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timerippleA few preliminary remarks before I get down to the business of being intelligible:
Okay, so Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is kinda schmoopy and I just watched the finale because I wanted to know who died (remarkably, no-one), but Toda Erika’s character is actually kinda cool and the soundtrack is really pretty. And Kaname Jun. He looks a lot like Kame, actually, only, you know, pretty.
And now, the Organized Movie Post.
Due to the various forces of the internet conspiring against me, I have not been able to find the latest full subbed episodes of Black & White. And thus I have been reduced to watching actual DVDs--some of which have actually been in English. Astonishing, I know.
Waitress (2007). Directed by Adrienne Shelly, starring Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion.
I was living in LA when this one came out, and I remember a lot of commotion but never actually got around to seeing it. And it’s good! A downtrodden but wry waitress, an unwanted pregnancy, a jealous husband named Earl (na nanananaaaaAaAaAa... goodbye, Earrrrrrl!), Doctor Mal, and more pie than you can shake a stick at!
Damn. Now I want pie.
The Tudors, Season One (2007). Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the rockstar young King Henry VIII, plus lots of other awesome and famous people. I saw a few episodes when I was in Vancouver but due to lack of a television I missed the rest. Can I just say: costumeswoon! Also politics, scheming, friendship, social climbing, and more rampant personal chemistry than even the script knows what to do with. Good stuff!
And now for the flail. With Black & White on hiatus, I’ve been filling the void with movies. Specifically, Wong Kar-Wai’s movies.
Oh my goodness.
I’d seen In the Mood for Love a couple years ago, but in addition to re-watching it I’ve now seen its sequel 2046 and the earlier Chungking Express. Oh my goodness.
Chungking Express (1994). Starring Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Faye Wong, and Kaneshiro Takeshi. But mostly Tony Leung and Faye Wong, because this is a bizarre film with two sequential stories about love, loss and redecorating. I don’t even know what the DVD description had to do with the film, aside from nothing. It’s random and gorgeous and hilarious and wonderful, full of trademark Wong Kar-Wai cinematography and direction. I’ve seen Faye Wong’s performance described as “elfin”, which isn’t bad; she has a peculiar kind of charm as the waitress who constantly listens to “California Dreamin’” on the radio and dreams of traveling the world. Tony Leung plays a cop who wanders around his apartment in his underwear lecturing his stuffed animals and cleaning supplies. AWESOME.
In the Mood for Love (2000). Starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The repressed, gorgeous story of two neighbors who discover their spouses are cheating on them with each other. The film’s obsession with enclosed spaces gives it a shocking intimacy even as it also brings out the confined nature of the characters’ lives. And it IS obsessed with enclosed spaces, proximity, the lack of space and privacy in a crowded and tense apartment building: the cramped hallways, narrow noodle-shop steps, even Maggie Cheung’s wardrobe speak of constraint and precise containment. The scene where she takes off her heels after sleeping in them and massages her feet is very telling. The vision of 1960s Hong Kong is a lot like Regency England in terms of the importance of reputation, the constraints on personal freedom, the constant threat of gossip.
I think the sequel, 2046 (2004), suffers from lacking that repression, among other things. In the Mood for Love has this incredible tension between desire and propriety. 2046 is more about desire and futility. While it’s a gorgeous film, with Wong Kar-Wai’s beloved fragmented imagery taken to new extremes, its brand of emotional commentary just didn’t strike me nearly as much. It stars Tony Leung again, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, and Kimura Takuya. Now, I know Zhang Ziyi’s gotten a lot of attention in the past few years, but where Maggie Cheung is capable of fantastic emotional subtlety, in my opinion Zhang Ziyi generally has all the natural expressiveness of a plank of wood. (She and Orlando Bloom could start a club for Pretty People with Forced Facial Expressions.) I liked her character but not her portrayal in 2046. The other bits of randomness didn’t bother me-- I loved the bit with the train stewardess android; made me think fondly of Palimpsest-- and Tony Leung was his usual unspeakably beautiful self. The music was even more gorgeous than in In the Mood for Love, with the plucked-strings chords from In the Mood for Love underneath the melody this time. So-- another stunningly lovely film, but I much prefer In the Mood for Love or Chungking Express.
I’m searching local libraries for other Wong Kar-Wai films-- any suggestions? I really want to see Ashes of Time Redux (there’s no such thing as too much Tony Leung, you guys!). Any other favorite directors? I’ve seen some Ang Lee films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution, and Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers (zzzzz) and of course Hero (BEST MOVIE EVER).
