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Wong Kar Wai Movies in US

 
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yitian



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PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:18 pm    Post subject: Wong Kar Wai Movies in US Reply with quote

With The Grandmaster US premiere coming soon, New York and Boston will hold WKW movie series showing every WKW films Very Happy.

WKW series at Museum of the Moving Image (New York): July 12th - August 24th, with The Grandmaster New York premiere and Wong Kar-wai in person on August 10th.
http://www.movingimage.us/films/2013/07/12/detail/wong-kar-wai-2/

The Films of WKW at Museum of Fine Arts (Boston): August 1st - August 25th, with The Grandmaster shown on August 15th.
http://www.mfa.org/programs/series/films-wong-kar-wai
http://www.colormagazineusa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=890:the-films-of-wong-kar-wai-at-the-mfa&catid=40:entertainment
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solitude87



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PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 10:27 pm    Post subject: Happy Together Screening Reply with quote

Hello, Screening from Museum of Moving Images, New York

Happy Together - July 14th @ 6:00PM EST

I have watched this movie N times already (on DVD via my laptop and TV). But it is an honor watch it in theater for the first time, perhaps the only time.

I got there kind of early, got a ticket at the front desk. It was only 4pm so I had to walk around the area, decided to go to UA across the street and watch a movie to kill some time.

After watching a movie at UA, it's already 5:50PM, I rushed back to the museum and went in the theater. There were already about 100 people sitting in scattered areas of the theater. More people came in as the movie begin.

I sat at the upper middle area to get a good view. The movie started on the dot. No commercials xD

The movie was in original Cantonese with English subtitles. The subtitles were a little off, sometimes it didn't show up when the characters were talking. (I'm glad I'm Cantonese!) There's a lot of laughter during the movie. I always find this movie very comedic, especially when Po Wing move stuff around the apartment, trying to sleep with Fai in that tight bed xD, Po-Wing: Hello, give me a piece of that chicken~, So tell me who you slept with? How many? or Po-Wing telling the ill Fai to cook for him....lots of memorable scenes.

Not sure how I should review this movie since I've watched it so many times already that I lost count. When the movie came out in 1997 I was too young to watch this or even know what it is, let alone understand it. I managed to watch it when I got older. Even though this is supposedly a movie about two gay men together as they say, I saw them as two good friends who were there for each other when going through hard times. They don't talk much, more like fighting a lot, but they know they care about each other deep in their heart. They just don't know how to express themselves. I really like the classic line "How about let's start all over again?" I think it can mean a lot...it takes a lot of courage to say that. It's a sad ending to see that Po Wing & Yiu Fai can't be there at the Iguazu Falls together. Maybe they were never meant to be.

There is a better/great review here:

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/happy_together
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yitian



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:09 am    Post subject: Re: Happy Together Screening Reply with quote

solitude87 wrote:
Hello, Screening from Museum of Moving Images, New York
Happy Together - July 14th @ 6:00PM EST

Lucky you, thanks for reporting Very Happy
It seems that I always miss the opportunity to watch HT on big-screen, a year or so ago at MOMA and now at the Moving Image Sad . Surely there will be another chance soon in big apple Think . (I won't miss TG premiere though cheers Dancing )
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solitude87



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:13 am    Post subject: Re: Happy Together Screening Reply with quote

yitian wrote:
solitude87 wrote:
Hello, Screening from Museum of Moving Images, New York
Happy Together - July 14th @ 6:00PM EST

Lucky you, thanks for reporting Very Happy
It seems that I always miss the opportunity to watch HT on big-screen, a year or so ago at MOMA and now at the Moving Image Sad . Surely there will be another chance soon in big apple Think . (I won't miss TG premiere though cheers Dancing )


Glad you'll be able to make it to the premiere!
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solitude87



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PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:10 am    Post subject: The Grandmaster Premiere in MovingImage Theater Sold out Reply with quote

Kind of old news.
I have been following Moving Image Museum on Twitter.

The majority of the tickets for the premier had been reserved by museum members.
When it was available to public on July 19th, the museum was flooded with phone calls, tickets it were sold out in matter of minutes.

