Ang Lee: “My dream since childhood was to make a spectacular action film in the Wuxia [martial arts superhero] genre.” Born in 1954 in Taiwan, where he lived until 1979, Lee grew up influenced by the Shaw Brothers’ Hong Kong epics, such as COME DRINK WITH ME (King Hu, 1966) and ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN (Chang Cheh, 1967); and by Hu’s Taiwanese films DRAGON INN (1967) and A TOUCH OF ZEN (1971). After receiving his MFA in filmmaking from NYU, Ang became…

John Sayles: “I had heard of the Black Sox scandal when I was a kid, wondering how could anybody be so low as to throw the World Series?” In his twenties, after reading Eliot Asinof’s detailed non-fiction book Eight Men Out (1963), Sayles was convinced that the White Sox players got involved in fixing the 1919 Series less from greed than from their exploitation by greedy ownership: that this was a larger story of labor vs. capital. Inspired by ALL…

These notes were created by ChatGPT after it was provided with the following prompt: “Write a 600-word humorous essay on the Steven Spielberg film A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.”

When Steven Spielberg’s film A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE hit theaters in 2001, audiences were blown away by the stunning visuals, the heart-wrenching story, and the impressive performances. But what most people don’t realize is that beneath all that emotion and drama, there’s a lot of comedy to be found.

First off, let’s talk about…

“I wanted to make a love story between two women that was authentic. The inauthentic ones ended in a bisexual triangle or a suicide. It was foremost for me that this be authentic, and authenticity in this case means love.” —Donna Deitch

Set in Reno in the ‘50s, director Donna Deitch’s “astonishingly polished and nuanced first film” (Paul Attanasio) portrays the romance between a Columbia professor awaiting her divorce and the free-spirited younger woman she first encounters in what B.…