中國網(wǎng)站品牌欄目（頻道）
 |
| 電影《致青春》劇照 |
|
The year 2013 will be remembered for the spectacular takeoff of China's filmmarket, and it will also go down in history as the year bad movies ruled, or at leastshared, the box office and public consciousness as often as, if not more frequentlythan, good ones. Here is the result of painstaking scavenging for somethingvaluable from a big pile of cinematic fluff and trash. No Man's Land After spending four years in censorship limbo, Ning Hao's dark tale of man at his mostanimal phase finally sees the light of day. The final three-minute scene is so obviously achange for compromise it should be ignored by sharp-eye cinephiles. An ambitious lawyer travels to China's hinterland to defend a hard-boiled criminal and getshim off on a technical loophole. On his way back to the big city, he passes a 500-kilometerstretch of "no man's land" where any trace of law and ethics evaporate like water in thedesert. He encounters a posse of colorful types, including his former client. They are all badguys, but so indelible in portrayal the exaggeration becomes fun. The lawyer awakens tothe vestige of humanity lying dormant in himself and takes a fatal diversion from hisrelentless pursuit of fame and fortune. When Xu Zheng and Huang Bo made this Chinese Western back in 2009, they wereemerging stars. Now, one has helmed the country's highest-grossing movie (Lost inThailand) and the other has firmly established himself as China's best thespian in bothcomedy and drama. The movie has grossed north of 200 million yuan ($33 million).Whatpoetic justice! Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons Stephen Chow elevated himself into a realm of movie gods when his 1994 A ChineseOdyssey became the equivalent of the United Kingdom's Monty Python a cross collegecampuses in China. Chow's retake on the Monkey King story is a 3-D exercise in unalloyedadventure and typical Chow-style humor. This time, it does not have much room forreinterpretation or tea-leaf analysis. The movie cuts a very thin slice from the literary classic, i.e. the coming together of thethree disciples of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) monk before they embark on their epicexpedition to India, but imbues it with a rich tapestry of details. The three parts vary in toneand length, but who cares? The fun is non-stop and it's closer to Stephen Chow than to WuCheng'en the author of the book, even though Chow worked only behind the camera as thedirector. Finding Mr. Right Don't be fooled by the generic title. The Chinese title, When Beijing Meets Seattle, is somuch more telling and titillating. A romantic comedy set largely in Seattle but shot inVancouver, with a few brief scenes in Beijing and New York, it is a tribute to Sleepless inSeattle more than a half-bake remake, with more cynicism of a gilded age. A Chinese woman is sent by her married and obscenelywealthy boyfriend to the United States to give birth. Whilethere, she very slowly falls for a decent divorced man andrediscovers the values she has given up for material gains. Asa