The Bullet Vanishes

Let’s start with a crackling good mystery. People are shot. Some in front of witnesses. Yet forensics can’t make a case of death by gunshot. Why? Because without a major piece of evidence – the bullet – the cause of death cannot be ascertained only assumed.

At a local munitions factory, a woman is accused of stealing a box of bullets. Is she fired? Are the authorities brought in to question her. Neither. She’s offered “The God’s Will Resolution.” Basically, she must play a one-round game of Russian Roulette. If she is innocent, God will spare her from blowing out her own brains and everyone would return to work. If she’s not innocent…well, the case would be opened and closed right then and there.

Let’s make it a period drama. Set it in the 1930′s. Lots of men in long overcoats, newsboys caps, or fedoras. Plenty of pistols and tommy guns. Big cars that look boxy and black.

We will need a couple of heroes for the film. One is a local cop who is known as being the fastest gun in the area. The other is a brilliant detective known for both his eccentricities and amazing investigative and deductive powers.

Add in a beautiful woman doctor of forensics as the Medical Examiner (M.E.). And a little exotica in the form of a mysterious fortune-teller. Spice it up with dance halls, opium dens, and houses of pleasure. Then set the whole story in Tiancheng Province in China. They call this film – The Bullet Vanishes.

If we were pitching the story to investors we might describe it as something along the lines of CSI meets Sherlock Holmes with a hint of Miller’s Crossing and Last Man Standing. Actually, TBV only resembles those films based on style and look rather than subject. I’ve used those films as examples only in a general sense of saying that the costumes and cars, the guns and gals, the science, and the period settings of those films are as good a way of describing The Bullet Vanishes as any other.

A Simple Life

Directed by Ann Hui and written by Susan Chan and Yan-lam Lee, who also produced the film, this film was Hong Kong’s official entry for the 2012 Oscars. The title in English is A Simple Life.

The story is similarly quite basic – Deannie Yip , a fine veteran Hong Kong actress, plays Ah Tao, who has been in the service of one family for about sixty years (and four generations) as a nanny/maid/cook/housekeeper. While most of the family has emigrated to the West, the oldest son Roger, played by Andy Lau, has remained in HK. Roger is a very successful film producer. He’s always on the run scouting out locations in China, or taking meetings with directors and actors, he is away from home about as often as he’s in town.

Ah Tao handles the laundry, keeps the apartment clean, cooks, and shops for Roger. She’s well-known in the neighborhood, and the merchants play tricks on her but with affection. We understand that she cares for Roger’s well-being when she chastises him for eating ox-tongue:

You want more angioplasty? Forget about it.

But Ah Tao maintains her place. She wouldn’t think of sitting at the dining table with Roger, or eating with him in the living room while he’s watching tv. She will eat standing up in the kitchen instead. They work well together – when she hears Roger getting ready to leave for a trip, she makes her inquiry simply.

Ah Tao: How long this time?
Roger: Just two days

Roger in his way appreciates all Ah Tao does for him. But Ah Tao suffers a stroke. She becomes impaired, and in the aftermath walks with a quad-cane. But her mind is sharp. She tells Roger that she doesn’t want to be a burden for him. She will live in a nursing home in the area. And pay for it herself.

The Flowers of War

The Flowers of War has been reported to be the most expensive film ever produced in China. I’ve seen the numbers and they are in the range of 100 Million US dollars.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, this epic film is about courage and sacrifice set against the ravages and horrors of war in 1937 in Nanjing, China. This film also marks the first time that a Western Actor has the lead role in a Chinese production.

The film has a limited opening playing only in a short list of select cities (just 21 theaters nationwide) beginning on Friday, January 20th, 2012.

Since it is not playing anywhere in Florida, I have to hope that it will achieve a wider distribution later on, or I’ll have to wait for the DVD to review it.

Christian Bale (an Oscar winner for The Fighter and he starred as Batman in The Dark Knight) has the lead role. He plays a traveling mortician, attending to the dead, while not an adventurer, he’s kind of a wayfaring dissolute man who happened to find himself in Nanjing, and at the church, when the Japanese troops attacked the city in December of 1937.

By circumstances unknown to me, so I’ll call them luck and fate, he and a group of frightened Chinese Catholic schoolgirls and another group made up of a dozen beautiful courtesans, find themselves trapped inside a walled compound, a home to a cathedral – which they hope will afford them safety from the marauding soldiers. Bale’s character, John Miller, will take up the role of the church’s priest, donning the clothing and vestments of a recently killed priest for the impersonation.

What Women Want (2011)

First we will set the stage. We are in Beijing, China, the time is present day, and most of the action will take place in and around a top-tier ad agency. Andy Lau plays Zi Gang Sun, an ad executive who is on a seemingly terrific career path.

