Father Geek here with our new Euro-AICN editor Robert Bernocchi's 4th column for AICN's new Euro-headquarters in Rome. This week, long-time Euro-column reporter Grozilla has scored a great interview with a former classmate of ol' Father Geek's at the University of Texas Film School back in the twilight of the 60's and the dawn of the 1970's, Tsui Hark.

Yes the master of Hong Kong cinema learned his craft deep-in-the-heart of Texas back before there was SLACKER, or Robert Rodriguez, or BLOOD SIMPLE, or Mike Judge. He was there in the time of the profs that spawned TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and Tobe Hooper, the era that saw Farrah Fawcett roaming the school's hallways. Annnnnnnd yes indeed Father Geek was there then too, soaking up film production classes, and learning screenwriting, and attending with Harry's mother Summer long seminars taught by the likes of Howard Hawks and Edward Dmytryk.

We were told to make a living we had to go to the West Coast. Tsui would go so far West he ended up in the East, and we (Harry's mom and I) formed the "Mind's I" psychedelic lightshow company, working with most of the top touring Rock bands of that day, and I got down to the business of producing my greatest work to effect the world's Entertainment industry, Headgeek Harry Knowles, Buuuuut enough of the history lesson...

Now here's Robert...

Euro AICN

Robert here, with the usual dose of news, reviews and a great interview with HG maestro Tsui Hark. I also received a Star Wars – Episode II scripment by our correspondent Ratbert and I suppose this was the one removed from TheForce.net at the request of Lucasfilm. Thus, unfortunately, we can’t use it. Before going deep on this week stuff, I want to point out to italian audience that since november 22 to november 25 in Rome, during the comic exhibition Romics, there will be plenty of LOTR collateraled events. We, as Caltanet, will be there, so, if you live near Rome, try to have a look.

Heard through the grapevine :

The french distibutor of Not Another Teen Movie is brainstorming about its french title. For once, they've got a funny idea: it seems that they thought calling it "Encore un film à la con" . But I'm not sure they'll dare do it. And even less explain what it means (another lousy movie) to Columbia.

Speaking of teenage comedy, a small company decided to make a kind of french American Pie. It's called Sexy Boys and gonna be one of the big release for the end of year. This company can be proud because this is as dull as American pie, but goes far beyond on its trash side. Forget the apple pie for a new recipe : in one scene one of the fellow looking for sex (Why does teenagers are only focused on sex in comedy nowadays. Did no director or executive in charge ever saw Ferris Buller's day off or Stand by me ?) jerks off in a kitchen glove filled with hot spaghettis. His girlfriend rings at the door. After opening, he goes to the bathroom to clean his dick. When he come back to the kicthen, the girl has mixed the pasta with some others the guy cooked for a dinner with pals. Next shot is a close-up on the mouthes of girls sipping the spaghetti with some white stuff on it. Then wondering what's this special taste... Bon appétit. There's also a funny vomit scene in this film which is nor good neither bad. Just lacks of directing and script. I keep wondering why in France, directors and producers use for teenage comedy, actors too old to be trusted in those parts (here each of them is over 20). Anyway I guess it won't be a good idea to release Sexy Boys just two months after American Pie 2 opened here. Kids are kids but can't be fooled too much. The first screenings of Sexy Boys with this specific audience was kind of disastrous, all seeing just a copycat of the Weitz's movie. Too bad when if Sexy Boys is far to be unforgettable, it got some good parts and ideas from Emmanuelle, as a shrink<, even one very promising actress, Armelle Deutsch (Newyorkers Aicn readers can see her in Francis Veber's comedy The closet, she plays the youngest accountant).

Grozilla®

Four Weddings and a Funeral star Charlotte Coleman has died aged 33, after suffering a massive asthma attack.

The BAFTA-nominated actress was found dead in her flat in Holloway, north London, on Wednesday by her actress mother Ann Beach. Miss Coleman's parents had become worried after not being able to contact her. Her father, retired producer Francis Coleman, said the actress had always suffered from asthma, and had two or three inhalers, but had never experienced a major attack.

Mr Coleman, 77, said his daughter was taken to Whittington Hospital in north London, but was pronounced dead on arrival. He said she had been in great spirits when they had last seen her, the day before she died.

"When she left she said she was feeling a little ill and I told her to stay with us but she wanted to go home," he said. "The family is devastated. We loved her and she was a rare creature who the camera loved. "It has all come as a terrible shock to us all but the family is pulling together."

In the hit film Four Weddings And A Funeral, Miss Coleman played Scarlet - the chaotic and eccentric flatmate of Hugh Grant's character. She won a BAFTA nomination for the role, in which she also starred alongside John Hannah and Simon Callow.

