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Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561552 times)

roujin

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1780 on: September 18, 2012, 04:36:27 PM »
haha, yeah, I don't know why I focused so much on the ducks. I guess it was just such a bizarre sequence of events that it must've made an impression.

Sandy

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1781 on: September 18, 2012, 09:08:47 PM »
I totally agree about Cyclo, and I need to catch up with Vertical Ray of the Sun myself.

Really great to read your verdict, Sandy! Radiohead captions for the win! Your anecdote also brought to mind a Bright Eyes lyric:

And there's kids playing guns in the street
And one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say
"Enough is enough, if you walk away I walk away"
(And he shot me dead)


Here's the video, in case your iPod needs more life breathed into it.  :)

pixote

pixote! That song! I'm loving it, then the harmonies set in :), and then these words:

A good woman will pick you apart
A box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended and you may be afraid
But dont walk away, dont walk away



but that's not all!

deafening pleasure

that might be the most amazing word pairing ever.


oldkid recommended that I listen to Okay Computer. Do you have some Radiohead favorites that I may like? Before I derail this thread further, would you send them to that other thread?
« Last Edit: November 05, 2016, 04:25:06 AM by pixote »

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1782 on: September 19, 2012, 06:34:01 PM »
Round Two Resurrection Reviews


 Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai, 1990)
 Won over Fight Back to School - sdedalus
 Lost to A Petal - tinyholidays

 Fallen Angels (Wong Kar Wai, 1995)
 Won over Xiu Xiu - jbissell
 Lost to Blues Harp - BlueVoid

 Happy Together (Wong Kar Wai, 1997)
 Won over Happy End - Clovis8
 Lost to Supermarket Woman - Bondo

Having watched all three of these films in the past week, I really have to hand it to mañana's review of Happy Together, wherein he dares to admit the unadmittable: "There’s a stylish coolness to Wong Kar-wai that I find kind of corny." Haha, there's really something to that. Wong is a total cornball. He litters his films with the mechanisms of romantic comedies — payphones, video cameras, tape recorders — and then gives them a tragiocomic twist that's equally romantic and corny, in an emo kind of way. The romantic gestures are almost all ill-timed or misunderstood or appreciated but acknowledged. Wong is a postmodern cinematic romantic, a teenage kid imitiating Belmondo imitating Bogart. Halfway through the second film, all the secondhand smoke started to make me cough. By the end of the third film, I remembered the fine-line between auteurism and self-plagiarism, between consistency and redundancy. I was smiling at the time.

I can't quite imagine what it must have been like to walk into a theater in Hong Kong in 1990 and watch Days of Being Wild. How surprised those few audience members in attendance must have been to learn that Hong Kong films were allowed to have good music in them. And how awed they must have been at just how very assured Wong's filmmaking was — visually, stylistically, even thematically. I haven't seen anything else quite as striking from 1990s Hong Kong since Peter Chan's Comrades, Almost a Love Story, and that was made six years later. The opening ten minutes of Days of Being Wild have the feel of statement cinema, redefining what movies can do and what audiences should expect from them. It's a great vingette between Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung, one which probably inspired a whole generation of short thesis films. Wong is so good at these meet-cutes that I wish he'd just give into his alleged corniness and make his own Love Actually or whatever. But romantic comedies aren't cool, duh, so it's the nihilism of Leslie Cheung's character that overtakes the picture, and that's interesting too, I suppose. I can totally relate to the criticisms outlined by tinyholidays in her verdict ("crazypants"!!!), but most of it worked for me. In fact, in time I think it could my favorite of these three films. It's already the most aesthetically pleasing, I think, especially with that consistently great color palette and the absence of too much jarring craziness. I'm surprised everybody in this marathon thread was so enthusiastic about the ending — I'm much more mixed on it myself — but we at least seem to agree that, on the whole, it's a very good film.

