Tsui Hark

The way you're doing it is so melodramatic, it kind of crosses over into camp.

But I don't think Tsui Hark is intending to do that, probably for cultural reasons.

And as a result, it just doesn't quite click.

For instance, right, Dennis Rodman, there's a moment, I guess they're in Belgium or something, I don't know, but he, France maybe.

All these elements I think contribute to that sensation of, of volume and texture.

It wasn't directed by Tsui Hark, but it was produced in, in heavy quotation marks by Tsui Hark, which means, like a lot of his films of that time, it was probably [laughs] directed by him too.

And it has that Tsui Hark style and it has all those elements you just said, but I, I guess I was just feeling a bit, uh, uncharitable to it, you know.

Like, maybe I wanted to go back to the more kind of gruesome and uncouth, uh, Hong Kong horror films.

Uh, whereas that one to me is, you know, it's a much more kind of better modulated film and in that moment of watching it was, uh, maybe not what I was looking for.

I, I really like the film, but it has, like, a lot of, like- Prosthetic cat fights, uh, alien cat fights.

Feels a little bit more like tongue-in-cheek in a way.

You have that strand a little bit, then you have, like, someone like a King Hu that do- does, like, a convoluted comeback story that we can perhaps talk in a lo- or episode that deals with a Shoei Hart and, like, a failed swordsman film.

There are many movies about his students and teachers, and even his fourth wife got a 32-episode TV series in 2011.

Jackie Chan and Jet Li found early fame playing Wong, and movies about him have been directed by some of Hong Kong's greatest auteurs, including Chang Cheh, Lau Kar-leung, Yuen Woo-ping, Tsui Hark, and Sammo Hung.

At least part of the credit goes to the descendants of Wong's lineage, of his family and his martial art, who went on to work in Hong Kong's film industry.

For example, Lau Kar-leung, whose father was, depending on the source, either one of Wong's direct disciples or was taught by Wong's disciple Butcher Wing.

At the same time, the emergence of youth culture and youth social movements led to the creation of an altogether different Wong Fei-hung, a young hothead and spoiled brat whose dad doesn't think he deserves to learn kung fu, who eventually hones his body and spirit after apprenticing with a tough teacher.

Or the alternatingly tough and ludicrous version in 1978's Drunken Master, who learns to be a badass from decrepit alcoholic [laughs] Beggar So, quote, "macking on women, picking fights, and falling face-first in poop." In the 1980s, the looming return of Hong Kong to China and the 1989 pro-democracy protests and Tiananmen Square Massacre triggered a kind of identity crisis for Hong Kongers.

Were they Chinese? Were they Westerners? How could they navigate a changing world while holding onto their past? Enter Tsui Hark with a new series of films about Wong, the Once Upon a Time in China series, which we've mentioned before on the podcast and in the blog as influences on G Gundam and Imagawa.

Tony Williams, in his analysis of the series, points out that because of censorship, Hong Kong films generally avoided representations of political issues, especially ones as explosive as reunification.

[laughs]

Somewhat famously, John Woo and Tsui Hark, uh, had a falling out over the direction and the creative behind A Better Tomorrow 2.

Woo's, uh, script for part three became Bullet in the Head, which, oh, that's just a fantastic movie in its own right.

And Hark made what I'm about to watch, Love and Death in Saigon.

I think the selection of Maggie Chan as the leading character was very reasonable because in the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s and 90s, it was a leading industry of crime action in the city.

Tsui Hark, John Woo, Jonny Taw among them.

And Jon Woo, he often confessed that French films, the impact of French films onto his films.

Yeah, I mean, I love Les Vampires.