Noticias

During the troubled production of Ashes of Time, which was supposed to be his third film, Wong Kar-wai took some time off and did what anyone in his position would do: made another movie. And he did it with a fast-paced, highly improvisatory shooting schedule, writing pages of the script during the day and shooting them at night. The result, Chungking Express, is among Wong’s most exciting films and is an early precursor to the expressive odes to romantic longing that have come to define his work.

The title is symbolic of the film’s lively, anything-goes sensibility, representing the pair of largely unrelated stories that make up its bifurcated narrative. The first story, which takes place mostly at Chungking Mansions shopping complex in Hong Kong, focuses on the lovesick Cop 223 (Kaneshiro Takeshi), who pines over an ex-girlfriend named May. The officer has taken to collecting cans of pineapple...

The Cannes Film Festival has paid tribute to director David Lynch who was a long-time habitué, winning it Palme d’Or prize for Wild at Heart in 1990 and serving as jury president in 2002.

“It is with infinite sadness that we learn of the passing of David Lynch, a unique and visionary artist whose work has influenced cinema like few others,” the festival said in a statement following the announcement of the director’s death on Thursday at the age of 78.

“Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes in 1990 for Sailor and Lula (Wild At Heart), then the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director) in 2001 for Mulholland Drive, he elegantly presided over the Jury in 2002,” it continued. “He leaves behind a rare and timeless body of work, whose films will continue to nourish our imagination and inspire all those who see cinema as an art capable of revealing the unspeakable.

Jude Law stars in back-to-back films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year with “Eden,” making its world premiere at TIFF, and the North American premiere of “The Order.” The film follows Jude Law as demon-addled Idaho FBI agent Terry Husk, tasked in 1983 with taking down an Aryan brotherhood led by Nicholas Hoult’s Bob Mathews.

To prepare for the role, Law took on some Method acting and admitted that he followed Hoult around for a day to get into character. However, Law rejected the label of “Method acting.”

“I have my own method,” he told IndieWire. “I think every actor does. And that includes all sorts of weird, different things. It depends on what the director wants and depends on what the character demands and what things interest me.”

Law and his producing partner Ben Jackson, under their banner Riff Raff, produced the film. “It came to us...

There is a great misnomer when it comes to Wong Kar-wai's only English feature film, My Blueberry Nights, and that is that it wasn't any good, despite having a stellar cast in Norah Jones (in her acting debut), Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Straithairn. It is easy to dismiss the film as paling in comparison to the filmmakers' other works such as Chungking Express and In The Mood for Love, but to be fair, putting any other film side-by-side with those two would almost always get the short end of the stick. Despite the criticisms, if My Blueberry Nights was to be viewed under its own merit, one would easily see a lot of desirable things. It carries the signature Wong flair and tenderness and transplants them into the Western zeitgeist, resulting in a striking and enigmatic mood piece that delves deeply into hope, despair, and...

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to Riff Raff Entertainment, the company founded by Jude Law and his longtime creative partner Ben Jackson. The London-based production banner has a big U.S. presence and European reach (the latter thanks to a recent deal with French outfit Newen). Law and Jackson walk us through the inception of Venice competition title The Order and their greater production ambitions for the company.

High-end drama The Young Pope took the Lido by storm when two episodes of the Paolo Sorrentino-directed series starring Jude Law as the unruly fictional Pope Pius Xiii premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2016. While Law was no stranger to the festival circuit – Sleuth premiered on the Lido in 2007 and that same...

With Wong Kar-wai being one of the names that are always mentioned when people all around the world refer to Asian cinema, we thought it would be interesting to do another ranking, and having his movies, a number of which are definitely masterpieces. As such, we asked Amp writers who have seen at least 8 of his features to rank them from worst to best. Notably, the two first titles got the same amount of votes and the third had just one vote less. In case you are wondering, the number one was the one who got most first places in the vote. Here is what the votes of Adriana Rosati, Rhythm Zaveri, Rouven Linnarz, Panos Kotzathanasis, Andrew Thayne and Jean Claude resulted in.

11. My Blueberry Nights (2007)

A young lonely woman takes a soul-searching journey across America to resolve her questions about love while encountering a series of off-beat characters along the way.

"May December" reunites Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in a film about a scandalous age gap in a relationship, with their characters dealing with the impending departure of their children. The film explores the conflicts surrounding the couple's age difference and the intrusion of a popular actress (played by Portman) into their lives. Todd Haynes directs this highly anticipated film, which marks Portman's long-awaited return to the big screen after taking a break from Hollywood, while Moore has been actively starring in multiple projects.

