Recommend me some Chinese cinema

Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, or both?

What are the proto-Crouching Tiger movies?

Ang Lee's earlier movies are lot's of fun.

Wong Kar-Wai has some good movies and some pretty intolerable movies.

There was a film that came out about 6 years ago about a Beijing public bath. I can't remember the name, but that was good. you should be able to find it in a good video store. anyone know what I'm talking about?

I'm the other. I keep telling myself it's because I saw it on a small TV screen on video and wasn't able to enjoy the "sumptuous" cinematography.

I'm the other. I keep telling myself it's because I saw it on a small TV screen on video and wasn't able to enjoy the "sumptuous" cinematography.

I saw it twice in the theater and once at home and just totally couldn't engage with it at all.

(I loved Hero and Shaolin Soccer btw)

Also, Infernal Affairs I and II (less so III, which just gets stupid towards the end.) - they're gorgeously shot and the best thing to come out of HK cinema in ages. Plus, HK cop movies are the Best Genre Evah.

The main joy of InfAff II is Inspector Wong, though. And the cinematography (plus it has less overemotive music, very little romance and the main female actress is actually good. Shock).

A Better Tomorrow is one of the great triad films, too, and the first sequel's pretty decent, though A Better Tomorrow III should be avoided like the plague. The third film in these trilogies is always a bit rubbish.

I saw this, but I forget the name, it was good.

A print (?!?!?!?!?!!!!!) of Ashes of Time played in Brooklyn last Sunday but I lamed out and didn't go. I am mad at myself for that.

i enjoyed this a couple of weeks ago, like Chungking Express but less zany.

channel 4 had an entire season of chinese ghost story films on one christmas but they, like everywhere else, seem to have stopped showing foreign films (less time for friends repeats i guess).

and those online dvd rental places often have lists of most popular foreign films, also by language:
http://www.screenselect.co.uk/visitor/browse.html?node_id=6134&parent_node_id=6102
http://www.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/movies.aspx?act=5&val=112&t=Cantonese
http://www.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/movies.aspx?act=5&val=91&t=Mandarin

I think many of the high spots have been mentioned, 'cept for maybe Farewell My Concubine, which blows Temptress Moon outta the carp pond if you ask me.

I recommended Ju Dou, but now that you mention it, I haven't seen it since college. I remember really liking it, but who knows. I was young and impressionable.

I used to go see a Hong Kong flick almost every week, and saw lots of briliant ones that I've never come across before: 666 Satan's Daughter (something like that!), the comedic brilliance of Who is the man Who is the Woman part 2 (I'm not kidding! there's some great gender-bending and a fantastic farcical scene where two of the charaters are wearing rubber masks - one of Whoopi Goldberg and the other of Woody Allen).
I did a couple of Chinese film uni papers so I should probably have a more informed response to this q, but most of the films we saw in that have already been discussed. It was very interesting to see footage of the film production facilities in Beijing which then (early 90s I think) were quite basic...Yellow Earth is a stunningly beautiful film.
Does anyone know the Young & Dangerous HK gangster action flick series?

shaolin soccer is totally fun, but i love stephen chow anyway.

my favourite HK films invariably involve Chinese vampires (chinese vampires can only hop, and they get to humans by smelling their scent and the only way you can stop them is by sticking a piece of yellow buddhist paper thing on their forehead). Hk also makes the best comedy ghost films.

i wish the original "spring in a small town" (48) wasn't so hard to see. likewise there are some good--and many bad--silent and early-sound shanghai films, like "the goddess", that are almost impossible to find at the moment.

if you're in the usa you can rent/buy "crows and sparrows" from '48 which is wonderful.

oh to add to list: wang xiaoshui (sp?)

also to add to list: xie jin ("two stage sisters" etc.)

So I think it's semantically acceptable.

I understand the political statement you seem to be making, but it seems a bit excessive.

Are these all movies made in the People's Republic of China? No.

But a lot of the Taiwan movies are about the estrangement from China. I don't know if there was a nationalist urge in Taiwan before Chang Kai-Shek arrived, but it is a different country -- film divided into ethnicity would make Canadian and US films the same, innit?

The issue of Taiwanese identity is certainly complicated. There are different types of Taiwanese people (those whose families have lived there for hundreds of years, those who came over in 1949 from the mainland, etc.). Taiwan's identity has been shaped by its traditional culture (basically Fujianese, I believe), it's relative isolation from the Mainland throughout most of the dynastic history of China (up until the Qing Dynasty, I think), the Japanese occupation for nearly 50 years, and then the influx of KMT from the mainland after the revolution and the treatment of native Taiwanese by the KMT.

