World of Wong Kar Wai

[hadyn]

But 2046 remains with Sony Pictures Classics. So we won't be seeing that in the set, I think.

There’s a comment in this thread from someone claiming they know for a fact 2046 will be included, and I’m constantly looking for evidence to reassure myself that somehow this is true. The Fellini set hasn’t reassured me.

I might be able to rest easier if Sony does their own separate BR release of the remaster. Either way, I’m definitely renting it Dec 18th.

[dwk]

The Fellini set has about 8 or 9 seperate licensors. Even with the missing films, it is a bit of a miracle.

As for 2046, I can't think of any reason that Sony wouldn't license it to Criterion.

[feihong]

"It's like he wants to make entirely different movies out of boredom."

Well, I think Wong's style changed a lot with In the Mood for Love. Since Ashes of Time and Chungking Express he'd been making his films seem very "of–the-moment," with a lot of the grungy, free-form style of the 90s. When the much "classier" style of In the Mood for Love became a big hit for him, I think he started to move forward in that vein as much as he could––witness the complete hijacking of the original grungy sci-fi direction for 2046 with the glamour of an "In the Mood for Love 2" sensibility. Then there was the genuine disaster of the Ashes of Time Redux, which lifted the original tone and feel and direction of the movie out and replaced it with a "classier" sensibility. The key element here I think was the substitution of Frankie Chan's wailing electric guitar with Yo-Yo Ma's cello on the soundtrack (though the "contemplative" shots of a CGI moon and the removable of so much of the action and abrupt editing from the story also shows this reaching towards more "respectability"). Now here's Fallen Angels––narratively the weaker film in between Chungking Express and Happy Together (because it leans so much on the heroic bloodshed movie cliches, and because the characters––especially Takeshi Kaneshiro's mute lunatic––are a little more superficially presented)––albeit one that I think fans of WKW in the 90s hold close as a favorite (certainly it has one of the most moving endings of any WKW movie)––and he's got to remake it from the improvised, toss-off experiment it was when it was filmed into a post ITMFL masterpiece. It's like he begins with his rule he established with Doyle on the set––that the wide-angle lens should be their primary lens for the film––and now he thinks he's pushing it one step further by warping wide-angle shots out of their native dimensions. And I definitely agree with you that the cropping of other images badly robs them of any context and most of their atmosphere. It's like he's applying his current agenda to the film––and he can't be nearly as invested in its' presentation now as he was when he made the film. So he treats it from a remove, as a piece of his legacy instead of as an individual film. So from that point of view, it's alright to chew it up and spit it out differently. Of course, fans of the film have to actually watch it this way, and it's hard to imagine new viewers appreciating all the stretching and the too-close compositions.

I don't know. Wong Kar-Wai movies always work because of the projection of very palpable "atmosphere." When you mess that up, I don't know what you've got. Ashes of Time is far, far the worse for it. I have to imagine Fallen Angels will turn out similarly "off."

As for 2046, it's not in the trailer. Wouldn't it be likely to be there if it were part of the set?

Thanks for the linking me to the comparison, Fanciful Norwegian. Somehow I never saw that disc added. I'll stick with my Kino disc then. It's nice that the AE disc is still out there, though, and cheap at the price.

[yoshimori]

Re Fallen Angels, one of my favorite films: I've got a perfectly fine blu-ray of the original version, so I'm more than happy to see in a new way. In fact, if I'm disappointed with these new (cropped) images, it's mainly in that WKW didn't do now what he originally intended to do with the film, which is wildly distort the image horizontally through an anamorphic lens post facto. Doyle and Wong did tests back when, but decided the distortion was too extreme.

[therewillbeblus]

That's a much more articulate analysis, feihong- "boredom" was just me being coarse, but yes he's trying to push his artistry by reconceptualizing images and ruining them in the process.

