Wong Kar Wai - Feature Films, 1988-2007

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.

Chungking Express is available for now on the new Criterion Channel streaming site if you sign up (free to cancel):

https://www.criterionchannel.com/

this movie kicks so much ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Ly030AcwY

has any movie so densely imagined been so light on its feet?

And for such a seemingly simple concept it has very dense storytelling

this is almost every WKW movie-- there's just so much going on.

like little worlds, really.

the moment the 2nd story in this film begins, with Tony Leung walking up the camera, is one of the great movie moments. fun fact: i used to hate "california dreamin" but it's hard to hate it after this movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAH-0GKvIrM

also chef's salads are gross

this movie kicks so much ass

has any movie so densely imagined been so light on its feet?

someone should re-dub that scene where they hit the jukebox and, like, papa roach starts playing.

why was chef's salad handheld and wrapped in tinfoil

I never understood this

i love how wong is such a sensualist, and there's such an attention to food here, but so much of the food is (IMO) unaccountably gross. chef salad? fish and chips? sardines? pineapple? ok, pineapple is fine, but those cans are expired.

something very inspiring about a film that's so rapturous over such mundane food.

imagine some american director getting all moony over a big mac.

Wong Kar-wai announced his new film BLOSSOMS as a part of trilogy with In The Mood For Love and 2046. He said he has prepared the script for last 4 years and he’s ready to shoot in the end of this year or beginning of next year #WKWisback pic.twitter.com/d73Cueo39a

— Hang Lu (@hanglutvd) March 19, 2019

coincidentally 2046 is also when we can expect him to wrap postproduction

I thought it already was a trilogy with Days of Being Wild

so is this Amazon series just not happening?

https://www.screendaily.com/news/filmart-huanxi-releases-details-on-wong-kar-wai-web-series-paradise-guesthouse/5137774.article

Wong was previously attached to Amazon web series, Tong Wars, about Chinese immigrants in the US in the 19th Century. However, an Amazon spokesperson said the project is no longer in active development and the company has relinquished the rights.

oh

oh, that's too bad. it never seemed terribly likely, though.

It is in some ways remarkable how steeply downhill non-mainland Chinese filmmaking went this decade. Tsai Ming-Liang, Hou Hsaio-Hsien, Wong Kar-War, neither of them has made a film in five years, no?

well tsai has said he's going to stop making 'conventional' feature films altogether, and hou and wong haven't been particularly prolific for 20+ years....

Eh, Hou made four films 01-07, Wong three 00-07. It really went off a cliff after that, and nobody else took up the mantle.

well the hong kong film industry kind of cratered in the new millennium, and taiwan's cratered back in the early '90s. johnnie to keeps busy, at least.

by which i mean, the # of films has just dropped precipitously in general, which affects auteurs and non-auteurs alike.

He, I haven't seen a Johnnie To film as well since 'Office', which is kinda remarkable. But yeah, the industries seems to have cratered, Hou made several films abroad as well. It is kinda remarkable, and the rise of a new generation of Chinese film hasn't really made up for it yet. It's just weird for me having to deal with Singapore films instead of Hong Kong all of a sudden.

"Happy Together" was 90 minutes of tedious bickering. Disappointing.

Have to be in the mood I guess

One of my favorite queer films.

Relationships are a lot longer than 90 minutes of bickering, so 90 minutes is a breeze.

Explains why my relationships have been lasting under 90 minutes

I do need to rewatch Happy Together for the same reason as Michael, I was just not really tuning in

are his films streaming anywhere? I wanted to watch chungking express the other day but couldn’t find it

looks like the criterion channel has both chungking express and happy together

Plus In the Mood for Love and Fallen Angels.

I just rewatched "Happy Together", I am 32 and the last time I saw it I was... 20? It was very fascinating seeing it as adult with 10+ more years of life and love experience. The thing that struck me the most was that the characters exist in a world without a trace of oppression or homophobia, there is not even a single passing glance or snide remark from a stranger, it focused squarely on the relationship between these two men and let that be the sole focus of the film. And while it's a film about a toxic relationship between two people and not a film about """gay men""", there is enough queerness in the film (bathroom cruising, sugar daddy/rent boy stuff, etc) that this isn't just a hetero film with gay characters palette-swapped in.

I guess I'm not surprised that someone's takeaway would be "90 minutes of tedious bickering", bcz like yeah, you're not wrong, but the things that make this film so profound esp from a queer perspective are the things that it lacks and not the things that it contains, it has a simplicity abt it that queer ppl haven't really been afforded in film and I think this aspect is lost if you are not queer, have not immersed yourself in queer cinema, have not thirsted for acknowledgement and representation. I remember feeling this the last time I watched it, when I was in college and was doing a lot of research and writing abt queer representations in film, but what's surprising now is that 12 years later it still feels so fresh and rare to have a queer film that's not centered around queerness.

Film at Lincoln Center and Janus Films present World of Wong Kar Wai, a retrospective of the Hong Kong master, rescheduled from its original dates in June and opening November 25 as this year’s FLC holiday series.

Contemporary cinema’s supreme rhapsodist of romantic longing, Wong Kar Wai makes mesmerizing mood pieces that swirl around themes of time, dislocation, and the yearning for human connection. Ever since exploding onto the international scene in 1994 with his third feature, Chungking Express—an art-house sensation that would become one of the defining works of the Hong Kong New Wave—Wong has been refining his signature style, marked by woozy, hallucinatory visuals (often shot in sumptuous color by frequent cinematographer Christopher Doyle); the indelible use of pop music; and elliptical editing that evokes the impressionistic haze of memory. Though he’s renowned for his sublime studies of love and its absence, Wong’s small but exquisite filmography encompasses idiosyncratic forays into science fiction, crime thrillers, and the martial arts epic, all infused with his trademark motifs and swooning style.

FLC is honored to present this career-spanning retrospective of one of the greatest auteurs working in world cinema today, with brand new restorations of some of Wong’s most dazzling films including Chungking Express, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, Ashes of Time Redux, Days of Being Wild, 2046, As Tears Go By, and a never-before-seen extended cut of The Hand, plus an expanded run of In the Mood for Love commemorating its 20th anniversary. The films open in the FLC Virtual Cinema, accessible to audiences nationwide. Visit https://virtual.filmlinc.org/ in the upcoming weeks for specific dates.

ugh, I have spent a lot of time over the last week or so thinking abt film screenings and how much I miss them and all the specific things that I love about them that home viewing lacks. I heard about this retrospective about a year ago from some film-world friends and have been VERY eagerly anticipating it and it fuckin blows this is just gonna be some VOD thing and I’m not gonna get to experience the magic of seeing these on a huge screen in a room full of ppl

like I know this is #firstworldproblems as fuck but it’s one of those little things that inexplicably hits harder than it ought to, I really miss life

on the bright side these restorations were all done by Criterion which means there is likely a Blu ray box in the works!!