| The 50 best family films Gallery: As part of the Commission Us strand of our Film Season, you asked for a library of the best children's films. Here's our top 10; here's Michael Hann's personal choices, where you can also add your own guardian.co.uk |
Video | The Social Network: 'A revenge of the jocks drama' He's socially awkward, misunderstood and lonely, but it's not Mark Zuckerberg you feel sorry for in David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's telling of the Facebook story, says Catherine ShoardCatherine ShoardHenry Barnes guardian.co.uk |
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: No 9 Ang Lee, 2000In 2000, a knockout blow for the venerable martial arts movie was visited upon unsuspecting western audiences by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee's exhilarating addition to the genre. Hardened critics at Cannes greeted fight scenes with excited applause. People who'd have never dreamed of watching martial arts found themselves debating the finer points of wuxia, the fighting style that allows its practitioners to defy gravity and soar above rooftops.Shot with Chinese actors speaking Mandarin, but co-written by US writer James Schamus, Crouching Tiger was received indifferently in Asia but proved immensely popular in the west, winning four Oscars and becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. No wonder: you could lose the subtitles and still be transfixed by the film's visual delights. The scenery, taking in Qing-dynasty Beijing, the ghost city of Xinjiang and other extraordinary Chinese locations, is magnificent. The fight scenes are choreographed with exquisite grace by Yuen Woo-ping, whose work on The Matrix had wowed audiences the previous year.The most famous scene has famous warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and upstart Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) battling with swords at the tops of tall, swaying bamboo trees. No less thrilling is the rooftop scene in Beijing, or Jen Yu's show-off battle at a traveller's inn. With fight scenes like that, the plot doesn't matter, surely? What's most pleasantly surprising about Crouching Tiger is how emotionally involved in the characters' stories you get. Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) are the famous warriors who fear only declaring their love for each other. Jen Yu is the impetuous governor's daughter who engages in a secret affair with a desert bandit (Chang Chen) and fancies herself a warrior. In keeping with genre traditions, the plot is intricate, requiring a great deal of exposition – including daringly extensive flashbacks which reveal Jen Yu's adventures in the desert – but Lee handles it all with consummate skill.Action and adventureAng LeeKillian Foxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
The best horror films: 'We'd freeze-frame the bit where the head falls off' Xan Brooks tentatively enters through cinema's blood-spattered back door as he explores the history of what is traditionally the tawdriest genreXan BrooksAndy Gallagher guardian.co.uk |
Ang Lee casts unknown teenage actor in Life of Pi Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student from Delhi, wins lead role in film adaptation of Yann Martel's novelA previously unknown Indian actor has won the lead role in Ang Lee's forthcoming big screen adaptation of the bestselling novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, reports Variety.Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student from Delhi, beat more than 3,000 other challengers for the role following a month-long search. He will start work in January, when Lee plans to start principal photography in Taiwan and India. David Magee (Finding Neverland) has penned the screenplay.Martel's 2002 Man Booker prize-winning novel chronicles the travails of a shipwrecked teenage boy stuck on a life raft with only a female orangutan, an injured zebra, a hungry hyena and a brooding Bengal tiger for company. Lee will utilise state-of-the-art technology to bring the story to life, and the film will be released in 3D. Studio Twentieth Century Fox sees it as a tentpole, all-audience film.When he announced his involvement last year, Lee, who is best known for his films Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Sense and Sensibility, said he was struggling with the story structure."How exactly I'm going to do it, I don't know," he said. "A little boy adrift at sea with a tiger. It's a hard one to crack!"Prior to Lee signing on, the project had been stuck in development hell for a number of years. Film-makers such as M Night Shyamalan, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Alfonso Cuarón had all been attached at one time or another, but none managed to get the movie into production.Ang LeeYann MartelBooker prizeBooker prize 2002Ben Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |