Results tagged “gongli”

Breaking and Entering - Anthony Minghella directs this artsy, foreign drama about a yuppie architect (Jude Law) who begins an affair with a Serbian refugee, Amira (Juliette Binoche) after he catches her son trying to break into his office. Robin Wright Penn plays Live, his long-suffering girlfriend.

Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, which closed out last November’s AFI Festival, is now in release. Curse takes place on the eve of the Chrysanthemum Festival in the year 928 A.D. at the end of the Tang Dynasty, as the emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) arrives unexpectedly to find that the empress (Gong Li) is unwell, despite the herbal medicine that he personally prescribes. The palace setting—the crazy psychedelic colors of its jade walls, the imperial red and gold, and the thousands of soldiers, servants, and other household members—swirls us into intrigue: sons in revolt, incest both witting and unwitting, plots and poison, and at the top of the pyramid, an unhappy autocrat.

The arrival of “Memoirs of a Geisha” this holiday season earned its spot, in LAist’s eyes, as a film worthy of your well earned dollars. The buzz has been building around town for weeks as screenings and sneak previews have been popping up, including this lovely tale of a celeb date night. Directed by Rob Marshall of Chicago fame and starring Ziyi Zhang (who just snagged a Golden Globe nomination), Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe, the story winds through the young melodramatic life of a girl blossoming into a geisha. Those of you who have read the book will find the movie follows pretty true to the story, though Marshall does focus a lot of time on the cat fights and jealousy amongst rival geisha houses and less on what it takes to become a geisha.