Fallen Angels, on the other hand, is my least favorite of these three movies and the one I find the least visually appealing (I am not a fish). The main thread about the killer (Leon Lai) and the agent (Michelle Reis) is borderline great, but the secondary story focusing on Takeshi Kaneshiro's willfully mute anarchist was, for me, an annoying diversion. The conceit of his breaking into random small business and operating them after hours is a good one, but it fails to develop into anything interesting and mostly just takes time away from Lai/Reis. Scott Tobias, in the New Canon review linked to by jbissell in his verdict, devotes disproportionately few sentences to this storyline (just three), which I think is telling, and declares that "later scenes about his complicated and ultimately touching relationship with his father give the role unexpected emotional depth." I agree with that to a point, but that emotional depth is brought about cheaply and represents Wong at his corniest. His reliance on multiple threads and narrators works against him here, resulting in a film that feels like an incomplete collection of moments, moments which, however cool in isolation, frustrate in aggregate. IMDb has a bit of trivia for Children of Men that says that Clive Owen's character never gets to finish a cigarette. That's a near perfect metaphor for Wong's storytelling in Fallen Angels. Not that I didn't like the movie.

One great appeal of revisiting Happy Together in the wake of the previous film was the promise of a more focused narrative, however elliptical it might be. And while the film does briefly follow a supporting character (Chang) in typical Wong fashion, the story did deliver on that promise. That turned out to be a negative, though, showcasing what seem to be Wong's weaknesses as a screenwriter. The disintegrated relationship between Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung) and Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung) just isn't that interesting — or, rather, it isn't presented in an interesting fashion. Instead, their scenes together are like a caricature of a Cassavetes film — two people being sort of repetitively nasty to each other. It made me long to watch Two for the Road again instead. There are a few strong moments between them (I especially liked the lighting of the cigarette shot through the door, for example), but there are long stretches when the film relies on its masterful audiovisual technique to maintain any sort of engagement. Wong excels at dramatizing the making and missing of personal connections, but Ho and Lai are stuck in limbo between those ends, and the script seems a bit stuck, too. When Tony Leung's character is on his own, the film really soars, evoking wonderfully his sense of isolation and the near connection he has with Chang. The cumulative effect of the sustained mood affected me even more strongly than that in Days of Being Wild, and the film ended on its highest note, which really helps its lasting impression with me.

I'm not sure everything I wrote above reflects what I actually meant to say. I really struggled with these reviews, and it didn't help matters that I wrote them piecemeal over the course of two days. Just to summarize: These are three good films, though I can very much understand the reasons each of them lost its second round matchup. Still, I suspect at least two of them will be back in the third round, possibly all three.

Resurrection Standings (the top twelve films will earn resurrection)

Up next: Minbo - or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion.

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Verite

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1783 on: September 19, 2012, 07:11:20 PM »
It's already the most aesthetically pleasing, I think, especially with that consistently great color palette

I should cop the Mega Star Blu-ray some day.  Did you use the screencap from DVD Beaver?  Seems to be close to what Doyle intended the film to look like.  I've only seen the Kino DVD which doesn't have a green tone in many of the scenes. 

Quote
"later scenes about his complicated and ultimately touching relationship with his father give the role unexpected emotional depth." I agree with that to a point, but that emotional depth is brought about cheaply

If you have time, can you expound (re: cheaply)?

Quote
but there are long stretches when the film relies on its masterful audiovisual technique

For me, when that kind of rendering of emotions and mood works, it really works.  Huge reason as to why I love Happy Together and Friday Night.  The latter you gave a B-.  I found your review by the terms: "dancing mom Claire".  ;D
« Last Edit: September 19, 2012, 07:13:07 PM by Verite »
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smirnoff

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1784 on: September 20, 2012, 10:00:22 PM »
Sopyonje
(Kwon-taek Im, 1993)
Round 1 review by Blue Void


The “tortured artist” is common enough but when it comes to Pansori, the Korean singing style featured in this film, it is a requirement. To perform Pansori properly demands true pain and despair. The artist must accumulate it, harbour it, and never let it go. If they do, they will lose their ability.

Woe to the children who are forced to train in this art form! This film tells the story of two of them: Songhwa and Dong-ho.

Blue Void’s review covers the plot of the film thoroughly and I don’t think anything more needs to be added to it. I’ll just reiterate some of the pros and cons from his review that were true to my own experience.

The Pansori is performed often, and at great length in the film. As a style of singing I found it interesting, and sometimes emotionally stimulating, but not terribly pleasing to the ear. The songs are simple fables, and the emotion of the stories being told are expressed by the singers voice and body language. For me it was simply a case of diminishing returns. With each performance I gave a larger and larger sigh of “here we go again”. There’s subtext to it all, but it’s spread rather thin. I would’ve liked a more motivated narrative... a definitive goal. Something that hung on the successful performance of every song, and gave them more purpose. But instead the songs were closer to segues than important story elements.

