This is the latest of the recent spate of American Chinese films to receive critical acclaim and I admit that I have a particular fondness for them, being curious as to they might slowly shape the identities of ethnic Chinese in the United States. The Farewell is actually the most Chinese of these films yet. It does star Awkwafina who isn’t especially Chinese but the director here Lulu Wang was indeed born in China and only later moved to the US. The film itself takes place almost entirely in China, with only some brief scenes in the beginning set in the US.
Even after years at it, revisiting the great classics of cinema is a never ending affair and so here we have one of the earliest and most famous exemplars of the French New Wave movement. The director is of course Alain Resnais but I think we should also give due credit to screenwriter Marguerite Duras. I also note that the producers of the film stipulated that one of the main characters must be French and the other must be Japanese and scenes must be shot in both countries. So labouring under these restrictions, Resnais and Duras created this thoroughly unique film.
As usual I’m a few years behind the curve playing this extremely popular and meme-worthy game late. But that’s just fine for me and this truly is one of the genre-changing games that all gamers must get around to trying eventually. The main campaign, such as it is, takes less than three hours to complete. After that there are various challenges, secrets to find, and an Endless mode if you’re up for that kind of thing, which I’m usually not.
Here’s a classic Hollywood adventure film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and directed by John Huston. It’s notable in that they actually did film this at least partially in the Belgian Congo, which must have been quite a feat in the 1950s. It’s a fun enough adventure that is entertaining even today but there’s nothing especially noteworthy in it.
The proper Nosferatu film is of course the 1922 silent one by German director F. W. Murnau but we’ve never watched and judging that it is perhaps a little too difficult to grasp in the present, I decided to skip over it. This one is the 1979 remake by Werner Herzog, once again starring his favorite actor Klaus Kinski. Unfortunately while this is solid work the impact is subdued due to how familiar we all are with the Dracula story and I kept wondering how much of it really comes from the earlier work. I now think maybe I should have watched that instead.
After hearing about the controversy over the Bruce Lee scene, I held no great enthusiasm for watching this but I always knew I would get around to it eventually. As it turned out I did find the scene to be kind of insulting, but it’s a relatively minor part of the film. As for the rest of it, after a bit of a slow start, I found it thoroughly entertaining and yet bereft of any meaningful theme or deep insight.
I’ve had this on my reading list ever since I saw it being featured in Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great but I’ve actually first known about it since I read Eliezer Yudkowsky’s fanfiction The Methods of Rationality as his version of Harry Potter consciously patterns himself after the main character in this book Miles Vorkosigan.
