After the disappointment of Inception and the incredible arrogance of Interstellar, it was by no means certain that we would automatically troop off to the cinema to watch the latest Christopher Nolan film. I can’t express how heartened I was when I heard that its running time is only around an hour and forty minutes, meaning that it isn’t the overbearing epic that is typical of his more recent work. After that the excellent reviews and the recommendations of Broken Forum members was enough to get to watch it in an IMAX cinema.
This is the first film I’ve watched by a Chinese director of some renown, Wang Xiaoshuai. He is apparently considered a member of China’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers, and while I am skeptical of such labels, I suppose it does have some relevance here as one of their defining characteristics is more individualistic films that highlight the tensions in the country’s rapid modernization and urbanization. I’m also amused that the two male leads in this film are nobodies but the two supporting actresses are huge stars today, though their roles here are relatively minor.
Since this is an older novel, it was obviously another pick out of Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great. This was Maureen F. McHugh’s debut novel and it was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula though it didn’t win either. As its title suggests, China and Chinese culture takes center stage in this novel. It’s far from being the first Western science-fiction work to do so, notably David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series was started in 1989. Still this book is more highly regarded and is very enjoyable while I found the Chung Kuo series to be an impressively wordy mess back when I tried it ages ago.
This is billed as a documentary but it’s debatable whether it’s more of a film than a documentary. Its original Italian title makes more sense, Fuocoammare, in reference to a song that a woman requests on the radio in honor of the men who work as fishermen in the family. Apparently the Italian Prime Minister liked it so much that he gifted a DVD of it to each of the EU’s heads of state.
Any film made by Martin Scorsese is guaranteed to be among the year’s most notable works due to the director’s reputation alone. It duly went straight to the top of many critics’ lists though it met only middling success on the awards circuit. I thought it was intriguing, about the travails of Christians in 17th century Japan and so put it onto my own list.
Yes, I’m aware that the sequel to this is due to be released in a few months. I also know that this is a multiplayer-centric game and I have no intention of playing multiplayer mode for its sake. I had bought this a few months back due to three reasons: the strength of the Star Wars brand, especially its original trilogy setting, its reputedly excellent graphics and fond memories of the 2005 version of the game which I similarly only ever played single-player.
Almost all of the films that we actually watch in the cinema are superhero action movies, a fact that I find to be both somewhat embarrassing and depressing. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this one either after so many superhero movie cinema outings so far this year and the fact that we’ve seen so many different iterations of the character already. This is why I’m far more enthusiastic about characters that have never been made into a movie before. In the end however the excellent reviews and great word of mouth on Broken Forum drew me to the cinema anyway.