The core story is strong, despite my wavering interest, and when it finally got to the climax I was paying close attention. The scene was a bit of a let down, but still the best part of the film.



Swallowtail Butterfly
(Shunji Iwai, 1996)
Round 1 review by roujin


Roujin’s round one review does a great job of summarizing what this film is... and believe me, that’s no easy task.

The story sometimes had the feel of being improvised, as if they started out with such and such amount of film and just kept adding scenes until they ran out. Other times it reminds you there’s a core story its telling. There’s the protagonist and then there’s a dozen other characters, all of whom get just as much screen time. Usually in scenes relating to nothing. To try and actively follow the plot was maddening, so I quickly gave that up and just took it on a scene by scene basis.

The movie has a post-apocalyptic feel. Like when Stallone goes into the sewer village in Demolition Man, or when Denzel strolls into that desert town in Book of Eli... it’s a lot of broken windows, shanties, dirty clothes on clotheslines, graffiti, red light, piles of junk, crying baby noises, barking dogs, sirens, steam coming out of vents, hooligans running around... and so on. In other words because of the distinct visual texture the story feels more like a fantasy than a drama. Roujin compared it to Southland Tales... I would say that’s bang on.

Unlike Sopyonje this became a chore to sit through after a while. 2 hours 20 minutes, who are you kidding with that runtime? I was feeling like Al Pacino in Heat after the first couple of scenes.



Sopyonje was fair, and for this match-up that's good enough for a ticket to round 3.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2012, 10:15:54 PM by smirnoff »

mañana

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1785 on: September 21, 2012, 01:31:02 PM »
Having watched all three of these films in the past week, I really have to hand it to mañana's review of Happy Together, wherein he dares to admit the unadmittable: "There’s a stylish coolness to Wong Kar-wai that I find kind of corny." Haha, there's really something to that. Wong is a total cornball. He litters his films with the mechanisms of romantic comedies — payphones, video cameras, tape recorders — and then gives them a tragiocomic twist that's equally romantic and corny, in an emo kind of way.
I think when I wrote that I was thinking more in terms of aesthetics than those rom-com set pieces and devices that you've listed, but, yeah, I think its all related in some way. When I think about Chungking and Happy Together's audiovisual techniques, I'm usually reminded of various poorly aged, 90s alt-rock video flares.  8)

I hope Days of Being Wild get resurrected, based on my love for In the Mood I'd love to see another Wong take on the 1960s.
 
Great post, btw.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2012, 02:16:27 PM by mañana »
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BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1786 on: September 21, 2012, 02:07:21 PM »
Yay for quick turnarounds! Good work Smirnoff. I was lukewarm on Sopyonje too. Probably not really a round 3 worthy film, but sounded like you made the right choice.
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1787 on: September 21, 2012, 02:50:52 PM »
I should cop the Mega Star Blu-ray some day.  Did you use the screencap from DVD Beaver?  Seems to be close to what Doyle intended the film to look like.  I've only seen the Kino DVD which doesn't have a green tone in many of the scenes. 

Yeah, I got the cap from DVD Beaver. I was hoping to find one that was more evocative of my experience with the film, but attempting caps from the Netflix stream was a failure, so I settled.

If you have time, can you expound (re: cheaply)?

I don't know. The dad secretly watching the tape was perfect, but everything after that seemed to cross over into maudlin territory. That kind of thing might work in the context of a film like Philadelphia, but here it felt to me more rote and unearned — easy emotion that felt disconnected by everything that'd come before it. And then the sequence's final freeze frame was kind of ridiculous, lol.

For me, when that kind of rendering of emotions and mood works, it really works.  Huge reason as to why I love Happy Together and Friday Night.  The latter you gave a B-.  I found your review by the terms: "dancing mom Claire".  ;D

I agree with you: when it works, it really works. But there's still writing involved — whether to give context to that emotion or mood or to change the dynamic therein — and when that writing is intrusively poor, it can kill things for me. I found the writing in Friday Night more problematic than in Happy Together; that's all. And I rate the latter B+, incidentally. It'll fall off my Top 100 next year.

