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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Scott Foundas
Ridley Scott's latest is the post-9/11, tech-savvy terror thriller we deserve.
No matter the run time and budget, Spike Lee's WWII drama is an epic bore.
The best four-plus hours, plus Jesus, round out this year's Toronto film fest.
Racial tension, above and below the surface, in Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace.
Summer '08: Batman saved the season, while a little Sex went a long way and the indies went south.
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Village Voice
Subjected to the light of day, Sarah Palin doesn't look like a maverick at all.
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Houston Press
Ronald Taylor is one of perhaps hundreds of innocent people Harris County has put in prison.
By Randall Patterson
Westword
Sloppy U.S. government paperwork is putting the lives of asylum seekers at risk.
By Lisa Rab
Without a Paddle
Published on June 11, 2008
Its hard being a human, but being a common person in China is even more difficult, one tearful shopkeeper says along the soon-to-be-submerged banks of the Yangtze River in Sino-Canadian documentary filmmaker Yung Changs lucid, beautifully observed portrait of the same incipient flood zone that served as the backdrop for Jia Zhangkes Still Life and its companion documentary, Dong. Whereas Jia turned his attention to the two million zombielike former residents forced to relocate on account of the worlds largest hydroelectric-dam project, in Up the Yangtze, Chang focuses on the luxury pleasure boats that sail up and down the titular waterway, offering tourists a farewell cruise through this ghostly landscape of crumbling buildings painted with water-level markers (150m, 175m, etc.). The ships themselves are hardly less surreal, as elderly cabaret singers rub elbows with young Chinese staffers who have been given American names and instructed in the politesse of dealing with the (mostly) Western clientele. (Dont talk about monarchies, royal families, Northern Ireland, or the independence of Quebec.) By journeys end, Yung has found, in the Yangtze, a brilliant natural metaphor for upward mobility in modern China: Whether they hail from the lowlands or the urban centers, everyone here is scrambling to reach higher ground.
June 13-20, 2008