Sinosphere Film

http://i.imgur.com/j6zWKM6.jpg

龜 continues to Sinofy ILX + 龜 needs his own thread to post pictures of Chow Yun Fat in a moustache

http://i.imgur.com/GqEjc8m.jpg

http://dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/100-best-mainland-chinese-films-poll-spotlights-dgenerate-titles

Who is the guy up in the first post with the kid?

Wow, impressed to see stuff like Oxhide or West of the Tracks so far up on that list.

In other news: When if ever has any film-sphere had a year as impressive as the sinosphere in 2013? The Grandmaster, A Touch of Sin, Stray Dogs and Til Madness do us Part. Amazing.

Why are Hero and House Of Flying Daggers listed? I thought they were all Hong Kong people?

Some HK actors but Zhang Yimou is a mainland director

A lot of that list seems interesting but I really disliked Hero, so it makes me less sure of the wisdom of the list.

Hero annoyed me (not knowing much about the political/historical stance some people condemned the film for) because I love spectacle and beauty but I thought it was too blandly pretty to deserve all the praise. It had all the worst visual aspects of Tsui Hark (I like lots of things in his films though), videogame cutscenes and Hollywood epic dullbloat.

It wasn't exciting as martial arts, drama, historical interpretation or photography. One of several films that made me extremely disillusioned about audience responses to films in early 00s.

I assumed that A Touch Of Sin was from Hong Kong, I didn't know that mainland China allowed that sort of film.
I've been very fuzzy about what is allowed and I've had difficulty finding out how Hong Kong films have changed since 1997, I've heard censorship has been imposed on them but all I know is that many HK stars attempted a career in America in the late 90s and that all the new HK martial arts films in the shops look like more dull historical epics.

Leaving this here as a list of movies to check out in the future

http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/CulturalService/filmprog/english/2014gan/2014gan_film.html

http://i.imgur.com/3eG5hZq.png

Screencap for this one catapults it to the top of the list

Also, I highly recommend this movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bwS4cFez8E

A Touch Of Sin being advertised on metro posters here now - might have to go see

You should

I think I'm growing more cool on it now though

http://i.imgur.com/94Ld9Hi.jpg

like

Hard Boiled?

Yeap

so long since i've seen it, i need to have a John Woo pre-Hollywood spree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA0JVAeSibc

Looks sick and good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo3WAi38n2k

Looks sick and good

http://i.imgur.com/3wea22G.jpg

龜 can you recommend some quality non-new wave chinese/taiwanese/hongkong films

You mean like recent, not very artsy indie house movies?

Off the top of my head I'd recommend Cold War (HK police thriller), Sparrow (probably my favorite Johnnie To), Reign of Swords (wuxia)

actually i was thinking of the generation before hou/yang/tsai/et al but recent recs are welcome too; will look those up.

Well, if you haven't seen A Touch of Zen, then def check that out!

not yet, have only seen ke's "still life" so far and have been meaning to have a marathon viewing of his stuff

the first version of Springtime in a Small Town? might be hard to find

x-post: No, A Touch of Zen! A Cannes-winning King Hu wuxia film from early seventies (King Hu's Dragon Inn was the film shown in Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn) It starts out a bit slowly, but the final hour or so is completely bonkers.

Also, I think The Godess - starring the Ruan Lingyu, the subject of Stanley Kwan's Center Stage - is in public domain and can be downloaded freely. It's cool.

oh lol -- i assumed it was a simple typo and didn't say anything :p

will look for it

There was a K4r4g4rg4 mega-torrent of Mao-era and earlier film, haven't seen it

Frederik is probably correct in that looking up HK movies from that era is likely to be your best bet, I know that not much was made during the Cultural Revolution and the immediate period afterward, not sure how active Taiwan's film scene was at the time either seeing as how they were also under a brutal authoritarian regime

Touch of Zen is what Jia's recent A Touch of Sin was based on

er, I mean, influenced by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EyPN-L3SCQ

: D

this was probably covered upthread, but don't sleep on the singaporean film "ilo, ilo"

sweet, wanna catch.

docu trailer above mainly reminds me of how many blank spots i have with the directors profiled, despite loving each; i know there's a traveling hou retro but it generally bums me out, that the machinery so covered such a specific tone & feel, & that access to that is limited by limited original materials, import-only dvd releases, &c&c&c.

i think ilo, ilo is on DVD now and is also maybe streaming some places?

if you really can't find the hou films you wanna see let me know and maybe i can hook you up.

