Venice awards

[mark schilling]

My own review of Dolls, now online at the Screen Daily site
http://www.screendaily.com/ is more on the "cheap orientalism" side. Kitano
has been slipping ever since "Hana-Bi"  -- and "Dolls" is a final plunge
into a self-absorbed, literal-minded sentimentalism. The third act was like
"Way Down East" in a Japonesque mode, complete with an interminable trudge
through the snow, but no heart-stopping leaps across the ice floes. D.W.
Griffith could at least evoke pathos; Kitano in "Dolls" is the director as
technician, who is more concerned with costumes and cinematography than the
story he happens to be telling. He's jingling the strings expertly enough --
but there's no life in his puppets.

Mark Schilling
schill at gol.com





----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Gerow" <gerow at ynu.ac.jp>
To: "KineJapan" <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 1:01 PM
Subject: Venice awards


> The official awards at the Venice Film Festival were announced and the
> only Japanese film to be awarded seems to be Tsukamoto Shin'ya's
> Rokugatsu no hebi (A Snake of June), which won a special jury award from
> the Controcorrente (Upstream) Jury.
>
> The Japanese papers reported that reaction to Takeshi's Dolls was quite
> mixed, with some calling it a masterpiece and some cheap orientalism.
>
> Any news from the scene?
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Yokohama National University
> KineJapan list owner
> For list commands: send "information kinejapan" to
> listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
>
>