tightly structured love story that closely follows Hollywoodgenre conventions it is backed up with nuanced Chinese waysof communication. But the exotic locale adds to theinternational feel which is deceptive as it is a pure Chinese production an became thebiggest sleeper hit of the year. Silent Witness H alf courtroom drama, half suspense, this study in genre filmmaking is tautly woven butbased on an imaginary legal framework. In other words, it is not realistic, but is built on anassumption. Once you accept that, you'll be able to enjoy the twists in the plot and themotivations of every character. The teenager daughter of a rich businessman is widely suspected of killing her father's pop-singer girlfriend. The truth peels off one layer at a time, until we come face to face with thepossibility that there is a bigger power at play than law, something that touches us infundamental ways. The three leads deliver immaculate performances and writer-director FeiXing exhibits a maturity that belies his newcomer status. The Love Songs of Tiedan Hao Jie's second feature suffers the fate of a typical art-house film, which means sinking atthe box office without even a ripple. His debut film Single Men (2010) was a breakoutgarnering a basket of international awards but never attempted to gain approval fordomestic release. As such, it did not need to remove the naughty edges that might haverankled the censors. In both movies, Hao displays the curiosity of a teenage boy who is just discovering thewonders of sex. Tiedan is an adolescent who falls for a much older neighbor and, yearslater, her daughters. The story is very fluent and full of bawdy humor, yet it lacks the smalldetails that make Single Men so refreshing. There is no ideology in either movie, butsomeone growing out of puberty is not really a subject everyone is comfortable with, and thestory is hard to tell well under the circumstances. Young Style Art-house auteur Liu Jie takes a swerve toward commercial cinema, but stops at the mid-point. He fills this coming-of-age story with jokes, but insists on casting non-professional inall the roles except the female teacher. Qin Hailu gets a bunch of hilarious linesadmonishing her students to work tirelessly toward the holy grail for every Chinese high-school student, namely passing the all-important national entrance exam and enrolling in aprestigious university. Here is one: "Sacrifice yourself for the happiness of all your family". Liu pushes the envelope by dwelling on a teenager's fixation on pursuing his love interest,which is a big no-no under current guidelines of movie content. But he dodges the bullets byhaving the romance as the cause for the protagonists' academic failure hence turning thestory into a cautionary tale. Dong Zijian, son of China's super-agent in the entertainmentindustry, did not disappoint his mother, or the audience. It's a very auspicious debut for aninsider. Apart Together Wang Quan'an won a Silver Bear award for best screenplay at the 2010 Berlin InternationalFilm Festival for this film. For whatever reason it