At 9:18 AM -0000 10/7/98, Tara Forrest wrote: >>...what other directors have been strongly compared to Godard? > >Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai cites Godard as a significant influence >(evident -in terms of editing and voiceover - in 'Fallen Angels' and >'Chungking Express'). Wong Kar-Wai's use of voiceover however - while >indebted to Godard - is of the cereal box (rather than 'deeply' >philosophical) variety. Wonderful wonderful films. Of course not everyone shares this opinion. Here are some viewer reactions to ASHES OF TIME that I recently discovered: SS - (*1/2) The hottest names HK films futilely act away in this meditative swashbuckler cum spaghetti eastern. Fans of Grain-O-Vision jerk-motion photography and student film stylistic pranks will like this, a cyclical story of swordsmen Cheung and Leung obtaining vengeance for the women in their lives. You can see Maggie's eyes move back and forth as she reads her final soliloquy from cue cards. Pretty awful. CRWP - What this film really means, I'm afraid, is that Ingmar Bergman has finally cracked the last culture that seemed immune to his "interior of the mind" euro-brechtian influence. This is a pretentious Euro art movie about "LOSS," that catch-all of the continental film sensibility and indeed, high bourgeois culture of all kinds. It is exquisitely filmed and evocative but it is ultimately about self conscious camera placement and people gazing out windows while rubbing significant objects against their cheeks. That the objects happen to be ancient Chinese broadswords, helps, but does not disguise the lack of emotional impact that defines this style of filmmaking. Blech! ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]