As a French person in the UK, I'd qualify that the UK is majority non-racist (especially after the Brexit vote), I also don't see much integration here, you have many communities living next to each other that don't mix much, however success was possible thanks to a different attitude that entrepreneurship (the cliche…

Isn't that the problem?
We had a show that was almost strictly political on Comedy Central. Regardless of how good it was, people weren't going to watch.

I wouldn't say I'm hyped, but I found the trailer fun and I have enough good memories of other Philips films that I'll almost certainly go see it when it's released where I am.

I don't necessarily make the most of it (can't be bothered to write something very often), but I still saw a few movies thanks to it I probably wouldn't have otherwise, and mostly for the better.
And it's good to be able to keep track of what I see (though there are plenty of options for that).

Parched is now on Netflix.
If I can just copy my ramblings from Letterboxd:

Netflix's catalogue outside of the US is rather limited, I have no trouble believing it is was the most watched film everywhere, the question is out of how much available.

What's with the dig against the Cesar awards (and do people in the US even know what movies win)?
They can be a bit populist but then also reward good films, for instance last edition Fatima (even if Philippe Faucon is a bit unknown outside of France), Desplechin, and Mustang, best film in 2015 was Timbuktu.
If we take…

I watched To Live this morning. And I thought the criticism was very mild if not barely noticeable (at least to someone not that knowledgeable about the time). And what struck me most for instance was that at no point was anyone lacking food (apart from the doctor who had been arrested, but even for him they make sure…

Only early Zhang I've seen is Red Sorghum (though all the hoopla drove me to get To Live out of the library, there's definitely sexuality in that one, but from a political point of view I couldn't think of anything the government would disapprove of, quite the opposite.
Couple of early Chen Kaige I've seen (Yellow Earth…

There was definitely that, but I believe he started that a few movies earlier. I haven't seen Not One Less but I recall contemporary reviews (in France) then lamenting what was apparently a CCP approved plot.

If anything, I'd say he made his name with the films he did up to the mid-nineties or so (up to To Live). They're the ones that put him on the world cinema map (Red Sorghum won the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival and is still considered in China one of the best Chinese films ever made). Hero if anything was already…

It's the first review I see that suggests it's not top 5 of the year so far (I sadly have to wait until end September to see it), and after Love Is Strange and the almost as good (and therefore only excellent) Keep The Lights On, I'd go see this anyway.

One of their biggest literary classics, Journey To The West is basically a fantasy epic with fart jokes (and was the inspiration for Dragon Ball), so yeah.

Judging by the title of the article, you yourself seem to think no one would read it if you used the name of the director instead of that of the white actor.

I haven't read all his books so don't know.
It's the first one I saw of his, when it was first in the cinemas, I loved it then and I love it now. He himself thinks it's one of his best (and definitely better than Multiple Maniacs) and introduces it every so often, who am I to disagree?

It's not even a question of standards of competence, Mondo Trasho is worse than bad, it's boring, which is probably the worst thing you can say about a piece of trashy provocation (he himself acknowledges it, saying he had material for about 40 minutes but just extended the scenes for no good reason). It was very…

A Dirty Shame is the only one I would call outright bad. Pecker is too sweet to dislike, and Cecil B. Demented is just plain fun.

A Jew from Palestine would still have looked a lot more like someone from the region than let's say Woody Allen. Sephardic Jews can be pretty dark skinned.

There's been only one film so far I'm confident will still be in my top ten by the end of the year (and I'd be surprised if it dropped from first place (not mentioned as it's French and as far as I know not scheduled for release in the US yet, but if you one day spot something called The Son Of Joseph somewhere you…

Very happy to see a mention for Marguerite which seemed then to have been buried as "costume drama for old people" when it's way better than that.