I've never seen Master of the Flying Guillotine -- spring for this?

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/an-evening-with-jimmy-wong-yu/2014/11/11

I'd say why not, looks like fine and is from the golden era

YES IT'S THE BEST

the two One-Armed Boxer movies are probly my fave martial arts films but they are a little ridiculous even by genre standards

by the way 龜 have you seen Stephen Chow's Journey to the West and if so is it worth 2 hours of my time?

Looks like fun

NV I'm not a fan of post-Shaolin Soccer Chow... I'd probably start with A Chinese Odyssey 1 and 2 before Journey to the West (ACO being based on the same Chinese folk tale)

I'd say why not, looks like fine and is from the golden era

― 龜, Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:51 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

master of the flying guillotine is kind of "outsider" HK though, it isn't much like the stuff the studios were making. it's nuts in a very sui generis way, YMMV.

xp

yeah i'm kinda pondering whether he's become "diluted" in some way i can't quite express but i'll end up watching it at some point. didn't know about A Chinese Odyssey, will find

http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/post/106923810733/faye-wong-dream-lover-the-cranberries-cover

Good stuff Brad

http://i.imgur.com/gmyRXhU.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/apr/03/artsfeatures

As a young man, Yang moved to the US to study electrical engineering at the University of Florida. His fascination with cinema took him to the University of Southern California to study film. But he dropped out and worked in computer design for the next seven years. "I had given up and said, 'I am not built for becoming a film-maker,' until one night when I was driving downtown in Seattle and saw this sign outside a cinema saying 'German New Wave: Aguirre, the Wrath of God' [the 1972 Werner Herzog film]. I went in and that turned me around."

He has finished a script about "a young kid who travels the world with just a cellphone and a credit card. Those two things are all you need now. It's a new world and there are a lot of stories we can tell each other."

:(

张国荣 retrospective-y thing at my uni over the next month and a bit. Any uh deep cuts you'd recommend, 龜?

DVDs not 35mm prints sadly; just the campus film club. Ooh, I don't think they doing pre-pop Leslie stuff like Nomad but I've wanted to see that (seems Dropbox img links are blocked here but Imgur's fine, I guess?). Not exactly obscure but He's a Woman, She's a Man & The Bride with White Hair are up next, both of which seem kinda 90s Shakespeare adaption-y at a glance.

Here you go

http://i.imgur.com/0zkyqIr.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Clw40ig.jpg

Is it true they're clamping down on VPNs?

Some ppl whose I helped w/IELTS prep returned a USB to me w/重返20岁 on it, hmmmn.

xpost: Yeah, from friends elsewhere I've heard Astrill's fucked on cellphones but still works on laptops, and two of the other big VPNs are hit/partially hit. I'm stubbornly trying to hardman it w/out one as long as possible (so much more Bing in my life than before); it's not so much sites not working as the seams of everything using whatever embedded stuff/APIs/fonts/whatever showing up & glitching out.

Great stills!

I paid for a VPN when I was there - SenVPN - but it ended up not being as good as my uni's VPN

Have heard good things about Vypr VPN in case you need recs, think there were a few others that people recommended but I never tried them out

Just pony up and go for it imo

Enforced break from social media is good, + streaming Mandarin-dubbed Raj Kapoor films on Youku kinda has its charms. However I'll undoubtedy snap in a month or so, so cheers for the VPN tips. ps if anyone has found a way to get jigglepanda.gif working as a Wechat sticker please share yr secret (have managed Flynt Flossy gifs tho).

