The fleeting Nordic summer, a respite from the darkness of interminable winter, is “the loveliest time of the year,” the Swedish author Selma Lagerlof wrote, with some understatement, in “The Story of Gosta Berling”: “Everything was beautiful. The road, gray and dusty as it was, had its border of flowers.” Even “the smallest child went on the road with a bunch of lilacs in her hand, and every peasant woman had a little bouquet stuck in her neckerchief.”Entertainment6 Aug 2024
(Rewind): Elaine May’s genius goes beyond her Tony-winning performance in “The Waverly Gallery.” The four movies she wrote and directed between 1971 and 1987 are among the strongest Hollywood films of the period.
No other filmmaker has been more immersed in the social upheavals of contemporary China than Wang Bing. Beginning with “Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks” (2003) a three-part, nine-hour look at the painful decline of a once-thriving industrial zone, the 52-year-old documentarian has consistently portrayed those dispossessed amid the changing landscape of his rapidly developing country.
(Streaming): John Huston’s “Beat the Devil,” the Humphrey Bogart vehicle once advertised as a decade ahead of its time, is now an official senior citizen, having opened in New York 65 years ago this month.
A child who, starting at age 7, attended an academy for Chinese opera and martial arts in his native Hong Kong, Chan was an international star well before he came to the attention of most American moviegoers.
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