She had been involved in television since the age of eight, with roles ranging from a part in Worzel Gummidge to the BBC sitcom However Do You Want Me? and the television drama, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Geoffrey Perkins, head of BBC comedy, said: "Charlotte was a charming and wonderfully eccentric person. She bought these qualities and more to the roles she played. She will be sadly missed." Mr Coleman said there would be a private family funeral on Wednesday.

Ratbert

Shame’s Photos review

It was longtime since I was so impressed by an italian debut. But when I’ve seen Shame’s Photos, a CGI animated short realised by Daniele Lunghini and Diego Zuelli, I immediately understood the importance of their work. Actually, I wasn’t the only one. Shame’s Photos won The Grand Prix Award at World Animation Celebration defeating such adversaries as Pixar’s For the Birds and Oscar 2001 winner Father and Daughter. Moreover, at the Castelli Animati festival (which occurs every year in Genzano), the short was elected the best european feature, beating the latest works by Jan Svankmajer and Paul Driessen. Shame’s Photos is a sincere hommage to the classic film noir, with all the stereotypes of this genre. As a matter of fact, we have the mafia-connected politician, a young and beautiful lady, a cold killer and, last but not least, a brave and reckless photographer, who takes some pictures of a senator with a woman who is not his wife (Shame’s Photos, as the title says). Of course, the senator wants to take his revenge and tries to kill the audacious photographer, who reminds me Joe Pesci’s character in Howard Franklin’s The Public Eye. Thus, what makes this short extraordinary is not what it tells, but the way it tells, as recently Christopher Nolan’s Memento did. The short is realised in CGI and it’s astonishing that such a work was made with so poor means. Shame’s Photos is shooted with a unique, wonderful plan sequence, which reminds undoubtely Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil legendary opening. But the pic also has a very modern look, very similar to Matrix most acclaimed sequences. And, even though the characters’ expressions and movements are forcely static, the movie is able to express anguish (the running photographer’s eyes), coldness (the killer’s eyes) and, most important, a great energy (the fighting scenes at the end, worthy of Samuel Fuller’s Underworld, U.S.A.). And a wonderful and perfect score, unsettling as the movie requires, composed by the band Complesso Residenziale. At the Castelli Animati festival, Oscar Grillo, president of the jury, kept on congratulating Lunghini’s work. Thus, if you don’t believe me, trust someone who spent his life realising cartoons. And, if you want, see the short by yourself by clicking here: Do It Right Now

The Point Men review

Director: John Glen Starring: Christopher Lambert, Kerry Fox, Vincent Regan, Maryam D'Abo.

Rare are the authors that are able to create a vivid movie about the clashes of Israeli hitmen and Arab terrorists. 007 - veteran John Glen joined the legion of these greats with his latest feature The Point Men. Ripley Highsmith`s script (based on Steve Hartov`s novel The Heat Of Ramadan) served as an exceptional reason for the reunion of the reliable B-cast that doesn`t even warm the bench in the mainstream cinema these days. Action fans eventually got an opportunity to enjoy a pretty smart conception of heartwarming cliches from the, allegedly dead, MOSSAD - genre that was revived by an intelligent script, above average budget, and Glen`s crafty direction of gunfights and car chases where bullets really hit the flesh and real cars get smashed up. No comment belongs out of this statement. There`s just home cinema for all those action buffs who craved for a good flip of an expensive Mercedes ever since McTiernan`s Die Hard With A Vengeance. Ethan

From ScreenDaily

Fry, Winterbottom projects on Revolution's slate The UK's Revolution Films is developing a slate of new films in- cluding actor Stephen Fry's directing debut, Bright Young Things, which Fry is adapting from Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, Vile Bodies, as well as a Michael Winterbottom pro- ject about the conflict in Afghanistan. http://www.screendaily.com/index.pl?6514

Grozilla had the chance to meet one of the HK most legendary directors and sent us this great interview:

Tsui Hark was in Paris last thursday to promote the french release (on dec 12th) of one of its latest masterpieces, Time & Tide (I watch the Z1 DVD any time I can, and still find some new thrills in it). How couldn't I share with euroaicn fellas an interview ?

With Time & Tide you’re going back to Hong Kong after two american movies. Is it the reason this film is so daring, as if it seemed to be a relief for you?

I’ve never done something like Time & Tide before. I was searching for some original ways to tell a story. I don’t know how far filmmakers can go without losing the audience. I’m here to experiment things and expecting the consequences, then knowing where not to go. Time & Tide must be seen as an experimental movie which can let me know for the next film which directions taking.