I might be able to arrange that if you give me yr wechat id (mine is the400lols I think)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9627011/xiaowu.png

BTW 小武 is very good

Dang I forgot today is the anniversary of Leslie's death, I guess that's why your film club is having a retro? xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-qT5B-_BxU

Lol Youtube recommended this to me. Thanks Youtube I'll check it out

“I came to know Leslie Cheung in HK. He sat opposite to me, smoking while listening to me talking about the story of Farewell to my Concubine. I noticed his fingers trembled as he held the cigarettes. His legs folded elegantly and he looked calm. I told him I was glad to have him played the role of Deiyi ~ but I wasn’t too confident that he could handle the role well at that time. He said he could give a good performance since Leslie Cheung is Deiyi ~ a person who cannot distinguish between acting and real life and a person having the characteristics of male and female. I only returned him with a smile.

A few months’ later, after shooting the scene that Shau-lou married to Juxin which had deeply hurt Deiyi, we went to the square outside the Imperial Palace for the next scene. It was shot in the night. This scene was about Deiyi accidental found the sword he promised to give Shau-lou as a gift in his childhood. He was bringing it back to Shau-lou and met the Japanese soldiers on his way. Leslie only had one shot in that scene. After the lighting was set, we let him get into the rickshaw. The camera started to roll… the Japanese soldier raised the curtain with his knife. Leslie was sitting inside the rickshaw in his smashed make-up with a long bloody red mark near his mouth. The despair and sorrow shown in his eyes are really terrifying. After shooting finished Leslie was still sitting there motionless with tears in his eyes. I didn’t bother to comfort him but signaled for the light to turn off. I let him stay in the dark. Until then I realize it should be an actor like Leslie who could give all his heart and soul into the role he’s going to play, could have attained such a standard of performance. It is exactly this expression from his eyes that explains fully the theme of the story i.e. obsession and betrayal.

As a director, Farewell to my Concubine is the film I ever made with the strongest emotions. After finishing it for some time I still couldn’t get myself out of it. I felt miserable and during that time I dreamt of Leslie in one night. He was wearing the costume of Deiyi, looking at me with the same familiar smiling eyes. He said, “I’m saying goodbye to you forever.” I woke up suddenly. I found my eyes were all wet. I couldn’t tell whether he’s Deiyi or Leslie. His farewell in my dream seems to coincide with his fate 10 years later. Yes, it’s true, Leslie is Deiyi.

I always think Leslie belongs to the past times. It is because he got a pair of eyes that could only be found in our vanity dreams of the past.”

Chen Kaige

Disorder and Floating now available together on DVD.

http://homevideo.icarusfilms.com/dgenerate/diso.html

Ty

Still one of the greatest things I've ever seen

http://i.imgur.com/RmbAnb3.jpg

New Chen Kaige's out; might try and catch it at a local theatre this weekend w/friends.

http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Books__Film-Film_features/28299/Chen-Kaige-We-havent-learnt-enough-lessons-from-the-Cultural-Revolution.html

Anyone see Caught In The Web? Had no idea it existed; figured I would have seen at least one mention in all the thinkpieces surrounding So You've Been Publicly Shamed, but ...

i've seen it - kind of tough to follow especially if you're not conversant about netizen culture, but good execution and technically competent

i finally saw yellow earth a few weeks ago - there's a part in the middle that's absolutely stunning, with the traditional dancers

http://i.imgur.com/NcC9Yit.jpg

I am watching this one later, from the reviews it sounds pretty damn good.
http://mikelogan.eu/wp-content/gallery/stuff2/l-xdv4zwqpu0l3m4.jpg?i=1634830805

http://i.imgur.com/1BSUK9u.jpg

Can't see anyone's imgur links so soz if this is a repeat; got dragged by local friends out to see 捉妖记 which is smashing all sorts of domestic box-office records. Live action + animation, the radish baby is v.uh toyetic in a way which ties in with the prevalence of Minions + Baymax stuff around GZ, Jiang Wu & Bai Baihe do the best w/their roles ... IDK, haven't been to see a blockbuster-y thing in ages so maybe the p.tired gender stuff is no worse than, IDK, Transformers or w/e, but was wishing I could have snuck into 道士下山. My friends & the local crowd loved it FWIW.

