{"id":3064,"date":"2011-04-18T17:13:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T16:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/news\/?p=1733"},"modified":"2014-03-29T08:10:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T07:10:37","slug":"blood-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2011\/04\/18\/blood-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Simple"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Blood Simple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> DVD

\nDate:<\/B> 18 April 2011

\nDistributor:<\/B> Momentum Pictures

\nDirector:<\/B> Zhang Yimou

\nWriters:<\/B> Jianquan Shi, Jing Shang

\nOriginal title:<\/B> San qiang pai an jing qi<\/I>

\nAlternative title:<\/B> A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop<\/I>

\nBased on the film Blood Simple<\/I> by:<\/B> Ethan and Joel Coen

\nCast:<\/B> Dahong Ni, Ni Yan, Xiao Shen-Yang

\nChina 2009

\n95 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Undeniably one of the most colourful films on offer this month, Zhang Yimou’s Blood Simple<\/I> is a remake of sorts of the Coen Brothers’ 1984 debut. Moving the action to northern China in the imperial age, the film follows Ni Dahong, the owner of a noodle shop in the middle of the desert, who pays a killer to murder both his unfaithful wife and her squeamish lover. It’s a shame that the banal slapstick and oddball jokes that Zhang decided to employ instead of the black humour of the original inevitably turn his ambitious venture into a comic farce as the plot rolls on, and it is only in the film’s showdown that he manages to get back on solid ground. There are plenty of things wrong with this film, including the wildly varied and exaggerated acting on display, but Blood Simple<\/I> is nonetheless a visual treat throughout, from the luridly coloured landscapes and floral costumes to the film’s deft cinematography that are clear reminders of Zhang’s earlier work.<\/p>\n

Pamela Jahn<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undeniably one of the most colourful films on offer this month, Zhang Yimou’s Blood Simple<\/I> is a remake of sorts of the Coen Brothers’ 1984 debut.
\nReview by Pamela Jahn<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","category-dvds-and-blu-rays","tag-asian-cinema"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-Nq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":264,"url":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2008\/01\/16\/no-country-for-old-men\/","url_meta":{"origin":3064,"position":0},"title":"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN","author":"VirginieSelavy","date":"January 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"From the opening credits and Tommy Lee Jones' portentous voice-over as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, this is a tight, taut exercise in filmmaking, a relentlessly tense thriller that works on a purely visceral level but also deals in higher ideas of good and evil. 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