By Joe Bendel. Forget the Syfy (Sci-Fi) Channel’s Earthsea miniseries. Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the Earthsea novels and stories, would certainly prefer you did. Her reaction to Gorō Miyazaki’s anime adaptation of her fantasy world has also been decidedly mixed, but arguably not as vehement. In fact, Miyazaki’s film is not without merit, especially for those not intimately grounded in the Earthsea mythology. Three years after its Japanese premiere, Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea, finally has its American theatrical release, now screening in select theaters courtesy of Walt Disney.
While the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki long sought to adapt Le Guin’s Earthsea stories, it was his son Gorō, a relative new comer to animated filmmaking, who was assigned the project by Studio Ghibli, the anime house co-founded by Miyazaki the elder. The result is a visually striking, if thematically familiar, fantasy.
Like the epics of Tolkien and Robert Jordan, Tales follows a young protagonist of destiny, Arren, a confused prince who has apparently just murdered his father, the king. Fleeing in shame, he encounters the wizard Sparrowhawk on the road. Like his late father, Sparrowhawk is concerned about the chaos sweeping over Earthsea. The weather is unseasonable, crops are failing, livestock are dying, and two dragons were recently spotted off the coast fighting to the death – an unprecedented event in the Earthsea fantasy world.
From Miyazaki's "Tales from Earthsea."
Naturally, there is a Sauron-like evil overlord to contend with. In this case, it is the androgynous sorcerer Cob, whose slave-trading minions are out to get Arren. Indeed, Tales follows the standard epic fantasy template, but does so reasonably well. There is also a pseudo-environmental motif of a world out of balance that should have appealed to Le Guin, but it is subtler and more nuanced than most “green” movie messages.
Miyazaki the younger is most successful creating an epic look in the film, employing watercolor backgrounds and hand-drawn animation for dramatic effect. Indeed, his fantasy landscapes and cityscapes have an exotic beauty that elevates Tales well above standard issue anime.
Redubbed for an American audience (not an uncommon practice with anime distribution), the English language cast mostly ranges from adequate to fairly good. Timothy Dalton (the under-appreciated James Bond) is the class of the field, lending his commanding voice to Sparrowhawk. In contrast, Willem Dafoe’s work as Cob often sounds campy, in the wrong way.
The first Disney animated release to carry a PG-13 rating, Tales is similar in intensity (and subject matter) to Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings. Richly crafted but predictable (as is the case with most contemporary fantasy fiction), Tales is better than genre diehards might have heard at their conventions. It is currently screening in New York at the Angelika Film Center, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark.
By Jason Apuzzo. We want to keep people pumped here at Libertas about seeing Bruce Beresford’s extraordinary and courageous new film, Mao’s Last Dancer. We’ll be showing you a variety of clips from the film, including this excerpt above for today. It features the lovely Joan Chen as dancer Li’s mother. This clip really gives you a sense of what you’re in for with this film, in terms of how bold it is. [Make sure to read Joe Bendel’s LFM Review of Mao’s Last Dancer.]
“As I depart for my annual August vacation, I leave you with a highly recommended magical experience you must not miss. A giant hit at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, Mao’s Last Dancer, by the great Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), is a feel-good film bursting with courage, energy and overwhelming inspiration … In the cherished tradition of heartbreaking movies about personal triumph against impossible odds, it is a combination of Billy Elliot and Rocky …
“At 19, granted unheard-of permission from Mao’s regime as one of the first exchange students to travel abroad, on a three-month student visa, in 1980, Li [the dancer and protagonist of the film] faces new hurdles. His parents expect him to bring honor to their humble station, his country expects him to represent China like a good, loyal and cynical comrade, drawing attention to Communism while trusting no one. Terrified and confused, he is the first boy from his province to travel to Beijing, much less the world beyond. Landing in the U.S. in a stiff, outdated, Chinese government-issued suit, he is like Dorothy arriving in Oz. Housed and guided by the kind but flamboyant Stevenson (wonderfully acted by the charismatic Bruce Greenwood), he takes little time overcoming culture shock, adjusting to alien Chinese restaurants and realizing that the Communist propaganda drummed into his head about America as a place of deprivation and darkness is a lot of hokum. The more he experiences of Texas cooking, kung fu movies, miraculous kitchen appliances, American hospitality and tennis shoes, the more distanced he grows from the ideals of Communism and the rigid dogma of Chairman Mao. (Against the rules of the Cultural Revolution, he also discovers the thrill of admiring political defectors like Nureyev and Baryshnikov without fear of arrest while watching forbidden tapes.) Capitalism, he confesses, is groovy …
“Distilling so much drama and turmoil into two hours is not easy, but by the time the film completes Li’s long and arduous journey, in 1986, when his parents are finally allowed to fly to the U.S. to see him dance for the first time, you will marvel at how much is accomplished. I predict the highly charged emotional finale will leave you cheering … Mao’s Last Dancer is a masterpiece.”