Todd Haynes reunites Academy-Award winners Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore for his next movie, May December, coming to Netflix on December 1st, after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival back in May.

The story centers on Moore's character, Gracie Atherton-Yoo and her husband Joe Yoo, whose relationship caused an enormous scandal due to the couple's 23-year age difference. Two decades have passed since they were...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

The 35mm print of Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo we presented last weekend has an encore appearance on Saturday afternoon, while prints of two Spielberg sequels (The Lost World and Temple of Doom) play alongside Shadows and Fog, Bloodhounds of Broadway, and My Blueberry Nights.

Anthology Film Archives

“Shopping Worlds” is a cinematic exploration of malls, offering the likes of Jackie Brown, Nocturama, Wiseman’s The Store, Dawn of the Dead, and Akerman’s Golden Eighties.

Museum of the Moving Image

Inception and John Carpenter’s Starman play on 70mm in a new series.

Film Forum

Contempt and Thelma & Louise play in 4K restorations, while the ’50s creature feature Robot Monster play in 3D on Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

“Views from the Vault” closes with films by Jia Zhangke and more, while “Silent Movie Week” is underway.

Nata­lie Port­man will be honored at the 49th edition of Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val, which will bestow her with its Deau­ville Talent Award. She will attend a screening of her new film, Todd Haynes’ sex scandal drama “May Decem­ber,” at the festival, which runs from Sept. 1 to 10.

Among her career highlights, the festival singles out her performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” for which she won an Oscar in 2011. She was also an Oscar nominee for Mike Nichols’ “Closer” in 2005 and Pablo Larraín’s “Jackie” in 2017.

Other standout roles the festival pointed to were her performances in “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” in 1999, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” in 2003, and Kar-Wai Wong’s “My Blueberry Nights” in 2007.

“All of these roles are marked by her ambivalent presence, a blend of strength and fragility,” the festival commented.

Other performances...

In an unusual turn of events, this year’s recipient of the International Award at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards is also a nominee in its feature competition. Darius Khondji, who has been working as a director of photography for decades and earned his first Academy Award nomination for Evita (directed by Alan Parker) in 1996, is taking home the annual honor and competing for a trophy for his work on Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.

While some DPs are known for longtime relationships with a single director, Khondji has amassed a remarkable body of work through productions with a range of helmers whose cinematic styles vary widely. Bardo was his first collaboration with Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whom Khondji describes as a very visual director who was intent on making the film, which Netflix released Dec. 16, feel as immersive as possible. He also has lensed films for...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

“Working Class Musicals” examines the most lavish expressions from a ground level, featuring Cherbourg, Chantal Akerman, West Side Story x2, and more.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Johnny Guitar, Jennifer’s Body, and Woman in the Dunes.

Film Forum

“Loving Highsmith” begins with Purple Noon, Strangers on a Train, and The American Friend; Alain Resnias’ The War Is Over continues and Carnal Knowledge, restored, begins a run.

Japan Society

Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! plays on 35mm this Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

As the Three Colors: Red restoration continues, The Wiz has a free outdoor screening this Friday on Governor’s Island.

Paris Theater

Kurosawa’s Ran plays exclusively through the weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Streets of Fire, Licorice Pizza, Tron and Sleeping Beauty play on 70mm this weekend, while a series of zombie films screen.

Revered cinematographer Darius Khondji loves to shoot on film but has made his peace with digital, he revealed in a masterclass at Cannes on Thursday.

“It’s just so sexy to shoot on film, the texture is beautiful, it looks great on skin tones,” Khondji said. Khondji said that digital can be very beautiful too but it can make make cinematographers lazy. Khondji’s first experience of shooting digitally was on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Amazon Prime Video series “Too Old to Die Young.” He initially thought that the series would be shot on film, because Refn asked him to shoot it while at a Kodak lunch in Cannes.

The cinematographer eventually reconciled to the idea of shooting digital after conversations with Refn and running several tests with digital cameras.

“He convinced me that it would be very experimental and frankly, we could really be very free on it,” said Khondji.

With the arrival of every cinephile’s must-have this year, The Criterion Collection’s long-awaited Wong Kar Wai box set, the legendary director has discussed the changes he’s made to his most beloved films. While he was in the editing room, another project emerged, which finds him digging up footage that was left on the cutting room floor. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, his production company Jet Tone Films created a surprise new 30-minute documentary titled One-Tenth of a Millimeter Apart.