did not premiere in China until 2013 - "without any cut or revision" explains the filmmaker - and stil failed to garner any significantbox-office return. A dexterous account of a newly-married Shanghai couple who were separated in 1949 inthe maelstrom of political upheavals the family drama is full of subtlety punctuated byoccasional bursts of funny melodramatic turns. It features natural dialogue and top-notchperformances all round, especially Lisa Lu and Ling Feng, who play the reunited couple.However, it doe not offer a dramatic climax or any obvious message, political or otherwise,leaving many filmgoers perplexed about the moral of the story. On the plus side, it gives youplenty of room for philosophizing. Drug War Hong Kong's reigning king of the gangster genre Johnnie To resisted entering the mainlandmarket for a long time. When he finally did, he did not make too many concessions. As amatter of fact, this film, set and made in the mainland and financed by mainland money,served to widen the boundaries of what a crime drama can depict on mainland screens. Not only are the drug-taking scenes realistically portrayed, but the heroic cop is more three-dimensional than most characters in this genre. The weakness, this time, lies in theantagonist, the Hong Kong drug-make who gets caught in the opening sequence. Thedirector maintains his fast pacing and his signature violence is also intact, but the storyleaves something to be desired in psychological depth. So Young Zhao Wei's directorial debut is a commercial smash, bringing in 700 million yuan at the boxoffice, but it is only three quarters of a good movie. The first 100 minutes, set in a 1990scollege campus, are characterized by fluency and even poignancy. The love story isredolent of the era and its quirks. The female lead, an unknown, reminds one of Zhao'sbreakout TV role Little Swallow, insistent and tomboyish and full of irresistible charm. Fast forward a decade when the group of college buddies reunite and, strangely, continuetheir unfinished love threads. This part turns melodramatic and wildly uneven in tone. It's asif it were made by a different person or lifted from a different movie, a most disappointingcoda to an otherwise perfect paean to the good old days. The Grandmaster Wong Karwai's outing in the martial arts genre is either a masterpiece or a deeply flawedexercise in exerting control over a story beyond his control. The movie has both narrativeloopholes large enough for the whole martial arts academy to march through andcinematography so lush and mesmerizing you'll forget about the story anyway. The titlecharacter disappears for the middle hour, for one. But one thing everyone can agree on:Zhang Ziyi delivers a knockout performance that steals the show and unseats the titlecharacter. The movie is currently on the shortlist of nine finalists for the upcoming BestForeign Language Film of the Academy Awards. By Raymond Zhou ( China Daily ) |
