digital tends to look 'brighter' overall, and there's a kind of cleanness or gloss to it as well. biggest clue is in low lit scenes - with digital, unless the cinematographer has crushed the shadows to black, there's often tons of 'shadow detail' that's not there with film.
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:03 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZOMNeJjzQ
not only was this a terrible movie but the 'look' of it was so boring, and completely at odds with its early 1900s shanghai setting
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:08 (ten years ago) link
has anyone been done anything interesting with low light digital since collateral? michael mann was raving at the time about that but i can't recall another film since which has captured halogen glow like that
inland empire did its own thing i suppose
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:13 (ten years ago) link
miami vice is the other big movie that has great looking low light scenes
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:17 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVRd40bOPpk
anyway drug war's low light scenes looked great imo
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 12:21 (ten years ago) link
blind detective looks EXTREMELY digital
― socki (s1ocki), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 13:47 (ten years ago) link
all the little camera moves in this were sick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ7NewHU99Q
― 乒乓, Thursday, 17 October 2013 23:12 (ten years ago) link
whyyyyy
― Nhex, Friday, 18 October 2013 03:14 (ten years ago) link
GREAT piece from Hua Hsu here
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9834016/johnnie-drug-war-violent-evolution-hong-kong-cinema
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 18 October 2013 03:34 (ten years ago) link
hes a good writer and it seems strange to be reading him on that sewer of a site next to Overrated, Underrated, or Properly Rated: Pearl Jam
― Maggishos soyfriend. Wins. (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 18 October 2013 03:39 (ten years ago) link
I had no real grasp on life in Taiwan or Hong Kong, but there was something thrilling about seeing these radically normal-looking Chinese people tote guns and crack wise. I never trusted Jackie Chan — he seemed too pliable and elastic, too eager to please. Jet Li didn't seem long for a world vexed by modern problems — gun smuggling, drug trafficking, financial collapses. I was mostly obsessed with the nonchalant swagger of Chow Yun-fat, the meticulously choreographed shootouts of directors like John Woo or Ringo Lam. I had little understanding at the time of where these movies came from. They recalibrated my sense of what I could demand from a movie, not just in terms of high-quality onscreen gunplay but also the possibilities of who could play the hero or villain. They were someone else's dreams. Maybe, in one of the densest cities in the world, the possibility of sprinting down the street by yourself was pure fantasy, and that's all you needed.
really captures the appeal of hk movies for azn émigrés, or at least this one in particular
― 乒乓, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:08 (ten years ago) link
that paragraph definitely stood out for me
― Nhex, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:10 (ten years ago) link
good essay but has all the hallmarks of someone writing about hk who has never lived there, or maybe only visited for a few days on vacation. or maybe i just find sentences like Throughout the 1980s, local movies provided the surface upon which everyday people could project their questions about the uniqueness of Hong Kong and, as the British prepared to return the colony to China in 1997, their anxieties about its future. to be almost useless in their potential to give insight.
― 乒乓, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:11 (ten years ago) link
u read any bordwell on hk cinema
― socki (s1ocki), Friday, 18 October 2013 04:22 (ten years ago) link
he's so good on the nuts and bolts of like, how it works visually
yeah i love bordwell. he has love for everything
― 乒乓, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:23 (ten years ago) link
need to cop planet hong kong for my coffee table, and maybe re-read now that i'm a bit more familiar with cinematographic language
my favorite bits about hk cinema are how oftentimes, the voice acting is done entirely in post production. this is because it 1) keep costs low so you don't have to reshoot for a missed line 2) ease of export since you'll probably be dubbing into mandarin at some point anyway. and how certain directors will make something like 6-10 movies a year, that's crazy.
― 乒乓, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:25 (ten years ago) link
like, iirc, part of the reason why woo didn't really succeed in hollywood was because he couldnt bring over his crack stunt team, there were things like unions and they all had to have insurance and so much red tape etc.