Premiering on the night of their 30th anniversary, this past Friday, April 2, at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the short screened after the new restoration of Happy Together. Tracing the beginnings of Jet Tone Films, which was founded in 1991 by Wong Kar Wai for the production of Ashes of Time (1994), the film features never-before-seen materials, including deleted scenes, behind-the-scene footage, and selected narration by Wong Kar Wai.

Right now in Hollywood, there isn’t much going on. Unless we set Mank aside for a second, there aren’t many objectively notable releases. Be it due to the Covid-19 pandemic or lack of motivation, the western movie world is lagging.

To battle this surge in inspiration, we decided to look slightly back, but not too far. We believe it’s the perfect time to retrospect and talk about the glorious mind of Wong Kar Wai.

In this article, we’ll focus on how what appears like a vice in Mr Wong’s transforms the lead roles into their best selves.

Infidelity as Self-Revelation

Starting with perhaps the most controversial theme, we’ll heed our attention to In the Mood for Love first.

For anyone who’s seen the film, they must have felt perplexed and somewhat anxious watching the plot unfurl.

Early into the storyline, the viewers realise...

by Nick Taylor

Happy Birthday, Wong Kar-Wai, who turned 62 years old last week, something that surely feels impossible for anyone younger than 61 to really consider for themselves! The celebrated auteur is known for his indefatigable sense of coolness and poise, doing for delicately conjured yet passionately felt romanticism what Ingmar Bergman did for psychological anguish. Especially in certified masterpieces like In the Mood for Love and Happy Together but even in lesser works like My Blueberry Nights, Wong’s sense of style is refreshing to sit with and inimitably his. And so, in celebration of our beloved birthday boy and the many gifts he’s given us across his career, I’m here to discuss Days of Being Wild, and the bewitching, jewel-toned performance of Carina Lau...

‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ leads Mubi chart.

Safy Nebbou’s Who You Think I Am has topped UK streaming platform Curzon Home Cinema’s (Chc) most-watched films for a second week as audiences continue to seek home entertainment during the lockdown.

A month after all cinemas closed across the UK, in a bid to stem the spread of Covid-19, Curzon’s streaming platform reported a 211% revenue increase on the equivalent weekend in 2019.

However, income from April 17-19 was down 31% on the previous weekend, highlighting the importance of launching strong, new titles on a weekly basis.

Romantic drama Who You Think I Am,...

Making films in another language is always a risk – for every Yorgos Lanthimos-style success, there’s a Wong Kar-wai disaster lurking around the corner

It is a truth universally acknowledged in world cinema that a celebrated auteur, making their first film outside their native tongue, must be preparing a dud. So news that Hirokazu Kore-eda was working on a film in French after his Palme d’Or for Shoplifters was cause for alarm. Would the world be forced to endure another My Blueberry Nights – the turkey served up by Wong Kar-Wai in his English-language debut in 2007 – after two decades of highly regarded work?

Related: The Truth review – Catherine Deneuve's grand diva dominates mixed Venice opener...

Wong Kar-wai has announced his 10 feature films will all be getting 4K restorations. The director recently told Filmmaker Magazine (via The Film Stage) that his plan is to have the restorations ready for a theatrical tour in 2020 to mark the 20th anniversary of “In the Mood for Love.” Wong’s feature films include “As Tears Go By” (1988), “Days of Being Wild” (1990), “Chungking Express” (1994), “Ashes of Time” (1994), “Fallen Angels” (1995), “Happy Together” (1997), “In the Mood for Love” (2000), “2046” (2004), “My Blueberry Nights” (2007), and “The Grandmaster” (2013).

“We’ve been working on these restorations for a long time,” the director told Filmmaker. “A few years ago I watched my film somewhere, looked at the monitor, and said, ‘Why does it look so messy?’ They said, ‘Now we are used to 4K projections, so you have to upgrade it, otherwise you will have those kind of feelings.’ We have been working on it. Last year in Lyon,...

Delicatessen (1991)Growing up in the mid-to-late nineties, the pan-and-scan generation, I can remember the first time I saw a movie that was shot by Darius Khondji. Se7en, the cinematographer’s first American film and best-known work, looked scarier that any movie I’d seen other than The Shining; it was miasmic and biblically unclean, with deep shadows that seeped and stuck like gunk, rain pelting from a pre-apocalyptic sky. Then came The City of Lost Children, a dark storybook fantasy of Gilliam-esque camera angles, about a squalid port town lost in fog and a mad scientist’s lair built on piles out in a sludge-green sea. That one I watched maybe twenty times, always with sympathy for the disembodied brain Uncle Irvin and for Krank, the child-snatching villain who cannot dream.Later there was Alien: Resurrection, the video for Madonna’s “Frozen,” and The Ninth Gate, another movie I had...