2013年，中國電影市場毀譽參半，一面蔚為壯觀，一面也將因“爛片”當?shù)蓝d入史冊。從票房和口碑看，縱然不能說“爛片”主宰熒屏，那至少也堪稱與“佳片”平分秋色。在此，我們披沙揀金，從影院漫天的浮華與垃圾中搜尋出一些值得一看的影片。 《無人區(qū)》 寧浩這部黑色荒誕作品描繪的是處在極端階段時人的動物本能，因?qū)徍硕鴶R淺了四年后終于面市。眼尖的影迷一定能看出最后三分鐘的場景很明顯是導(dǎo)演做出妥協(xié)而修改的。 一位雄心勃勃的律師遠赴中國西北腹地為窮兇極惡的販隼老大辯護并抓住術(shù)語漏洞為他打贏了官司。在回城途中，他經(jīng)過一個500公里的“無人區(qū)”，在那兒法律和道德如同沙漠中只能蒸發(fā)的水，蕩然無存。他遇到了一系列形形色色的人，包括以前的客戶。他們?nèi)菈募一?，但夸張、極具喜感的刻畫讓人難忘。律師看到了自己身上沉睡的動物性殘余，并下定決心從此不再對名利汲汲營求。 2009年拍攝時，徐崢和黃渤剛在影視圈嶄露頭角。如今，徐崢自己的電影《泰囧》已成為目前國產(chǎn)電影票房的紀錄保持者，而黃渤無論在喜劇還是話劇中都奠定了作為中國最好演員的地位。此影片票房達到了2億元。叫好又叫座是理所當然的。 《西游：降魔篇》 1994年的電影《大話西游之月光寶盒》上映后，周星馳成為電影領(lǐng)域的神話，他在中國大學的校園受歡迎程度與英國的《蒙提·派森的飛行馬戲團》無異。周星馳重拾孫悟空題材，帶觀眾體驗了一場純粹的3D冒險之旅，品味他獨有的周氏幽默。此電影沒有花太多筆墨重新闡釋和分析。 電影選取文學經(jīng)典中的一小節(jié)片段，即唐朝（公元618到907年）一位高僧收取三個門徒開始了師徒四人前往印度拜佛求經(jīng)的宏大征程。在此簡單框架下對細節(jié)大力渲染。與其他此題材作品在口吻和長度上差別很大，但那又怎么樣呢？影片笑料不斷，與原著作者吳承恩相比，它更接近周星馳，盡管這次他僅作為導(dǎo)演身在攝像機后面。 《北京遇上西雅圖》 《北京遇上西雅圖》的英文片名直譯為“找到白馬王子”，相比這個籠統(tǒng)的名字，中文片名要更加引人入勝而富有表現(xiàn)力。影片講述了一個發(fā)生在西雅圖的浪漫愛情故事，卻拍攝于溫哥華，其中少數(shù)鏡頭在北京和紐約拍攝。此片不是翻拍《西雅圖不眠夜》，而是向其致敬，只是多了些對這個鍍金時代的唏噓。 一位年輕中國女子被她的有婦之夫男友送到了美國生孩子。期間，她漸漸愛上了一個離了婚的正直男人，于是重新審視自己因“拜金”而丟棄的價值觀。作為一部極具好萊塢特色結(jié)構(gòu)緊湊的愛情故事，此片又不乏中式細節(jié)的敘事風格。但充滿異國情調(diào)的場景給作品帶來的國際范兒很容易迷惑大家的眼睛，讓人忘記它是純粹的中國制造，同時也是今年中國電影市場最大的黑馬。 《全民目擊》 半法庭、半懸疑的電影題材緊密交織，構(gòu)建于虛擬的法律框架。換句話說，本片純屬虛構(gòu)。只有接受了這一前提，觀眾才能品味片中那跌宕起伏的劇情和角色錯綜復(fù)雜的動機。 富豪十幾歲的女兒被指控殺害其父親的歌星女友。真相層層揭開，慢慢浮出水面。影片要表現(xiàn)的似乎是超越法律更而觸動人心的強大力量。三大主演的表現(xiàn)堪稱完美，作為新人的編劇兼導(dǎo)演非行也為自己交了份成熟的答卷。 《美姐》 郝杰的第二部專題電影還是難逃文藝片票房慘淡的魔咒。他的首部電影《光棍兒》斬獲國際大獎無數(shù)，而在國內(nèi)卻難以得到認可。盡管這樣，它并沒有刪除可能讓審片員為難的鏡頭。 兩部電影中，郝杰都描繪了懵懂少年對性的好奇。《美姐》中的男孩愛上了比他大很多的女鄰居，多年后又愛上了她的女兒。故事情節(jié)流暢，充滿有關(guān)情欲的元素，而對細節(jié)的處理不如《光棍兒》來的清新明快。這兩部影片都沒有觸及意識形態(tài)敏感區(qū)，而青少年對性的認知也不是所有人都覺得自然的話題。因而故事好壞在當前環(huán)境下很難去衡量。 《青春派》 一直走文藝路線的導(dǎo)演劉杰突然急轉(zhuǎn)彎轉(zhuǎn)戰(zhàn)商業(yè)電影，但這次他走了中間路線。他總開玩笑說自己上了年紀，可在片中選角上還是很年輕大膽的，除了女老師是知名演員，其他都是新人。在片中秦海璐說了很多鼓勵高中生為通過高考沖進理想學府而努力學習的搞笑勵志名言，比如“累死你一個，幸福你一家！” 劉杰在影片中花大筆墨描述青少年學生追求愛情，這可是現(xiàn)在電影內(nèi)容中的雷區(qū)，他碰觸了底線。但通過巧妙的安排劇中男主角因追求愛情而高考落榜的結(jié)局又回歸到勵志的主旋律。董子健，這個中國娛樂圈著名的金牌經(jīng)紀人王京花之子并沒有讓他媽媽或者觀眾失望。業(yè)內(nèi)人士也普遍認為他的處女作表現(xiàn)不俗。 《團圓》 導(dǎo)演王全安早在2010年就憑借此電影獲得柏林國際電影節(jié)最佳編劇銀熊獎。不管出于何種原因，三年后才在中國重見天日。制作人解釋說“沒有任何刪減和改編”，但并沒有獲得豐厚的票房回報。 影片巧妙敘述了上海一對新婚夫婦在1949年政治巨變的極度混亂中被分離。平淡的家庭生活偶然出現(xiàn)有趣的戲劇性轉(zhuǎn)折。鏡頭語言平緩從容，盧燕、凌峰兩位失散后重聚的戀人扮演者表現(xiàn)不俗、堪稱一流。但片中沒有戲劇性的高潮，也沒傳達任何政治的或其他方面的信息，讓一些電影愛好者對故事的寓意深感困惑。也有值得贊的一面，就是留給你哲學深思的空間。 《毒戰(zhàn)》 杜琪峰是香港警匪題材電影的大師，長久以來，他都拒絕進入內(nèi)地電影市場。而最終進來后也沒有做太多讓步。實際上，這部在內(nèi)地取景拍攝、由內(nèi)地投資發(fā)行的影片在豐富了內(nèi)地熒幕上犯罪片的描述套路上功不可沒。 影片不僅僅是對吸毒的場景做了寫實的描繪，警察的英雄形象比同題材的刻畫更加立體生動。片中的敗筆就是反派角色香港大毒梟在一開始就被抓了。導(dǎo)演保持了他一貫明快的節(jié)奏，而他招牌式的暴力場面也完整的保留下來。但故事在心理深度上似乎還不大讓人滿足。 《致我們終將逝去的青春》 這部作品是趙薇作為導(dǎo)演的處女秀，從商業(yè)角度看是巨大的成功，帶來了7億票房。前100分鐘發(fā)生于上世紀90年代的大學校園，其特色是敘事流暢甚至有些犀利。愛情故事帶有那個年代的芳香和怪異。女主角是個新人，很容易讓人看到當年讓趙薇一鳴驚人的“小燕子”的影子，都是那樣敢愛敢恨，勇敢堅強，天真活潑。 10年后的同學聚會上，這群大學的小伙伴重聚，并莫名其妙的繼續(xù)他們當年未竟的愛情。這一戲劇化的、突如其來的轉(zhuǎn)變在風格上有點不一致。似乎是另一個人拍的這一部分，或是從其他電影中提取的情節(jié)，如果不是這一令人失望的結(jié)尾，這一定會是完美的懷念舊時光的佳作。 《一代宗師》 王家衛(wèi)鏡頭下的功夫題材電影要么是絕世經(jīng)典，要么是超出他掌控范圍而有硬傷的習作。這部電影在功夫表現(xiàn)上的漏洞足夠武術(shù)界的人集體游行，而從電影藝術(shù)的角度看，敘事拖沓而催眠，讓人忘了要說什么。主人公中途一度消失。但在一點上大家是一致的：章子怡的驚艷表現(xiàn)蓋過了主角的風頭，可以說喧賓奪主?，F(xiàn)在，該影片入圍了奧斯卡最佳外語片的九強。 相關(guān)閱讀 （譯者：ChrisJJ 編輯：Julie） |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
