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(05/03/24 4:00am)
Art has been an act of resistance throughout the ongoing war in Gaza. As the war has martyred poets, scholars, and artists, there is an exigence to preserve Palestine’s rich cultural legacy of art and scholarship in order to bear testament to its existence. A rallying cry, seared in the public consciousness, came in Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die,” published after he was killed on December 7th by an Israeli airstrike. His haunting stanzas foretell a harrowing prophecy, professing “If I must die / you must live / to tell my story [...] If I must die / let it bring hope / let it be a tale.”
(02/05/24 5:00am)
Weike: Hayao Miyazaki’s newest entry to his glorious filmography bears every hint of a final swan song. It’s a film with a culmination of everything that fascinates Miyazaki: a young boy’s adventure, a parallel reality, and even planes and his obsession with flying. Simultaneously, it’s also a film with ten years in the making, even carrying a title (in Japanese) that begs the most fundamental question of our existence: how do you live? Fiona, how does it feel like to watch The Boy and The Heron in comparison with the other Miyazaki animations?
(09/06/23 12:16am)
The Cannes Film Festival is addicting. Not just because of the luxurious assemblage of the grandest and most star–studded films of the year, all demanding one's attention, but because it's combined with the frantic atmosphere of a carnival. Covering the festivity for a Chinese media outlet, I attended the 76th Cannes Film Festival this May. Every morning—even after a mere four hours of sleep—in a small apartment I shared with four other reporters, I was instantly energized by yet another day exclusively dedicated to a cinematic world: where every conversation, every chance encounter, belonged to a magical experience.
(06/02/23 1:33pm)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Gray Man, or earlier, Red Notice—these are what Netflix co–chief Ted Sarandos termed as “big event films” and supposedly represent the company’s (I hate to call it a film studio) path forward under a “bigger, better, fewer” refrain after its shocking earnings disclosure last April that resulted in a significant stock value loss. Deliciously packaged and advertised, these “big event films,” however, distressingly stand in every possible way at the opposite of the cinematic art, and I’m not comparing them to esoteric, erudite arthouse productions. Being innovative is an excessively high standard; they’re just not interesting or even entertaining.
(02/20/23 5:00am)
The film A New Old Play opens with its protagonist’s death.
(12/09/22 3:55am)
The frenzied buzz over Bong Joon–ho’s phenomenal Parasite (2019) seems to have just been yesterday, with both a sweeping victory at the Oscars and the box office (the fourth highest grossing foreign film in the United States). Decision to Leave (2022), a crime thriller from the celebrated Korean auteur Park Chan–wook, was recently released in the United States, and the film has been often described by the press in tandem with Parasite. Decision To Leave had its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival with a tremendous success, and it also aims to be a leading contender in the 2023 Oscar race. While it is still extremely hard to replicate Parasite’s success, Decision to Leave is in no way less glamorous. In fact, the audience may be left much more emotionally struck after watching Decision to Leave.
(11/18/22 5:00am)
On Oct. 16, the 60th New York Film Festival (NYFF), presented by Film at Lincoln Center, came to an end after a 17–day cinematic marathon. Featuring a wide range of quirky, subversive, and most importantly, inherently different films from across the world, the festival is a potent testament to the youth of cinematic art and its everlasting appeal, even after the severe effects from the COVID–19 pandemic. Since its creation in 1963, the NYFF is one of the longest–running and most prestigious non–competitive film festivals in the United States.
(10/23/22 8:50pm)
Ten years after his bizarre, stylized neo–noir crime story, Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik returns with his newest, almost three–hour long feature film: Blonde. The film, which premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival and arrived on Netflix on Sept. 28, has faced heavy criticism over its extreme exploitation and overt simplification of Marilyn Monroe’s tragic life events. The runtime may seem to promise an in–depth, holistic rediscovery of Monroe’s life. Yet, Blonde is not a biopic, and despite the film’s blatant flaws, Dominik’s intention may lie somewhere other than an authentic representation of the blonde bombshell.
(09/27/22 11:00pm)
Imagine Disney+ or Kevin Feige doing a Game of Thrones prequel about House Targaryen. There would be more dragons, for sure. An amusing tour of the dragon pit with a flippant guide is warranted in the first ten minutes of the pilot, including several self–referential jokes. They might even have two dragons spew fire at each other, although no one would be harmed by the end of the episode.