Quentin Tarantino on "Chungking Express"

hello and welcome to one car wise Chungking Express now wong kar-wai for my money is one of the most exciting filmmakers that has come out since I've personally been making films his films have a like an excitement that like well all the Hong Kong films kind of have a majority of excitement about them that's different from American films but his are a little different that's more like a guardian influenced to them which is not the way most of the you know the John Woo Jackie Chan style of films are so it makes them very very different I find his work very charging when I saw Chungking Express was when I was with pulp fiction I was at a festival in Stockholm and I had seen a film of Wong Kar wise before called days of being wild that I always really loved and I heard he had a new movie coming out so I was interested in seeing it well that's where I saw it and ah it just blew me away I just absolutely adored it I loved it it's I love romantic films and this film has just like this wonderful wonderful romantic comedy flavor to it while at the same time being encapsulate in this crazy frenetic of Hong Kong world which as well as the Hong Kong movies are when you see them in America if you actually see them in Hong Kong they don't seem so wild because that's kind of what life is on the streets there it kind of has that pace it's very strange anyway well the movie will start in just a little bit then what we're going to do is after words I'm gonna come back and I'm going to like talk about a couple anecdotes about the film I mention a few facts about Wong kar-wai and some of the people in the film and name give you a couple more movies that if you like this one you might want to check out so I will see you after the movie's over in the meantime enjoy Chungking Express hi I'm back and I promised you at the head of this tape that I would go in a little bit more details about the film that you just saw now a very interesting kind of story happened but how a Wong kar-wai made Chungking Express he was doing this epic swordsman film called ashes of time the star is basically every star in all the the Hong Kong lexicon I was taking him years to film it not years if I'm gonna take him a long time and um what happened is he's doing this big epic is taking four ever and then he starts editing it and editing it's taking him forever and it's just going on and on and on and finally you know he says you know I can't see anything anymore all I see is this big epic film I'm doing and to kind of like shake away the cobwebs all right he came up with an idea for Chungking Express what we basically saw all right said let me just do this real quick kind of down and dirty movie that I can just kind of knock out and just kind of like you know feel like push ups more or less do that and then I'll go back and be able to do my epic again well that's exactly what it did he got together they shot a chunky Express fairly quickly and just like you know zapped it out and had a good time editing it and like all of a sudden as opposed to this you know big epic he was doing you know he did more of a like a fun cool quick rock and roll style film and that's exactly what and it worked out just the way he wanted it to it was finished he went right back to doing ashes of time his epic year with a whole renewed energy you know that making Chungking Express gave him and both films actually came out in a Hong Kong around the same time so it was like so it was like literally just kind of a way to jumpstart his own stalled nests and you can see that in the film the film has this kind of go for it jumpy energy you know the idea was exactly what he needed at the time now if you like this film other films at Wong kar-wai has done that you should definitely check out is as tears go by which was his first film which a sort of like I kind of like a Mean Streets kind of like story set in Hong Kong and the other fan other families did is a days of being wild which is the first one kar-wai film that I actually saw and it's a sort of like you know again it has a big big plethora of actors a Tony Leung who plays the the cop that whose apartment gets invaded by a Fay Wan he's in a daze of being wild and it plays like a Hong Kong version of American Graffiti yeah that's the film that I first saw him and wanted to like explore more of his work all right he also did up ashes a time which is available and uh and the film that he did after Chungking Express basically at this moment his newest movie a phone call fallen angels which again has a lineage to Chungking Express insofar as originally Chungking Express like Pulp Fiction was going to be comprised of three stories but he ended up like just like liking the two that he had and they that in the Bing story enough fallen angels more or less is the third story he would have filmed for Chungking Express if he had done three stories so if you like chunky knee expressed and definitely check out fallen angels because it's it's more or less the continuation of it now some of the gals in this movie let me give you some info on them Bridget Lin who was the woman with the the blonde wig in the film she is more or less considered the the Greta Garbo of Hong Kong and she deserves that title perfectly she's one of the most charismatic stars I think in the world Erin she kind of has that you know she doesn't look like Garbo but she has that wonderfully statue istic face thing is you might have seen her in one of her first movies that came out was Peking Opera blues one of the greatest films ever made picking up her blues is just as a blast it's a lot of fun she's in the first Jackie Chan a police story but then what happened with her was as time went on her