There were people tweeting the museum complaining about not being able to get tickets, and that was their answer, there weren't many tickets left for the public.
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yitian



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PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It pays to buy a membership Laughing Laughing
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Sandy
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wong Kar Wai on ‘The Grandmaster’ and Kung Fu

Published: July 26, 2013

By ERIC KELSEY — Reuters

A minute with… LOS ANGELES — Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, best known for pensive dramas “Chungking Express” and “In the Mood for Love,” explores the life of Kung Fu master Ip Man in the new film “The Grandmaster,” which will be released on Aug. 23 in the United States.

The film tells the story of Ip — the trainer of Kung Fu film icon Bruce Lee — played by longtime Wong actor Tony Leung. It is divided into three parts that span his adulthood in 1930s southern China and his Hong Kong exile after Mao’s communist revolution in 1949.

Wong, 57, spoke with Reuters about the meaning of Kung Fu, exile and writing a fictional love story into Ip’s life in the form of Gong Er, the daughter of a Kung Fu grandmaster and played by Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

Question: What motivated you to make a film about Ip Man?

Answer: To make a Kung Fu film in my way. I see today there’s a lot (of) misconceptions or misinterpretations about some of these Chinese things, and one of them is the Chinese martial arts. The reason I wanted to make a film about Ip Man is because I believe a lot of people follow Chinese Kung Fu or Kung Fu films because of Bruce Lee.

Q: How well-known is Ip Man, who died at age 79 in 1972, in Hong Kong today?

A: He’s not that popular, but he’s very respected in the martial arts world, and in the case of Bruce Lee, he has become a legend. Once I knew I wanted to make a film about him, I had a meeting with both of his sons, and they showed me this short film shot three days before he passed away. ... He was doing demonstrations (in the film) of the Wing Chun (a Kung Fu style) combinations. He was 70-something (years old), very skinny, very weak, and he’s doing this demonstration with a dummy in the living room.

Q: What did you make of that film?

A: It’s very intriguing why he wanted to do this, because we all know that this combination is very, very legendary. It’s the core technique of the Wing Chun combat skill. We watched this film — now you can find it on YouTube — but at that time, it was almost like a secret. What I think he intended to do is to do this: he wanted to preserve his technique so it can be shared and taught to future generations.

Q: How is your film different from other Kung Fu films?

A: I haven’t seen any films talking about legacy. I’ve never seen a film that is so honest to the value of Chinese martial arts. I haven’t seen many films that are serious about the technique. ... Everyone says Wing Chun is very good with the hands, but they don’t know that actually the secret is in the footwork.

Q: The film is also a frustrated love story between Ip Man and Gong Er. What aspect of that storyline intrigued you?

A: I think it’s more than just a physical or standard love story, because, in a way, they’re also both great martial artists. I don’t know if it’s mutual attraction or mutual admiration, because when you talk to a martial artist he can be a very normal guy or old man, nothing special. But once they’re doing a demonstration, they are different persons.

Q: Your films strongly emphasize place. What role does it play in the relationship of Ip Man and Gong Er, who both emigrate to Hong Kong?

A: They lose everything and the only thing that’s common among these two people is the memories of their fighting and their skill and their passions toward martial arts. It’s like two Russian immigrants who are chess grandmasters and they end up in New York and the only thing that’s in common for them is chess, and here it’s martial arts.

Q: What particularly about this period, World War Two and Mao’s revolution, resonated with you?

A: This story tells you a lot about what is Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a place for all these immigrants after the war.

Q: You were born in Shanghai but moved to Hong Kong at age 5. Do you feel like an immigrant yourself?

A: We are the second generation. We can feel the sentiments of an exile from our previous generations. They’re living in Hong Kong, but they’re living in their own world. They’re living with the same traditions, the same habit as before, and so in fact it’s interesting for me to make this film. All the films I made before are about this generation. “In the Mood for Love” is about the people of the first generation, and they’re stuck in Hong Kong and how to adapt to this new life.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/07/26/2639902/wong-kar-wai-on-the-grandmaster.html#storylink=cpy
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

'The Grandmaster' Re-Tells The Story Of China's Greatest Martial Artist

by Joe Wilde | 23 July 2013

'The Grandmaster' is a semi-autobiographical account of the life of Ip Man (aka Yip Man) - one of China's most famed fighters and the man who trained Bruce Lee

Here's a martial arts film to get excited about, the semi-autobiographical tale of one of China's most famed martial artists in the past hundred years; the legendary Ip Man. The Grandmaster re-tells the story of the legendary South Chinese fighter and his feud with Northern China's fightest fist fighter, Gong Yutian, his decline into poverty following the Second Sino-Japanese War and his eventual rise once again to the top as a fighter in Honk Kong, where he eventually met and trained Bruce Lee.

