Review

Bong Joon-ho's Latest, 'Mother', Pleases

Already one of the heroes of South Korean cinema’s recent creative renaissance, Bong Joon-ho had an international success well beyond arthouse parameters with 2006’s The Host. That delightfully old-fashioned (albeit with up-to-the-moment CGI effects) sci-fi monster movie with a distinct local flavor managed what so many similar Hollywood exercises fail to do: Deliver thrills and spectacle without stinting on character involvement, social commentary, humor or even poignancy.

topics: actors, asian cinema, directors, genre films, world cinema

Experience

28th SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival Opens

This year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival observes an organizational milestone: 2010 marks the beginning of a fourth decade for the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), hitherto known (until 2005) as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA).

CAAM’s and NAATA’s achievements over the last 30 years are too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that an organization originally founded to nurture Asian American filmmakers (an effort given further muscle by strong support from the Center for Public Broadcasting) as well as counter ethnic stereotypes still prevailing in popular media (perhaps peaking with the protests against mid-late ’80s thrillers Year of the Dragon and Black Rain) has long since accomplished all that and more. Today’s CAAM can look back on helping to foster such important high-profile voices as Wayne Wang and Ang Lee, while stoking both present and future makers via its distribution, PBS presentation and funding arms.

topics: activism, actors, asian american cinema, asian cinema, audiences, bay area, sf international asian american film festival, women filmmakers, world cinema, youth

Take Two

Hurt and Belief in 'The Yellow Handkerchief'

If the usual line about William Hurt is that he looked to become a major star in the 1980s, but didn’t fulfill that promise, in more recent years it’s become clearer, that Hurt probably didn’t want to become that kind of star. He certainly hasn’t run his career like someone desperate to get to the top and stay there—at least not for a couple decades. So, while he’s stayed busy in the interim, it comes as a bit of a surprise to see him take charge of a whole movie, as is the case with new indie The Yellow Handkerchief. Though after two Twilight movies his co-star Kristen Stewart might be much the bigger marquee star, it’s Hurt who dominates here, albeit quietly. Rather like Jeff Bridges in the concurrent sleeper Crazy Heart, this is an opportunity to appreciate a very good actor too often taken for granted, at the top of his form.

topics: actors, hollywood

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest at 20

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cinequest was the scrappy upstart amongst Bay Area film festivals? Apparently not: This year finds San Jose’s annual cinematic blowout entering its third decade.

February may be the shortest month, but Cinequest is going longer nonetheless, at least for this 20th anniversary annum: The 2010 fest runs nearly two weeks, Feb. 23 through March 7, once again at venues all within three blocks’ walking distance in downtown SJ. (For those with a car-free carbon imprint, they’re about 20 minutes’ walk from CalTrain.)

As ever, the primary Cinequest mix is equal-parts heavy on both world premieres (mostly U.S. indies) and recent festival faves from around the world.

topics: activism, actors, audiences, bay area, genre films, how-to, independent film, technology, world cinema

Take Two

Expecting the Unexpected with Werner Herzog's 'My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done'

Werner Herzog has spent an entire career reaching wildly beyond the cinematic norm. His poetic, frequently transcendent narrative features have encompassed a parabolic society of little people (1970’s Even Dwarves Started Small), an adult wild child (Each Man for Himself and God Against All), putting his entire cast under hypnosis (Heart of Glass). Plus various permutations of Klaus Kinski, the brilliant, impossible actor Herzog showcased from 1972’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God through 1982’s Fitzcarraldo (on which Kinski replaced an ailing Jason Robards). The tortuous relationship between director and late subject—death threats included—was captured by Herzog’s My Favorite Fiend, one of his many great, eccentric documentaries.

topics: actors, film history

Experience

"Freak" Flag Flying at YBCA

Because it’s a place where contemporary visual art, pop culture themes, live performance of myriad disciplines and recorded media comingle, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has sustained a major place in San Francisco’s cultural landscape since 1993—yet perhaps without quite receiving the due it would have had its mission been narrower and more easily defined.

That resistance to precise classification is, actually, much of what we like about YBCA. In the film/video department alone, longtime curator Joel Shepard has carved out a unique Bay Area programmatic niche that can encompass retrospectives of important but little-seen current international fiction and documentary directors alongside shows that reflect a distinct fondness for for vintage exploitation, subcultural artifacts and cinematic “outsider art.”

All three of the latter are on display in the venue’s new series “Freaks, Punks, Skanks and Cranks."

topics: actors, bay area, music, women filmmakers, yerba buena center for the arts, youth

In Production

Kelly, Yamamoto Wrap Art Trilogy

Transformation, of any kind, is one of the most ephemeral, elusive things to capture on film. Indeed, one advisor to veteran Marin filmmaker Nancy Kelly told her that it was too subtle for the camera to record, and she’d never be able to do it. Difficult, OK, but impossible? “Well, that certainly got Nancy going.” chuckles Kenji Yamamoto, Kelly’s partner and a respected editor. At long last in the homestretch of the final piece of their trilogy on the power of art, the duo’s enjoying the last laugh.

topics: activism, actors, digital distribution, diy, documentary