Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Contrarianism-ism


I'm fully aware that Slate's bread and butter is, along with explaining things, a peculiar brand of tepid, middle-brow contrarianism. I sometimes think their writer's guidelines consist entirely of: "Pick a thing, then disagree with it a little bit." So when someone pointed me to this article by Grady Hendrix about Chinese cinema, my first reaction was along the lines of "meh." But the more I thought about it the more its biases bugged me, so here we go.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Chinese Films Withdrawn from Melbourne


Jia Zhangke and two other directors have withdrawn their films from the Melbourne International Film Festival because of the festival's decision to include a documentary on Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. dGenerate Films has posted a translation of Jia's official statement on the matter, and Richard Brody provides some context.