By Jason Apuzzo. We reported recently here at Libertas about how the CW’s reboot of the Nikita franchise will be making the CIA the villains of the piece. So far as we’re aware, we’re the only site currently making a fuss over this.
Variety (registration required) is now reporting today that the show is currently turning heads for a different reason – namely, the raciness of it’s advertising.
At Libertas, of course, we dive right in to such controversies.
As I mentioned in my earlier post about this show, what alerted me to this show to begin with was a gigantic, eye-popping billboard of star Maggie Q slapped up against a building here in LA. The poster was the already quite racy one of her in a red dress (see here). Now, apparently, the people at CW are trying to get huge billboards of Maggie Q in leather and tattoos (see left) into major markets like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – and even here in LA not everybody’s going along with it.
Let me begin by stating the obvious: it would be spectacularly hypocritical of me to complain about the sexiness of this show’s advertising, given our regular featuring of pin-ups here at Libertas. On the contrary: we love this sort of thing, as it speaks to the sort of freedoms we enjoy here in the West that are routinely frowned upon in totalitarian societies (both of the Islamo-fascist and communist variety) elsewhere in the world.
Plus, the girls look cute – which should be reason enough.
Cheerleaders.
With that said, even I think that putting up 50ft. billboards of Ms. Q in leather and tattoos in public places like malls, where families and children may gather, is probably a bit much. And for safety reasons, I don’t think it’s too good of an idea to put these billboards near freeways. The one of her in the red dress (see here) is more than enough to get the point across.
What bothers me more is that this new show apparently goes The Full Stallone in taking a nasty swipe at the CIA. Why aren’t people more bothered by this? Let me put it this way: why are we so prudish about the sex component to this series, yet so completely untroubled by what the show is depicting in terms of our own government?
Attacking our intelligence services is such a terrible idea at this point in time, as those services struggle under the combined weight of low morale, rampant anti-Americanism overseas and budget cutbacks. And here’s another problem: shows like this do, eventually, get syndicated in foreign markets … and what kind of effect do you think they have, particularly among those already inclined toward hating America? [Foreign distribution rights to Nikita have already been sold to the UK and Australia.]
Much as with The Expendables, I really wanted to like this show. It had the potential of being a kind of sexed-up version of 24 – or a weekly Salt, if you will – and in fact that’s what the show should have been. Instead, they had to make America’s intelligence services into the enemy, into ruthless murderers bent on assassination. What a shame.
The only silver lining here, I suppose, is that the CW is giving us a better-looking show this fall called Hellcats. The show is apparently based on the book, Cheer: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders. I’ve put the trailer for the show below. This cheeky comedy-drama’s premise is described this way:
Hellcats revolves around Marti, a pre-law college student from the wrong side of the tracks. When budget cutbacks and her mother’s constant carelessness cause her to lose her scholarship, she joins the Hellcats, the college’s competitive cheerleading team.
Perfect! A series about a young gal forced into a life of cheerleading due to tragic circumstances. [Is Roger Corman running this network?] Between the new terrorist-fighting Hawaii Five-O and this, I think we’re set now.
I’m as surprised as anyone right now to be denigrating one of Stallone’s films and talking up a (semi-)competing picture by Angelina Jolie. This isn’t exactly what I expected at the outset of the summer, to say the least. But we try to stick to the content of films here at Libertas, and to what messages films convey, rather than to individual star personalities. I think it’s very dangerous to get caught up in the personalities of stars, unless those stars remain disciplined and consistent in terms of what projects they choose. Since the decline of the old studio system, such stars are actually rather few and far between.
Stallone, to me, chose a distasteful storyline (at least with respect to the villain) around which to launch his career comeback – whereas I was very pleasantly surprised by what Jolie did with Salt. And for me it really ends there: with the films, and what they convey about our country and the spirit of freedom which it still embodies. As a side note, I think the business of equating masculine male action stars with patriotism is fine, so long as those stars happen to be fighting on our side.
• We like Frank Miller here at Libertas, and Frank is apparently collaborating with Evan Rachel Wood and Chris Evans on a big new ad campaign for Gucci products. Check out the teaser for the ad campaign below. It looks fun.
• California has apparently run out of film tax credits. Don’t you just love this? The California Film Commission has already allocated the entirety of its $100 million in tax credits available this year to 30 projects, and now has a waiting list of 45 projects. According to the LA Times:
“The demand is far exceeding the supply,” said California Film Commission Executive Director Amy Lemisch. “We ran out on the first day of funding.”