I don't know how it'll hold up for me now, since I haven't seen the film in over ten years, but Fallen Angels was my favorite WKW in college partly because of those cliches and the superficiality of the mute lead evoking its own brand of enigmatic strength. Essentially I felt like WKW repurposed traditional roles and ideas from classic cinema and integrated them into a misty art film. I'm aware that my love for this is undoubtedly skewed from nostalgia, for after a handful of films in my Asian cinema class failed to arouse me, this was the first to win me over, and a huge contributor was the visual energy that is just getting wrecked here. I'm not usually the most sensitive stickler for aspect ratio changes, but I couldn't be more disappointed by this alteration.

[swo17]

I've read that the Chinese edition of the original Ashes of Time is the best quality English-friendly option. Is this that edition? It doesn't exactly look Chinese

[feihong]

I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say the visual energy of the movie is being changed. This kind of post facto alteration of movies has really come to drive me nuts. Initially it seemed to be part of the move to get a preferred cut of Blade Runner, of Pat Gareett & Billy the Kid, and some other films of the like, but I think a distinction has to be drawn between the movies marred by studio interference––Blade Runner, Pat Garrett––and ones where the filmmaker changed things after later consideration, but basically got what they wanted in the first place––Star Wars, Miami Vice, Mad Detective, Fallen Angels. These are films that played one way, and then received after-the-fact modifications that went so far as to exclude the opportunity to see it in its original form. Of course, Mad Detective has the inferior-quality Mei Ah blu ray in its original cut, Miami Vice has the Theatrical Cut blu ray from France, Star Wars has a lot of fans pitching together to do their own restorations to what the films originally were. As for Fallen Angels, at least the AE disc is still available, but neither that nor the Kino are anywhere near what the picture quality will end up being on the Criterion disc. And this reframing will be just petty enough, for a film with much more limited interest, that there won't be some fan edit where the stretched footage is visually reformatted to make a better-quality fanedit. This will just be the way the movie is now.

I guess I feel like these "director returns to make what they really wanted to make later" cuts of these films are usually made from a very different mindset, and they choices that get put in there don't really add up that often. In the case of Apocalypse Now Redux, I do think the film has been really carefully reconceptualized, without losing the stuff that worked so well in the theatrical version––and Coppola has been pretty fastidious about keeping each version available, each in high quality. That's something I've greatly appreciated, more that Michael Mann's and WKW's sotto-voce tinkering behind the scenes. That international cut of Mad Detective––which has now become the main way to see the movie––takes it from "magical-realist detective movie" to the much duller "police procedural with a big plot hole created in the edit." I had loved Miami Vice in theaters, got to appreciate the director's cut blu ray, and then finally saw the theatrical presentation on the French blu ray again and realized what Mann had taken away from my viewing experience. Obviously, these are worse eviscerations on a narrative level than what presumably will happen to Fallen Angels, but...I am very, very sensitive to film being stretched or squished. I watched the trailer on a small Vimeo screen, and I could see it happening right before my eyes, and it looked...all kinds of wrong. I wish there were to be the two versions of the film on this disc, but I feel fairly certain there will be only the one version.

re: Ashes of Time, that's the World Video edition, which is cropped and then the image is moved to the top of the screen. Visually it is not as good as the Mei Ah DVD (also from Hong Kong, but released a little later). I've never heard of a Chinese edition. I have the Mei Ah and a TF1 disc from France, which presents an international cut of the film, but the picture quality is better than the Hong Kong discs. Here's a link to the Mei Ah edition:

https://rb.gy/gq8t67

I think this is the Chinese edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Ashes-Time-Chine ... B006BSPHJE

[swo17]

OK thanks. Doesn't the French disc only have French subtitles though?

I also see this edition. Any idea how it compares?