career started kind of like a fading out a little bit but then she did a movie called swordmaster - alright went along with a Jet Li now the thing is in that movie she played a male who was ascending to like this godlike position alright and the only way to attain this godlike position was to castrate himself alright and she played the castrated male God in the movie it was a smash in Hong Kong and all over the Orient and made Brigitte lend a huge star however she started this whole thing in a series of movies where basically she's almost always playing either a you know a force of evil a force of nature she's playing a woman passing as a male or in the case of like swordsman 2 and its sequel the East is red actually playing a male alright you know that cross dresses like a woman that's like that she's karna this market in a China playing these kind of movies and it's you know she's fantastic she's really great she's one of the few human beings that can pull off playing God like that other movies has she done that you might want to see like I said there's swordsman to its sequel the East is red she plays a she's the lead in the bride with white hair the bride with white hair and also check up a Peking Opera blues she's very very good at mad all right oddly enough um OH also check out ashes at I'm she's excellent enough as well oddly enough in this film this was her last movie she quit basically uh the business after this film and got married so this was her her farewell song and she not normally don't normally doesn't wear the blonde wig the reason that Wong kar-wai wanted her to wear the blonde wig is for two reasons one he liked the idea of having the Chinese Garbo mast and dark glasses and a blonde wig so you she's almost recognizable from her normal persona alright and to this character was a homage to the Jenna Rowland's character in John Cassavetes Gloria yeah Wong kar-wai loves that movie and this this character was set up to be his Gloria alright the other female lead it that perky little nymphet right that takes over the poor guys apartment is Faye Wong now this was Faye Wong's first movie they Wang ho is the single most popular rock star alright in Hong Kong right now she's a huge smash you know smash recording artist and this was her first movie and she's like she's known as a the Madonna of Mandarin and um and she this was her first feature and she just like stole everybody's heart she won a Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards she's great she's great in the film and the the Chinese version of the cranberry song that you hear in the film is actually sung by Faye Wong and I'm sorry I don't think I'll ever be able to see California Dreaming again with that like seeing Faye Wong do her little dances yeah she's the best Oh everyone I don't know anybody who hasn't seen this movie hasn't gotten a crush on her now the thing that you should understand about Wong kar-wai style and what makes it different from the majority of films coming out of Hong Kong is almost all the Hong Kong films are either like wild crazy comedies wild crazy fantasy films that you know have a very Sam Raimi kind of style and then like the what's becoming near the John Woo ringgold am buh-buh-buh-buh-buh action films all right well one car why has all that same energy that like you know this Hong Kong tends to bring to its cinema but he's also taking a cue from the French new-wave films of the late 50s early 60s the films that Godard did the films that a clod cheb row éric rohmer and Francois Truffaut did in their early days all right in particularly Gaddar is his man the feeling of the his style his kind of a sense of fun is as what he brings to the film and it's so I got to tell you it's just very different in looking at Asian cinema to see the mix of French new-wave inside of that thing about the French new-wave his letter you might have heard of the term but not know exactly what it means all right with the French new-wave there was a group of young filmmakers that came out in in France who were basically they were they were rebelling against the what they considered the bourgeois cinema of the you know the the French studio system all right and their way to do movies was to take genre pieces and then just kind of break the rules make no kind of like they have a feeling of making them up as they go along they weren't studied in film school they were studied from film criticism and films and when you look at a lot of those films they have an infectious quality almost like if you just love movies enough you don't need to study loving movies is enough to be able to make a good movie well that in its own way is pretty much the style that Wong Kar I has brought to Hong Kong films now if you liked Wong cars wise films used to definitely check out some films of good are all right you know and some films along the same lines that he did are the original breathless with jean-paul Belmondo a band of outsiders which the French title was called banda par which is what my company abandoned art is named after and another film called my life to live Uma Thurman's character in a pulp fiction was IAM not too dissimilar from agra Dora's wife anna karenina who is in a bunch of his movies and they had the same kind of haircut anyway that's it for the first film on the Rolling Thunder video collection Chungking Express and we'll see you next time with our next film Jack Hills switchblade sisters

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Views: 733,387

Keywords: Chungking Express, Film, Movie, Review, Quentin Tarantino, on, talks, reviews, Wong Kar Wai, Chung Hing sam lam, Opinion, Hong Kong, Cinema, Favourite

Id: RoHg-RvcwzE

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2013