What might appear to be an homage to David Bowie glitz on its cover, is actually much deeper in Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux which follows the unconventional metamorphosis of a young teenager from school shooting survivor to tortured pop idol.

Similar to how Natalie Portman pulled out all the stops and transformed into a sublime, razor-sharp ballerina for her Oscar-winning role in 2010’s Black Swan, she made certain she was vocally prepped and choreographed before her 10 days of shooting on Vox Lux (the entire film was shot over 22 days). Financing dropped out prior to the pic’s production and delaying its start which provided Portman with extra prep time so she was ready to hit the ground running when filming began.

“It gives you more time when things fall apart, as long as they come back together again,” Portman says.

The film, which is dedicated to Jonathan Demme who...

“When you’re gone, all that is left behind are the memories you created in other people’s lives or just a couple of items on a bill.”

Director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights (2007) screens Thursday May 11th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts at 7:30pm.

Elizabeth (Norah Jones) sets out on a journey across America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream and a soulful new friend; a cafe owner–all while in search of something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than hers, including a troubled cop and his estranged wife and a down-on-her luck gambler with a score to settle. Through these individuals, Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater exploration within herself.

Legendary Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai is renowned for his vivid use of color, which the kind folks over at Glass Distortion have made abundantly clear in a sweeping new compilation titled simply, “Wong Kar Wai: Color Obsession.” As the filmmaker’s varied spectrum of bright hues and darker tones splash across the screen, one can see how crucial this colorful aesthetic is to creating the distinct mood and atmosphere for which his films are known.

The Chinese auteur’s obsession with color is well documented, as in this 1998 interview with Bomb Magazine, when he compared “Chungking Express” (1994) to “Fallen Angels” (1995) by discussing both films’ palettes: “Whereas ‘Chungking’ was sunshiny and suffused with bright, lovely daytime colors, ‘Fallen Angels’ is more about neon, and night time, and grunge.”

Read More: Supercut Guru Kogonada: How He Leapt from Small Screens to Sundance Next with the Mysterious ‘Columbus’

Glass Distortion also...

After finally releasing his long-gestating action epic The Grandmaster a few years back, Wong Kar-wai has stayed fairly quiet. That is until this summer, when we learned he teamed with the powerful Chinese production company Huanxi Media Group to fund an original, 18-episode drama series to produce and direct a few episodes of. With production not kicking off until next year for that series and details being scant so far, we now have word of a promising new feature film he will reportedly direct.

Buried at the bottom of a THR article about Megan Ellison‘s Annapurna Pictures and how they plan to have a “content empire” is the news that the In the Mood For Love director will helm Gucci for the company. Years ago it was attached to Ridley Scott with Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead — as well as Penelope Cruz circling at one point — but that talent has left,...

.

.

Former Miramax and The Weinstein Company executive Michelle Krumm has been named head of production, development and studio at the Safc.

She will start on October 6 after relocating to Adelaide from Los Angeles where she.s been based for more than 20 years.

Her appointment is a key part of the restructure that followed the merger of the Adelaide Studios and production departments, which eliminated five positions and created several new executive positions.

Peter Hartley has joined as head of corporate services and finance after three years as finance manager and company secretary at the Australian Dance Theatre. Alison Bowman starts on September 28 as manager, communications.

After leaving TWC in 2008 Krumm formed her own production banner. In 2013 she produced James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now, which starred Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller. During her tenure with TWC as executive VP, head of acquisitions and co-productions she acquired numerous titles including Vicky Christina Barcelona,...

Former The Weinstein Company and Miramax acquisitions executive has been named head of production development and studio at the Safc.

Krumm will start work on October 6 after relocating to Adelaide from Los Angeles where she has been based for more than 20 years.

She recently produced The Spectacular Now starring Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller.

During her tenure with The Weinstein Company as executive vice-president, head of acquisitions and co productions Krumm acquired films like Vicky Christina Barcelona, My Blueberry Nights, The Road and All Good Things.

She also acquired Australian films such as Wolf Creek, Rabbit Proof Fence, Rogue, The Silence, Death Defying Acts, Like Minds and Storm Warning.