The program, enacted last year to stem the flight of production from California, provides a 20% to 25% tax credit on qualified production expenses that can be applied to offset state income or sales tax liabilities. Although limited in scope compared with what other states offer — the incentive doesn’t cover talent costs and excludes commercials, for example — it has been popular, especially among independent filmmakers.
As an indie filmmaker myself, I can tell you that the production situation here in this state is lousy. Basically nobody wants to film around here unless they have to, and unfortunately most indie productions have to. Having a Governor in office who was once a motion picture star himself was supposed to help this, but as we know … [Sigh.]
This is actually a good sign. You know why? Because if dudes are blowing out their knees on-set, that means they’re filming some serious action on this show. Things are looking up.
• Some internal memos apparently just got leaked out of Paramount, and we now know what projects are currently in that studio’s pipeline. Among the projects leaked were: A Baywatch movie (hooray! what took so long? lack of blondes in LA?); a Nevada Smith remake (how do you top Steve McQueen? or Karl Malden, for that matter?), and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Dictator, in which he supposedly plays a deposed foreign dictator who gets lost in the United States. That last project could be hilarious if it’s done properly.
January Jones of "Mad Men."
True story about Nevada Smith: apparently Indiana Jones was originally supposed to be named ‘Indiana Smith,’ but Spielberg changed the name to ‘Jones’ because he was afraid audiences would confuse Indy with the McQueen character.
[Are you reading a word I’m saying here, or are you just looking at the picture to the left? Just checking.]
• Hollywood is apparently very afraid of the new Google TV initiative, as Google expands the reach of its media empire-in-the-making. The new Google TV technology is the latest effort, following on the heels of Apple TV, to combine TV with the internet. Personally I think the entertainment industry is far too worried about this. I see no evidence suggesting that there’s a public demand for this fusion of TV and internet right now, until such a fusion becomes much more fluid than it currently is. Also on the tech front today: apparently James Cameron has been assisting NASA as they plan to put a 3D camera on Mars.
• Ernest Borgnine will be receiving a lifetime achievement award from SAG. Congratulations, Borgie! It was a pleasure for Govindini and I to meet him a few years back. He had such a powerful handshake (at age 90!) that my hand is still recovering. Borgie’s just as vital and colorful as ever, and has undoubtedly enjoyed one of the great cinema careers of all time. Not bad for an Italian kid from North Haven. 🙂
By Joe Bendel. For fifty-plus years, Mainland China’s Communist government has experienced bitter factional rivalries and instituted enormously destructive campaigns for ideological purity. While the pendulum has swung back and forth from relative stability to institutionalized insanity, it has remained an authoritarian state where artistic freedom is simply impossible. That is why twenty year-old ballet dancer Li Cunxin defected to America in the early 1980’s. It was a bold decision that would define Li’s bestselling memoir and Oscar-nominated director Bruce Beresford’s subsequent big-screen adaptation, Mao’s Last Dancer, which opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide.
As a young boy, Li was slight but flexible as enough to be accepted at Madame Mao’s ballet academy. Diligently training to build his strength, his natural talent blossomed -even in the didactic productions foisted on the academy by their ideologue patron.
Eventually Li was entrusted to study with the Houston Ballet as part of a cultural exchange program. Primed to expect unspeakable misery, Li slowly discovers America is not as he was led to believe. Acclimating to the new environment, he actually finds he dances better in the land of class enemies because he “feels freer.” He also falls in love with Elizabeth Mackey, an aspiring dancer. Then his life really starts to change.
Li indeed decides to defect, news the Chinese government does not happily receive when he ill-advisedly delivers it in-person. In fact, they forcibly detain him in the Consulate, with the intention of whisking him out of the country against his will. However, Li’s friends refuse to leave quietly (fortunately Texans can be an unruly lot), precipitating an international incident.
Dancer is a truly inspiring crowd-pleaser of a film, but it is not an overly-sanitized or conveniently simplistic reduction of a complex, real life story. In fact, the guilt-wracked Li, fearing dreadful repercussions for his family, frequently quarrels with Mackey, eventually even divorcing her. Yet, as a result, Li emerges as a flesh-and-blood human being. We can also forgive the film for indulging in its manipulative coda, having more or less earned its triumphant freeze frame.
As wildly improbable as it might sound, much of Dancer was shot on-location in China. Reportedly, once shooting was underway, the authorities began demanding changes to the script, but to his credit, Beresford rebuffed them. As a result, there are indeed scenes of Madame Mao (who remains an official non-person in China), played by a truly eerie dead-ringer for the Gang of Four leader. We also watch as Li’s mentor at the academy is purged for perceived ideological offenses, such as teaching the techniques of counter-revolutionary defectors like Nureyev and Baryshnikov. (Granted, the film also seems to imply contemporary China may be loosening up, at least to an extent.)
