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Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: camelpimp on 31 Oct 2007, 10:33
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Anything you'd recommend? I've seen Hero, Crouching Tiger, and have seen Not One Less and part of To Live in Chinese san subtitles. Anything you'd recommend that would be a little more obscure?
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Keep going with Zhang Yimou's movies---Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern are good. Hmmmm what else..... Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, Farewell My Concubine, In the Mood for Love and 2046 come to mind.
Apparently Springtime in a Small Town is by reputation one of the best Chinese films ever made. I haven't seen it, but I would say check that out if you can find it.
Also obligatory mention of Shaolin Soccer and also of various Shaw Brothers films.
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Kung Fu Hustle.
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seven swords is good. akira krosawa's old stuff is classy but different. there are others, but you have to let me peruse my collection
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heyyyyy kurosawa didn't make chinese movies. just what are you trying to pull here.
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2nd on Zhang Yimou (esp. The Road Home) and Farewell My Concubine. Life on a String, another Chen Kaige film, is really good, too. The Blue Kite goes along similar lines as To Live, but I think it's slightly better. Yi Yi, while technically Taiwanese, is an amazing film.
There are lots more that are still pretty good. Seriously, I'd go for anything you can find by Zhang Yimou (Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is a recent one) There's a musical (though the tunes are rather in a Western, Andrew Lloyd Webber vein) out recently called Perhaps Love - certainly decent, if you like musicals. There's also The Go Master, another recent one - visually stunning (like most modern Chinese films, actually). I haven't seen Shower, but that's supposedly pretty good, too.
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NINJA TERMINATOR
THE STORY OF RICKY
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THE STORY OF RICKY
I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE SUBTITLE...RIKI-OH:THE STORY OF RICKY SEEMS MORE ACCURATE.
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The House of Flying Daggers is pretty amazing.
Plus, Zhang Ziyi.
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Fearless. Not obscure, but lovely and also COOL :)
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The House of Flying Daggers is pretty amazing.
Plus, Zhang Ziyi.
Meh. Gong Li.
I just saw The Sun Also Rises (no relation at all, that I could see, to the Hemingway novel). No subtitles, so I didn't really know what was going on, but it definitely held my attention. Gorgeous movie.
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Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
FUCK YES. That movie made me cry. It's one of the best films I can remember seeing. And for some god-knows-why reason, it barely even seems to have been noticed, at least not here in Australia. Nobody ever mentions it when they're talking about Zhang Yimou, it got no reviews when it came out (well, maybe one tiny one), and it was only at the cinemas for a couple of weeks.
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THE STORY OF RICKY
I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE SUBTITLE...RIKI-OH:THE STORY OF RICKY SEEMS MORE ACCURATE.
Actually they are alternate titles. The actual chinese title is 'Lik Wong', but I did not imagine people would get that.
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Mr. Vampire!
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Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
FUCK YES. That movie made me cry. It's one of the best films I can remember seeing. And for some god-knows-why reason, it barely even seems to have been noticed, at least not here in Australia. Nobody ever mentions it when they're talking about Zhang Yimou, it got no reviews when it came out (well, maybe one tiny one), and it was only at the cinemas for a couple of weeks.
I think the reason it got so little press (I wasn't really watching for it when it came out, so I didn't notice what kind of attention it got in the US) had to do with the fact that it got sandwiched between Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower. People probably didn't notice that he'd made a serious movie.
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Not a serious movie at all, but Shaolin Soccer (http://youtube.com/watch?v=tUvK5XHlHuM) is completely awesome in all possible ways*
*Even the ways you haven't thought of yet.
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I realize this is a Korean movie, but if any of you have not seen Oldboy, then watch it now.
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I realize this is a Korean movie, but if any of you have not seen Oldboy, then watch it now.
Not Chinese. And it's been brought up in the Recommendations thread a few times. But I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I'm gonna buy the trilogy on Amazon pretty soon.
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Yi Yi, while technically Taiwanese, is an amazing film.
Seconded. It depends on what you're willing to allow as "Chinese." I will not, of course mention anything Japanese (Akira Kurosawa) or Korean (Chan-wook Park) but if you're into crime films and gangster pictures, Hong Kong is the place to be. Johnny To's recent movies Exiled and Triad Election are both excellent examples of Hong Kong crime dramas.