Okay, so Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is kinda schmoopy and I just watched the finale because I wanted to know who died (remarkably, no-one), but Toda Erika’s character is actually kinda cool and the soundtrack is really pretty. And Kaname Jun. He looks a lot like Kame, actually, only, you know, pretty.
And now, the Organized Movie Post.
Due to the various forces of the internet conspiring against me, I have not been able to find the latest full subbed episodes of Black & White. And thus I have been reduced to watching actual DVDs--some of which have actually been in English. Astonishing, I know.
Waitress (2007). Directed by Adrienne Shelly, starring Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion.
I was living in LA when this one came out, and I remember a lot of commotion but never actually got around to seeing it. And it’s good! A downtrodden but wry waitress, an unwanted pregnancy, a jealous husband named Earl (na nanananaaaaAaAaAa... goodbye, Earrrrrrl!), Doctor Mal, and more pie than you can shake a stick at!
Damn. Now I want pie.
The Tudors, Season One (2007). Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the rockstar young King Henry VIII, plus lots of other awesome and famous people. I saw a few episodes when I was in Vancouver but due to lack of a television I missed the rest. Can I just say: costumeswoon! Also politics, scheming, friendship, social climbing, and more rampant personal chemistry than even the script knows what to do with. Good stuff!
And now for the flail. With Black & White on hiatus, I’ve been filling the void with movies. Specifically, Wong Kar-Wai’s movies.
Oh my goodness.
I’d seen In the Mood for Love a couple years ago, but in addition to re-watching it I’ve now seen its sequel 2046 and the earlier Chungking Express. Oh my goodness.
Chungking Express (1994). Starring Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Faye Wong, and Kaneshiro Takeshi. But mostly Tony Leung and Faye Wong, because this is a bizarre film with two sequential stories about love, loss and redecorating. I don’t even know what the DVD description had to do with the film, aside from nothing. It’s random and gorgeous and hilarious and wonderful, full of trademark Wong Kar-Wai cinematography and direction. I’ve seen Faye Wong’s performance described as “elfin”, which isn’t bad; she has a peculiar kind of charm as the waitress who constantly listens to “California Dreamin’” on the radio and dreams of traveling the world. Tony Leung plays a cop who wanders around his apartment in his underwear lecturing his stuffed animals and cleaning supplies. AWESOME.
In the Mood for Love (2000). Starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The repressed, gorgeous story of two neighbors who discover their spouses are cheating on them with each other. The film’s obsession with enclosed spaces gives it a shocking intimacy even as it also brings out the confined nature of the characters’ lives. And it IS obsessed with enclosed spaces, proximity, the lack of space and privacy in a crowded and tense apartment building: the cramped hallways, narrow noodle-shop steps, even Maggie Cheung’s wardrobe speak of constraint and precise containment. The scene where she takes off her heels after sleeping in them and massages her feet is very telling. The vision of 1960s Hong Kong is a lot like Regency England in terms of the importance of reputation, the constraints on personal freedom, the constant threat of gossip.
I think the sequel, 2046 (2004), suffers from lacking that repression, among other things. In the Mood for Love has this incredible tension between desire and propriety. 2046 is more about desire and futility. While it’s a gorgeous film, with Wong Kar-Wai’s beloved fragmented imagery taken to new extremes, its brand of emotional commentary just didn’t strike me nearly as much. It stars Tony Leung again, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, and Kimura Takuya. Now, I know Zhang Ziyi’s gotten a lot of attention in the past few years, but where Maggie Cheung is capable of fantastic emotional subtlety, in my opinion Zhang Ziyi generally has all the natural expressiveness of a plank of wood. (She and Orlando Bloom could start a club for Pretty People with Forced Facial Expressions.) I liked her character but not her portrayal in 2046. The other bits of randomness didn’t bother me-- I loved the bit with the train stewardess android; made me think fondly of Palimpsest-- and Tony Leung was his usual unspeakably beautiful self. The music was even more gorgeous than in In the Mood for Love, with the plucked-strings chords from In the Mood for Love underneath the melody this time. So-- another stunningly lovely film, but I much prefer In the Mood for Love or Chungking Express.
I’m searching local libraries for other Wong Kar-Wai films-- any suggestions? I really want to see Ashes of Time Redux (there’s no such thing as too much Tony Leung, you guys!). Any other favorite directors? I’ve seen some Ang Lee films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution, and Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers (zzzzz) and of course Hero (BEST MOVIE EVER).