I think when I wrote that I was thinking more in terms of aesthetics than those rom-com set pieces and devices that you've listed, but, yeah, I think its all related in some way. When I think about Chungking and Happy Together's audiovisual techniques, I'm usually reminded of various poorly aged, 90s alt-rock video flares.  8)

I misordered my thoughts in that paragraph. I should have followed my reference to your review with the line about the cigarette smoke, and then transitioned from there into the rom-com stuff. I agree, though: I think it's all related in some way. This long article (linked to by sdedalus) included a debate on whether Wong could be too "cutesy." That's something I struggle with in his films, too. It was a fight not to be cynically dismissive of the "leave his sadness at the end of the world" stuff in Happy Together; or to compare it unfavorably to similar scenes in Il Postino. There was something very awkward about it, for sure, but it still managed to, um, warm my heart.

Sopyonje
(Kwon-taek Im, 1993)
Round 1 review by Blue Void

Swallowtail Butterfly
(Shunji Iwai, 1996)
Round 1 review by roujin

Great job, smirnoff. I think I'll skip Swallowtail Butterfly in the resurrection process, especially when roujin praised it by saying, "I'm pretty sure this movie is awful..." lol.

pixote
« Last Edit: September 21, 2012, 02:53:35 PM by pixote »
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Bondo

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1788 on: September 21, 2012, 03:18:14 PM »
Great job, smirnoff. I think I'll skip Swallowtail Butterfly in the resurrection process, especially when roujin praised it by saying, "I'm pretty sure this movie is awful..." lol.

That's the highest praise roujin has to offer.

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #1789 on: September 22, 2012, 11:41:05 PM »
The Weald (Naomi Kawase, 1997)

Without having done a proper survey of all the films that were included in the bracket, there's not a lot of female directors to choose from. Even outside the bracket's confines, if you asked me to name a female director from the Far East, I'd be hard pressed to name one. These are still very patriarchal societies. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity to watch something from one of those rare female directors.

The Weald is a very unstructured documentary, a fairly big warning sign in itself. If you pressed me for a general synopsis of what it was about, with the help of others' reviews, I could say it is something about aging in a changed culture where multi-generational family support no longer is as strong. This still feels like a stretch as this is the longest and most diluted of 76 minute movies. There just aren't enough interviews or enough depth in the interviews to really establish the film's themes in a powerful way.

From a technical standpoint, there isn't much elegance here in the cinematography, though some of the natural settings are certainly beautiful. The visual sense of the film is marred by too many awkwardly close shots of the film's subjects. Overall this is a pretty big let down, though if I'm honest, Kawase's other film sounds a bit more promising, it being unavailable to me for this matchup due to ranking rules.

1.5/5

The Cherry Orchard (Shun Nakahara, 1990)

Do not watch this film if you wish to remain unspoiled as to the plot of Chekov's play. At the start, one of the girls explains to her boyfriend the story of The Cherry Orchard, the play her school is putting on. The play itself is, as far as I can tell, not of great importance to the film beyond lending some lines about cherry trees and how they relate to time. This reminded me 5 Centimeters Per Second, one of my favorite films, its title referring to the speed at which cherry blossoms fall. Given the place of cherry trees in Japanese society, and the annual cycle of the blossoms, it seems an apt metaphor for a school setting with girls coming of age.

The film involves the time leading up to the play's performance, which is in doubt after a student was caught smoking. Fittingly, a lot of the film feels like a play. The camera finds many great framings and, though there are some more traditional two-shots and the like, sometimes it settles in for a long, often stationary single shot and lets the girls' nervous energy provide the life to the film. This is a big ask for a group of young actors and they deliver, with no performances standing out in a negative way. There is a great naturalism to the whole thing. In many ways, this is exactly the kind of filmmaking I respond to most.

If there is one main drawback, it is that the group of girls is quite large which can make it harder to keep track of individual character concerns. That the group compositions are frequently changing, and as the play gets nearer, the costumes and makeup changes too, makes the task of keeping everyone sorted even more challenging. Still, the couple of main characters get developed in really interesting ways, with a variety of gender and sexuality issues involved. It exudes a wonderful feeling of authenticity in both dialogue and group dynamics that succeeded in truly charming me.

5/5

Verdict: At the risk of being too predictable, The Cherry Orchard's female teen coming of age story moves on with highest recommendation, perhaps second only to After Life among my bracket discoveries.