Tag: deity

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ne Zha 2
(Nezha:
Mo Tong Nao Hai,
lit. Nezha:
The Demon Child
Churns the Sea,
哪吒之魔童闹海)

Director – Yang Yu aka Jiaozi – 2025 – China – Cert. 12a – 143m

***1/2

Two supernatural, child warriors battle a plethora of marmots, dragons and immortals – action-packed, animated, spectacular, Chinese box office juggernaut is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 21st

All but destroyed by the events in Ne Zha (Yang Yu, 2019), supernatural, child warriors Ne Zha (voice: Lu Yanting) and his companion Ao Bing (voice: Han Mo) are reconstituted thanks to the giant lotus of deity Taiyi Zhenren (voice: Zhang Jiaming). Their new bodies, however, are unstable.

Mistakenly believing Ao Bing dead, his father Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea (one of four dragon monarchs for each of the seas of the four compass points who live in a vast underground cavern) gives demon Shen Gongbao (voice: Yang Wei) a severed dragon’s claw capable of ripping the sky, and sends him off to the town of Chentang Pass to slash the heavens and cause them to leak lava upon it. A fiery battle ensues.

Meanwhile, after a series of adventures elsewhere including a fight with a hoard of marmots, Ne Zha goes to help heavenly immortal Wuliang (voice: Wang Deshun) as he traps Shen’s forces in a giant cauldron at what is left of Chengtang Pass.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Pharaoh
(Faraon)

Director – Jerzy Kawalerowicz – 1966 – Poland – Cert. 12 – 152m

*****

The reformist zeal of a youthful heir to the Ancient Egyptian throne confronts the immovable conservative tradition of the priesthood of the god Osiris – on Blu-ray from Monday, September 16th

There is nothing else in cinema quite like Pharaoh. That was my impression watching it, and although in such instances you always wonder if there are films of which you’re unaware that lie in a similar vein, this impression is confirmed by watching the Blu-ray’s excellent, 70 minute-odd afterword by critic, curator and scholar Michal Oleszczyk, which contextualises the film by detailing (1) the source novel by Boleslaw Prus, (2) its place in director Kawalerowicz’s wider body of work, which also includes Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and (3) its significance in both 1960s international film culture and wider Polish history.

This disc extra isn’t meant to be watched until after the film has been viewed, not least because it contains a number of spoilers, so I’ll say no more about it in this review except to say that it’s an excellent and worthwhile extra that will add much to the viewer’s appreciation of the film.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Movies Shorts

Opera

Director – Erick Oh – 2020 – South Korea – 9m

*****

Compelling, Oscar-nominated schematic of a self-contained society’s infrastructure behaviour and movement of groups of people within it over a day and a night – from the Annecy 2021 Animation Festival in the Short Films In Competition section – Official 4

This feels like it ought to exist as an art exhibit in a gallery playing over and over again. Watching it online, I went back and immediately rewatched bits of it until I’d seen the whole thing about five times. It’s like a massive moving painting where the camera starts at the top and slowly works its way down to the bottom before slowly panning up again. It makes me wonder if an installation version exists without the panning where visitor can just watch the whole thing on repeat until they’ve taken it all in.

It’s a picture of a self-contained society with the ruler at the top (and a deity above him/her), an elite, the workers at the bottom and several strata in between. In the space of nine minutes, we watch the sun come up and the society go through its daily ritual from morning to night then daily renewal in the morning.… Read the rest