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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 26, 2018 5:18:36 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Jan 8, 2019 16:46:43 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Jan 20, 2019 4:28:20 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 20, 2020 2:45:29 GMT
Rare Make-up chair pics of li'l Bale!
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 20, 2020 2:56:53 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 23, 2020 15:29:45 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 27, 2020 18:27:20 GMT
An insightful analysis of Bale's perf from the filmexperience.net blog: thefilmexperience.net/blog/2020/11/7/the-oscar-worthy-kids-of-1987.html"Christian Bale, EMPIRE OF THE SUN Despite its epic proportions and Spielberg's typical appeal to sentiment and nostalgia, Empire of the Sun is, in its essence, a character study. Everything, from the staging of scenes to the use of choral music is meant to establish everything we see as an extension of the protagonist, an English son of privilege living in Shanghai when Japanese forces invade. Countless times, we are meant to see that Bale's Jim is unaware of the reality he lives in, sheltered to a spoiled degree, clouded by the veil of a happy childhood. Because of that, the arc he goes through is all the more noticeable and felt deep within. Bale takes Jim from bratty exuberance, a Lord Fauntleroy who looks at warfare through rose-tinted glasses, to a husk of a person. It isn't merely a question of dying naivete and the pains of growing up, but the portrayal of someone whose spirit grows callous-like hardness through the friction of prolonged hardship. Even if this was a role given to an adult, Jim is one hell of a difficult character. Bale, already an accomplished actor at the tender age of 13, tackles these challenges with the feverous abandon of an inspired master. He surrenders to Jim's early hysteria, his hunger, and crushed romanticism. Later, when the toll of war changes the boy, he chisels away at his soul. The light grows dim in his eyes, a cold cynicism shapes an impenetrable mask that shrouds the little hints of childishness still intact. Still, even after all that, the light inside hasn't died and Bale reveals it, at crucial times, to devastating effect."
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Post by RhodoraO on Jan 4, 2021 15:40:30 GMT
From an essay on Molly Haskells book "Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films" (2017): www.villagevoice.com/2017/01/12/molly-haskell-follows-spielberg-from-boyhood-to-responsibility/"Her chapter on 1987’s Empire of the Sun, the film she cites as the director’s best, offers an illuminating celebration of a movie too often considered a sort of dry run for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. An adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel, Empire follows British schoolboy Jamie/Jim (Christian Bale) through World War II after he’s separated from his parents when the Japanese attack Shanghai; Jamie witnesses and escapes countless brutalities, but still comes jollily of age in an internment camp, dreaming of fighter planes, befriending through the barbed wire the Japanese pilots who take off one hill over. Jamie likes the end of the world just fine, thank you very much. Upon the film’s release, many critics found the candied scenes of the boy’s adventure at odds with the prevailing themes of loss and death and the apocalyptic third act. But, as Haskell notes, that contrast is the point: “The zest for war is alive in every fiber of [Jamie’s] being, a reminder of feelings sublimated in adult men and rarely acknowledged in the antiwar theme of most war films.” Empire of the Sun is honest about boys’ — and the movies’ — yen for action. Seven years before Empire, making Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg took Harrison Ford’s advice and let Indiana Jones “just shoot the fucker”; the flip death of that Arab swordsman brought the house down. Empire crashes that gee-whiz zeal for violence into the abattoir of history, revealing the sickness at the heart of both our fun and our “serious” war films."
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Post by RhodoraO on Jan 23, 2021 0:09:55 GMT
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