Not just a couple of Chinese chicks standing around talking

Concerned that there might be someone somewhere who hasn't seen every image of every actress from the 2009 Shanghai International Film Festival red carpet I decided to mine Google images once again for photos from Sina.com, CRI English and Yahoo Singapore. Here is the first batch, leading off with Zhang Ziyi in white and Fan Bingbing in red. Each of them is breathtakingly gorgeous on her own and together they could cause beauty overload. The unfortunate actor rendered all but invisible standing next to them in the picture to the left is South Korean So Ji Sub.

The two of them looking at the photographer and through him directly at the viewer tell us why Agamemnon and Achilles sailed for Troy--either of these faces could launch a thousand ships. Two beautiful women, confident in their beauty and (one imagines) aware and comfortable with its devastating effect.

Zhou Wei can do the impossible on the screen--she can look tough, sexy and cute at the same time. Here she settles for merely beautiful:----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hao Lei was looking great in a daringly cut gown with net inserts and a feathered hat:
--------------------------------------------------------------

Kelly Lin in what might be the reddest red dress of the evening and looking smashing in it:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Han Xue looking as cut as a box of puppies in a simply cut frock, understated but approriate accessories and perfectly arranged hair.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Maria Grazia Cucinotta all 5'10" of her, looking as Italian as the Piazza Venezia, but since she was at the SIFF, her she is:
---------------------------------------------------
And just for the heck of it, Anthony Wong, dressed like he double parked his pirate ship: ---------------------------------------------------------

And because too much of a good thing is a good thing:

Let's find a scaffold and shoot a movie

There are a lot of reasons to love Hong Kong movies. Two of the best reasons are blogs that I follow every day and have mentioned here in the past. One is WEBS OF SIGNIFICANCE which covers Hong Kong life generally including the movies. There are many people who write about the Jade Screen—YTSL, who runs Webs of Significance writes the way most of us wish we could. That she is a terrific photographer with a good eye for what Hong Kong such an intriguing city where the amazing is commonplace. But what led me to her blog and kept me coming back were her well written and very well reasoned (meaning, of course that I agreed with her) reviews. An example is her discussion of one of Leslie Cheung’s best movie outings which can be found here: He's a Woman, She's a Man review. Since YTSL says that this “was at least my 20th viewing” of this film she is perfectly situated to review it. Having seen a few movies that often—Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, In the Mood for Love—I know it is may be the best way to understand everything about what is on the screen. The late Gene Siskel, who loved “Saturday Night Fever” as much as anyone could (go figure) wrote about learning more about it on the tenth viewing than he did on the first. If you follow the link View from Brooklyn Bridge you will come to her review on Brian’s invaluable blog.

Another is Soft Film: Vintage Chinese Cinema, an indispensible resource for those interested in the heyday the mighty Shaw Brothers machine. Using a combination of scans of material he owns, youtube clips and stuff sent by readers, duriandave’s blog allows one to travel back to the days of movie queens, action heroines and flower vases. A recent post which really caught my eye was this one in which Grace Chang as a super sexy Chinese Carmen singing a syncopated Habanera Grace Chang . This clip is now one of my not-in-the-least guilty pleasures. While it is probably not Grace Chang’s voice on the soundtrack—unless she has almost perfect French diction—it remains a blistering interpretation of the dazzling, delectable and doomed Gypsy enchantress. There is a lot going on in the background—the mise-en-scène is perfect and the reactions of the background players, particularly the slightly leering guys in the band, hits just the right tone of innocence and menace. Check out the drummer from about 0:36 to 1:03, for example. Cheung Yeung has the appropriate deer in the headlights look as Carmen/Grace deploys enough megawattage of sensuality to blow half the fuses in Kowloon. Here is the clip:

It is the movies themselves, not only how they are reviewed and remembered, that can make one (at least this one) enthused to the point of obsession. The way they are made and promoted, in many cases much different from what those of us raised on Hollywood product expect, makes them, if not unique then very different from expectations.

