The positive critical reception surrounding Lulu Wang’s The Farewell has for the most part centered on issues of generational and cultural divides between Billi (Awkwafina) and her family in their attempt to conceal a terminal diagnosis from razor witted Nai Nai (Zhao Shu-zhen). Behind the closet door, a window beckons with a view of the Wyoming outdoors, as Ennis stays confined in his dingy trailer. Hanging inside, shrine-like, are a pair of shirts once worn by him and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal), along with a picture postcard of their mountain. Ennis (Heath Ledger), alone in his trailer, opens his closet. To appreciate Lee’s cinematic mastery, look again at its final scene. But even in Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme played it too safe, with its neutered passion between Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas.
TOM BRADY GAY MEMES MOVIE
But by the time it hit theaters in 2005, it had been a dozen years since a mainstream American movie had placed the sexual orientation of its gay protagonists front and center. It’s easy to forget the boldness of this film in 2022. Much as I loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I have to choose Brokeback Mountain to represent the lifework of Ang Lee. MM Courtesy of Profimedia, Capital pictures. Small wonder that Omori would eulogize Marker her own output similarly showcases an innate curiosity about the world, from tattoo art ( Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World) to Japanese incarceration camps ( Rabbit in the Moon-as a small child Omori’s own family was detained at the Poston Internment Camp in Arizona from 1942 to 1945). Part of that’s timing Marker passed away in 2012, but part of that might also be that Marker was such a slippery character, so in control of his image (or lack thereof-he hated to be photographed and often used an image of a cat for an avatar), that he was able to leave nothing but a sense of good will.
TOM BRADY GAY MEMES SERIES
Director Emiko Omori was a cinematographer on Marker’s 1989 documentary series The Owl’s Legacy, and here puts together anecdotes and vignettes into something that might reasonably be accused of hagiography in that nobody has anything remotely critical or negative to say about Marker. Like Chan Is Missing, the film essay To Chris Marker is also a kaleidoscopic search for an unknowable person, this time the enigmatic filmmaker Chris Marker (of La Jetée fame). MM To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter(2012) I recommend giving it your 35 minutes, and a little time to wonder what might have been. In 2004 the surviving elements were restored by the Academy Film Archive, and is now available to view on Wikipedia, of all things. The Mandarin Film Company folded soon after, and, according to Arthur Dong’s Hollywood Chinese, the whole thing was regarded by Wong and her family as an embarrassing secret for decades.
The Curse of Quon Gwon was Wong’s directorial debut, but it only had two screenings, and distributors rejected it. According to a now oft-quoted 1917 issue of Moving Picture World, the film “deals with the curse of a Chinese god that follows his people because of the influence of Western civilization.” Director Marion Wong established the Mandarin Film Company in Oakland, California (where she was raised) in 1916, at the age of 21. As such, The Curse of Quon Gwon presents a challenge and mystery to contemporary viewers as to what exactly it’s about. Only two of an estimated seven or eight reels (approximately 35 minutes) survive of the earliest known Asian American produced feature, and any copies of the screenplay or production records remain lost to time (ditto the film’s expository intertitles).
To celebrate AAPI month, we honor the Asian-American filmmakers who have changed the landscape of cinema.