Rob may be our resident Johnny To expert here but I highly recommend Exiled which has been selected by Hong Kong to represent it as a foreign language film for the Oscars. I don't think I've ever seen a more meticulously and expressively photographed action film. Each set piece seems begins like a tableau and then just blows apart into furious movement. It's beautiful stuff.
Which reminds me of something else i was going to blog about.
I saw four of the six films in the Redcat's Pedro Costa retrospective this weekend and was totally blown away. (For all you Foundas haters out there, I would direct you to his piece in the Weekly on Costa which I thought was a pretty good intro to his films.)
Anyway, during the Q&A after Colossal Youth (Juventude em marcha) an obvious film student asked Costa about his pacing and editing style which, with its long takes and fixed camera positions, reminded the student of painting. Oh man did that set Costa off. As soon as the kid said painting Costa cut him off: "No, no, no, these are not paintings, this is cinema, it isn't painting at all ..." And proceeded into a rant against critics who have consistently referenced painting in discussing his works. I guess the age old antagonism continues ...
