Xi yang jing

Gentle and genial film seems to have been overlooked as a triviality...and to be fair the narrative is a bit tenuous and lightweight as drama....but I feel the simple wonder and joy of the scenes depicting the first impact of a new art on an alien and sceptical society have a radiance and naturalness which capture the century long romance between cinema and audience better than any film in years. Immensely sympathetic performance from Jared Harriss (who seems to have inherited all of his fathers charisma...hopefully without poor Richards penchant for hellraising and haminess)....and charming offbeat cuteness from costar Yu Xia combine to make this a real heartwarmer. Radiant location photography (including glowingly beautiful scenes at the great wall) and sensitive direction by Ann Hu give film added impact. In short a must for anyone ever enchanted by a shadow flickering to life...and making magic in the dark.

A very sweet movie about a young Chinese man enamored of western technology and an Englishman trying to make his fortune showing movies in China. It's a very interesting story that is presumably based on true events, although I'm assuming it's more fantasy than real. It's got a fairy tale quality you rarely get in real life, and it's also got 8 people credited for the script, so they must have been making up stuff right and left.

This is a very likable movie that conveys how magical film was to people who had never seen it before. It is not an especially deep movie, touching briefly on the loss of tradition and the encroachment of western culture but mainly just being a pleasant little movie. It's actually a movie I enjoyed very much that is already beginning to disappear from my mind 15 minutes after seeing it. Light as a soufflé, but I enjoyed every minute.

Ann Hu‘s first directorial and writing effort is an ambitious project that belies her 2 month apprenticeship at the film school at New York University. `Shadow Magic' is a fictitious tale built around the introduction of the infant film industry in China of the very early 20th century. Raymond Wallace (Jared Harris) comes to Beijing to introduce the simplest of motion pictures to its natives. Liu (Yu Xia) portrays a youthful Chinese apprentice photographer who helps him encourage the locals to attend the show he calls `Shadow Magic'. The clashes of cultures form the backbone of the conflict. Filmed beautifully on location, acting, cinematography and music coalesce magically to draw today's audiences into its story, just as its characters are instantly charmed by the movies they come to see in filmdom's first theaters. This is a movie not to be missed by anyone who loves film.

This is a beautiful, funny, vivid film. It's even better than "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" -- which it parallels but doesn't replicate. The story completes a full circle and had the theater beaming as the credits rolled. A hundred years after this story takes place, we're just as intrigued by flickering images in a dark theater.

A lovely little film about the introduction of motion pictures to China. Captures the amazement of film's first audiences pretty much as it's described to have been worldwide, and uses actual Lumiere films for most of the actualities. I don't agree with other people about bad acting on the British fellow's part - I thought he was fine, but the Chinese lead really stole the show. In any case, I found myself with a smile on my face through most of the movie. People who fear subtitles might note that a lot of the film is in English (which for some reason is given subtitles as well as the Chinese on the DVD).