Zulawski orgy roundup part 2: By the light of the silvery moon

(Image: Panopticum)

(My previous entries on BAM Rose Cinema's Andrzej Zulawski series can be found here and here.)


Anybody who takes the time and trouble to be an enthusiast in any field has their holy grails, their tantalizing unattainables. It's like the grown-up geek's version of an ever-receding Christmas morning, where the anticipation of getting is in some ways better than the actual thing. Maybe it's the out-of-print live album, or the uncensored first publication; the baseball card with the misspelled name, or the suppressed and unfinished Polish religio-mystical science fiction epic nightmare.


To cut to the chase, last month I finally saw On the Silver Globe (1977/1988), nine years after first reading about it in Film Comment. And it was only somewhere between 30 and 40 percent a disappointment. That would be the tediously and pretentiously talky part. The other 60 to 70 percent is the surreal, synapse-frying kinda-masterpiece I was promised. Which is more than enough to make it worth seeking out if getting synapses fried is your thing.

Mad Dogs and Chinamen

Chow Yun-fat and hosts (Image: Emperor Motion Pictures and Kong-Cast)

I always feel guilty about not attending much of the Tribeca Film Festival, and I always vow that next year it will be different - but there's so much stuff!  I just get overwhelmed and kind of give up, seeing only one or two movies.  The must-see this year that cut through my option-induced paralysis was Let the Bullets Fly, which recently broke the record for China's highest-grossing domestic film ever, and, more to the point, was reputed to be very good and, perhaps even more to the point, marks the now-sadly-rare occasion of a major vehicle for Hong Kong supernova Chow Yun-fat, still quite possibly the coolest man alive.