Anya ,'Touched'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I confess, I'm not a fan of the HK/Chinese historical epic. Just, does practically nothing for me. I'm very much of the opinion that if you've seen one Once Upon a Time in China, you've seen them all.
(I also think that the genre constraints may have historically encouraged fart-smelling acting, which is so painful to watch and so rife in historicals. Jet Li, I am looking at you. )
2046 will make you love ItMfL even more.
Ugh, God of Gamblers II made my friend Claudine lose her Chow Yun Fat lust. Nobody wants to see him being a doof.
I blame Wong Jing, the director. His movies mostly suck, often very watchable because of the actors, but not that good. But turning CYF into a doofus? A crime.
Candy! Brigitte Lin Film Festival Stat!
I had a mini-one over the Holidays. Deadful Melody, Bride with White Hair, and Dragon Inn.
I had a mini-one over the Holidays. Deadful Melody, Bride with White Hair, and Dragon Inn.
::checks through mail pile for invitation. Fails to find one. Looks questioningly at Candy, tears welling up in eyes...:
I confess, I'm not a fan of the HK/Chinese historical epic.
That's why I'm pimping the HK noir to you. How'd you feel about Black Cat?
Also, Candy, can you explain the title of Deadful Melody to me? Because...you know, it looks like a typo. Is "Deadful" supposed to be like "fatal"?
Raquel, could it have been The Legacy? That's what I thought of at your description. But they haven't inherited the mansion, they're guests of the owner.
Sorry, DavidS!
Yes, fatal. As far as I can tell.
I am mclargehuge with love for all those period kung-fu/wuxia movies from the 90's.
Love the noir triad movies too. I just love HK/Asian movies.
It's been tough lately with the HK movie industry having a bad time trying to recover from SARS and whatnot.
That's why I'm pimping the HK noir to you. How'd you feel about Black Cat?
Haven't seen it. I've plowed through a number of crime-family gun-battle melodramas from the late 80s, early 90s, but I have a powerful OTT-o-meter, and have been mostly unsatisfied.
but I have a powerful OTT-o-meter
Mine's probably not as powerful as Nutty's, but I often find myself unwilling to be transported by the magic of melodrama and tragic star-crossed love or whatever that tend to plague most HK dramas. I had to try hard not to guffaw out loud at the end of "House of Flying Daggers" (while rolling my eyes at the lot of them for being such melodramatic queens, like, THREESOME. Look into it.) I think I actually cackled at the end of "The Killer"--or whichever flick that had Chow Yun Fat and the blind girl flailing at each other on snow at the end. But mine is a stodgy type of a soul, I'm afraid.
OMG! The Killer! I have that on an old videotape. Because it's the only HK melodrama I own, it has a special place as "no, really, it's all a huge joke!" pretend-irony.
I mean, there are OTT moments that are total jokes, and then there are ones that nobody who made the movie was in on at the time.
What was the HK movie that had the villians storing arms and explosives in a hospitall? Where the good guys have to show up at the end to save all the babies?
eta: Most OTT HK movie moment that I've seen....