[feihong]

The French edition only has French subtitles, and because it's the international cut, the English subtitles available on the internet won't match up to it. I was looking at that Taiwanese discs myself. It says 4:3 non-anamorphic on the back, which is the case for both the World Video edition and the Mei Ah edition, so I wouldn't expect it to be any better. The Chinese Edition, released by a company I think is called "Beauty(?)," doesn't specify anamorphic or non-anamorphic. But I can't find that edition for sale anywhere. There's somebody in the Amazon comments saying that the Japanese OOP DVD has the best transfer of the film, but that the Taiwanese disc is the next notch down in quality, and has burnt-in English subs. So it seems like the Taiwanese disc might be the best choice.

I'm trying to proxy shop for the Japanese disc right now, but it doesn't look like there's anything available. Besides, that edition doesn't have English subtitles.

[swo17]

Ha, I was getting all my info from that same Amazon reviewer. I guess I'll go for that Taiwanese edition for now since it's also pretty inexpensive

[feihong]

I can see the chinese disc on Taobao, but I dont know how to order from there. I guess that disc has no english subs, either.

In China they released a beautiful blu ray of Tsui Hark's Dragon Gate Inn. That's from around the same time period. I wonder what the chances are that they might do this same with Ashes of Time?

[Calvin]

As for 2046, it's not in the trailer. Wouldn't it be likely to be there if it were part of the set?

Not necessarily. This is a trailer for a theatrical touring program as opposed to the Blu-Ray set and theatrical screening rights and home video rights don't usually come together.

[feihong]

Oh, interesting.

[colinr0380]

To follow on from feihong's points, I also have qualms about presenting a new version of a film decades later as a 'final, only' version and letting all previous versions fall out of circulation or languish with poorer transfers. I am actually all for directors tinkering (or completely cutting up and destroying) their previous films in an attempt to create something new out of the ashes (though someone should really gently tell Oliver Stone that he's probably done all that he can with Alexander at some point!), but that really needs to go hand in hand with preserving the original cut for posterity, and most importantly for historical context. Then audiences and even future archivists can see both the original film that had its influence at its initial release (not that I am suggesting that Fallen Angels had a Star Wars-like effect on the culture, but it had its own influence in its own way, and arguably I could not imagine something like the Pang Brothers' Bangkok Dangerous or One Take Only existing in the form they do without Fallen Angels to take inspiration from. Or the heavy stylisations of South Korean film Nowhere to Hide, with its rain-streaked violence underscored to Holiday by The Bee Gees) and then the later amended version put out decades later.

Also having the original as a frame of reference to view a 'new' version of the film should be seen as a benefit rather than a detriment, allowing to compare and contrast. Sure, some people may (extremely) prefer the earlier version to whatever new one is made but that surely should be preferable to, for example, only be able to judge Ashes of Time by its Redux version and nothing else. Suppressing everything that came before might ensure that the changes have to be accepted but it also runs the risk that the entire film will go on to be dismissed entirely because of all of the extra doodling added on top of it (see THX-1138 for the most egregious current example).

So in summary: directors should be free to experiment and mess with their films as much as they want to but for all of our sakes keep them away from the only surviving negatives, so that at the very least an archive if not general audiences will have an ability to store a film in the form that it was originally commercially released, and affected the wider culture, in.

[swo17]

I can see the chinese disc on Taobao, but I dont know how to order from there.

I bought from there once using an agent (Taobaoage). It was a laborious process, but it can be done!

[feihong]

Good to know. Maybe I'll give that a shot.

One more crack at a yet another likely non-anamorphic Ashes of Time shouldn't be prohibitively laborious.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Chinese editions of Ashes of Time are all the same non-anamorphic master that was previously used for the Mei Ah laserdisc (and, I assume, VHS), with burned-in Chinese and English subs. The DVD Beaver caps are unfortunately an accurate representation. There are claims the Taiwanese DVD features a tiny bit of additional footage with Joey Wong that was included in the Taiwanese theatrical release, but that isn't the case. (The Wong footage has apparently been shown on Taiwanese television airings, and was also on the South Korean VHS release; naturally it's on Youtube as well.) The big difference is that the Hong Kong disc has both Cantonese and Mandarin options while the Taiwanese and Chinese editions only have Mandarin, though at least it's the original HK Mandarin dub and not the watered-down mainland dub done for the Redux.

