neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Big Shot's Funeral
	Xiaogang Feng Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Kwan, You Ge, Da Ying, Paul Mazursky 2001		As it bounces from subtitled Mandarin to English, "Big Shot's Funeral" — Chinese director Xiaogang Feng's broad satire of commercialism — can be tough going. But it has a few inspired moments. It helps to have shaggy Donald Sutherland ("Panic") aboard as Don Tyler, an arrogant, hard-to-please director remaking "The Last Emperor" in Beijing. The shoot isn't going well, and the film's peeved producer (Paul Mazursky) is going to replace Tyler. That's when Tyler is felled by what looks like a stroke. As he falls into a coma, he reveals his last wish to a Chinese cameraman (You Ge) who's been doing a "Making of 'The Last Emperor'" documentary: Tyler wants a lavish "comedy funeral." Tyler's assistant, played by Hong Kong leading lady Rosamund Kwan, gives the go-ahead; the cameraman teams with an unscrupulous promoter (Da Ying) to actualize what all assume is Tyler's dying request. Although Tyler isn't dead yet, the impending funeral becomes an international phenomenon, with the promoter grabbing for every possible sponsor and broadcast tie-in. The swipes at untrammeled commerce are amusing, and so is Sutherland.