Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.
Mainstream cinema has the potential to demonstrate both the best and the worst that the medium has to offer. Concerning the latter, any number of criticisms can be leveled at the swill and drivel that the world’s film industries will subjects us to and while they are often besides the point, they are just as frequently justified. When money is involved projects must inevitably revolve around profit, so at one end of the spectrum you will always find shallow and consumerist works versus the riskier ventures, often from established talents, that you will sometimes witness at the other.
Mainstream cinema has the potential to demonstrate both the best and the worst that the medium has to offer. Concerning the latter, any number of criticisms can be leveled at the swill and drivel that the world’s film industries will subjects us to and while they are often besides the point, they are just as frequently justified. When money is involved projects must inevitably revolve around profit, so at one end of the spectrum you will always find shallow and consumerist works versus the riskier ventures, often from established talents, that you will sometimes witness at the other.
Between these two extremes there lies an uneasy middle-ground, which is expansive and marked by slippery definitions. Within this domain, there are filmmakers that strive to make something worthwhile from within the strict confines of commercial filmmaking and they sometimes achieve it, indeed every once in a while they might even make something transcendent. Then there exists the studio hands who, despite working from a seemingly routine template with the assistance of unexceptional pedigree, every so often happen upon something that works.
