im anticipating the grandmasters by wong kar wai, you can do what you like

i love that it's really Gong Er's movie

That's a good point. I'm not sure it's completely true -- tho I haven't seen the long version -- but it could or should be true. She's definitely the most interesting character, and she also has the best fight scenes.

Finally saw this (American cut) and pretty much loved it. It's not up there with 2046, but what is, really? Still, it's gorgeous and melancholy, and I loved the fight scenes.

i love that it's really Gong Er's movie, and that the central tragedy of the film is of her potential being strangled and killed by Confucian strictures.

Yes! It's really about kung fu as an art form and the importance of preserving the knowledge of the past, and Gong Er embodies that through failure: missed opportunities, lost knowledge, regret, regret, regret...

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/02/27/william-chang-on-the-art-of-movie-design-2/?mod=WSJBlog

Unghngnhngng I wnat this guy's job

saw the grandmaster last night, seeing it with a saturday night movie crowd was probably a bad idea. but not sure anything would have helped make it any better. you can tell its had harvey weinstein make cuts to it, as its insultingly littered with intertitle screens, which should make it easier to follow, but instead just make the film feel dumber. but then i dont know if the longer cut of this would have been much better either. wong kar wai is becoming a parody of himself really. his style is so mannered on this, its almost like someone doing an imprersonation of his style after watching in the mood for love. far too many slo-mo shots, for no real reason, odd camera placing, which makes no real sense, and looks like a real mess. it has one truly affecting scene at the end, between zhang yiyi and tony leung in terms of something that is very WKW, and a few decent fight scenes, but mostly, its just a mess of a movie. poetic in places, but a fallure as a biopic, a failure as a romance, and worst of all for a film called the grandmaster, just not that memorable as a martial arts movie. in WKWs defence, it made me really hate harvey weinstein. if WKW is to make any more films, he should probably do away with his now very affected style, and just go back to basics (ie no more closeups of raindrops when you actually want to see fighting). he should go anti-style. because this is just silly. and why does tony leung have that hat on so often?

also, for an ipman film, its just stupid that the first intertitle screen in the epilogue is about gong er. and some of the dialogue is just silly (and im someone who genuinely likes the philosophy that you get in martial arts movies).

harvey weinstein should never be allowed to buy any asian films again.

I could never see this film with its so-called 'cuts'.

I've remembered many of the fights throughout the year since I saw it, so I'd say the fights are memorable. Also, this is a wkw-film first and foremost, that it fails at being something else is not that important. Now I really want to rewatch it :)

theyre memorable, sure, but not for anything other than their wkw-ness but why is that always seen as a good thing? i see it as not so much a directorial stamp, but a sign of limitations. this is kind of a problem i have with praising directors for their auteur-ness - critics like spotting the same things in their movies, and directors seemingly like to, or cant help but, give them the same things to spot again and again, leading to a rather ridiculous circle jerk.

No, they're memorable because they are insanely beautiful. Which has a lot to do with their wkw-ness, but nothing to do with a circle-jerk. The train, the snow, the rain, the moment where Leung jumps over Yiyi. They're memorable. I couldn't care less that it isn't the kicks and punches that are particularly memorable.

youre not wrong in that they do have an aesthetic power, but i felt like i was watching a music video or some sort of tv commercial at times, there was something a little too slick about them. the editing was too quick, and the camera positioning meant you were constantly disoriented and not being sure where to look in a way that made me think more of a bourne-style hollywood actioner than something like crouching tiger or hero.

https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/talking-grandmaster-costume-design-with-oscar-nominated-william-chang-193468/

Tl;dr article by David Bordwell here:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/09/23/the-grandmaster-moving-forward-turning-back/

Which links to something he wrote about ASHES OF TIME REDUX: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2008/12/18/ashes-to-ashes-redux/