An example of this is the almost casual way that a film crew will set up on a busy street and the more than casual way that the people on the street will take not of or ignore what they are doing. Some photos from a scene of a movie with Leon Lai currently being shot show the star and a stuntman on a scaffolding, rigged for a fall, then a much wider view with the two of them circled showing just how uninterested the vast majority of people are to yet another movie. The sidewalk immediately beneath the scaffolding—where the airbag is located to break the fall—has been cordoned off but not very strictly. The wider shot shows that all the impedimenta of a shoot is there on a platform beneath the scaffolding including a big reflector that no one could have missed but most citizens simply don’t find it that compelling, as if not only movies but making movies continues to be such a part of the daily life in Hong Kong that it is just something happening in the background.

Pictures from Sina.com through Dennis Lee's not to be missed ever Hong Kong Cinema Daily News

Infernal Mission

No one ever sets out to make a bad movie although in hindsight one can see that the combination of creative people assembled for a project seems to doom if from the beginning. Sometimes, though, a movie turns out better than anyone might think it could. Infernal Mission is such a film.

Infernal Mission has many of the elements of a dull timewaster: an inexperienced writer and director; generic, barely dressed sets; by the numbers cinematography and a script that seems to be a cheap copy of a much better movie. It is visually uninteresting and dramatically dull. However the sum is greater than its generally ordinary parts or perhaps some of the parts shine are much brighter than one would expect. Even though the war room for the elite anti-drug squad looks like the word processing pool of a small accounting office, the gun fights are (with a couple of notable exceptions) perfunctory and the plot is pushed forward by people finding clues lying around on desks, it is still an effective police drama with decently developed characters, believable conflict and hidden agendas that are hinted at and only slowly revealed.

Teresa Mak plays Mak Ka Mei, the police cadet recruited to be a mole in the organization of a drug kingpin. She is beautiful as always, playing very tough when she needs to be, tender when necessary and makes it clear that she is always looking over her shoulder. The difficulties her character encounters, a female spy in the heart of a criminal organization are only hinted at—her main tool for getting information on drug deal is sex, since she had to hide her skills gunplay and strong arm tactics . Her status as both an insider, being present when huge deals are made, and as an outsider, never completely trusted are clear from the beginning and serve as one of the hinges for conflict. The audience likes her and wants her to succeed.

Infernal Mission is the only film credit for director Chan Man-Leun and screenwriter Chung Bond. However Cha Cheun Lee, its producer, has directed eighteen Hong Kong films, most of them romantic comedies or Category III not terribly hard-core pornography. He has been an actor, producer and writer--typical (or at least not untypical) for someone far below the top rank of Hong Kong film who wants to work in the business. I assume, based on nothing other than Cha Cheun-Lee's experience and the almost invisible status of the director and writer that he was more respoonsible than anyone for what showed up onscreen.

In addition to Teresa Mak the cast features Ruby Wong Cheuk-Ling, Lam Suet and Tony Ho Wah-Chiu. Ruby Wong, the mole in the police department, is a very attractive and talented actress who has done comedy for Ringo Lam and police dramas for Johnny To. She had a terrible hairdo/wig which actually distracted the audience from her performance, with them wondering why her hair was covering her face instead of the qualities she brought to her character. Tony Ho played the violent and erratic crime boss. His character was over the top for most of the movie and he brought it off with well. With 48 movies in 10 years--a lot for an actor in the post-handover world--he is a talented young pro. Lam Suet, as the police commander behind Teresa Mak's undercover operation, has always been perfect for any cop or hoodlum role.

The ensemble portrays the constant anxiety of both working undercover and being responsible for the operation. The script, which is based on, borrowed from or in homage to Infernal Affairs, keeps things hurtling along--no subplots, comic relief or stopping to think slow down the rush to the inevitable bloody showdown.

There weren't a lot of stunts--this is a buttoned up, low budget police drama--and the most dangerous thing that any of the actors did was smoke cigarettes. Teresa Mak had a quite a few scenes in which she smoked. She may not have had a nicotine habit when filming started but she must have before it finished.