Amanda Schull & Chi Cao.
Perhaps Dancer’s greatest challenge was casting credible dancers for its key leads roles. Again, fortune smiled with the discovery of the considerable acting chops of Chi Cao (currently Principal Dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet) and Chengwu Guo (a member of the Australian Ballet) as the adult and teen-aged Li, respectively. Both prove to be charismatic performers, with Chengwu making a surprisingly strong impression, even with his limited screen time. (Hopefully, they will both be allowed to return home, despite their participation in the film.)
Dancer also boasts two Twin Peaks alumns – including Kyle MacLachlan, making the most of a small supporting role as crafty immigration attorney Charles Foster. It is Joan Chen who really delivers the film’s emotional punch though, as Li’s spirited mother Niang. Even thoroughly glammed down for the role, she still remains a radiant beauty.
Dancer is a well-rounded, fully satisfying bio-picture. The product of Australian filmmakers, it refreshingly refrains from kneejerk political cheap shots, even implying then Vice President Bush played an important role securing Li’s freedom. It also vividly captures Li’s passion for dance, which is the fundamental cause of nearly every event that unfolds in the film. Emotionally engaging and politically astute, Dancer opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide.
By Jennifer Baldwin. Who are the rejected? The Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce secretaries, crying in their focus group because they can’t find husbands? Peggy, who feels irrevocably rejected by Pete after finding out that he and Trudy are going to have a child? Pete’s father-in-law, whose Clearasil account is rejected for the more lucrative Ponds Cold Cream account? Allison, Don’s secretary, who has been rejected by Don after their one night stand a couple of episodes ago?
Perhaps “the rejected” is something else, something a little less concrete but nonetheless essential. According to Dr. Faye Miller: “It turns out the hypothesis was rejected.”
And what is that hypothesis? Basically, Don’s hypothesis is that women will use Ponds cold cream on their faces in order to pamper themselves and satisfy their own desires as part of a beauty ritual. But unfortunately for Don, that’s just not how the women in the focus group responded.
“I’d recommend a strategy that links Ponds cold cream to matrimony,” Dr. Faye continues. Turns out Freddy Rumsen was right after all: most women just want to get married and a cold cream campaign based around that will work.
The conversation between Don and Faye that follows may be the best summation of the culture wars to ever appear in a basic cable one-hour drama:
Don: “Hello 1925. I’m not going to do that. So, what are we going to tell the client?”
Faye: “I can’t change the truth.”
Don: “How do you know that’s the truth? A new idea is something they don’t know yet so of course it’s not going to come up as an option. Put my campaign on TV for a year then hold your group again and maybe it’ll show up.”
Faye: “I tried everything. I said ‘routine.’ I tried ‘ritual.’ All they care about is a husband. You were there, I’ll show you the transcripts.”
Don: “You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.”
Don’s anger in this scene, of course, stems from his underlying guilt about what he has done to Allison.
But look closely at the conversation going on here: Faye is arguing that the truth is immutable, that these women want the traditional thing, but Don is arguing that people can change — if they are sold such change through advertising, media, and TV. And that, in a nutshell, is the culture war: The struggle to change human patterns of behavior through media and other channels. But the question remains: who is right, Don or Faye?
Joyce & Peggy.
Other things of note this episode:
I loved that last look of angsty goodness between Peggy and Pete as she goes off with her new bohemian artist friends and Pete shakes hands with all the suits in the office. With news that Trudy is going to have a baby, it seems the Peggy/Pete relationship hopes are at last dashed. I loved that bittersweet look of regret between them at the end of the episode, but I can’t say I’m too broken up. I’ve always been Team Trudy.
Peggy continues her transformation into Don Jr. This time she’s hanging out with a bunch of hipster artists, just as Don did with girlfriend Midge and her friends in Season One, and just like Don, she doesn’t hesitate to deflate their bohemian posturing:
Hipster Artist: “Why would I ever do that [work in advertising]?”
Peggy: “So you could get paid [duh]. To practice your art.”
Peggy likes the hipsters, but she’s not about to throw off her professional ambitions any time soon.
Second episode in a row with no Betty. Can’t say I mind. Betty’s character was destroyed for me in Season Three.
And finally, I have to confess, I have no idea what that little scene with the elderly couple and the peaches was supposed to be about. Don certainly observed them with studied intensity, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out the point of it.
And even though she wasn’t the focus of the episode, here’s a picture of Joan. Because Christina Hendricks rocks:
