Word: gongs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Dvorak, the score provided ample opportunity to demonstrate the orchestra's varied colors. Especially striking was the percussion ensemble of the second movement, consisting of triangle, tom-tom, snare drum, cymbal, wood block, gong and chimes. After an initial statement, the ensemble returned to a perfectly executed dynamic rise and fall. In the third movement, the flute performed the solo melody effectively with a sort of rubato, freely suspended over the rest of the orchestra...
...subject is, well, foreign to Hollywood directors, for whom the basic elements are a propulsive story and some slambang special effects. But as Chen Kaige shows in the humid, tumid Temptress Moon, image is all. Reuniting the stars (Hong Kong's Leslie Cheung and the mainland's Gong Li) of his 1993 Farewell My Concubine, Chen paints a glamorous portrait of drugs and decadence in 1920s China. The leaders of today's China, addicted to the old narcotic of Maoism, may have seen the film as an unflattering mirror of themselves; a year after its completion, Temptress Moon is still...
...unseen plutocrat tells his young daughter, "Opium is the source of all inspiration." He blows the sweet smoke in her face, which creases into a sickly smile. Opium is the curse of the House of Pang. Those who surrender to it will corrupt the children of the palace, Ruyi (Gong Li) and Zhong-liang (Cheung), creating a new generation of addicts. As grownups, these adult children will stare into the camera, their only confidant, to express their impotent rage; and their faces will be streaked with tears as chic as pearl drops...
Chen's theme, from his first film, Yellow Earth (1984), has been the indoctrination of children--and, often, their misuse by those who should care for them (read: the state). But he has never illustrated it as voluptuously as here. He and ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle bathe Gong Li in warm reds, giving her a fever of frustrated love, and surround Cheung with cold grays to reflect the ice of his resentment. As the slick gigolo and avenging angel of the Pang family, Cheung radiates the intensity of a lover scorned and scarred for life. In a performance that dares...
Spike Lee and Mike Leigh, Gong Li and Jennifer Jason Leigh were all on the Riviera to peddle their films at dozens of press conferences and at luncheon interviews. Gong Li fared better at a posh dinner for her film Temptress Moon; her tablemate was not some grubby journalist but the genial dauphin of nearby Monaco. It was the first time in nine years that Grace Kelly's son had visited the festival, lured by Temptress Moon's elegant producer Hsu Feng, who thus provided a new answer to the old question: How do you get Prince Albert into Cannes...