In the film, we see Yutian renounce his title as grandmaster in order to challenges Ip (who was picked as South China's representative fighter) to a fight to see who really is the greatest martial artist of their time.

Following Ip's victory, Yutian's daughter, Gong Err seeks to restore her family's honour with another fight, only for her challenge to be interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945) - a war that end in Yutian's brutal murder and Ip's decline into poverty. While Err begins a campaign of vengence against her father's killers, Ip must make a new life for himself in Hong Kong, where the fighting is tougher and his talents are truly tested.

The Grandmaster has been directed by Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love, My Blueberry Nights, 2046) who also served as the co-writer along with with Haofeng Xu (Judge Archer, The Sword Identity) and Jingzhi Zou (My Kingdom, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles), with Ziyi Zhang, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Cung Le among it's stars. The film was released throughout Asia earlier this year and will be given a limited run in the USA on 23 August.

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/the-grandmaster-trailer_3776034


Last edited by Sandy on Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:13 pm; edited 3 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Martin Scorsese To Present Wong Kar Wai’s ‘The Grandmaster’
By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday August 13, 2013

http://www.deadline.com/2013/08/martin-scorsese-to-present-wong-kar-wais-the-grandmaster/

EXCLUSIVE: Martin Scorsese is lending his support to the upcoming Weinstein Company release of The Grandmaster, the film directed by Wong Kar Wai. Scorsese will lend his name in presentation of the kung fu film, and above the line it will read Martin Scorsese Presents The Grandmaster when TWC releases the film theatrically in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto on August 23 and nationwide on August 30. Wong has directed such films as Chungking Express, 2046 and My Blueberry Nights, and The Grandmaster stars Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang, and Chang Chen and is executive produced by Annapurna Pictures’ Megan Ellison. The film opened the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. “Wong Kar Wai has turned martial arts into a modern dance,” Scorsese said.

“Every movement hit with precision, every emotion drenched with underlying honor. The Grandmaster, arranged with both elegance and fury, left me mesmerized.” Said Wong: “Marty has always been a great inspiration. We are so thankful for his support of the film.”

TWC Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein said: “Marty Scorsese’s reaction to The Grandmaster couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. When Marty champions a film, nothing is better; it is the ultimate seal of approval. I look forward to audiences seeing this wildly entertaining and artistic film.”
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

'The Grandmaster' Mixed in Dolby Atmos
1:12 PM PDT 8/13/2013 by Carolyn Giardina

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/grandmaster-mixed-dolby-atmos-604974

The technology "will use sound to transport audiences right into the film action," director Wong Kar-Wai says.

The U.S. version of Wong Kar-Wai’s The Grandmaster was mixed in Dolby Atmos, which will be used for the August 13 premiere at the Regal E-Walk Cinemas in Manhattan. The Weinstein Company will release the film on August 23 in North America.

"The Grandmaster is a Chinese kung fu story that is not only about physical fighting," the director says, "but also about such intangibles as chi, the mind and the spirit, which are never easy concepts to express. I have been extremely impressed by the powerful enhancements to storytelling that Dolby Atmos makes possible. The Grandmaster in Dolby Atmos will use sound to transport audiences right into the film action."

The U.S. version of the film was mixed in Dolby Atmos by Kantana Sound Studio in Bangkok, Thailand, the first mixing studio equipped with Dolby Atmos in Southeast Asia.

The film stars Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang and was first released in mainland China on January 8. The film will be distributed by The Weinstein Co. to 800 screens in the U.S., including select theaters equipped to support Atmos.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In ‘The Grandmaster,’ Wong Kar Wai Takes Audiences on an Ip Trip

http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/in-the-grandmaster-wong-kar-wai-takes-audiences-on-an-ip-trip-1200575645/

August 8, 2013 | 02:00PM PT
Director’s painstaking preparation puts actors, auds in the mood for kung fu
Justin Chang
Senior Film Critic @JustinCChang

At one point in Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster,” the Chinese kung fu legend known as Ip Man is confronted by an arrogant upstart who seeks to engage him in combat. Ip Man accepts, but not before inquiring as to whether the young man has eaten lunch yet. He has, in fact — rice and barbecued pork. Big mistake.

