Word: gu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cabot: Kerry J. Dingle, Philip D. Dreyfuss, Richard E. Freeman, Xiaoyu Gu, Kamila M. Lis, Henry M. Rosenberg, Sixiao Xu, Oussama Zahr
...Chinese film, as in Hollywood, ambition and nuance seldom keep company. The mainland's best-known directors are masters of the kind of movies that critics call "epic" when they succeed and "overwrought" when they fail, films that swamp our eyes and yank at our hearts. Cinematographer Gu Changwei has shot many of Chinese cinema's most imperial tours de force?Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum and Ju Dou, Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, Jiang Wen's Devils at the Doorstep. But his directorial debut Peacock, surprise winner of the Silver Bear at this year's Berlin International Film...
...rich as the cinematography, and moments of great poignancy?the mother's efforts to persuade the prettiest girl in town to have dinner with her retarded son, the lengths to which the sister goes to defend her brothers from bullies?temper the hardness the Gao children sometimes display. Gu packs his film with vivid period details: boys play hacky-sack with a flaming chestnut, a couple preserves eggs in handfuls of sticky mud, a family's supply of coal dissolves under a sudden rain. The camerawork is flawless; the takes long and sinuous...
...bicycle. When a real peacock appears in the movie's quiet coda, it declines to spread its plumage on demand and the onlookers move on, disappointed. Its splendor, like the Gao children's dreams, remains unfledged and all-too-rarely glimpsed. Fortunately, this is not the case with Gu's talents. He unfolds them masterfully and his Peacock is a marvel that deserves to be admired...
...with Nixon, the years out of office and finally death have a way of dousing polemical fires. "When people see this film, all the controversies about Mitterrand tend to shrink away," says director Guédiguian, a communist. "It talks about the legend, about the King. The time is far enough away now for us to begin to see him as a whole." Guédiguian's main character, crafted in stunning depth and complexity by actor Michel Bouquet, is known simply as le Président; he smiles more and projects less personal authority than the original, but shares...