He’s not only an eligible bachelor, but he revels in it. He’s unofficially – the hottest guy in the office. He’s also a male chauvinist, and his skill is in selling products to men. Girls working there fawn all over him, that is when they’re not flirting with him, or creating scenarios where they can bump into him.

On his way to the office one day – he meets a beautiful woman in the elevator. He offers to buy her a coffee, and she says she only drinks water. You can see the attraction. His for her is written all over his face, and she’s intrigued too, only she’s not so outgoing about it that you can easily tell what she’s thinking. She is Li Yu-long and she’s played by Gong Li. Lau’s Mr. Sun doesn’t know it, but she’s just been hired by his firm to become the Executive Creative Director of the firm – a position that he thought he would be promoted into that day.

After his boss, the firm’s CEO’s broke the news to him that Li got the job instead of him, he heads back to his office, where his staff had a surprise party set up for him – a celebration on his promotion. That he didn’t get. He dismisses them. Sorry guys, not today. Maybe sometime in the future.

The next morning, there’s a big meeting scheduled in the conference room to introduce this Li. Sun makes a bet with one of his buddies, that this Li, whoever she is, will look like a man. Soon after Li walks in and sits down. Sun goes over to chat her up.  He still hasn’t a clue as to who she is. He only knows that she is the woman from the elevator from yesterday. ”Oh – you also work here?‘, he says, amping up the wattage of his smile.

When Li takes off her glasses, Sun says, “You look good without your glasses.”

She replies, “You also look good … without my glasses.”

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – July 15th, 2011

There is a word (or words) in Chinese that means ‘old sames’. That word is laotong. As understood, it is used to describe a relationship between two women that would be similar to close and strong friends, would last longer than sisters, and be even more intimate than marriage, but yet would not involve sex. In short, a laotong would be an emotional match that would last a lifetime.

In 2005, Lisa See wrote a novel called Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. This book would become a best seller. In the book, a character describes a laotong thusly: A laotong relationship is made by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and eternal fidelity. The book opens with the following sentence:

I am what they call in our village “one who has not yet died.”

The speaker of these words is an 80 year old widow. She’s outlived her husband, and her future is limited. So she spends much of her remaining time looking at her past, filtered by memories that are hers alone, or those memories shared with her laotong.

From those 14 words, the story of a specific laotong would be told. The novel is more than 250 pages long, and in 2011, this story will be released as a motion picture. The director is Wayne Wang, who also directed the film version of the Amy Tang novel – The Joy Luck Club.

The Piano in a Factory

The Piano in a Factory (2010) is a comedy drama from China. The film was directed and written by Zhang Meng, with the Korean, Jae-young Kwak as Collaborating Director. I caught this film today at the Sarasota Film Festival.

This is a film whose producers just signed a distribution deal with Film Movement in mid January this year. A New York theatrical opening is planned for this summer, with a limited national roll out to follow. At present, there’s no DVD available, and there’s not even a movie poster available. The image above is a still created from the closing credits.

So what is the buzz about? The story is intriguing. This is Northern China, a heavily industrialized area. But this particular city, is in the throes of the post-industrial hiccups. In fact this is a dying city. Factory after factory have been shutdown, for reasons that could be called obsolesence. Only here, there’s no ‘new’ to replace the old. There’s rampant unemployment, ashen skies, and life is a struggle.

Chen Guilin is a laid-off steel worker. He and his friends are making a meager living as a small musical band for hire. They hire themselves out to occasional weddings and other celebrations, such as a funeral. Chen has a young 10 year old daughter who has shown a great interest and talent for playing the piano.

The Wedding Banquet

Before Lust, Caution (2007), before Brokeback Mountain (2005), before The Hulk (2003), and even before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Taiwanese movie director Ang Lee was well known in international movie circles for his very well received The Wedding Banquet, which was released in 1993.

The story basics start with three characters, Wai-Tung and Simon, a gay male couple, and Wei-Wei, a beautiful struggling artist who is a tenant in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, rental apartment property owned by the portfolio diverse Wai-Tung.

Wai-Tung has not told his parent that he is gay. Said parents continue to harangue him about getting married and presenting them with grandchildren. And Wei-Wei is facing deportation from the US unless she can marry an American.

Well, Wai-tung is a naturalized American citizen, so a ‘marriage’ of convenience between he and Wei-Wei is designed by the threesome. Wai-tung announces this to his parents in Taipei, and to his shock and dismay, they promptly announce that they are flying in to meet the bride, and arrange the wedding, as a civil ceremony only just won’t do.