Yes, it is my fifth day here in Cannes a day which henceforth shall be referred to as the day with the worst screening karma known to man. My success rate getting to see the film sthat I planned to see? One for four, and neither Tokyo nor Ashes of Time Redux were that one. Sigh. I feel like I can legitimately blame Harrison Ford for making me miss Tokyo ... it was a bad day to try and move around the Croisette ...
Anyway, there were still good things to be had. Such as? The promo for Ip Man, the Wilson Yip directed, Donnie Yen starring bio pic of Bruce Lee's mentor. The current promo is largely behind the scenes footage but also includes some final work and it all looks very, very impressive. Donnie looks strong - you'd expect a strong effort from him considering how highly he regards Bruce Lee - as do the production values and the supporting cast. Fans of Fan Siu Wong - who we talked about a little while back thanks to his part in The Moss - will be glad to know it looks as though his role is pretty significant.
From there it was over to Russia's Art Pictures to take a look at the eleven minute promo reel from Fyodor Bondarchuk's upcoming scifi epic Inhabited Island. What they've got is clearly designed to showcase the scope and action of the film and it thoroughly succeeds on that level. This is a true epic, the world created for the film simply massive and - most importantly to me - seems to have a legitimate sense of history and culture built into it. There's no getting a sense of the film's story from this reel and it was presented without any of the CG work done and with a temp score but the level of detail, intricacy of the action scenes and quality of the camera work is every bit as high as you'd expect from the director of the stellar 9th Company.
The one full screening of the day was four part horror anthology 4bia. I expected the segments from the Shutter and Alone directorial duo Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom - making their solo debuts here - to be strong and both were - with Pisanthanakun's entry showcasing a very strong sense of humor - but the best of the lot, in my opinion, came surprisingly from Iron Ladies director Yongyoot Thongkongtoon who puts together a remarkably effective and impeccably shot little piece of work.
Wrapping the day up was the Fantastic Fest karaoke extravaganza which climaxed with festival director Tim League trying to bully Troma founder Lloyd Kauffman into performing My Way shortly before the show was shut down by police thanks to noise complaints. Those Texans ... they're wacky ...
Man, that sucks Todd. Too bad you missed screenings for both Ashes of Time Redux and Tokyo. Will they be re-screening them or were those the only screenings? I guess you could ask around for people who did get to see them and see what they said about the films. Personally, I am really pumped for Ashes of Time Redux. Its probably my favorite WKW film and it will now finally get a good DVD release. I heard they spent 1 to 2 million dollars on re-editing, special FX,etc for Redux. The Yip Man movie sounds pretty good. When Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen team up they usually come up with some good stuff. How were the fight scenes that you saw? Was the choreography anything new for Donnie. I am guessing it would be different than the choreography in SPL or Flashpoint due to the fact that Donnie Yen is using Wing Chun, the fighting style of Yip Man, in this movie. I heard he has been training in Wing Chun the past year to get ready for the role. I believe he has past experience with the martial art too since it was the foundation style for his idol, Bruce Lee's martial art Jeet Kune Do. I saw a few pics that they released and the film does look very good. Production values are very impressive.
found a review for Ashes at the hollywood reporter, but the man doesn't seem to be knowlegeable enough to provide any useful information on the New vs. the Old
your right cjhobbies00, the reviewer says absolutely nothing significant at all except for the colors this time around are clearer and more saturated and the new soundtrack is moving and well done. Anyway, here is the review for those that want to read it...
This full-scale restoration will be a grand treat to those many fans of Wong Kar-wai who have never been able to see the 1994 original except on badly duped DVDs. One of the director's rare forays into genre territory, the film depicts the timeless and placeless world of wuxia (chivalric warriors practicing the martial arts).
Predictably, though, the rambunctious Wong was not content merely to repeat or reinvigorate the genre when he began shooting "Ashes of Time" more than 15 years ago, but decided to reinvent it completely. Commercial prospects for this new version are dicey because martial-arts lovers may find it too arty, and art-film lovers, Wong's international fan base, may find it too generic and too violent. DVD sales, however, should be robust and festival screenings plentiful.
In any case, one wonders what fecundity of imagination -- or perversity of artistic willfulness -- it took to shoot a costume epic that is made up almost entirely of dark rooms, close-ups and tightly constricted long shots. Or what about the fact that the film contains only a handful of repeating, doubled, easily confused characters rather than the proverbial cast of thousands?
Wong's obsessive themes of memory, the irretrievability of the past and the impossibility of love, trump those of the traditional wuxia film, which tend to deal more with honor and the indomitability of the spirit. Furthermore, where is all the sword-fighting that audiences might reasonably have expected to see? While it's true that some stirring action scenes are sprinkled throughout the film, for the most part, as in most of Wong's films set in modern times, it's all interiority, unrequited longing and emotional frustration.
The film is still a formal wonder, as it was 15 years ago, full of Wong's signature step-printing technique, his off-kilter shooting angles and a flamboyant visual style that often produces something more like an abstract expressionist painting than a movie. But while it's hard to be definitive about what's different in the new version without comparing it shot by shot with the old, the music seems much more powerful and more fully keyed-in to the action, and the color is saturated and intensified to make the film even more stylized than it already was.
In short, while those who didn't "get it" the first time around won't warm up to the film any more than they did then, those who do will be ecstatic.