SCREENING LOG - 12/12-12/19/2005

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Vidas Secas / Barren Lives (1963, Nelson Pereira dos Santos)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057654
TSPDT project #805
yes

Daybreak (1933, Sun Yu)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400888/
mixed

Zelig (1983, Woody Allen)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086637
TSPDT project #806
yes

Bright Leaves (2003, Ross McElwee)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372806
yes

The Red Detachment of Women (1961, Xie Jin)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472622/
Asia Weekly 100 Chinese Films Project #59
yes

thanks to pete-0 and Fish Beauty for
True Heart Susie (1919, D.W. Griffith)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010806
TSPDT project #807
yes (#7 for 1919 between SUNNYSIDE and BLIND HUSBANDS)

thanks to Fesch for
Recollections of the Yellow House (1989, João César Monteiro)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0599214
yes - it has many wonderful small moments, and I was close to giving it a YES, but maybe it was too low-key at some points for me to feel it was earning every minute of its 2+ hour runtime. Of course, that might be a by-product of how one's attention span is affected when watching a movie on a computer. But it was a gorgeous looking movie and that in itself made me stand up and take notice more than I might have otherwise. I think it expressed a similar set of themes to SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR but in a way I found much more appealing and genuine.

Veronika Voss (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084654
TSPDT project #808
yes

Queen of Sports (1934, Sun Yu)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438500/
YES

Love and Duty (1931, Bu Wangcang)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192239/
YES YES (#1 for 1931)
I'm amazed that I'd never heard anyone mention this film before, because it really is a shining gem from the 30s (I rate it higher than CITY LIGHTS or M from the same year!), if only because it has the greatest performance by one of the greatest actresses who ever lived. Maybe BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN wasn't as good as I expected it to be, becasue this movie set the bar for impossible romances impossibly high. It's a passionate family drama about a woman who pays dearly for following her heart instead of the feudal tradition of arranged marriages, and it's told with an unflinching, methodical directness worthy of von Stroheim, with some startling stylistic fluorishes and fantasy sequences woven in. Ruan Lingyu gives a tour de force playing three different characters, one of which, the tragic heroine, she plays at three different ages -- ingenuous student, passionately adulterous mother, and aging, world-weary matriarch -- all with the same all-out feverish intensity that registers point blank with me. She also plays the mistress of the heroine's husband and the heroine's grown-up daughter! It's like she is the living Shiva manifested in multiple roles throughout the fabric of the film's reality -- the film itself is like a living breathing incarnation of her manifold persona. And just the way she touches things has this "I have to touch this or else I die!" electricity to it. By the end I was convulsing in grief and awe. If she wasn't my favorite actress before, she most definitely is now.

Dream Street (1921, D.W. Griffith)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012122
yes

thanks to kerpan for
Turning Gate (2002, Hong Sang-soo)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0313550
YES YES (#4 for 2002 between BLISSFULLY YOURS and DIVINE INTERVENTION)

I think what made this film work for me in ways his other films hadn't was the amount of personal identification I had with the main character, such that I times I was being indicted in a blisteringly honest way, in terms of my own desires, ambitions, self-esteem, and my attraction to certain women (incl the one I'm most in love with now -- the parallels of my situation with his in the second half of the movie were uncanny). I still have reservations about the degree of male narcissism and casual misogyny in his films, but my experience with TURNING GATE can't help but reframe my relationship to these films.

Amorous Histories of the Silver Screen II (1931, Cheng Bugao)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192845/
yes

Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388795
yes* (#18 for new films seen in 2005 between 2046 and TONY TAKITANI)

* - It must be mentioned that the film deserves kudos for contributing to the single most memorable experience I've had in a movie theater, and is therefore impossible for me to approach this film with any true objective evaluation.

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