Ruby Wong

Tony Ho and Lam Suet

Infernal Mission is available at a few online stores incuding HKFlix and YesAsia

The Hong Kong Movie Database page (registration may be required) is here HKMDB

Collectors and Film History

The history of Hong Kong film will never really be written although many have tried and others continue to try. duriandave, whose well researched and increasingly addictive blog is here is a great introduction to movies and popular culture generally in the Crown Colony and other parts of the Chinese diaspora. Another source is Silver Light:A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Cinema 1920-1970 by Paul Fonoroff whose reviews from a couple of decades after this book are discussed in a post below.

Foronoff makes it heartbreakingly clear that when it comes of the history of film in Hong Kong, it just isn't there. There are prints of four of the over 500 feature films produced in the pre-World War II era. In some cases the same problems that plagued some Hollywood classics prevailed--the prints themselves and the movies on them weren't considered important enough to store properly, so heat and humidity did its damage. There simply wasn't enough room in Hong Kong to warehouse films--Hong Kong has long been one of the most croweded and hemmed in places on earth. Without enough room to house its people there wasn't much outcry to find space for old movies. It wasn't until 1993 that the Hong Kong Film Archive was established. A problem not faced in other movie capitals occurred during the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945 when any movies that could be found were melted for their silver content.

Fonoroff discovered that the only way to write a history of the movie industry he loved was to acquire the source materials himself. In searches through old theaters in Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Singapore and Malaysia he found the posters, lobby cards, handbills and magazines that he used for illustrations in Silver Light.

We are spoiled now. Everything is digital, its all indestructible strings of zeroes and ones that don't get thrown out, burned up or simply left behind when a cinema closes like so much of the this history already has. The difficulty for the fan, of course, is that the more movies you watch the more you want to see; the more you learn the more you realize you don't know. It can be frustrating to look at advertising material for films that no longer exist--and who wouldn't want to see a martial arts western from the 1940s, "Double Pistol Heroine", for example--but among the serious collectors, I imagine, there will always be one more place to look to uncover one more bit of Hong Kong fim history.

Teresa Mak in "Love is a Many Stupid Thing"

There are a number of things you can count on in a Wong Jing comedy including plenty of attractive actresses, generally dressed (or undressed) to hightlight their beauty. A movie from the Wong Jing cinema factory in the 1980s and 1990s might look as if it were slapped together in a few weeks--because they often were. Confused plots and semi-improvised dialog were either part of the charm or real annoyances to his audiences. But Wong always knew how to get a movie cast, shot, edited and to the distributor on time and under budget.

A typical example of this is "Love is a Many Stupid Thing" which features Teresa Mok as a tough Hong Kong police sergeant leading a squad of lovely police constables. She falls in love with the wrong guy, a handsome cop who is actually a mole from one of the Triads sent to infiltrate and spy on the police. Her moods go from coy to friendly to bloodthristy--in one scene she storms into a conference room and stomps the suspect then flirts with the officer who was questioning him. This is a movie in which Teresa Mak is one of an ensemble--probably the lead co-star if such a thing exists. It is a guy's movie with Eric Tsang and Chapman To keeping the slapstick humor going. Here are some pictures from "Love is a Many Stupid Thing".

The first two show her in uniform. Many actresses look great in police uniforms--Cynthia Khan, for example, clocked a lot of time as a Hong Kong policewoman--and Teresa looks quite fetching here as Sergeant Cool Lady:



Cool Lady (I am not making this up although it probably made a lot more sense when said in either Mandarin or Cantonese) attempts to involve herself in the conversation Watson (Raymond Wong Ho-Yin) is having with another cop on how to approach the suspect played by Tony Ho Wah-Chiu and who is described in the credits as "insane sex offender". She is already getting a bit wild-eyed since she has a crush on Watson.



Things develop poorly during the questioning to the mounting concern of Cool Lady and her squad who are watching through the two way mirror.

