Ray Pride

Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Three Times" is the month's categorical masterpiece, with the Taiwanese master exploring love in three eras, from 1915 to the present day, starring the same pair of actors, including his mouthy muse, Shu Qi ("Millennium Mambo"). For love of language instead of the language of love, there's "Wordplay," a doc portrait of Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword man and his fans, including Bill Clinton. Al Gore's on screen in "An Inconvenient Truth," a bracing, hopeful documentary about the climate crisis, which also happens to be scary, intimate and even funny from the man who introduces himself, "I'm Al Gore and I used to be the next President of the United States." From presidents to "The King," Gael Garcia-Bernal plays his first American character in James Marsh's dark, mythical journey to the heart of Corpus Christi and the guilt of patrimony. Daddy figures? Kevin Keating's "Giuliani Time" reconstructs what was known and believed about 2008 presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani when he was merely an authoritarian mayor. Anti-authoritarian? Pick from Caveh Zahedi's intricately self-abasing comic essay film, "I Am a Sex Addict," about the predilections that wrecked a couple of his marriages, or the gentle drift of 81-year-old Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion," with its own eccentric heart.


(2006-05-24)

Also by Ray Pride

Rush Hour 3
With "X-Men: The Last Stand," directed by Brett Ratner, the "Rush Hour," "Rush Hour 2" and "Red Dragon" helmer, who took over deep into pre-production after Singer migrated across the newsstand to take on "Superman Returns," the three words that come to mind after its mad succession of scramble royales: "Fiduciary responsibility: Accomplished."
(2006-05-23)

Tip of the Week
The Fourth Annual Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival plays this week at Facets, and it's a stellar lineup
(2006-05-23)

Art Break
It's late, and a Sur La Table shopping bag is close to tipping on the sidewalk, bursting with bright red photofinishing envelopes from almost seventy photographers. In precisely a week that bulk will burst across the walls of a nearby bar in the form of almost 2,000 photos taken in twenty-four hours with twenty-seven-exposure disposable cameras
(2006-05-16)

Tip of the Week
The passage of time--finite, limitless--is the psychological center of "Day Break" (2005), Hamid Rahmanian's meditative, often-impressionistic debut feature
(2006-05-16)

Murder ballad
(2006-05-16)

Artists and models
(2006-05-09)

Tip of the Week
(2006-05-09)

China Syndrome
(2006-05-02)

Tip of the Week
(2006-05-02)

Tip of the Week
(2006-04-25)

Something to suck on
(2006-04-25)

Tip of the Week
(2006-04-18)

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