Wong Kar-wai

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I took a look at the opening and closing credits for Blossoms and Wong is dubbed "producer-director" (监制/导演), but with three others listed as "joint" or "co-directors" (联合导演): Li Shuang (a former AD for Zhang Yimou and Wang Xiaoshuai), Cheng Liang (a director/producer/writer of short films and TV series mostly set in Shanghai), and Ronald Zee (an obscure Hongkonger whose only previous credits are on other recent Jet Tone productions, e.g. editor of One-Tenth of a Millimeter Apart). A similar crediting scheme was used a couple of years ago on a rather dreadful six-minute short commissioned by Mercedes-Benz, in which each of the three directed a different segment. My skepticism that Wong actually did much of the directorial legwork himself is reinforced by the fact that William Chang doesn't seem to be credited in any capacity.

The reception of the first four episodes is actually better than I'd expected, the complaints largely centered on the supposedly unwieldy blend of the typical feel and look of a Chinese TV drama with that of Wong Kar-wai (or ersatz Wong Kar-wai). I might give this a shot if English subtitles appear—thirty episodes of TV without them is beyond my patience—but I'm mainly waiting to see what happens with the movie version.

One interesting side note is that the series exists in two versions, one in Shanghainese (which was the primary language of shooting) and the other dubbed into Mandarin by the original cast. Only the latter is being broadcast, but both are streaming online.

[Stefan Andersson]

Ashes of Time Redux, French re-release in restored version according to The Jokers´ FB 6 days ago:
https://www.thejokersfilms.com/les-cendres-du-temps
https://www.facebook.com/thejokersfilms

[pistolwink]

"Restored" to what? 720p?

[tenia]

Of course there is not a single technical detail about it.

[senseabove]

Surprise: WKW has discovered AI upscaling!

[domino harvey]

WKW announces new breakthrough in disc encoding. Insertion of Blu-ray will now automatically override and turn on your TV's motion smoothing settings

[tenia]

TV filters will actually be randomly applied because no man walks across the same TV settings twice.

[pistolwink]

The best joke would be if the 'restoration' of Redux was actually one of the original 1995 versions of the film.

[feihong]

The negative of the Redux was damaged and they had to revert to the original, which had been hidden in Wong's closet, perfectly preserved, all along.

[therewillbeblus]

WKW has 100% stepped in the same river twice

[togg]

I rewatched Chungking Express and In the mood for love recently. I like the new restauration, it makes sense. And for Chungking it's mandatory, past skin tone was so off.

Chungking is great. Standard characters that explodes into fireworks when she starts breaking in into his appartement.
In the mood for love it's a comedy with two characters so stucked up they learn love thanks to the other relationships of their spouses. It's fun but final years over years acceleration is useless.