KVT and Hanoi Parallax

Friday was technicolored

When I walked into Studio Tho I was confronted with a lot of those images I’d always wanted to capture in Hanoi but that had always eluded me. Don’t miss it. Most images will take your breath away.

Its like when you are walking, riding or driving past an everyday scene and all of a sudden you know its special and has to be captured but by the time you’ve got your camera out and focused some detail has moved, or when you look at the image you’ve taken it hasn’t caught that momentary magic, or somehow it’s alright but all wrong. All of us amateurs manage to get an occasional jewel but only a few have got a D’Attillio eye and fewer can manage to utilize our ever moving conceptual eye so that it reveals a focus that is practically invisible to the casual gaze.

Larry D’Attillo’s exhibition Parallax is a must see for anyone who fancies themselves as a photographer and I hope that a lot of would bees and  might bees and  some who already think they’re hot stuff manage to catch the master classes and learn how to make use of  parallax in their own work

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Don’t Burn, the movie version of Dang Thuy Tram’s diary Last Night I Dreamed of Peace at the National Cinema Centre, has some great visual shots in it and should have taken my breath away but overall its been done with a heavy hand. It had the potential to be a great movie but it doesn’t find its wings. Sometimes it’s the little things, like one of the American leads being played by a character with a distinct French accent, and sometimes it’s the hammy acting by the non-Vietnamese cast. Sometimes it’s the intense feel of melodrama.

Director Dang Nhat Minh has been responsible for some very good Vietnamese movies, two of my favorites being When the Tenth Month Comes and Nostalgia for the Countryside, but Don’t Burn didn’t grab me like they did.

All in all it’s worth seeing and it will probably get a few mentions at some places on the international film festival circuit.