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Showing posts from June, 2021

Hero (2002)

This film follows a dialogue between a king, later revealed to be Qin Shi Huang, and a nameless hero.  Nameless is an officer of the law who has killed two conspirators against the king's life, Long Sky and Flying Snow.  He claims to have eliminated a third, called Broken Sword.  The king has invited Nameless to speak with him, both as a reward and to find out more about the conspiracy.   But the information Nameless and the king review about the conspiracy starts to contradict itself.  Conflict emerges not just between Nameless and the king, but between the conspirators regarding what they should do.  Originally, Sky, Snow, and Sword all wanted to assassinate the king, but at some point Sword changed his mind.  The reason why he did this, and the inability of the other conspirators to accept his decision, are at the core of why the stories unravel. The fights in Hero are often more like ritual than conflict.  Many wuxia films portray ...

The TSPDT Poll 2021

For those who don't know, TSPDT decided to poll the general public about the greatest films of all time.   I submitted a list, which I'll share here: Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985) Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951) Barravento (Glauber Rocha, 1962) Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999) Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966) Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-Tung, 1983) Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922) Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2003) Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) Hellzapoppin' (H.C. Potter, 1941) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin, 1947) October (Sergei Eisenstein, 1927) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986) Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1973) Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) Spontaneous Combustion (Tobe Hooper, 1990) Swing You Sinners! (Dave Fleischer, 1930) Tale of Tales (Yuri Norstein, 1979) The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 201...