THOMAS PODVIN’S FREELANCE WORK
Freelance writer - translator - Editor

Whenever the former Monty Python alumnus and reigning eccentric of the British film industry directs a new project we can expect two hours of imaginative and entertaining fare. The Brothers Grimm is no exception; indeed, it is filled with more bizarre characters and surprising story developments than The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil combined. The real Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, were born in the eighteenth century Germany, and at age 20, began collecting and publishing European folktales, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty. The genius of Gilliam here isn't to adapt one of their tales, but to make a fairytale out of the brothers' lives, portraying them in their early years (before they began writing) as con artists, witch-hunters and collectors of odd objects (a red hood, a glass shoe…). All of which, of course, they will later use as source material for their book. Yet there's something missing in the film; it is amusing, at times even silly, but somehow the old Gilliam magic doesn't quite work.
MGM

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue

While the English title is Just Friends, it translates literally as "I'd rather we stay friends" -- something you'd say to your partner just before you ditch her to return to the sweet and sour life of a celibate. Indeed, being single is the central theme of this bitter-sweet, urban comedy set in Paris -- the world's most romantic city? The plot centers on two characters, Claude (Jean-Paul Rouve), who hasn't been involved into a steady relationship for some years, and Serge (Gérard Depardieu), who flirts at wedding parties in the belief that 56 per cent of married men meet their wives at such an event, ignoring the fact that in Paris, two out of three marriages end in divorce. Serge is a statistician, not the type who lets fate decide his future. Rather, in his quest to meet his mate, he attends speed dating sessions, group therapy and matrimonial agencies and cunningly involves Claude in the process. Directors Nakache and Toledano show Paris as never before, and reveal the male ego in the funniest fashion possible. Just Friends was nominated for the Golden Goblet at the 2005 Shanghai International Film Festival.
Mars Distribution

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue

If you're a baby boomer, then the 1960s TV series Bewitched surely counts as a childhood favorite. Remember the witch Samantha Stephens twitching her nose to cast a spell? Created in 1964, the lighthearted comedy series aired for eight years on ABC – much longer if you include re-runs. In this big screen version, director/scriptwriter Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail) scratched her head and came up with a totally different story. Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) is an ingénue witch who wants to lead a normal human life – whatever that is. She's cast as the lead for a remake of the TV-series Bewitched opposite has-been actor Jack Wyatt. Somehow this version ended up a messy mixture of reality (within the movie) and fiction. Ephron has stretched the movie concept (a remake within the remake) for more than 100 minutes that lack pace and timing – key ingredients for a successful comedy. Those viewers unacquainted with the TV-series will be left wondering what all the fuss is about. Fortunately, Kidman, more radiant than ever, doesn't need a magic spell to make this flick look cute.
Sony Pictures

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue

An airplane crashes on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific. From then on, it's clear that Lost is surfing on 9/11 sediment – an adrenaline rush that terrorizes without respite. Forty-seven passengers survive the crash and soon embark on a crash course on – what else? – survival. Of course, that doesn't leave any time over for wondering why they crashed, but no matter. The environment is hostile, à la Survivor, and this is actually the show's appeal: reality TV never looked so good. For character development (and to avoid the boring and repetitive sets that eventually sank Gilligan's Island) viewers are offered convenient flashbacks that poke into the survivor's past. If the concept sounds intriguing, well, sad to say, it's ruined in part by cheap gimmicks (music video sequences) which intrude upon and destroy the suspense. The series also suffers from the Matrix syndrome – as the episodes mount up the viewer becomes lost and frustrated by an increasingly convoluted plot. Too many questions are asked and very few answers are given. Our advice, watch this multiple Emmy-Award winner if you must, but don't watch too many episodes in a row.
Touchstone Television

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue

"When your city is no longer your city, history can turn the right man to the wrong choice." With its opening sentence, Everlasting Regret hooks the viewer and for the next 115 minutes never lets go. And what a history it is, though the quote is misleading. This is a woman's tale set in Shanghai over a 40 year period, a period of marvelous historical change. Hong-Kong singer/actress Sammi Cheng plays Wang Qiyao, in her best role to date, taking her from a young beauty-pageant winner in the glamorous 1940s to her days as a simple housewife and mother in the post-Mao area. Released in the Chinese mainland as To Live, To Love, the film is based on Wang Anyi's Changhen Ge, an influential, award-winning novel written in the 1990s. Both the movie and the book shine with nostalgia. In the film the city's past is wonderfully recreated by Hong-Kong director Stanley Kwan and production designer William Chang (in large part responsible for the beauty in films by Wong Kar-wai). Everlasting Regret is influenced by both Wong's In the Mood for Love and Zhang Yimou's To Live, but in the end it is a work that stands on its own, an exquisite and bitter tale of a woman, that like Shanghai itself, is like no other.
Shanghai Film Studios

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue

In this sequel to 1998's The Mask of Zorro – a vehicle for Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones – little remains of the original legend of Zorro but the title. Zorro was a California folk hero, a noble, yet modest, man who fought against injustice. Johnston McCulley first introduced the character in a serialized story The Curse of Capistrano in 1919. A number of TV-series and films have related his adventures since, including the notable 1957-59 TV-series Walt Disney's Zorro and the 1975 feature film Zorro, starring Alain Delon.
In this version, Zorro is full of himself: macho, arrogant and selfish. As such, Banderas is more exasperating than ever. What's more, the attempts to modernize the myth, however admirable, fall victim to just about every cliché and obvious emotional triggers imaginable. Of course this spoils the pace of an already very long adventure (2:10). Clearly, this movie is aimed at the youth market, full, as it is with too broad humor, a far too predictable plot with childish subplots, a showy hero, a cardboard baddy and overly-theatrical, unrealistic swordplay. Fun for the kiddies, maybe, but no laughing matter for adults.
Columbia Pictures

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
December 2005 issue