Read More: Meet the 2015 Sundance Filmmakers #4: Amy Berg Explores Brainwashing and Fear in 'Prophet's Prey' Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, will narrate director Amy Berg's upcoming Janis Joplin documentary, "Janis." Oscar-nominated Berg, who stunned audiences with "Deliver Us From Evil" and "West of Memphis," explores the rock star's life and stage persona through her own personal letters to her family and lovers and interviews with those who knew her. Cat Power gained popularity as a singer-songwriter for infusing a variety of sounds into her music. Some of her albums include "You Are Free," "The Greatest" and her most recent, "Sun." She has also had small acting roles, including Katya in "My Blueberry Nights" alongside Jude Law and Norah Jones.  "After attempting to get this film off the ground for 7 years, I am ecstatic that the film is finally ready to be seen," said...

Director: Kar Wai Wong; Screenwriters: Kar Wai Wong, Jingzhi Zou, Haofeng Xu; Starring: Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi; Running time: 108 mins; Certificate: 15

There's plenty to recommend about Wong Kar-wai's martial arts drama, the Hong Kong auteur's long-awaited return to cinema after the disappointment of his first English language feature My Blueberry Nights in 2007. Yet The Grandmaster still falls far short of its potential, with the mesmerising visual sequences counterbalanced by the muddled and self-defeating narrative structure.

The sprawling tale is based on the true story of Ip Man (Tony Leung), the famous practitioner of close-range Chinese combat style Wing Chun, who once trained the great Bruce Lee. It chronicles his battles amidst the turbulent 1930s, rife with conflict between North and South China, through his flight to Hong Kong and relationship with the hugely skilled female fighter Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi).

Bursting with thematic potential about the dueling paths of happiness and vengeance,...

Eyes on Cinema —the prolific YouTube channel that posts frequent investigations into film and filmmakers— has just released a 21-minute interview with Shanghai-born writer/director Wong Kar Wai. American audiences might know him best as the man behind last year’s “The Grandmaster” (about Bruce Lee’s martial arts instructor, Ip Man) and 2007’s “My Blueberry Nights” (which starred Norah Jones, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman). In the video, Wong talks about making his 2000 release “In the Mood for Love.” Even moviegoers unfamiliar with that film are likely to find the (fairly uncut and definitely unpretentious) discussion illuminating, especially when the filmmaker talks about the rationale behind various artistic choices that led to the finished product. He begins with funding problems that plagued production, which oddly afforded him an opportunity to work simultaneously on “2046,” which shared a number of cast members and would open four years later. The interview is also.

ChinaVision Media Group, which will soon be renamed Alibaba Pictures Group, has signed production deals with Wong Kar Wai’s Block 2 Pictures, Angie Chai and Giddens Ko’s Star Ritz International Entertainment and Peter Ho-sun Chan’s We Pictures.

The deals emerged in a profit warning filed by ChinaVision on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday. ChinaVision is being rebranded as Alibaba Pictures Group, following ecommerce giant Alibaba’s acquisition of a controlling stake in the company in April.

Alibaba has also reportedly hired China Film Group vice president Zhang Qiang to head Alibaba Pictures Group. However the company has not confirmed or responded to the reports.

ChinaVision reported expected losses of $12.5m (Hk$97m) to $23m (Hk$180m) for the six months to June 30, 2014. However it added that losses were due to a lack of films released during this period, and that business was expected to pick up in the second half of the...

Every now and then, a film falls through the cracks. Independent dramas in particular are susceptible to a weird phenomenon we'll call the Distribution Bermuda Triangle – they're made, they play at a film festival or two, they rack up some early buzz and movie fans get excited.

And then... nothing. A gaping void where the release date ought to be.

The UK has been especially bad for this of late, with a slew of 2013's most buzzed-about dramas still without distribution. Below, Digital Spy rounds up the five we're most desperate to finally see on this side of the pond

The Spectacular Now

In the wake of Shailene Woodley's recent box office double whammy (Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, if you've been snoozing), our hopes were high that this sophisticated teen drama would finally see the light of day in the UK. But as yet, there's been no word.

Another interesting project on the slate in 2015. The next project from filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai has been confirmed and kinda/sorta announced, with some actual specific information about what it is. The Chinese filmmaker last brought us the beautiful martial arts epic The Grandmaster, but he hasn't made much else since My Blueberry Nights in 2007. Now he's getting ready to direct another romance, to follow up many in his career (like 2046, In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express). This one is an adaptation of Zhang Jiajia's short story Ferryman, as this will be titled, from the collection I Belonged to You sold in China. Read on. Last week news was reported that we would see Wong Kar-Wai's next movie in 2015, a romance. After many more years of waiting, I'm glad to finally hear he's at it again. But it was finally Film Business Asia (via The Film Stage) that landed confirmation,...

