Word: dou
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...Success is nothing new for the 51-year-old director, yet it has long been tinged with disappointment. Ju Dou (Zhang's third film) and Raise the Red Lantern (his fourth) both received Oscar nominations, but initially weren't allowed to play in Chinese theaters. To Live, Zhang's darkly humorous and ultimately tragic masterpiece about a family's struggle to survive three decades of political upheaval, won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 1994, but is still largely off-limits to mainland viewers...
...director that Zhang found his true calling and an all-consuming lifelong passion. With Red Sorghum, Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang proved himself in the art houses abroad. But many mainland critics remained unimpressed, accusing him of "exoticizing" the nation's feudal past and poverty-stricken countryside for foreigners. They felt he should play cultural ambassador, using his camera to burnish China's overseas image. Chinese audiences share this ambivalence. Younger moviegoers have an almost universal description of why they dislike Zhang's fixation on the past and on the countryside: "The films are really just...
...Instead of Woodstock innocence, cynical commercialism?by now a defining Chinese characteristic?rears its head at the end of Day One. Dou Wei, best known as the ex-husband of Canto-pop diva Faye Wong, bores half the audience into an early departure with an hour of pretentious ambient electronica. At the end of his set?during which a steady barrage of bottles and cans is hurled onto the stage?Dou cackles wickedly and says, "You've been tricked!" Tricked indeed: "We know the music is entirely inappropriate for this kind of venue," says one of his synth-geeks later...
...Kurosawa used to say that the best way to become international was to be as true to one's own culture as possible. Nonzee is no different, and tips his hat to Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou for the same reason. "His films all smack of the East, particularly Ju Dou, and I want to give Thai cinema the same sense of identity that Yimou gave Chinese cinema." Rival director and friend Ratanaruang has Nonzee down better than any. "I think he's more Chen Kaige than Zhang Yimou," he enthuses. "Kaige is capable of art house, but he's also...
...also wouldn't catch many people attempting what Zhang Yimou, renowned for lush emotional masterpieces like Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, has set out to achieve in his newest film, Hero. Flush with Chinese, U.S. and Hong Kong funding, Hero is the most ambitious martial-arts epic since Taiwanese director Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four Oscars in 2001 and broke the box-office mold by becoming the most successful foreign film to hit the U.S. That victory remains both a blessing and a curse for the Chinese film industry: it raised awareness of Asian...