Author Topic: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 561839 times)

smirnoff

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2220 on: October 30, 2016, 12:43:41 AM »
Nice work Sam and Jared. :)

BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2221 on: October 30, 2016, 09:21:59 AM »
Awesome work Sam and Jared (and of course Pix!) for getting us over the round three hill!

Edit: fixed Jared's name. My phone keeps autocorrecting it to James. :(
« Last Edit: November 02, 2016, 03:16:56 PM by BlueVoid »
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2222 on: November 04, 2016, 12:19:13 PM »
Round Three Resurrection Review


My Rice Noodle Shop  (Xie Yang, 1998)
Won over April Story (verdict by edgar00)
Won over Patlabor 2 (verdict by Bondo)
Lost to Perfect Blue (verdict by Sam the Cinema Snob)

Dislocation has to be the most dominant theme running through the films in this bracket. Asian cinema of the 1990s seems at times populated solely with migrants, refugees, and exiles. There's very little sense of home, except as a distant ideal, forgotten to the past. Even the characters who've never left home still feel lost. Urban alienation abounds.

If I could have found a way to read My Rice Noodle Shop as a satire of this trend — mocking its characters' woe-is-me attitude about their dislocation, when it's really their privileged social status that they're nostalgic for, not China itself — I might have enjoyed its take on the nationalist refugee experience in Taiwan. But, alas, I think the tragedy on display was supposed to affect me emotionally, and that certainly wasn't the case. It's all rather laughable. Bondo's verdict encapsualtes my general reaction with perfect synecdoche: "I think we are supposed to pity her struggle, but the truth is she has terrible public service/tact and I think her restaurant should close." I had somewhat high hopes for the film, but I now attribute that to my confusing it, again and again, with Woman Sesame Oil Maker; or maybe just the fact that I've been craving rice noodles.

Resurrection Standings (the top six films will earn resurrection)
* Automatic Resurrection

Up next: Made in Hong Kong

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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2223 on: November 04, 2016, 01:41:08 PM »
Round 4 is so close I can taste it!

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2224 on: November 05, 2016, 04:12:30 AM »
Round Three Resurrection Review



































Made in Hong Kong  (Fruit Chan, 1997)
Won over Postman Blues (verdict by roujin)
Won over Mahjong (verdict by flieger)
Lost to Vive L'Amour (verdict by Jared)

Back in November 2008, when roujin posted his first verdict in this bracket and advanced Made in Hong Hong to the second round with mild enthusiasm, worm@work said of Chan's film, "If it ever needs to be resurrected, maybe I'll post more details on why I loved it as much as I did." Well, where are you, worm?! We're all waiting.

It turns out that Made in Hong Kong doesn't need another advocate. The film's chaotic creativity speaks for itself. It might rival Chungking Express as the bracket's most "nineties" film, and not just because of the posters of Natural Born Killers, My Own Private Idaho, and Leon that adorn various bedroom walls. It's one of the most alive films of the decade, too, merging the wonderful messiness of Kamikaze Taxi with the indie immediacy of Ordinary Heroes. The ambient buzz of the city dominates the soundtrack, complementing the oft-fractured visuals to create a rather beautiful portrait of youthful hopelessness.

The overall energy of Chan's effort is sometimes more engaging than the individual scenes. He writes and directs like a man who'd been scribbling ideas down in notebooks for years, and then, with just scraps of film at his disposal, tried to cram as many of those ideas into each frame as possible. Made in Hong Kong is almost the exact opposite of Musuko. As flieger wrote, it's "not the work of a relaxed master, but of someone who is thinking, feeling, and just grasping at showing all the things that are there to be seen. Like Sam Lee's performing energy and verve, this a film that reaches, and on the whole, succeeds marvellously."

Made in Hong Kong doesn't end particularly well — the final twenty minutes seem to resist the idea of ending at all — but it's a very good film, and it wouldn't suit me well for its run in the bracket to end here.

Resurrection Standings (the top six seven films will earn resurrection)
* Automatic Resurrection

Up next: ???

pixote
« Last Edit: November 05, 2016, 04:57:29 PM by pixote »
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pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2225 on: November 05, 2016, 04:13:06 AM »
Round 4 is so close I can taste it!

Jinx!

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BlueVoid

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2226 on: November 05, 2016, 11:44:50 AM »
Yay! Great finish Pix. Love the caps. On to round 4?
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2227 on: November 05, 2016, 12:57:56 PM »
Think we'll all be rating the films in the bracket and reseeding them. Wanna say pix gave us a timeline of late November before the next round starts.

pixote

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2228 on: November 05, 2016, 01:13:55 PM »
Right now, there are seven films I want to resurrect. But that's not possible; I have to resurrect an even number. Rather than trim the list to six, I'm going to expand it to eight. There are five films I want to consider for that eighth spot; two that were eliminated in the second round (but never got resurrection consideration) and three that weren't available at the start of the bracket. I'm going to try to watch all five this weekend, and the best of them will join the top seven above. Then we'll spend a week (tops) rating the 58 remaining films before kicking off the fourth round on Monday, November 14.

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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: 1990s Far East Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #2229 on: November 05, 2016, 01:20:19 PM »
Sounds like a plan! Glad we're getting some momentum again.  :)