THE BEST OF THE BEIJING INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL 2012-2014

AUGUST 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

NEW YORK, NY

http://www.cinemaontheedge.com/#schedule

anyone seen any Beijing fest? the Ai Weiwei doc investigating the activist's death?

http://gilbogarbage.tumblr.com/post/57027553537/wong-kar-wai-as-tears-go-by-was-my-first-film

http://arts.uchicago.edu/event/chinese-opera-film-series-inspector-and-prince-director-zheng-dasheng

saw this today and really liked it

Looks sweet. Was it really from 2004 like that link says, or later? Can you remember who it was made w/? Finding, uh, conflicting information though maybe that's just my illiteracy making sifting through diff productions of 《廉吏于成龙》 harder than it should be.

It's from 2009 I think? idk

it was kinda like watching a filmed shakespeare play but the performances were really good i just vibed with it

Chung Mong-Hong - so Soul was really facile i thought but i liked Parking a lot

ah, planned to catch that tonight but timing didn't work out :-|

was the 'lynchian' descriptor from the write-ups at all accurate?

there was one scene that was maybe lynchian but really it was more like Pulp Fiction x After Hours

hmmm I'll take it. gonna track this one down.

i forgot that fest was, like, 4 films in 2 days

interested in tonight's 9:00 film but not interested in staying til 11:00

http://shihlun.tumblr.com/post/134739602755/tsai-ming-liang-its-a-dream-2007

this tumblr has a lot of good stuf http://goodbyedragoninn.tumblr.com/

Any recs on what piece of popcorn I should see in the cinemas after my Xmas day exam finishes? Soft spot for all the 《恶棍天使》 posters in the metro ...
https://cdramadevotee.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/7c766316-7fd5-49a0-b59e-20218d9974eb_size77_w550_h283.jpg?w=646

https://cdramadevotee.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/list-movies-in-december-2015/

ND/NF fest showing Zhao Liang's new Behemoth in March

http://www.filmlinc.org/daily/first-eight-selections-announced-for-45th-new-directors-new-films/

Saw it at CPH:DOX. Really beautiful pictures. I thought it was a bit too stereotypically European, but then I spoke with someone who lives in China, and he said a lot of filmfans in China were over the moon at how different it seemed from typical Chinese docs.

You all NEED to see Lost & Beautiful, btw. One of very best films of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOldvideoo/videos

this account has a bunch of movies uploaded

Saw a real surprise, the 4-and-a-half hour film The Family by Chinese-Australian Liu Shumin. Sorta an expansive Tokyo Story, an elderly couple traveling around China, visiting their kids and revisiting their past. Amateur actors. But wow, at the imagery. Incredible all around. Overlong, but then again, it's a debut. This guy could get big!

Some clips in this video, but no real trailer yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQN38Ps_rZA

http://i.imgur.com/MktGZZb.jpg

Jia's Mountains May Depart opens in NY today.

http://i.imgur.com/D5Cc541.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/33XDPMj.png

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1644?locale=en

http://metrograph.com/film/film/209/hibiscus-town

playing today at metrograph, i've seen it and not gonna go

https://thefilmstage.com/news/its-karaoke-time-in-gorgeous-first-clip-from-bi-gans-cannes-premiere-long-days-journey-into-night/

i'm enjoying this chen kaige demon cat movie with kukai solving the murder of yang guifei. two years old but i didn't notice it at the time.

The Wandering Earth looks like some preposterous mad fun from the trailer.

how big is wandering earth in the outside world? pacific rim-type hype or more restrained? the chatter around it has been interesting but i assumed it was like wolf warrior where nobody outside of the prc ever saw it.
i know it'll never show in tokyo and i'll probably end up catching it on an hna flight into beijing some day.

Not seen it mentioned once in Anglosphere media, it was a US/Chinese twitter poster who highlighted it to me.