Wong Kar Wai - Feature Films, 1988-2007

BFI monograph on ITMFL out

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2016/03/06/in-the-mood-for-wkw/

sounds rad, i like tony rayns

http://i.imgur.com/iFIb3FL.jpg

the 10th anniversary box set came with a pair of boxers

http://i.imgur.com/7Pnlalj.jpg

On Friday, Amazon confirmed five new projects — series greenlights for a period drama from Paul Attanasio and Wong Kar-wai and a comedy starring Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph; two comedy pilots; and a Seth Rogen-produced comic book adaptation eyed as a straight-to-series order — that reflect the drive to find shows that deliver sizzle in the water-cooler environs of social media and can travel around the world.

In an interview on Friday, Price told Variety that there is a new focus on finding “big shows that can make the biggest difference around the world” in growing Amazon Video’s reach and Amazon Prime subscribers. “Tong Wars,” the drama penned by Paul Attanasio and directed by Wong, is a prime example of a period piece that blends the epic history of Chinese immigration to the U.S. with a crime potboiler. “It’s a very compelling show,” he said.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/amazon-studios-jeff-bezos-roy-price-zelda-1202552532/

WHAT?!?!?

Wow this sort of sounds like Wong's Yakuza Papers! Exciting!

Here for it all day

wow yeah

Nice thread on the man who wrote the story which In the Mood for Love is based on:

The great modernist Hong Kong writer Liu Yichang 劉以鬯 passed away today. Peripatetic, diasporic, cosmopolitan - Liu's life and work embodied a lesser known trajectory of modern Chinese literature. Wong Kar Wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE was inspired by 2 of his best known stories. pic.twitter.com/jONyGdiNBt

— eileen chengyin chow (@chowleen) June 9, 2018

ok but where's my Amazon series

amazon need to be nationalised.

thought that was roger ebert at first

this guy went to shit, jesus.

what has Christopher Doyle been up to?

I look at that run of films and think, "My god, that feels so long ago..."

right?

Doyle was on-camera extensively in Anthony Bourdain’s Hong Kong episode that just aired a week or so ago. Seemed like a pretty exasperating guy. Lots of talk about the WKW films.

i went to a talk of his where he was showing clips and i had to leave because he was so boring and annoying.

Actually I saw WKW talk once at the NYFF, and he was kind of annoying as well. Totally talked trash about Doyle, among other things.

So, um, he turns 60 today, apparently. A lot younger than I thought.

yeah! been around for quite a while

I saw Days of Being Wild last week, and it was pretty great. Especially the start. Vintage Wong, the very moment he found his style.

It's kinda crazy that in the sixteen years from 88-04 he made As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. And in the fourteen years since then he has made My Blueberry Nights and The Grandmaster. Sigh.

Well, whatever he's doing I hope he is happy. He deserves it.

It was a great run, no need to make more. Hb wkw!

Just saw As Tears Go By - a lot of standard crime drama content but I liked its stylishness and its homage to 70s crime films

ok but where's my Amazon series

― the masseduction of lauryn hill (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, June 12, 2018 2:48 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure what to make of the first appearance of Tony Leung in Days of Being Wild being in a dank low-ceilinged room just at the end of the movie

was Wong Kar-Wai was setting us up for In the Mood for Love a decade later

-2nd was

It's the same character, yeah

didn't hate but also didn't love the comedic aspects of Fallen Angels. it was beautiful though.

like so many auteur films, it's something to watch and ponder again at a later date

I do want to see Chungking Mansions

^ this
The slapstick of the mute guy is so out of tune with the criminal romance

I have worked my way chronologically through Wong Kar-Wai’s films recently, and am up to In the Mood for Love, which again seems like just about the greatest film I’ve ever seen. Every aspect of it has such vibes. And for such a seemingly simple concept it has very dense storytelling. It’s like he had an 8 hour story to tell in 1 hour 39 minutes. I’ve seen this movie three times now, but it still feels like it has a lot more to reveal

The highlights of the movie for me this time were the string of scenes in the middle that included the exploratory conversation in the restaurant where Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung reveal what they know about the infidelities of their spouses, their tentative reenactment of the scenes of betrayal and rehearsal for a confrontation, their subsequent acknowledgement of their feelings and the surreal farewell during the rainstorm, and their missed connection in the hotel room just before he leaves for Singapore

there was also a lot of interesting echoing or presaging of various scenes and replaying of scenes with a different perspective

not to dismiss the cinematography, the costumes (so many different qipaos), and two really great performances I think, portrayals of isolation and the yearning for connection, internalized performances that are apotheoses of the actors’ on-screen personae and which are always the kind I remember the most

(love morbs' description of it "ppl in slow motion w/ same song under it")

I did like how there was sometimes extremely subtle and sometimes not so subtle slowing of the frames

the music was beautiful: Zhou Xuan’s “Hua Yang De Nian Hua”, Nat King Cole’s ”Aquellos Ojos Verdes", "Te Quiero Dijiste", "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”, and especially Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji's Theme”

loved the scene where they share two separate meals during their entrapment in his room overnight while his landlord and friends played an epic series of mahjong games. also the repeated foregrounding of the noodle container as a metaphor for desire, the clock as metaphor for constriction/estrangement/distance

"2046" was very complicated - three love stories plus a future fantasy, all told in fragments nonsequentially. I hated it the first time I saw it, but looking at it again a second time I thought it was pretty incredible

Making my way through Days of Being Wild and I think the most crushing scene is when the policeman is waiting by the phone booth waiting for the girl to call - then gives up and walks down the street and I was so sure the phone was going to ring just as he moves out of audible range

that was a great scene

(My Blueberry Nights was not very good, but it was so nice to see Chan Marshall (Cat Power) in the film and to hear "The Greatest" in the soundtrack

I hated it the first time I saw it, but looking at it again a second time I thought it was pretty incredible

― Dan S, Friday, October 19, 2018 5:19 PM (forty-seven minutes ago)

pretty sure someone says something similar upthread (and has some advice for a 3rd rescreen).

well I should definitely see it a third time. Can't think of a film I've had such different reactions to between viewings

though I still think In the Mood for Love is his masterpiece

I'm not sure but was Wong Kar-Wai's mistake with My Blueberry Nights his trying to transpose his aesthetic to NY, Memphis, Las Vegas?

makes me wonder if that that film was just an exploration and if he still has a lot more to reveal to us

I kinda thought My Blueberry Nights was okay, it's just so much worse than anything else he has done. But I'm happy it exists.

My Burberry Nights

My Blueberry Nights is a horrible enough title already.