On a totally different note, 2046 is awesome, and you should see most movies directed by Kar-wai Wong, esp. Chungking Express and Days of Being Wild.
Also, I agree Gong Li is great, but avoid Zhou Yu's Train. Man, that was crappy.
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2046 is indeed great. Most of my recommendations have already been suggested but If you're into the crime drama thing Infernal Affairs is pretty good. If anyone wasn't aware it's the movie that was remade into 'The Departed'.
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FUCK YES. That movie made me cry. It's one of the best films I can remember seeing. And for some god-knows-why reason, it barely even seems to have been noticed, at least not here in Australia. Nobody ever mentions it when they're talking about Zhang Yimou, it got no reviews when it came out (well, maybe one tiny one), and it was only at the cinemas for a couple of weeks.
I saw a preview for that on the DVD for The Devil and Daniel Johnston. I thought it looked interesting, but now I'm definitely going to check it out.
Also, I recommend Chuen jik sat sau (Fulltime Killer) from Johnny To/Ka-Fai Wai.
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Iron Monkey
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2046 is indeed great. Most of my recommendations have already been suggested but If you're into the crime drama thing Infernal Affairs is pretty good. If anyone wasn't aware it's the movie that was remade into 'The Departed'.
The Departed was so much better than the Chinese version.
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I remember there being a few things plot wise that I thought worked better in the original, but as a whole, definitely. Still, it's worth watching. But then again, I watched the Chinese one first so, I might not feel the same had it been the other way around.
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Story. Around the time I was 11 or 12 my parents got all hung up on "imparting culture" upon me. And thus they took me to the Chez Artiste theater in Denver to see independent film. I ended up seeing Pi, Run Lola Run, Memento all during their initial runs. Fun times were had. But I digress.
On one particular night, my parents had brought me to the theater and had given me my ticket. While they got concessions, I ran off to the show. Except I didn't actually look at the ticket. We were supposed to see some movie about people in a post-death limbo waiting room or something, but I ended up just sitting down and watching the other movie they were showing. And that movie was Xiu Xiu: the Sent-Down Girl.
Needless to say, afterward my parents were pretty pissed, but I was too depressed to care. It might have been the first time I saw rough, degrading sex onscreen. In the theater I was thinking "man, my parents are really taking this culture thing a little far". I still remember the "You are soft... like dough." scene. Ugh.
Anyway, I heartily recommend that movie. I hear the "Election" gangster pic trilogy is good, but I haven't seen any, so I can't make a personal endorsement. There was another movie that starts out as a gangster flick but changes halfway through into a western that sounded pretty cool, but I can't remember the name of it now :( if anybody knows what I'm talking about, remind me.
And... I think I'm done wasting everybody's time here.
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The one you didn't see back then, the one about the postmortem waiting room - that's probably a Japanese movie called After Life. You should see that one, too.
Here are some more that I watched this semester:
Fearless, for a martial arts film, is really stinkin' good. So is Once Upon a Time in China. Really does a good job at portraying the frustrations caused by Western imperialism. Both are beautifully shot.
Neorealism (I think I have that right) isn't everyone's cup of tea, but Jia Zhangke's recent films, The World and Still Life are both really good. Slow, maybe a little hard to follow, but good.
Ang Lee has a new film out - Lust, Caution. Well done, caused something of a stir because of the MPAA's NC-17 rating.
Kekexili : Mountain Patrol is great. Story of a reporter who goes out into a harsh area of Tibet with a civilian task force trying to stop poaching of Tibetan antelope. Brutal, compelling, very well-made.
A World Without Thieves is a really nice movie. A good story, good acting, good characters.
Chicken Poets is kind of an avant-garde, postmodern satire of China's commercialization. It's pretty neat.
And Blind Shaft. Another satire, but much rougher and darker. Two miners kill younger workers that they lure in and pretend are family members, so they can extort money from the mine bosses (in China's illegally-operated coal mines) by covering it up to look like an accident. More realism, but this time moves quickly, instead of slowly. Really good movie.