MUBI: Three by Wong Kar-Wai

by Cláudio Alves

Happy birthday to Wong Kar-Wai. The Hong Kong auteur turns 65 today, the same day I say goodbye to 28 and welcome my 29th year –we're birthday twins! But of course, I've loved the director long before discovering we shared July 17th, having fallen for his cinema when I glimpsed Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung cross paths in slow-motion, saw the treacherous enchantment of a kitschy lamp lost in Buenos Aires, experienced a Nouvelle Vague color kaleidoscope to the sound of "California Dreamin'." It's only fitting to celebrate the date by pouring over some of Wong's most ravishing pictures, remembering his mastery as we mourn a decade since his last feature.

Join me as I consider three films MUBI has programmed specially for July, a collection they call As Time Goes By. A trio marked by lavish spectacle, they reach for the stars – a wuxia experiment, a sci-fi lament, and a martial-arts biopic like none other…

Click to read more ...

Wong Kar-wai Aligns with Annapurna for Gucci Movie

A piece of advice for these turbulent, trying times in America: appreciate beauty and take good news where you can find it. Luckily for fans of master director Wong Kar-wai, Indiewire just reported a lovely blend of both. Poised to bring his eleventh film to the big screen with the help of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, Wong’s follow-up to 2013’s elegant wuxia The Grandmaster will be a (no doubt, very nice looking) movie centered around the Gucci dynasty and the murderous, complicated family drama swirling around it. There’s absolutely nothing surprising about hearing the names Gucci and Wong Kar-Wai within the same breath; style recognizes style.

In the interim between now and whenever the film’s release – and in the spirit of swooning more and swooning often – I recommend watching this scrumptious interlude from In the Mood for Love on a loop until you melt into the iconic pot of noodles that Maggie Cheung so gracefully swings. What's your favorite Wong Kar-wai?

Asian Film Awards: Snowpiercer, The Grandmaster, and More

The youngest of film awards for Asian cinema (they have quite a few) is the Asian Film Awards which are now in their 8th year. Unlike the prestigious Golden Horse which (mostly) goes to Chinese language cinema, these encompass just about anything Asian: Japan, China, India, South Korea, The Phillipines and so on. Their best picture nominees this year:

• No Man's Land (Mainland China)
• The Grandmaster (Hong Kong - Oscar submission last year)
• The Great Passage (Japan - Oscar submission last year) 
• The Lunchbox (India)
• Snowpiercer (South Korea - but extremely international with stars from the US, Korea, and the UK. Can this just open already?!)
• Stray Dogs (Taiwan) 

The near misses, we assume, are Ilo Ilo from Singapore (Oscar submission last year) and Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father Like Son from Japan (the one Spielberg might remake) since they did well with nomination tallies in major categories.  If you're interested you should look at their official site because they smartly include photos of everyone - you can even see what the cinematographers, editors and costume designers look like.

But who did Zhang Ziyi vote for?

I know you. You woke up this morning desperate to know what Zhang Ziyi's Oscar ballot looked like. I am here, as ever, to improve your day with answers and actressness.

The Chinese superstar wasn't* nominated for  Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) or Memoirs of a Geisha (2005, around the time AMPAS invited her to join) despite plentiful US media attention. (I imagine teen and early 20something readers aren't super familiar with her since it's been 9 years since she was a regular fixture in the US entertainment press???) The Grandmaster raised her profile a bit again and she obviously helped the costumes and cinematography to their Oscar nominations on account of good god she's photogenic.

She discussed her ballot with fans on her Weibo account  though she was cleverly vague about whether she was talking votes or predictions (AMPAS members aren't supposed to reveal their actual votes).

She wrote [translated for TFE - thanks Tony!]:

Quite a chaotic year. Voted without taking any precursor awards into account. Some simple predictions based on experience and personal feeling.  

Best picture: Gravity. Animated feature: Frozen. Not just great movies but both female-centric.  Blanchett best actress. J.L. best supporting actress. Leto best supporting actor. For best actor I loved Matthew's performance but voted for DiCaprio, he deserves this no matter what.

For art department and cinematography I'm rooting for the home team of course. Good luck to them. A tip: Mr. Sunglasses** will walk the red carpet

In the spirit of Zhang Ziyi's social media sharing you know you want to share this ballot on Facebook or twitter! 

*As I've stated numerous times Asian actors don't have much luck with the Academy or Hollywood. They don't get invited to present very often at the big show, you rarely seen them in color blind casting decisions, and they rarely get nominated for Oscars even when they have a high profile year like Ziyi or Gong Li before her. In fact, no Asian has ever been nominated for Best Actress (unless you count "Dark Angel"'s Merle Oberon who was half Indian but hid her heritage in the less diverse Hollywood of the 1930s)

** "Mr Sunglasses" would be her director Wong Kar-Wai

More Kudos for The Grandmaster

The awards journey of Wong Kar Wai's long-gestating martial arts history epic continues. Though The Grandmaster didn't win a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination, it nevertheless became one of those rare subtitled pictures to become a multiple Oscar nominee even without that honor. Though it's not likely to win either of its Oscar nominations, more trophies might be coming its way. It lost the Golden Horse for Best Picture, Asia's most prestigious film trophy, but now it leads the Hong Kong Film Award nominations with 14 nominations. Its nearest rival is Unbeatable, a fight tournament movie with 11 nominations which is really much closer to a Hollywood style inspirational sports drama like Warrior. (I reviewed the latter at TIFF last year.) 

Eddie Peng and Nick Cheung in UNBEATABLE

For those who, like me, are confused at the amount of different film awards for the Chinese film industry, I have asked and it works out something like so. There are three major regions (Taiwan, China, Hong Kong) and they each have film awards; The Golden Horse are from Taiwan and are considered the most prestigious because they have the widest open playing field (all three major regions are eligible for prizes plus places like Singapore -- which took Best Picture for Ilo Ilo if you'll recall) and they are the oldest and thus an institution; the Hong Kong Film Awards concentrate on Hong Kong cinema and China's Golden Rooster concentrates on mainland China... though in all three cases certain films work around the rules. It was ever so in film awards from anywhere, yes?

The nominee list, with more commentary, is after the jump

Click to read more ...