Here she tries to act demure and girlish toward Watson who she just rescued from the suspect who was smashing Watson's genitals under the table in the interrogation room. After kicking the bad guy in the head she simpers at the object of her affection:

One of the trademarks of Wong's work is actresses in their underwear. Watson and Cool Lady are staking out the bad guys from a rooftop. They fall off but each are able to grab a string of lights to slow thier fall. Cool Lady's dress gets ripped off leaving her on the ground in the rain in her not very revealing lingerie.
It isn't necessary to have the actress wet and partially undressed, of course. A simple snap front blouse that just barely closes over Cool Lady's breasts with the snaps pulling but not quite gaping is a slightly more understated look although still very effective:
Looking shocked, amazed, horrified or just plain angry is the stock in trade of any professional actress. Here Cool Lady has discovered that not only is Watson an underworld informant and is planning to kill her but that he never planned on marrying her.

"Love is a Many Stupid Thing" is not a bad movie for fans of Teresa Mak Ga-Kei. While she doesn't have much screen time she does pop up throughout the film and is often featured in the scenes she is in. The movie itself is funny in parts, dreadful in parts and occasionally confusing--in other words what one expects from Wong Jing.

Reviews and Reviewers

Last month my friend Chick Young, proprietor of the blog Trash-Aesthetics a person who knows more about film, criticism and theory than I will if I live to be 100 and who really loves movies, posted a short and scathing discussion of movie reviewers based on the published reactions to “Watchman”. While six weeks ago is a century or so in blog time it is still well worth reading (as his entire blog) and can be found here.

There are many examples of sloppy thinking/writing/viewing among both the waning number of reviewers for newspapers and the explosive growth of online reviews there have been some excellent reviewers. Paul Fonoroff, when he wrote for the "South China Morning Post" was one of them. Like everyone else in daily or weekly film coverage he wrote under deadline pressure, wrote about whatever opened that week and had a specific amount of space allotted to him. His audience were the Anglophone residents of the then Crown Colony. His reviews were published in At the Hong Kong Movies: 600 Reviews from 1988 till the Handover.

While Fonoroff was very tough on screenwriters and directors it is the writers get the brunt of his scorn. Almost invariably when he doesn’t like a movie he faults the script. Fonoroff loves actors, none more than Chow Yun Fat and Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, and he is generally at least supportive of the efforts of those in front of the camera. He knows good action scenes when he sees them and describes them well. A civil libertarian, he was very critical of movies in which the police show "a sneering attitude toward human rights" (from a review of Organized Crime and Triad Bureau) and wrote that "human rights in Hong Kong would be all but extinct if life ever imitated the 'art' of Twist in his article on that movie. It must have been a long decade for him since it seemed that there was a new "Danny Lee will beat you into submission" movie every month on the Jade screen.

His reviews were full of short and wonderfully descriptive allusions. In writing about True Love, Fonoroff mentions Sandra Ng and her "special brand of inelegance", as good description of her look and style as any I have seen. He wrote that "Robotrix looks like a Chinese Robocop invested with the spirit of Russ Meyer" and that in Point of No Return Jacky Chueng and Patrick Tam "are so unconvincing that one feels like putting out a contract on them. And I don't mean a movie contract".
With undergraduate studies in Chinese and a Master’s degree in cinema, knowledge of both Mandarin and Cantonese and long residence in Hong Kong, Fonoroff has the local lore, theoretical background and linguistic ability to cover Hong Kong movies in great depth. Most importantly he really loves the cinematic output of the former Crown Colony. This shines through in many reviews, not least in the Jade Leung vehicle Fox Hunter where he writes: "The finale set in a Guangdong department store s deftly choreographed. It’s unlike anything seen outside the Cantonese screen, as realistic as a Fred Astaire dance number and nearly as much fun."

From Fox Hunter, as is the image at the top of this post:

Another movie that Foronoff really liked (as did I) was Green Snake. He wrote that "The story outline is familiar to Chinese audiences from Singapore to Shanghai. Green Snake (Maggie Cheung) and White Snake (Joey Wong) are reptilian sisters who assume human form to seduce any hapless mortals who catch their fancy. Looking as they do like Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong, these human snakes are pretty hard to resist".

"What distinguishes Green Snake from its predecessors is both its imagination and humor. This is no museum piece rendering of a Chinese classic. The sight of the elegantly gowned Green Snake sticking out her tongue to nab a tasty fly, or her efforts to engage in the most unsnakely activity of shedding tears lightens up the proceedings considerably."

Three images from Green Snake