This is a very old Chinese film that I added to the list due to its classic status and its international reputation as one of the finest Chinese films ever made. However it predates the Communist victory by just a hair and as such it lacks the leftist sentiment that pervades the Chinese films of its era. This caused it to be sidelined by the Communists and its celebrated status today seems to be a relatively recent affair.
More stuff, a mixture of following along on Internet tutorials in addition to trying stuff out on my own. In particular, since a lot of my stuff so far have been very lacking in surface detail I’ve been trying to learn to do that. First is by faking it with normal maps and then by actually trying to model the detail. I haven’t been entirely successful but it’s been fun learning. The amount of work that goes into modelling decorative elements and I found it amusing that I had to look up reference materials for antique furniture and construction for the designs.
So I thought the whole time this was an Italian film but in fact it’s an English language film starring a whole roster of recognizable Hollywood stars. In fact this is a film directed by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, whose La Grande Bellezza I loved a couple of years ago. This one is set almost entirely within the confines of a luxurious hotel in the Swiss Alps and it’s no less impressive a work.
As this was one of the most talked about films last year I was inevitably going to watch this and it helps that I actually do have some memories of the incident as it’s called here. Funnily enough I was one of those mentioned in the film as remembering it as being Tonya Harding herself who assaulted Nancy Kerrigan. Though it looks like a documentary, I think it’s fairer to think of this as a biographical film.
Not much of note this month. We’ll start with the exciting space news and no, it’s not the one about the tourist going for Elon Musk’s moonshot.
This is one of those classic Hollywood films whose title everyone has heard of but probably rather fewer have actually watched. It’s based on a crime novel that was very popular in its day and thus was a popular subject for film adaptations. In fact, there are so many that I was confused about which one was supposed to be the famous one and picked this from the Golden Age of Hollywood. While it’s true that this certainly is the most famous of the adaptations, I’m not sure that it’s the best one.
As this is clearly a children’s movie I had no interest in it. But after the sequel was released last year I heard some very good things about it and it hasn’t escaped my attention that it has an insanely high Rotten Tomatoes rating. This first film isn’t as highly regarded but is still considered quite okay so I thought it would be appropriate to watch it before the sequel.