It took five year's for Wong Kar-wai to release last year's "The Grandmaster" after 2007's "My Blueberry Nights," so it's good news to hear that he's beginning work on his new project next year, adapting author Jiajia Zhang's romantic short story "Ferryman." "Ferryman" is part of "I Belonged to You," a collection of Zhang's short stories, and tells the story of a love affair between a young girl and a married artist in Changchun.  Zhang will pen the screenplay for Wong Kar-wai's adaptation. Tantalizing details about the project have been creeping their way around the Internet lately: earlier this month, we heard that Hong Kong-based Mei Ah Entertainment would be backing the film, which its chief executive said would feature a male star that "all women are crazy about."  Cue the speculation machine! Zhang's "I Belonged to You" had an interesting genesis: the author published several of the "bedtime.

The Iranian-French cinematographer Darius Khondji has worked with an impressive roster of international A-list directors including Bernardo Bertolucci ("Stealing Beauty"), David Fincher ("Seven"), Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("The City of Lost Children"), Danny Boyle ("The Beach"), Roman Polanski ("The Ninth Gate"), Woody Allen ("Midnight in Paris"), Wong Kar-wai ("My Blueberry Nights") and Michael Haneke ("Amour"). With his latest project, James Gray's "The Immigrant," hitting theaters last Friday, Indiewire spoke to Khondji by phone about working with Gray for the first time and about how it's different from his collaboration with other directors. Starring Marion Cotillard as a Polish immigrant arriving at Ellis Island in 1921, and Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner as the complicated men she encounters, "The Immigrant" exposes the darker side of the "American dream." The look of the film is simultaneously dingy and spectacular, a fitting depiction of both the wonder...

The last time high-style Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino attempted an English-language film, the results were interesting but muddled: starring Sean Penn as a past-prime goth-rock star crossing America in search of a Nazi war hunter, 2011's unabashedly odd Irish-Italian co-production "This Must Be the Place" had its champions, but was deemed enough of a misfire to send the director back to the safety of home. His follow-up, last year's Fellini-inspired Roman valentine "The Great Beauty" was as Italian as Italian can be, and his most universally acclaimed film to date -- even winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Bolstered by that success, Sorrentino is wading back into English-language waters. Boasting Italian, Swiss and British financing, "Youth" will tell the story of two septuagenarian men -- one a filmmaker trying to assemble his last masterwork, the other a composer being lured out of retirement -- holidaying together in the Alps,...

Plot76% Acting79% Directing73% Music71%Some very interesting segments, both action-wise and story-wise.Never quite reaches its full potential. 75%Overall Score Reader Rating: (4 Votes)91%Horizontal Vs Vertical

“The Grandmaster” ( or “The Grandmasters” depending on your location ) is director Kar Wai Wong‘s first attempt at the kung-fu genre. His most notable successes have mostly been about the pain of lost romance ( “My Blueberry Nights“, “2046” and “In The Mood For Love” instantly come to mind ) so it’s no surprise that “Yi Dai Zong Shi” is a mixed bag of good and bad.

The story spans a few decades, starting in the early 1930′s. The premise of the movie is simple enough:Gong Yutian ( Qingxiang Wang ), a renowned master of China’s Southern and Northern styles of martial arts, comes to town to celebrate his eventual retirement. It’s at the Golden Pavilion, the number one brothel in the region, that he decides to make the big announcement.

As one monthly theme begins, another ends. The former is, of course, Sound on Sight’s monthlong dedication to all films that scare, terrify, or spook us in conjunction with October being the scariest month of the year. (That’s a scientific fact, folks.) The latter is our look at the works of Wong Kar-Wai, inspired by his latest film, The Grandmaster. Though September’s just now ended, a handful of your intrepid Sound on Sight contributors, as well as our benevolent editor-in-chief/overlord, came together to vote on Wong Kar-Wai’s best films, his worst, and everything in between. What follows are capsule reviews of each of his films, listed in order based on the Sound on Sight’s staffwide vote. What’s our favorite Wong Kar-Wai film? Well, read on through the entire list, and you’ll find out. Enjoy!

****

10. My Blueberry Nights

Stylistically at odds with itself,...

Wong Kar Wai’s latest film, The Grandmaster, stars Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang and kicks into retail on November 26, 2013 for an Srp of $29.99 for the Blu-ray™ and $24.98 for the DVD. Anchor Bay Entertainment and The Weinstein Company announced today the Blu-ray™ and DVD release of The Grandmaster from writer and director Wong Kar Wai (Happy Together, In The Mood For Love And My Blueberry Nights). Presented by Martin Scorsese, The Grandmaster was recently selected as Hong Kong's submission in the best foreign language film category at the 86th Academy Awards®. From acclaimed director/writer Wong Kar Wai comes an epic tale inspired by the life of the warrior hero who taught Bruce Lee. Asian superstar Tony Leung (In The Mood For Love) portrays legendary Kung Fu master Ip Man, who survived...