The brief slapstick episode that follows is not only the funniest moment in this lyrical and kinetic martial-arts drama, but also one of the numerous true stories Wong came across while researching Ip Man’s life firsthand. It’s a welcome reminder that although the Hong Kong auteur may be the cinema’s pre-eminent poet of romantic longing, even his celebrated arthouse weepies, such as “Happy Together” and “In the Mood for Love,” have their undercurrents of humor.

“I’m not a very serious person,” Wong chuckles, sitting down at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills to discuss his 10th feature (which the Weinstein Co. will release Stateside on Aug. 23). He could even be winking, though you wouldn’t be able to tell from those signature shades, which seem to deflect one’s questions in almost the same way his movies, with their playful surfaces and elliptical narratives, can resist easy interpretation.

These days, however, Wong seems happy to speak to audiences in more concrete terms. His first dip into the martial-arts well since 1994’s “Ashes of Time” and his first film since 2007’s critically and commercially disappointing “My Blueberry Nights,” “The Grandmaster” has an unusually didactic, almost evangelical sense of purpose: to capture the nobility and formality of Chinese kung fu as it existed in the 1930s and ’40s, and to make its competing schools, traditions and philosophies accessible to the broadest possible audience.

“It is not new, but it has been forgotten,” Wong says. “I wanted to revisit the tradition. Chinese martial arts is not only about skill, it’s not only about kicks and punches. There’s a certain wisdom in it.”

Although it follows a number of different fighters, to the point where Wong considered changing the title to “Grandmasters” (his son talked him out of it), the film offers a loose personal history of one of kung fu’s great wise men. In tackling the oft-told story of Ip Man (played by Wong’s usual male lead, Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who pioneered the popular Wing Chun fighting style and famously taught Bruce Lee, the director fashioned an arty rejoinder to the entertaining if factually dubious “Ip Man” movies starring Donnie Yen.

“There are so many kung fu films and so many different interpretations of Chinese martial arts,” he says. “I didn’t want to invent stuff for dramatic reasons. I didn’t want to have Ip Man fight the Japanese. … I just wanted to set the record straight.”

The result, on one level, is a Wong picture through and through — another ravishing study of beautiful bodies circling each other in close quarters, their story coalescing in fragments of memory and snatches of voiceover. And like a few of the director’s recent movies, most famously “2046,” “The Grandmaster” ran into numerous delays, necessitating reshoots over the course of three years and missing a few of release dates before finally bowing in China in January. (It had its international premiere on opening night of the Berlin Film Festival, where Wong served as president of the jury.)

But in other respects, Wong’s latest is a film of significant firsts. It’s by far his biggest commercial success, having earned more than $50 million worldwide; in China, it outgrossed his previous four features combined. It also reps an unprecedented foray into biographical drama, and Wong, a free-form stylist but also a notorious perfectionist, met the challenge by insisting on strict historical accuracy: After exhausting various books, journals and archival materials, he spent three years interviewing hundreds of mainland martial artists in preparation for the script (co-written with Xu Haofeng and Zou Jingzhi), including several Ip Man proteges.

During production, the director’s obsession with verisimilitude extended to everything from the period-perfect sets created by his longtime production/costume designer and editor, William Chang, to the hours spent dressing, coiffing and training the actresses playing courtesans in a 1930s Foshan brothel, the site of the film’s extended first-act setpiece. Feeling the pressure perhaps most of all were Leung and co-star Ziyi Zhang, who plays Gong Er, a poised, powerful fighter who is inexorably drawn into Ip Man’s orbit. Both actors spent three years training for the picture’s dazzling fight sequences, many of which were shot under inclement circumstances, from an opening melee in the rain to a climactic clash on a snow-swept railway platform.

For Wong, the intense preparation was necessary not only to ready the actors for their action scenes, but to put them in the desired state of mind.

“Tony told me afterward that he would never have been able to play this character without his training, because the training enabled him to understand their body language — why they behave like this, what’s inside them, the confidence in the way they look at people,” he says.

