2B - Thursday, April 3, 2008

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

REDUCTIVE REASONING
Picking one and one apart.

The Daily Arts guide to
upcoming events
Today
You Can Never Tell
7:30 p.m.
At the Arthur Miller Theatre
$9 with student ID
Tomorrow
The Hobbit 2: The Lord of
the Rings
7 pm
At the Walgreen Drama Center (Studio 1)
Free
Saturday 3.22.08
Ann Arbor "Dance for
Mother Earth" Pow Wow
10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Crisler Arena
$10 with student ID
Choir of King's College,
Cambridge
Sp.m.
At Hill Auditorium
$10-$24
Sunday 3.23.08
Victors and Villains:
Michigan Pops
Orchestra
7 p.m.
At the Michigan Theater
$5 with student I D
Please send all press releases
and event information to
artspage@michigandaily.com.

Mel Gibson in "What Women Want."
'I .THE YEAR OF LIVING
DANGEROUSLY' (1982)
Pran, another way

TRAILER REVIEW
"BANGKOK DANGEROUS"
LIONSGATE
Release date: August 22, 2008
Asian remake number 3,003. The Pang Brothers, the
respected duo that helmed the original "Bangkok Dangerous,"
are back to bring their 1999 Thai action flick to Western audi-
ences. No, they didn't just dub it or subtitle it - they re-shot it,
complete with a particularly greasy-looking Nigholas Cage as
the lead. I don't even want to get into what this phenomenon
of remaking nearly every Asian film to make money says about
our inherent xenophobia, but I will say this looks like decent,
mindless fun. Hot cars, hot women and lots of explosions? All
right, I'll just shut up and have fun with it.
COURESY OF ooSsoun BRANDON CONRADIS

By BRANDON CONRADIS
DailyFilm Editor
With the recent death of Dith
Pran, the Cambodian photojour-
nalist who inspired the 1984 film
"The Killing Fields," it seems
appropriate to write a film vault to
coincide with the tragedy. But "The
Killing Fields," for all the Oscar
nominations it has to its name, is
unforgivably manipulative and
preachy. Instead, I'm reminded of
a contemporary of that film, one
that also deals with the perils of
a hotshot journalist amidst social
and political strife in Southeast
Asia. The film, Peter Weir's "The
Year of Living Dangerously," is
arguably one of the most under-
rated films of the decade, and a
sparkling gem on one of the most
consistently impressive rasum6s of
any director working today.
A post-"Mad Max," pre-"Lethal
Weapon" Mel Gibson stars as Guy
Hamilton, a young Aussie journal-
ist stationed in Jakarta in 1965.
With Indonesia divided by civil
war and the threat of wider conflict
looming, journalists are scram-
bling to get their names on the big
story. Guy soon becomes a celeb-
rity among his colleagues, earning,
the attention of half-American,
half-Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan
(actually played by awoman, Linda
Hunt, in an Oscar-winning per-
formance). Meanwhile, Guy falls
in love with an alluring British
diplomat, Jill Bryant (Sigourney
Weaver, "Aliens") - but as politi-
cal tensions grow within the com-
munity, the trio finds their close
bond threatened.
"The Year of Living Danger-
ously" simmers with a quiet men-
ace. The tension comes not from
the brutal events that surround
the characters - apart from one

stirring scene halfway through,
there's little actual bloodshed
- but from the general sense of
tragedy that envelops them. At its
heart, the film is a romance, and
it's the subtle, honest performanc-
es from its three leads that drive
it. But it's also a thriller, one that
wrings tension out of emotion, not
action.
Much of the praise should also
be heaped upon Weir. An Austra-
lian who began his career mak-
ing art films in the '70s - strange,
dreamlike films like "Picnic at
HangingRock" (1975) -Weir came
into his own when he went main-
stream in the early '80s with this
film and its predecessor, the mas-
An underrated

masterpiece
re-emerges.

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terful war movie "Gallipoli" (1981).
Weir's genius has always come
from his ability to disguise what
are essentially highly unorthodox,
artful tone poems as commercial
products. Even his famous Holly-
wood films, like "Witness" (1985)
and "Fearless" (1993), are offbeat
and idiosyncratic.
"The Year of Living Danger-
ously" may very well be his best
film and that's saying something.
There's probably no better cine-
matic testament to the sheer brav-
ery and commitment of journalists
than this film. So for all intents
and purposes, it's this - not "The
Killing Fields" - which should be
honored in conjunction with the
legacy of Pran.

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