgogi" ("Za Yakiniku Moubi Purukogi") -- a sizzling comedy/drama that will make you rush out to the nearest Korean restaurant as soon as credits stop rolling.
First-time director Gu Su Yeon has stirred in ingredients from two hit factors in mainstream Japanese entertainment. One of them is the long existing body of food-themed films, TV drama and manga, such as the classic "Tampopo", "Shoutai's Sushi" or the recent "Udon". The other is a new boom in films with Zainichi (Koreans resident in Japan) as a subject, like "Pacchigi!" and "Pacchigi! Love and Peace," "Blood and Bones" and "Dear Pyongyang". With proper marketing, Gu's fusion film could be billed as hearty family entertainment from Seoul to Sao Paolo.
Gu has no qualms about using the tried and true formula of David versus Goliath, which translated into this film's context becomes tripe versus prime beef, humble family-run eatery versus giant national restaurant chain and traditional recipes versus nouvelle cuisine.
Shot in a style that mimics and parodies Japanese TV gourmet shows, with snappy editing, exaggerated zoom-ins and loud commentary, the narrative is strung together by amusing episodes of culinary encounters that tantalize and educate, such as an anatomy lesson on a cow's various edible insides, or the secret recipe for making pickled perilla leaves. The scenes in the final showdown live up to gastronomic expectations, and endures -- no, demands -- repeated viewing. Instead of finishing at the climactic moment, the story stretches a bit longer to deliver a rather quaint message at the end: That what really matters is not what you eat, but who you eat with.
The two main characters, Tatsuji and Torao, embody different schools of cuisine and radically different values. Ryuhei Matsuda, who is gradually emerging from the shadow of being the son of the late Yuusaku Matsuda, one of Japan greatest actors, is suitably cast to play a grungy small-town lad who feels he could never live up to his adopted grandpa's cooking skills. Ex-model Arata is a perfect foil as the haughty cooking champion manipulated by an avaricious Japanese mother, and cut off from his Korean heritage.
Vegetarians get a bashing in this pro-meat entertainment, with cult actor Taguchi Tomorowo especially funny as a meat-loathing, weasel-like yakiniku chain manager, who buys out small proprietors with banknotes and bulldozers.
Gu Su-yeon, who is an ethnic Korean born in Japan, obviously drew from personal experiences of this immigrant eating culture. Unlike other films about Zainichi, which focus on the hardships and discrimination they endure, "Bulgogi" stays clear of racial tension and social issues. But then, so what? If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then a juicy piece of salt-marinated tripe crackling on the grill can also be a gateway to understanding how ethnic culture survives even when transplanted to a sometimes hostile foreign land.
THE YAKINIKU MOVIE: BULGOGI
Phantom Films/Cinema Investment/Tokyo Eizo Kobo/Pyramid Film/Eisei Gekijyo/Pyramid Film/Artist Film/Asahi Koukokusha/Pony Canyon
Credits:
Director: Gu Su Yeon
Producer: Kimio Kataoka
Written by: Mitsunori Guu
Based from the manga by: Haroma
Producers: Kimio Kataoka, Masahiro Harada, Akira Ishii, Keisuke Konishi
Executive producer: Katsue Kobayashi
Director of photography: Hideyuki Mushu
Production designer: Tomoharu Nakamae
Music: MaMiMery
Editor: Kazuhisa Takahashi
Cast:
Ryuhei Matsuda: Tatsuji
Arata: Torao
Yu Yamada: Yori
Taguchi Tomorowo: Harada
Kaori Momoe: Kataoka
Running time -- 116 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/20/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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