We had summer here for a week and then yesterday it suddenly disappeared, without a trace, and I was shivering in the cold wind. Being inside and write letters suddenly felt like an excellent idea!
I agree with what you say about festival audiences. Over the years I've been to a number of Q&A sessions at film festivals, and occasionally I've been the one providing the A's (at Bergman related events I've organised), but I usually find them embarrassing. Embarrassing because the questions are often naive and uninformed and so very rarely about the art but almost always about the politics. ("How do you feel about the rebellion now taking place in Mali?" is a more common kind of question than, "That scene in the middle, when they were at the lake, was beautiful. How did you shoot that?") It is as if people watch film at festivals to get their prejudices about other countries confirmed.
It's quite possible that Ai Weiwei's biggest artwork is himself, but is that necessarily a bad thing? He is a living installation, using the Chinese authorities as part of the artwork, and as such he is probably not aiming for timelessness but for an embodied critique of the contemporary.
I haven't watched A Touch of Sin yet, these have been busy days and I've had to prioritise rather harshly (it doesn't help that it has only been shown in a cinema here in which all seats are terribly uncomfortable).
This week I'm working on an article about Yasujiro Ozu, an inspiration for both Jia and Hou, and a filmmaker I feel have been talked about in a manner that is rather disconnected from the reality of the actual films. There is a big difference between Ozu's films and the constructed, critical idea of them. This of course often happens but I think it is unusually pronounced in the case of Ozu.
Today I think I'm going to see the new Godzilla. Not because I expect to be enlightened about the world and the political issues facing Japan or the US today but because, judging by the trailer and a few articles I've read, it is spectacular-looking, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Fredrik