― 乒乓, Friday, 18 October 2013 04:26 (ten years ago) link
all italian movies were like that for a super long time
― socki (s1ocki), Friday, 18 October 2013 13:43 (ten years ago) link
there was this a few weeks ago:
http://www.film.com/movies/ranked-johnnie-to-films-from-worst-to-best
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 16, 2013 9:45 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark
So putting "Romancing in Thin Air" as #1 was massive trolling
But "Sparrow" is really, really special
Excellent
― 乒乓, Monday, 30 December 2013 00:26 (ten years ago) link
Linked in that article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlCYNt2z9k
― tbd (Eazy), Monday, 30 December 2013 01:25 (ten years ago) link
Yeah that's a great shot but falls apart toward the end
So does the movie
― 乒乓, Monday, 30 December 2013 01:47 (ten years ago) link
breaking news is ok but not that good. The big heat is too low, fulltime killer just about right.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, 30 December 2013 02:20 (ten years ago) link
Al you should see sparrow. It's like a Hitchcock movie
― 乒乓, Monday, 30 December 2013 02:42 (ten years ago) link
Well maybe not Hitchcock, or only insofar in its 'look'
Just a really lush movie
― 乒乓, Monday, 30 December 2013 02:51 (ten years ago) link
yeah i'm gonna hunt that one down! it is too bad so many of his films are impossible to find. the mission deserves something more than the crappy import dvd i have.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, 30 December 2013 05:08 (ten years ago) link
http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/3000-police-raid-chinese-meth-cooking-village-in-crackdown.html
Were they cooking meth in Drug War? I don't recall
― 龜, Monday, 6 January 2014 11:21 (ten years ago) link
Yes.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, 6 January 2014 14:11 (ten years ago) link
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/state-television-airs-footage-of-major-drug-raid/
― 龜, Wednesday, 15 January 2014 16:14 (ten years ago) link
a 60th b'day appreciationlookin fwd to the musical
http://moviemezzanine.com/johnnie-to-essay/
― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Friday, 24 April 2015 14:49 (nine years ago) link
Tnx for that Morbs
Miss omar little :\
― 龜, Friday, 24 April 2015 15:05 (nine years ago) link
thx morbs
― Nhex, Friday, 24 April 2015 18:14 (nine years ago) link
drug war was probably the best new film i saw last year. as with other of his films, for an action/genre movie it lingers in a surprisingly complex way.
i still think his best run, overall, was a few years around the end of the '90s, but sadly those films are among the ones that are tied up in rights issues and thus are harder to come by (especially in decent-looking editions). i'm talking about:
a hero never dies / expect the unexpected / the longest nite / where a good man goes / running out of time / the mission
what i'd give for a nice blu-ray criterion set of those films! call it "milkyway at fin de siecle" or something.
(you could go back a few years and include lifeline, beyond hypothermia, and too many ways to be no. 1--and it would be the best thing ever.)
― he quipped with heat (amateurist), Friday, 24 April 2015 22:05 (nine years ago) link
Chow-Yun Fat sings
https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-toronto-2015-johnnie-tos-office
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 16 September 2015 05:20 (eight years ago) link
reviews are pretty good...
http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/review-office/
apparently only NYC engagement is in Whitestone, Queens!
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 September 2015 19:54 (eight years ago) link
it's not very focused but it's fun (also it's playing at amc times square)
has nomar seen sparrow yet??
― 龜, Sunday, 27 September 2015 20:32 (eight years ago) link
not yet! i have no idea where to get a copy. might have to order it? the local dvd rental place just closed down, they tended to get all if not most To movies.
office looks amazing imo.
― nomar, Monday, 19 October 2015 18:11 (eight years ago) link
let me clear out some dropbox space maybe? i actually don't think i have any way of reaching you outside ilx haha
― 龜, Monday, 19 October 2015 18:15 (eight years ago) link
just hit you up with my email ;)
― nomar, Monday, 19 October 2015 18:22 (eight years ago) link
;)
― 龜, Monday, 19 October 2015 18:44 (eight years ago) link
OFFICE tonight at NYC MoMA in 3D
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 21 November 2015 18:42 (eight years ago) link
real heads caught it at the times square amc
― 龜, Saturday, 21 November 2015 18:50 (eight years ago) link
well this was free for me
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 21 November 2015 19:04 (eight years ago) link
龜: i finally managed to watch SPARROW. thanks again for sending it my way.
damn to's such a good director. and simon yam is so good. he's a great and underrated lead actor, in total cary grant charm mode here but hanging onto that "yamsian" element of menace a bit. he's probably the most effortlessly chill of all HK dudes imo. and actually it's funny to think that, for me at least and probably many others, he made his stateside rep with this crazy psycho performance in 'full contact'. and he's done a few others like that as well, i.e. 'run and kill'. also he looks only about five years older here (movie is from '08) than he did in '92.
totally swell movie and beautifully composed and with a big heart, generous to all the characters, even the purported villain. enjoyed lam suet's borderline cameo mini role. and gordon lam is always a welcome presence.
i'd like to hang out w/kelly lin tbh.
― nomar, Thursday, 3 December 2015 18:26 (eight years ago) link
btw i was thinking about THE MISSION recently too. listen to the balearic jams in this scene, it sounds like The Studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4bXobWSn8
― nomar, Thursday, 3 December 2015 18:33 (eight years ago) link
reposting from above obv, vid was deleted before
― nomar, Thursday, 3 December 2015 18:36 (eight years ago) link
glad you liked it nomar! :)
― 龜, Thursday, 10 December 2015 15:26 (eight years ago) link
https://mrjagofilm.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/sparrow-1.gif
― nomar, Thursday, 10 December 2015 15:34 (eight years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/xuqIQID.jpg
― 龜, Thursday, 10 December 2015 15:39 (eight years ago) link