Taiwan's identity is still complicated thanks to it's relationship with the U.S., contrasted with Taiwan's increasingly close ties with the PRC in terms of business, and Taiwan's transformation into a vibrant democracy and a whole bunch of other stuff at work.

It's all rather complicated, and it's certainly nothing like America and Canada.

So for the purposes discussing Chinese language films, I think including movies made in Taiwan is acceptable.

Only one I caught at the Lincoln Center Chinese retro last month, very fine (as is the remake).

S: Jia Zhang Ke, esp Unknown Pleasures and Platform.

I think my fave Chinese film of the '90s is Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite.

As we were talking about this on that other thread, I thought I should put it here.

FIND and SEE this film, WINTER VACATION (HAN JIA) by LI HONGQI, it is FANTASTIC, like a Northern Chinese Aki Kaurismaki:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xegkyj_winter-vacation-de-li-hongqi_shortfilms

what other thread? I will try to find this movie

new jia is aight

c0l1n to thread

http://blogs.indiewire.com/tedhope/archives/american_indies_have_a_lot_to_learn_from_their_chinese_counterparts/

enjoying this ^^; i saw disorder recently and loved it, kinda inclined to try to catch everything else dGenerate are putting out

i guess i'm throwing this out to tape store & whoever else might be knowledgeable: has anyone seen this:

http://dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/winter-vacation-han-jia/

i'd be interested in any opinions on other dgenerate/new chinese cinema that's around; i know i oughtta see petition but feel like there's some probably v strong films around that are off my radar

didn't you point me to Disorder?

yes, & would still v much endorse.

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/1289/snapshot20101103175933.jpg

i think some of it's value was in being super comprehensive & sprawling, tangling up a lot of threads that were usually p novel to me in a kind of welcome-to-urban-china way. like not 'shock value' but in being very immersive. so ymmv but i think it's a great movie, and the aesthetic - a bunch of people w/digital camcorders rendered into hi-contrast b&w - is v appealing too.

The best bet is to just see all Chinese non-fiction you can get your hands on. Pretty much everything DGenerate puts out is interesting, if not great. The Zhao films are a good place to start, but I'd rank CRIME AND PUNISHMENT over PETITION, though I've only seen the (awkwardly truncated) short version. Hopefully his foray into official filmmaking goes better than Jia's.

Both OXHIDEs -- the second, in particular -- are essential. As are both Zhao Dayong's. GHOST TOWN gets a lot of shine, but STREET LIFE is just as good. Also look out for KARAMAY and BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE.

Wang Bing's stuff is distributed by DER rather than DGenerate, but see everything you can. Preferably in a theater --as with all of this stuff -- but depending where you live, that can be a tall order.

WINTER VACATION does something pretty narrow very well. If you like utterly deadpan, unrelentingly bleak humor (think a slower, less broad Jarmusch), you'll like it. If not, it will be excruciating.

DISORDER is obv. all-time.

do you have any way that I can see DISORDER?

Email me (the ilx webmail should work)

pretty sure we haven't seen that film in NY.

I've seen all of those except STREET LIFE and BEIJING... in theaters in New York!

welp, I'm sure I missed a few of em, but Disorder didn't have a week at Anthology or anything, did it?

I don't think it's had a week-long engagement anywhere, though it did play Anthology once or twice, as well as MoMA and, I think, MOMI.

It's getting too hard for me to pick one-offs.

Yellow Earth is a stunningly beautiful film.

Seconded, probably the first Chinese film from China that I've seen that isn't in any way Martial Arts related.

so I got around to watching disorder and wow - just stunning. took a little while to get warmed up to the digital b&w conversion. the way that, even in scenes shot during bright daylight, the b&w conversion shrouded and masked everything - felt like the action had to punch and slog through the filter - just incredible. many movies get described as kafkaesque, but this movie, this movie is really kafkaesque.

best chinese films i've seen in last few years are oxhide i & oxhide ii by liu jiayin (sp?) -- they are NOT for all tastes but they have an amazing sort of unassuming inventiveness in just ignoring boundaries between fiction, documentary, and structural film.

but yeah lots of great stuff out of the PRC these days, and i can't keep up with too much of it sadly. i've been disappointed with jia zhangke's recent stuff, although the shanghai film -- i wish i knew -- has real moments (and is fascinating if you're interested in chinese history and chinese film history in particular) but 24 city felt kind of programmatic and dull to me.

oh i've got oxhide i at home & was trying to build up to watching it (i think i'd heard that oxhide ii was really where it was at, so had wondered if the first might just feel like groundwork). she seems really interesting as a filmmaker.

disorder kinda fleshed out a lot of stories i hear about some ridiculous daily-life-in-china things, for me, wild streets, yeah the kafkaesque arguments between motorists and pedestrians. and it's funny because it isn't nearly like graceful or spacious enough to seem like it's made in 'vignettes' or as a tasteful kinda wings of desire-y floating-city-symphony. but it's just overload all the same. i think someone called it a city-cacophony.

