09-05-2015, 10:43 AM
[youtube]dY00f9yH130[/youtube]
The latest from Chen Kaige, one of the top 5th gen Chinese filmmakers, mostly because of the success of Farewell My Concubine. It's a Fant-Asia flick, starring Wang Baoqiang, a Shaolin-raised comedian actor who sits high on my 'one to watch' list from Kung Fu Killer and Lost in Thailand, and, among others, Jaycee Chan, who's name was removed from the credits, surely due to his recent pot bust in Beijing.
MCDtM is disappointing. It suffers from a trend in Chinese filmmaking as they struggle for that global blockbuster - too many dishes on the lazy susan spoils the banquet. Ok, not a great label for this phenomena, but I'll come up with something more succinct after Labor Day Weekend. It's akin to Jackie's Dragon Blade - there's some great stuff - big money sets, gorgeous cinematographic moments, good cast all trying to meet the projected scope of the project - but it gets totally lost in what it wants to be. It starts as a Kung Fu comedy, then shifts to an affair/romance/murder, then to bad drug trip, then to a Fant-Asia fight scene in a basketball court, and on and on, all the while dropping this wisdom bombs steeped in Daoism and Buddhism. Re-edit this baby and there's a great film in there somewhere. But as it stands, it's too ADHD to follow. Consistent to Kaige, it focuses on dysfunctional relationships. And the textures of the sets, costumes and design are sumptuous. I must get myself a gnarly knurled walking staff like in this film, or maybe a spider-web parasol with SPOILER a hidden bloody-mary style switchblade sword END SPOILER. Wang is a tad annoying with his whiny character, and the Kung Fu is all wire-&-CGI, but has a few moments of amusement.
MCDtM was based on a bestseller, and I imagine that it's a great read mostly based on how the wisdom bombs drop. I think it just got twisted up by Kaige's attempt to bring it to the screen. The film did very well - opening on top of the box office in PRC and placing 4th globally.
If I were I filmmaker (Greg), I'd be watching Chollywood cinema closely, not because it's good but because it's poachable. There are many great scenes in films like Dragon Blade and MCDtM, stuff anyone could poach like Tarantino. It's just these films are so boisterous they can't see past their own bluster, and so they continue to fail as international exports. However, if Chinese filmmakers ever manage to solve it, the sleeping dragon awakens.
The latest from Chen Kaige, one of the top 5th gen Chinese filmmakers, mostly because of the success of Farewell My Concubine. It's a Fant-Asia flick, starring Wang Baoqiang, a Shaolin-raised comedian actor who sits high on my 'one to watch' list from Kung Fu Killer and Lost in Thailand, and, among others, Jaycee Chan, who's name was removed from the credits, surely due to his recent pot bust in Beijing.
MCDtM is disappointing. It suffers from a trend in Chinese filmmaking as they struggle for that global blockbuster - too many dishes on the lazy susan spoils the banquet. Ok, not a great label for this phenomena, but I'll come up with something more succinct after Labor Day Weekend. It's akin to Jackie's Dragon Blade - there's some great stuff - big money sets, gorgeous cinematographic moments, good cast all trying to meet the projected scope of the project - but it gets totally lost in what it wants to be. It starts as a Kung Fu comedy, then shifts to an affair/romance/murder, then to bad drug trip, then to a Fant-Asia fight scene in a basketball court, and on and on, all the while dropping this wisdom bombs steeped in Daoism and Buddhism. Re-edit this baby and there's a great film in there somewhere. But as it stands, it's too ADHD to follow. Consistent to Kaige, it focuses on dysfunctional relationships. And the textures of the sets, costumes and design are sumptuous. I must get myself a gnarly knurled walking staff like in this film, or maybe a spider-web parasol with SPOILER a hidden bloody-mary style switchblade sword END SPOILER. Wang is a tad annoying with his whiny character, and the Kung Fu is all wire-&-CGI, but has a few moments of amusement.
MCDtM was based on a bestseller, and I imagine that it's a great read mostly based on how the wisdom bombs drop. I think it just got twisted up by Kaige's attempt to bring it to the screen. The film did very well - opening on top of the box office in PRC and placing 4th globally.
If I were I filmmaker (Greg), I'd be watching Chollywood cinema closely, not because it's good but because it's poachable. There are many great scenes in films like Dragon Blade and MCDtM, stuff anyone could poach like Tarantino. It's just these films are so boisterous they can't see past their own bluster, and so they continue to fail as international exports. However, if Chinese filmmakers ever manage to solve it, the sleeping dragon awakens.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse