burned out of her home and forced to live in the chicken coup where her young son was only recently murdered. The culmination of many such dramatised incidents. in COTTJLlilCllOll With dialogue-heaw scenes of political debate. make for a powerful film that provokes both anger and thought. It works wonders as a rallying cry for us to learn from past mistakes that we may rectify our present ones. With obvious parallels being drawn between what the British government did to the Irish and are now deing to the Iragis. (Miles Fielder) I GFT, Glasgow and selected release from Fri 23 Jun.
MARTIAL ARTS FEARLESS (15) 104min COO
Having spent the last few years making schlock English language yarns. Bride of Chucky. 5 lst State and Freddy v's Jason, director Ronny Yu returns to the martial arts genre he used to specialise in. Fearless is a martial arts movie in the vein of Bruce Lee's classic Enter the Dragon. Based on a true story, Jet Li plays Hua Juan Jia. the founder of the Jin Wu Sports Federation at the turn of the 20th Century. The sets and the Chinese backdrop are lavish. but the central premise of this film is designed to serve a single purpose. namely to cram in as many fights featuring Jet Li as humanly possible.
The film starts off with Juan Jia as a carefree young chap who wants to follow in his father's footsteps as a legendary warrior. However the brash and cocky youth soon falls by the wayside with disastrous consequences. He goes into exile. where he meets a blind girl. and it's at this point. away from the action scenes. that Fearless gets rather dull. Luckily. Yu quickly abandons the torrid love story and returns to where the film works best — a series of terrifically choreographed combats.
(Kaleem Aftab) I General release from Fri 23 Jun.
ROMANTIC COMEDY PRETTY PERSUASION (18) 110mins .00.
Kimberly Joyce (Evan Rachel Wood. excellent) is a conniving student. Her home life. where dad (James Woods) has hooked up with a young mistress (Jaime King). is disastrous. But at High School she is the undisputed leader of the pack. As with 803 classic Heathers and the recent Mean Girls. Joyce has two adoring sidekicks in the form of Arab Randa (Adi Schnalll and Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois). There‘s nothing this modern day Lolita wants more than fame and celebrity. and it inadvertently arrives when the girls claim that a lecherous English teacher. Mr Anderson (Ron Livingstone) has
sexually molested them
Director Marcos Siega "tenerl. deCides to tell the stor, in a l‘fl;.".-i new narrative. so .‘Je're never ttiiite sure what to b0il€3‘.’(3. and througl‘ care‘aii, planned reveals. the true ll()rrt)f :1? the Situation is revealed. 8, making sex crimes the source of the satire. Rrett. Persuasion is as dark as high school comedies come. it also arrives armed With heaxy criticism of the public obsession With the sex lives of young girls and celebrity. One llléthi r:r:ti<:ism is that there are too many undexeloped characters. and conseguentli. some of the needless sub—plots run into a (Lul— de-sac, However. this is still a yen. very good film. (Kaleem Aftabi I Cineworlrl Renfrew St. Glasgow from Fri 23 Jun.
oocummmnv TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE (15) 95min oooo
Taking American humourist Henry Wheeler Shaw’s advice to his son to ‘observe the postage stamp! It’s usefulness is to stick to one thing until it gets there,’ Mark Wexler’s film portrait of his filmmaker father, Haskell is a
work of deeply personal, intimate, occasionally unwatchable verisimilitude.
Undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of modern American cinema, left wing firebrand, cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler was the man behind the lens on Franklin J Schaffner’s remarkable The Best Man (1964), Norman Jewison’s imperishable In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair, Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?, Hal Ashby’s superb Coming Home and Bound for Glory as well as more recent work with John Sayles and Lee Tamahouri. Wexler’s real passion however clearly lay in his more political works, which included his now legendary directorial feature about the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, Medium Cool, a little seen documentary about the mysterious anarchist cell the Weathermen, called Underground and 1985’s underrated Latino, detailing Sandinista struggles with US imperialism in the Reagan era.
It’s an inspiring resume and one that his documentarian son Mark (maker of the excellent 1996 film Me and My Matchmaker about his attempts to find a life mate with professional help) is all too aware. From the get go Mark makes it clear that he knows he is an ordinary man who has an extraordinary father and that this documentary is going to be anything but a hagiography. Wexler Jr sets about instead to make an arresting, honest and almost unbearably voyeuristic portrait of his testy, overbearing, arrogant, impassioned and gifted father in the twilight of his career.
The film’s real dynamic comes from Haskell and Mark’s attempts during the making of the film to build a bridge over their differing political stances (in reaction to a childhood of lefty hectoring, Mark’s politics are decidedly conservative; he was even given full access to Air Force One by the Bush administration in 2001 to make a film of the same name). Like Nathaniel Kahn’s brilliant My Architect, this is an arresting journey into the decaying heart of inheritance. (Paul Dale)
I Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 30 Jun. GFT Glasgow from Fri 7 Jul.
Name Byambasuren Davaa Born 1971, Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia
Background Having served her apprenticeship on Mongolian TV, Davaa studied law and film in her home country before securing a place at Munich's University of Film and Television in 2000. Three years later she returned home to make her film debut. The St0ry of the Weeping Camel. which everyone loved. and which was nominated for an Oscar. She returned home once again to make her follow up. The Cave of the Yellow Dog. which was shot in the rural Alati region of northwest Mongolia. where Davaa‘s family are from. Last year in Cannes the film was awarded a special prize: the 'Palme 009'.
What she says about a dog’s life ‘ihe Cave of the Yellow Dog is concerned with the ongoing topic of urbanisation. It focuses on the existential changes that the nomads are facing. It shows the spiritual closeness between man and dog. which has its origins in the Mongolian belief in the eternal cycle of reincarnation. The soul wanders from body to body, from plant to animal, before it becomes a dog and then a human. “Everyone dies. but no one is dead" is a worldly wisdom that my grandmother shared with me as a young girl. But in modern times. many Mongolians are turning away from traditional beliefs in favor of a more modern lifestyle. As a result. the relationship between man and dog is changing.’
Interesting fact In Altai, dogs mate with wolves and their offspring hunt the sheep. goats and children of nomads. The urbanisation of many nomads has left those still living on the land unable to defend themselves against the dog-wolf packs.
I ihe Cave of the Yellow Dog is on selected release from Fri 30 Jun. See review, page 46.
22 Jun-6 Jul 2006 THE LIST 45