Coffee jikou

[Stephen Cremin]

The Hou Hsiao-hsien, Im Kwon-taek and Jia Zhangke films are all confirmed for Venice competition.  Miyazaki's new animation is the other Asian film in competition.  Otomo's STEAMBOY, Tsukamoto's VITAL and Miike's IZO all get screenings in other sections.

The screening of Hou's film in Tokyo last year coincided with the date of Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Awards, so I don't think any Taiwanese critics got to see it.  At least I don't think there's been any opinions in print in Taiwan.  Domestic (Taiwan) premiere is likely to take place at Kaohsiung Film Festival in September which is being programmed by Hou's team, who also organise the Taipei Film Festival in March.

I'm still interested in hearing any opinions on the film reported in the Japanese press.  Was press access at the time controlled?

Stephen Cremin




On Monday, July 26, 2004, at 08:25PM, Richard Suchenski <rsuchens at Princeton.EDU> wrote:

>I saw it in December last year as part of the Ozu centennial in the only
>public screening that I'm aware of.
>
>It's a terrific film; not as incisive, profound, or formally sophisticated
>as "The Puppetmaster," "Good Men, Good Women," or "Flowers of Shanghai," but
>a wonderful film in it's own right, and an intelligent and moving tribute to
>Ozu that manages to be extremely compassionate without being sentimental or
>trite (does anyone expect anything less from Hou?).  He's taken some of the
>temporal experiments of "Goodbye, South, Goodbye" - particularly the poetic
>articulation of everyday time - mixed it with some of the airy rhythms of
>"Millennium Mambo," and added a few nods to Ozu's formal rigor and humanist
>sensibility.  Like Tian Zhuangzhuang's remake of "Springtime in a Small
>Town," or Todd Hayne's "Far From Heaven," it manages to be both a testament
>to and a commentary on a celebrated 50's aesthetic without feeling
>condescending, facile, or patly ironic.  I'm not convinced that it
>represents a new direction for Hou's cinema, but it's a significant
>improvement on "Millennium Mambo" (where it felt that, formal beauties
>aside, Hou was just marking time), and it's a remarkable achievement.
>
>Hou was apparently somewhat dissatisfied with the film in December, and
>decided to try re-editing it for Cannes, where, unfortunately, it never
>played.  A friend of mine in Hong Kong tells me that Hou wanted to take it
>to Cannes and it looks as if it got snubbed as part of a new more
>risk-averse Cannes programming policy that also seems to have skipped over
>new films by Jia Zhang-ke, Mike Leigh, and Im Kwon-taek.  Given Hou's
>prestige at Cannes over the past decade, however, I find it somewhat hard to
>believe that the Cannes selection board would take "Shrek 2" and "The
>Ladykillers" over a Hou film, but I guess anything's possible...  It looks
>fairly certain, however, that it will play at Venice in September, and it
>will almost certainly show up at the New York Film Festival in October, and,
>last I heard, a Japanese art-house release was planned for September.
>
>I'm very much looking forward to the chance to see it again.
>
>Richard Suchenski
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Tatiana Leite" <tatianaleite at estacaovirtual.com>
>To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
>Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 2:22 PM
>Subject: Coffee jikou
>
>
>>
>>
>> Hello!
>>
>> Has anyone seen Hsiao-hsien Hou last film? Was it in any film festival?
>>
>> Tatiana
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>