Time & Tide ends with a baby delivery surrounded by mayhem. Is it a metaphor for the future of HK, which lives now a situation as chaotic as your film?

That’s not only true for HK but for any crisis situation: in those case one must find things to lead life, another one must knows which things will give a new meaning for life.

Opening and closing Time & Tide are some quotes from the Genesis you modified. Does that mean that any director is a kind of god for his own universe?

(Laughs followed by a long pause) Well, No! Reading this opening text made me a bit shy because it was like commenting a divine act. I found amusing to start with words from the bible. This film talks about someone who wants to make the world better. Genesis was the perfect text for that. I like the idea of opening a movie by telling that at first there was nothing, that’s the perfect start for a story. Starting from emptiness to create someting.

Apart from those quotes, the climax of Time & Tide is the final delivery scene. Is for you this film, a kind a rebirth, especially when knowing that many of your previous films were about keeping the faith in some old traditions, in ancestral culture?

More than a message I wanted to make a statement with this film: when You’ve done some actions, we need to ask ourselves some questions about the reason that led to those actions, why we did it. If we have to do it again, I wanna know why, know what’s necessary for those actions. Mankind is just animals guided by history. I don’t wanna tell anything about the actual situation of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong-Kong at a time when their reunion is not sure to happened. No lesson can be teached by looking at the past. What’s done is done. Better watch the future, thinking of the consequences our acts could lead, before those acts happen.

We all know now what Hk movies brought to Hollywood but on the other way, what did your hollywood experience bring to this film?

Making a movie inside the Hollywood system is more about adapting your way of working to new codes, other manners of dealing, thinking, making films. Standing in front of guys who have a totally difeerent point of view on cinema. I wanted to know if and how I could work and resist to this context. To me this experience was more a way of looking myself inside a system that being its slave. But when I went back home, some kind of instinct, some familiar background grabbed me. This experience allowed me to know where I was, what was really important to me, what I wanted to tell since then. Overall it allows me to project it in a film.

Since almost twenty years you’re known as the master of HK movies. You’re everywhere: director, producer, owner of a special effects lab, and of an animation studio. Are you a man of power? Is it easy to live with that social status?

In the early 80’s, I was working for companies. I was always in strong conflict with them, mostly about the way they worked on scripts and their contests. I then prefered creating my own society to get the final word. Films Workshop took its name from some classes I teached on film school. I chose this name by derision and in reaction to those other producers.

I didn’t know it will last so long. In 1982, I needed many special effects people didn’t do in HK to put in Zu. So I took some of my students who learn how to make it. A year later, another production I was working for asked me to deal with the SFX they needed. I thought, why not reunite again those students? In the meantime, they all have created their own shops, with radically different ideas. No way to bring them in the same way of working. I found then easier to create my SFX shop with people I like, who I could trust, who I could get along with. Today, history is repeating: I asked exstern society to work on the CGI for my films, but I’m not satisified of their work. I think I’m gonna create my own CGI shop.

I don’t feel much interest in power. I’m just looking for making my work easier to do films faster and in the most efficient way, without having to convince other people with my ideas. My status and reputation implies obviously some notion of power for the outside. This worries me a bit when it makes me to deal with political considerations or some kind of pressure. I just try not to think about it.

One genre seems to resist to you: animation movie even if you’re working hard on it. Why this interest for this genre?

When I was five, Snow-White was rereleased in HK. I didn’t know then what was a film. I just thought about it as a comic-book. When I learned it was a film, I wanted to see it. At first, my mother didn’t allowed me to. Because there was some kissing scene, and because Snow White was sexy. She told me that wasn’t an entertainment for kids. I was frustrated, even more when all my schoolmates talked about it. At last I saw it and it sealed my love for animation films which I stiil look at as the merrier portraying of society. Everything in there is beautiful and happy, far from the reality.

Paradoxically, it’s when the western film industry is making its own the HK film narrative codes, that HK industry seems to searching a new way. What’s your opinion on that?

It’s not the first crisis in the HK film history. It’s just the same thing that happened in the beginning of 80’s and 90’s when a film get some success, it gave birth to so many clones using the same recipes. The irony now is that at a time where we’re trying to avoid, to extinct some clichés, they’re growing to be a strong flavour of the month in american films, where any chinese character has to be able of flying or being a kung-fu master. Nowadays, HK film industry is dealing with another problem: the only genre which is now successful is local comedy, which can’t be exported. It leads filmmakers to some contradiction: if they want to make action movies, they’re now in strong competition with Hollywood films using the same codes but with more money. They have a choice to make: making films just for local market or for international one. We need to find a third way which can avoid this frontal competition with Hollywood.