It's hard to believe, but the last time we saw Natalie Portman on the big screen was in "Thor," and the next time we'll see her on the big screen is in the sequel this fall. And while she has a small handful of movies in the bank on the way, including two with Terrence Malick as well as the western "Jane Got a Gun," another project has emerged and made its way online. Entitled "Illusions & Mirrors," this newly released two-minute short was directed by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, and according to a Natalie Portman fansite, is a small segment of a longer 10-minute effort the duo are collaborating on for Dior called "Through The Abyss" that will debut later this year. Anyway, this mini-version was created for the Vienna International Film Festival and features Portman walking around a beach and meeting a few mysterious people. And that's it. But lensed by Darius Khondji,...

Our series continues with a look at Wong Kar-wai's martial arts epic, Hong Kong's representative in the race

• More from our Oscar predictions 2014 series

• The Grandmaster: first-look review

This year's …

Hero. Lush, audience-friendly martial arts epic, likely to be as appealing to western tastes as eastern.

What's it all about?

A two-hour-plus treatment of the complicated life of Ip Man, wing chun master and legendary teacher, who died in 1972 aged 79. Apart from his own accomplishments, Ip gained posthumous renown after one of his students, Bruce Lee, achieved worldwide fame as a film actor. With Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in the lead role, The Grandmaster covers his tumultuous early life, against the backdrop of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, up until his death. It's full of elaborate, emotionally charged confrontations with Ip's challenger Gong Er (played by Zhang Ziyi).

How did it happen?

After the 2007 fiasco that was My Blueberry Nights,...

Hong Kong – Director Wong Kar Wai's martial arts epic The Grandmaster has been selected to be Hong Kong's representative in the best foreign language film category at the 86th Academy Awards, the Federation of Motion Film Producers announced on Monday. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai (Infernal Affairs, Lust, Caution) and Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; My Lucky Star), The Grandmaster was screened in Los Angeles during a special salute to Wong -- whose other credits include Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and My Blueberry Nights -- by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on July 22. Photos: 100 Oscars

read more...

The Grandmaster

Starring Tony Leung Zhang Ziyi

Directed by Wong Kar Wai

Rated PG-13

2046 was the first movie I had seen from director Wong Kar Wai. It was gorgeously shot, epic in it’s scope and turned me into a fan right away. His next movie, My Blueberry Nights, a much smaller film than 2046, wasn’t that great. But it was then that I went back and saw his back catalogue of films like Chunking Express and In the Mood for Love, etc. Those films only reiterated why I liked Kai and his style so much. But I have to admit, when I started seeing trailers for his newest movie The Grandmaster, I wasn’t exactly pumped for what I might see. Maybe it was, for whatever odd reason, I felt the trailers looked too much like a mash up between The Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but I hesitant…...

"The Grandmaster" -- already Wong Kar-wai's highest grossing film at the Chinese box office -- hit U.S. theaters this weekend care of Mr. Harvey Weinstein (in a version 22 minutes shorter than what China got), and got off to a very respectable start. In 7 theaters, the film grossed $132,259 for a $18,894 average -- the highest average of any film in release, wide or limited. The film is Wong's first release since his 2007 English language film "My Blueberry Nights," which The Weinstein Company also released. That film averaged a so-so $12,357 from 6 theaters (especially given it wasn't in a foreign language and starred the somewhat marketable likes of Norah Jones, Jude Law and Natalie Portman) and ended up with $867,275. That was below 2001's "In The Mood For Love" ($2,738,980) and 2004's "2046" ($1,444,588). The opening of "The Grandmaster" is promising enough to suggest it could end up with a gross at least in between those two films.

Wong Kar-wai’s kung-fu movie begins with an elaborate, very impressive fight between Ip Man (Tony Leung) and a small army of unnamed opponents, who come at him with the same relentlessness as the rain that thunders down on them. The kicking and the punching is predictably intense, but the scene, presented without context or setup, feels less like combat and more like an aesthetic statement of principles. As we watch the droplets of water spinning off the brim of Ip Man’s white hat in exquisite slow motion, the shadowy forms of the fighters conjoining and separating amid the backlit curtains of rain, the dancerly grace of the camera moves and the cutting, it's hard not to feel that with this, Wong’s first feature since 2007’s misbegotten My Blueberry Nights, a dear old friend is finally back in the room.Wong Kar-wai isn't known for making martial arts...