[mhofmann]

The Mei Ah DVD of Ashes of Time may be bad, but it's still the best release to view the original HK cut. The French DVD is missing several minutes, it containing the international cut.
And STAY FAR, FAR AWAY from the U.S. World Video DVD referenced above -- it's terribly cropped, with an opaque gray box over what probably was burned-in subtitles. Worst. DVD. Ever.

[Murdoch]

I'm glad I didn't sell off my WKW blus in anticipation of this box. The Days of Being Wild HK blu has an awkward translation but overall it's a quality release. The Kino blu for Fallen Angels looks to be the same as the AE release, and the CC Chungking Express release was very nice (and in my mind has the best cover art of the collection). Happy Together (I unfortunately never picked up the Kino blu) and 2046 will make or break this set for me. I think Wong in the 90s is among the best oeuvre of films released by a director in succession so it's unfortunate he's become such a revisionist, but I'm glad most of those films received decent releases capturing their original forms before this box.

[whaleallright]

I guess I feel like these "director returns to make what they really wanted to make later" cuts of these films are usually made from a very different mindset

In a not-entirely-hyperbolic sense, they are made by different people, insofar as people's minds undergo considerable transformations across the decades. The Francis Ford Coppola that revisited Apocalypse Now recently is not the same Coppola that made the film.

This has been discussed elsewhere on this site, but to clarify there is not really one "original" version of Ashes. There are at least two, IIRC, before Wong mangled it with his Redux. Similarly, there at least three released versions of Days of Being Wild. It's too bad Wong seems stingy about allowing people to see all these variations, because they're pretty fascinating.

Too bad there aren't enough Wong fans online to crowdfund the sort of homemade 4K scans of 35mm prints that produced the various "despecialized" Star Wars bootlegs. There are prints out there—most of them fairly worn, but I'd prefer that over the 720p(?) travesty of Redux.

[therewillbeblus]

It'll be interesting to see how he fiddles with the other films too.. I'm starting to feel better about holding onto my Chungking Express OOP blu, though I really wish the new norm wasn't to expect Crit titles coming back in print to be different

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Mei Ah DVD of Ashes of Time may be bad, but it's still the best release to view the original HK cut. The French DVD is missing several minutes, it containing the international cut.

I'm not sure the Mei Ah disc is actually the Hong Kong cut. I've read somewhere (can't find the source now, unfortunately) that the HK cut was different from the one released in other Asian territories in that the latter had some additional action footage to mollify local distributors who were hoping for a more straightforward martial-arts film, and this longer version became the standard when the movie hit video. The TF1 version has various alterations from the more familiar 98-minute version, including a different ending, but the bulk of the running time difference is down to the missing action sequences, which makes me wonder if TF1 actually used the HK cut. (For what it's worth, the Variety review published after the Venice premiere claims the longer version also opened in Hong Kong, so it's possible whatever source I read was incorrect or I'm muddling it in my memory. The running time given for the Venice screening is 95 minutes, which may or may not be accurate since it's a few minutes longer than the TF1 cut but a few minutes shorter than the more common pre-Redux cut. Of course, another possibility is that the Venice cut was different from any commercially-released version, which would be unsurprising given that it was one of Wong's famous down-to-the-wire festival entries, with the last reel being delivered separately to the waiting courier at the airport.)

[cowboydan]

There's a new trailer for Fallen Angel's Thai theatrical release
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtdddHJV06A

[bluesforyou]

Honestly, doesn't look bad at all. I just hope the boxset includes a transfer of the original version made using the new master.

[yoshimori]

I'm just going to say it ... then duck: That looks way better than the original version.