My top 5 films in release (in Indianapolis) for this week:
1) Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller)
2) The Visitor (Tom Mc Carthy)
3) Roman De Gare (Claude Lelouch)
4) Stuck (Stuart Gordon) fri, sat, and sun only, Key Cinemas
5) Return To Oz (Walter Murch) fri only, Mass Ave Video Garden
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4 comments:
dang...the hhh couldn't even crack the top five...what is it about you and that guy that don't seem to click?
I don't know. I loved the first segment of Three Times and I haven't disliked any of his movies. Hou's films are almost too laid back. Tsai's films, also deliberately placed and filled with observational details, are more engaging both on a scene by scene basis and achieves a greater whole.
the details in tsai's films at times seem to come from a place of absurdity, occasional humor and sometimes wierdness(the hole) as to where hou's work is often rendered in the style of a hyperrealist painting in which the overall clarity of image and its like mirror in the real world team to create, through its almost too realistic nature something that is slightly askew. he uses reality to create and almost dream world(the bookends of three times) as to where tsai seems to incorporate the dreamlike into the fabric of a greater reality. that being said, i like tsai's films better while feeling in my gut that hou might be a more accomplished artist. either way both hou hsiao hsien and tsai ming liang are both really fun to say three times real fast...try it next time during the silent bits of goodbye dragon inn. tsai ming liang, tsai ming liang...
To me, they both deal in the monotony of everyday life. I absolutely agree that Tsai comes from an absurdist point of view, where Hou comes from a painterly background. In fact, the more absurd Tsai films (The Hole, What Time Is It There, and The Wayward Cloud)are my favorites. I don't know if it's the absurd humor, but lots of scenes and details stick with me from all of Tsai's films, where Hou, not that I dislike them, they are just more instantly forgettable. My dislike or disinterest of Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismaki proves that it's not absurdity alone that makes me prefer Tsai. As a sidenote, most of my top 5 stops playing this week which gives Flight of the Red Balloon a good chance to place.
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