Vertical Flow: Style Vs. Substance Vs. Wong Kar Wai

Sporting a lusty gestational period of something like sixteen years and taking nearly six years to bring to screen including extensive martial arts training for its myriad of performers, Wong Kar Wai makes a much anticipated return with The Grandmaster, a kinda sorta biopic on the legendary Ip Man, the famed mentor of Bruce Lee. A follow-up to his poorly received 2007 English language debut, My Blueberry Nights, Wong takes great pains to avoid the formulaic route of the biopic, a refreshing choice considering a splotch of films about the famed martial arts artist have bowed since he began filming his. The result, unfortunately, is a bit uneven, and those who know little of Ip Man going into the film will know about as much coming out. Instead, Wong has crafted a stunning spectacle, a film that employs some of the most...

Perhaps the best way to describe Shanghai-born, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai is as a fetishist of romance. Throughout his entire career, which spans four decades of filmmaking, the director has manifested his obsessive preoccupation with details and minutiae time and again; the little fleeting moments and impressions that that add up to a mood. “I’ve never worked with someone who’s put so much emphasis on a single moment,” Jude Law said in a New York Times interview in 2008, describing an entire night of shooting devoted to different angles and set-ups on a kiss within “My Blueberry Nights.” But the absolute focus on the smoking of a cigarette, a furtive glance, a kiss, the application of make-up or the fixing of a perfectly coiffed beehive is never unmoored to an emotion: there is a purpose to everything, even if that purpose is rarely straight-up storytelling in the classic Hollywood sense.

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.

Discussing his new film "The Grandmaster" at the Academy on July 22, Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai ("2046," "My Blueberry Nights," "In the Mood for Love") described the alchemy of image and sound in cinema: "It isn't one plus one. It's chemistry." This chemistry is on breathtaking, ravishing display in "The Grandmaster," a period piece set in China from the 1930s through the early 1950s, starring Tony Leung as the titular grandmaster Ip Man, who would go on to train Bruce Lee, and Zhang Ziyi as a fellow kung fu expert to match Ip's skill. The fight sequences -- which occupy well over half of the film's running time -- are dazzling both in action and stylistic terms, with a gorgeously melodramatic score heightening the wistful yet impossible romance that builds between the two main characters. The clunky biopic aspects of the film only momentarily deter from what is bound to be...

If the trailer for The Grandmaster feels at all familiar, then you’ve probably seen Ip Man, Wilson Yip’s 2008 kung fu dramatization about the life of the martial artist who trained Bruce Lee; at first blush, The Grandmaster appears to follow the same blueprint as Ip Man. The major difference, though, is that Wong Kar-wai is steering the ship, and as good as Ip Man is, Wilson Yip is no Wong Kar-wai as far as color palettes, composition, and cinematography are concerned.

One of China’s most celebrated filmmakers, Wong hasn’t made a feature since 2007′s My Blueberry Nights made a quiet debut on the world stage before being more or less forgotten. (A shame, since it’s actually quite good.) That makes the imminent arrival of The Grandmaster all the more exciting, even if seeing Wong work on a martial arts picture may strike ...

Click to continue...

Along with the post-screening Q&A’s and “Carte Blanche” series, Borderline Films’ Josh Mond, Antonio Campos and Sean Durkin (with often collaborator Brady Corbet pitching in) kept on giving, with the fest holding what they call a Kviff Talks session with the foursome. In the festival video below you can get a timeline for how they got together before they started the creative process, and how they went about producing films such as Afterschool and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and fielded some Q’s from the public.

Though the Karlovy Vary program is indeed filled with a plethora of Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes preemed items, much of my focus was on the Berlin film festival titles (as it’s not part of my film fest flight plan). Before even considering the Golden Bear winner (also showing), the biggie title was Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster. While somewhat thin...

After the tepid reaction to his last film, "My Blueberry Nights," it's no surprise that Wong Kar-Wai chose not to hold his latest "The Grandmaster" for Cannes. Instead, the auteur released the film at home in China and Hong Kong at the very end of last year, before giving the picture its international premiere at Berlin back in February. From our own reaction there, and many others, there's much to like about the film, but it doesn't quite match up to Wong's previous highlights like "Chungking Express" or "In The Mood For Love," or indeed the impossible expectations caused by its extended, multi-year production. But still, given the martial arts elements of the film, Harvey Weinstein is still hoping that the film can prove to be something of a crossover hit, and a brace of new images from the film helps to highlight why; a cast including Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen,...