The Playlist

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

Marrakech '12: Zhang Yimou Talks Working With Christian Bale, The Growing Chinese Box Office & More

By Jessica Kiang
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December 8, 2012 9:23 AM
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0 Comments

News

Zhang Yimou ("Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou," "Hero," "House of the Flying Daggers") has been making movies in his homeland of China, from within the system, for the past two and a half decades. During this time, he has witnessed, and participated in, the gradual, incremental thawing of Chinese relations with the West, and the partial loosening of the viselike grip of governmental control over film production. Honored with a tribute at the Marrakech International Film Festival, and presenting his newest film "The Flowers of War", Zhang spoke, through two translators (Mandarin-French, French-English) to a small group of journalists about his filmmaking life under a notoriously repressive regime, the themes he revisits, and working with Christian Bale. Here are five highlights from that conversation.

By The Playlist
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January 20, 2012 4:33 PM
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3 Comments

Reviews

While the historically overlooked massacre and genocide of China's city of Nanking is experiencing a resurgence in cultural awareness (and therefore cinema) as an under-remembered tragedy worth memorializing (see the 2007 documentary "Nanking"), the brutal events – Japan killing 200,000 people in their 1937 overthrowing of the region – is still mostly unknown outside of the East.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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November 8, 2011 6:32 PM
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News

There is still a lot of time for things to play out in the awards season race, but often there are indicators as to how far (or not) a film will go. While on paper, two-time Best Foreign Film nominee Zhang Yimou directing Christian Bale in a period piece war movie seems like a no-brainer, "The Flowers Of War" has taken quite a long time to secure distribution. Perhaps that melodramatic trailer should have been a warning sign? And no knock to upstarts Wrekin Hill, who are new players in the game, but word of their taking on the film doesn't exactly bode well for 'War' to be a major force in the next few months.

By Gabe Toro
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September 9, 2011 7:20 AM
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2 Comments

Today, the Toronto International Film Festival was host to twenty minutes of "The Flowers Of War," the new film from Zhang Yimou seeking a distributor. If you're confused, thinking that the world was finally going to get a look at "Heroes Of Nanking," don't worry, it's the same movie, with Christian Bale as an American priest who helps a number of local women take shelter during the Nanking Massacre of 1937. The synopsis also suggests they "fight back," though the original title is much more aggressive than the new, more graceful one. Both are a bit too melodramatic for our taste, and we suspect to most this will be "that Chinese movie with Batman."

By Oliver Lyttelton
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December 22, 2010 1:55 AM
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2 Comments

F. Scott Fitzgerald may have said that there were no second acts in American lives, but that presumably didn't include the Welsh-born Christian Bale, whose career to date seems to have been structured by Robert McKee. Beginning as a child star in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun," and working consistently into his teens in such films as "Newsies" and "Swing Kids," the actor firmly moved into the adult phase of his career with his iconic performance in "American Psycho." That, in turn, saw him win the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan's revival "Batman Begins," which has firmly landed the actor on the A-list.