Wong decided early on that the film would be released in two cuts: a 130-minute version for Chinese viewers and a more straightforward two-hour version for international audiences. In prepping the latter, he and Chang worked closely with Harvey Weinstein and exec producer Megan Ellison, whose Annapurna Pictures became a key financier in 2011. The result is not only simpler than the domestic version (which recalls the grand tradition of Chinese martial-arts novels in its tricky, convoluted structure), but also boasts explanatory intertitles, character identifiers and a reference to Bruce Lee in the closing credits.

If that sounds like a rare concession to commerce over art, the director has no regrets. With a film like “In the Mood for Love,” which Wong notes could be remade anywhere in the world, “you don’t need a lot of explanation, because the story is so universal. But “‘The Grandmaster’ is very specific. Because (non-Chinese viewers) don’t have much information or knowledge about the background and history, you have to give enough information for them to get into the story.”

Overcoming barriers of language, background and technology (a 3D conversion was briefly considered) is nothing new for Wong, a cultural chameleon whose own splintered sense of identity as a Shanghai-born Hong Kong transplant has supplied many of his films with a resonant, longing-for-home subtext. Incidentally, “The Grandmaster,” his first predominantly Mandarin-language film, fits into a trend of H.K. helmers venturing into the mainland movie industry — a transition with obvious potential benefits and drawbacks.

Still, Wong rejects the notion that collaboration necessarily means compromise.

“We don’t have boundaries in film,” he says. “It’s helpful to have a strong Chinese market, because without it, films like ‘The Grandmaster’ would not be able to get made. But it shouldn’t be a burden or a limitation. It should be your playground.”

Wong’s Finest Five

“Days of Being Wild” (1990)
Tony Leung Chiu-wai gets one of the great movie-star entrances. In the very last scene.

“Chungking Express” (1994)
A shot of pure neondrenched bliss. You’ll never look at canned pineapple the same way again.

“Fallen Angels” (1995)
Wong’s most visually extreme feature, and one of his most underrated.

“Happy Together” (1997)
Angst and alienation rule in this corrosively beautiful end-of-love story.

“In the Mood for Love” (2000)
Ineffable yet indelible. Wong’s undisputed masterpiece
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

HKETONY celebrates New York premiere of "The Grandmaster"

http://7thspace.com/headlines/442826/hketony_celebrates_new_york_premiere_of_the_grandmaster.html

Hong Kong (HKSAR) - Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, New York (HKETONY) hosted a reception on August 10 (New York time) to celebrate the New York premiere of the wuxia epic "The Grandmaster" and to welcome the film director - Mr Wong Kar-wai in New York.

Speaking at a pre-screening reception at the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), the Director of HKETONY, Miss Anita Chan, said the audience was all thrilled and honoured to have the distinguished film director at the reception as well as a post-screening discussion at the museum theatre.

She said the film director was one of the most influential filmmakers in Hong Kong, was internationally renowned for his unique visual style and delicate depiction of emotions, and had won many of the coveted film awards in the international and Hong Kong film festivals.

Besides highlighting the important place of Hong Kong films in the world cinema, which had garnered over 300 international awards in the past decade, Miss Chan said there had been a growing trend of Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions in the film industry in Hong Kong since the signing of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003.

The number of Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions has grown rapidly to an average of 30 titles a year, with big success at the box office. She said "The Grandmaster" was an exemplary co-production.

She called on the US film companies to leverage on the wealth and experience of creative talents in Hong Kong, and capitalise on the preferential treatment offered by CEPA to make the most of the new opportunities in the Mainland.

The New York premiere of "The Grandmaster" on August 10 is the centrepiece of a comprehensive retrospective of Mr Wong at MoMI from July 12 to August 24. The retrospective includes nine other of the director's award winning films. They are "As Tears Go By", "Ashes of Time Redux", "Chungking Express", "Days of Being Wild", "Fallen Angels", "Happy Together", "In the Mood for Love", "My Blueberry Nights", and "2046".

Details can be found on the museum website (www.movingimage.us/films/2013/07/12/detail/wong-kar-wai-2).

In a related development, the HKETONY is also collaborating with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is one of the supporters for its retrospective of Mr Wong's films from August 1 to 25. It will screen all of the director's 10 films listed above, with the exception of "Ashes of Time Redux" which will be replaced by "Ashes of Time". The wuxia epic "The Grandmaster" will have its Boston premiere on August 15.More information is available on the museum website (www.mfa.org/programs/series/films-wong-kar-wai).
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