Walter Hill's 1975 debut "Hard Times" was shot in New Orleans, albeit one dressed for a '30s setting. He returned for 1989's "Johnny Handsome," so this week's new released "Bullet To The Head" is his third visit -- and the first after Hurricane Katrina's devastation. The disaster inevitably changed the city's on-screen charge. In 2002, Louisiana passed new legislation entitling productions that spend a minimum of $300,000 in the state to a tax credit equivalent to 30% of their budget. The program's budgetary efficiency has been questioned, but states constantly steal production from each other through these tactics. (E.g., Louisiana's budgetary incentives stole work away from the until-then booming Texas industry.) In Katrina's wake, the state's tax incentives had the unexpected side effect of offering financial bait to record the devastation. The first filmmaker I recall taking up the challenge was...
- 2/1/2013
- by Vadim Rizov
- Indiewire
The Yellow Handkerchief plays out like someone tried to film the lyrics to one of those pulp-sappy, alt-country songs that play in Hallmark stores and/or Cracker Barrel gift shops. Yellow is a lushly symbolic color, representing everything from cowardice, infection, happiness, friendship, even caution -- although most of the time it inspires people to move faster. And if you buy that, I've got this lovely film studies degree I'd love to sell you on the back of this here bridge deed. Erin Dignam's script is allegedly based on Pete Hamill's novel, but seems more like it was ripped off straight from the Japanese film The Yellow Handkerchief (of Happiness) and gauzily shot by Udayan Prasad. I'd love to make the claim that Prasad and Dignam choked the plot with sentimentality and cloying symbolism, but the truth of the matter is they tried stretching a ten-minute premise into a sparse feature length film.
- 3/3/2010
- by Brian Prisco
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