5 min movie guide
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CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT
What better way to celebrate Chinese New Year at Sundance than selecting ‘CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT’ as my first movie of the day. Evidently that old curmudgeon Chairman Mao banned boxing in China as he said it was the sport of capitalism and thus very bad. It wasn’t until after Mohammed Ali visited China in 1979 as a goodwill ambassador that…
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NEWLEYWEDS
I’ve been a fan of Ed Burns ever since his directing debut ‘THE BROTHERS MCMULLAN’ some 16 + years ago (it picked up the SUNDANCE GRAND JURY AWARD). The small slew of movies that he has written/directed and starred in since them have established him as a kind of an Irish/American Woody Allen, but without…
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ITALY, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
In 2009 I remembered being totally enamored with an irrepressible young Italian gay couple that documented the struggle of acceptance of gay rights in their Country and being totally horrified about the vitriol and power of the Far Right Political Parties that seem to make the American Evangelistic Conservatives seem like real sweethearts by comparison.…
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KAWA
This is an old fashioned coming-out story in which a 40 year old married man and father of two finally accepts his sexuality but by trying so hard to please everyone, no-one ends up happy at all. Based on an autobiographical novel by acclaimed New Zealand novelist Witi Ihumaera (‘The Whale Rider’) that the author…