Time & Tide is the first of your films to get a wide release in France and many other european countries. At a time when the international market is becoming crucial for HK film industry, is the biggest challenge to be at last released in Mainland China?

(Ironic smile) It just doesn’t deal with commercial reasons. China’s policy toward cinema is radically different from other countries. If one day it would allow filmakers to be free to tell anything they want on screen, China will be a perfect world. But it’s like having expectations of something no one can tell if will happen one day. In other words, that’s totally illusive.

Time & Tide is produced by Columbia Asia. Was it a way to keep a relation with the Hollywood system?

The fact it was set-up within Columbia Asia didn’t mean it has a connection with Hollywood. Columbia Asia is a local office of this studio, but has a different organisation and way of working. I recently get in touch with some Columbia’s guy who didn’t seem to know how Time & Tide was conceived in their asian office. All their districts: production, acquisition, investments are clearly distinct. Until now I just spoke with four people from Columbia Asia, each from differents districts (laughs).

HK movies are known for their poor work on sound. Time & Tide got an impressive work on this side. Was it to reach the nowadays international standards where sound is more and more important or just to use the sound as a part of narration of its own?

Indeed, I wanted to work the sound, but first it means finding the means to get it. Which is not usually the case in HK. Getting a better sound means spending more time on it, having more takes so having more comfortable conditions of shooting and this costs more than the average HK film. Second: we had the luck to use a very good laboratory for the prints. It seems the be the least in western industries, but that’s not the case in HK. Often, there are the labs which got the final word on the way the sound and the image will look like. Combination of sound and image create a psychological impact: sound is able to get its own narrative logic and to give some clues to the story without being explicit, because the audience will mentally complete them. Nowadays the sound gave a texture to a film. I even think it’s more important than the music now used as a marketing product, neglecting its information part, just expressing what is already shown on screen. Sound has became the real modern part of film. Anyway it would be dangerous to dissociate sound and image in film, both need to be worked on. Any editor who just express interest for image will always be restrained by the room needed by a film. Adding the sound make this room wider, allows a wider universe.

In this technical context, how did you built the script structure for Time & Tide?

There wasn’t any real beginning point. Many ideas rooted around one common point: characters form different backgrounds influencing their relationships to society. Their interactions lead to this opened structure.

What’s the meaning of the title?

It came from a HK song about the way people who got a glorious life are dealing with another part of their life less glorious. It evokes the difference between some happy lives and other ones less happy. It seemed to be in phase with what I wanted to tell in this film.

John Woo, Kirk Wong , Chow Yun-Fat, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are now estated in Hollywood. You came back. Was it clear from the beginning you would come back to HK?

I kept on thinking Asia is a genuine and inextinguishable treasure of culture, and that America lives on a very poor one. As a filmaker I found instructive to make films anywhere in the world, but staying in Asia is like a neverending exploration. Even if I spend the rest of my life there, making movies asking about my roots and my identity, my work will never reach an end. That doesn’t forbid me to have a look on the outside world. If someone comes to me with an external project I like, I’ll go making it. Some american studio just ask me to direct a thriller about FBI. It interest me at least for knowing how the FBI became so present in american society. If they’re not scared to work it with me, I’m not scared as well.

On the opposite side, we all know the influence of american films on the others films industries worldwide. Hollywood is thinking on how to deal with September 11th. Do you think it will affect worldwide movies? Definitely yes. Which kind of changes will it lead to? Too soon to know.

For now there’s many speculations on which way Hollywood will react to September 11th. I suppose that its films to come will avoid dealing with destruction. Studios estimate that audience want to see harmony, family, good feelings. The truth will anyway come from the audience when they’ll sanction the film on screen. One thing is certain, we won’t see for a longtime any SF movie about destroying America: we know now that it could be done in reality.

HK films are closely tied with the city. What’s your relationship to it?

This city is so small it’s always about to implode. Actually, if you spend sometime in HK, you won’t get tied with the city but with its people. They’re the best survivors in the world, living on with such an energy. In fact it’s that people’s energy who gives life to HK, not the opposite.

There¹s an enigma unsolved for european film fans : how did Jean Claude Van Damme manage to seduce so many brillant HK directors?

(Long pause, a bit embarrassed) Well, maybe because he’s so friendly! (bursting in laughs)

Grozilla

Even this week is over, folks.

Robert Bernocchi

euroaicn@yahoo.com

http://www.caltanet.it/frm/cinema