The Oxhides are very good. I still haven't seen Disorder, but it is top of my list.

Winter Vacation is still one of my favorite recent chinese films. Has anyone seen anything else by Li Hongqi?

both oxhides are really great, in similar ways. though i'm feverishly anticipating oxhide iii: oxhidest.

You mean Broxhide:Bride of Oxhide?

i watched. it was good. i think part of me's just sympathetic/pleased that people are making films like this, on this scale, of these things. the whole oxhide ~motif~ was very strong. i will watch oxhide ii probably sometime in the next year.

Beijing Flickers’ screenplay is inspired by interviews Sixth Generation auteur Zhang Yuan conducted with hundreds of twenty-somethings while he was working on his photography exhibition Unspoiled Brats. Dumped by his girlfriend for a rich man, San Bao descends into a self-destructive spiral and meets a few kindred souls: a drag queen addicted to cosmetic surgery and poetry, a female singer kicked out by the musicians in her band, and a girl…

Is this one any good? It's showing for free in W. DC tonight at the Freer Museum

http://www.chinafile.com/alternative-top-ten

no idea how to watch any of these : /

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XlWDzABOSs

the wang bing & memories look at me are both starting to screen someplaces, so i'm sure will pop up soon. the rest who knows.

apparently the biggest chinese movies of last year were monster hunt, and lost in hong kong. has anyone seen these? the last new chinese movie i saw was The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, which had its moments but lapsed into huge explosions of melodrama and sentimentalism, which was disappointing. i did like black coal thin ice but im not really counting that as mainstream (or should i?). monster hunt and lost sound quite fun.

I am v into HK cinema rn. So far I've watched (in addition to most of Wong Kar Wai's stuff):

A Chinese Ghost Story: I don't rly love sappy melodrama but this movie is so batshit in its tonal shifts that I really enjoyed it anyway
The Killer: again all the serious romance was zzzz but it was still v fun
God of Cookery: this movie intrigues me SO MUCH, I really enjoy it but I know I'm only picking up on like 20% of it. so much seems lost w/o like an intimate knowledge of HK culture, Cantonese, etc. I wish I cd take an entire class on this movie.

Next on my list:
Comrades: Almost a Love Story
Made in Hong Kong
Police Story
City of Fire

are there HK action films w/o sappy melodrama or is that, like, an integral part of the genre? Are there any other movies I should seek out? I'm more into stuff set in modern times than stuff set in the past.

or even movies that aren't necessarily ~great films~ but are a v good represenation of, like, HK society/culture/sensibilities/etc

So, um, Chinese Opera Film is pretty much the greatest thing ever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVljzqLt64

That's the final scene of The Love Eterne, so yeah, spoilers, but really, everyone who saw that film knew the story already, it's like Sleeping Beauty or something. Apparently people saw it 100 times or more. I want to watch more, fear that nothing will be as good as this.

Also, this is what the Shaw Brothers did before they did martial art films. Li Han-hsiang, the director, later made a bunch of soft-porn stuff, apparently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kamu1F81P8A

I won't spam with more videos now. But wow.

on an unrelated note there's a new blu ray of Comrades: Almost a Love Story which I've acquired a rip of but have not watched yet

Also got 20 minutes into Made in Hong Kong and it is GREAT

Just caught the last Ju Dou screening of its Film Forum run. Amazing.

Seems like they added some more screenings starting Friday.

Oh nice, I’ve been watching a lot of Chinese cinema from mostly that time, including Shanghai Triad.
But the last thing I watched was An Elephant Sitting Still (really good, one of the things I liked was the desaturated look of it, the very soft, muted color palette and how its environment feels quarantined and anechoic as a result. it’s not quite one of those visually stunning movies that looks like a painting - I’m thinking of Barry Lyndon, Vitalina Varela, Dick Tracy for example - but it’s close.)