Edward Yang

Started by grand theft sparrow, June 27, 2005, 09:29:00 AM

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grand theft sparrow

I just saw A Brighter Summer Day at noyes' stomping ground, MoMA, yesterday and it was amazing!  I had only seen (and loved) Yi Yi before seeing this and it clinched Edward Yang as one of my favorite filmmakers.

Has anyone else seen A Brighter Summer Day?  The ending crawl in the film implied that it was based on a true story.  I'm curious to know if it is.

Yang seems to mostly use wide shots in his films (in all 4 hours of A Brighter Summer Day AND 3 hours of Yi Yi, I could probably count the number of close-ups on one hand) but emotionally, he gets right in the characters' faces.  And he's as great at getting solid performances out of kids as Wes Anderson or David Gordon Green.  In fact, A Brighter Sumemr Day reminded me of Rushmore, 400 Blows, George Washington, and a little bit of City of God.

Is there anything else he's done that anyone can recommend?  

I'm off to pester Criterion now.

w/o horse

Bump because:

1)  I am thinking about purchasing Yi Yi.
    a.  I would like to see more discussion of the movie.

2)  There is a peculiar non-answering to this thread.
    a.  No one has seen the movies (hard to believe)
    b.  There is not enough reason to talk about the movies (easier to believe)
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

Pubrick

in the 10 days since this was posted, i doubt much has changed.
under the paving stones.

xerxes

i loved yi yi, so i say buy it.

pete

brighter summer day was like a very very slow and arthouse-y "summer of sam"--both are stories based on real events that are more about the era and the zeitgeist than the actual events themselves.
Yiyi sucked though.  it was like a really really pretentious magnolia.  Edward Yang is a hack who thrives on the "arthouse" crowd of the world, with this snotty Woody Allen-esque urban snobbery (minus the sense of humor) and an unoriginal aesthetic very derivative of Ozu and his Taiwanese counterparts like Hou HsiaoHsien and Tsai MingLiang.  He's pretentious, hollow, and self-important, pretty much the most typical of an "arthouse director".
though brighter summer day was kinda good.  He's good with coming of age dramas.  the more "adult"/"mature" he gets, the lamer you realize he is.  you also have to give him credit for giving Christopher Doyle his first DP job.
he's been wanting to collaborate with Jackie Chan forever now though, I'd love to see that.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

w/o horse

Quote from: petebrighter summer day was like a very very slow and arthouse-y "summer of sam"--both are stories based on real events that are more about the era and the zeitgeist than the actual events themselves.
Yiyi sucked though.  it was like a really really pretentious magnolia.  Edward Yang is a hack who thrives on the "arthouse" crowd of the world, with this snotty Woody Allen-esque urban snobbery (minus the sense of humor) and an unoriginal aesthetic very derivative of Ozu and his Taiwanese counterparts like Hou HsiaoHsien and Tsai MingLiang.  He's pretentious, hollow, and self-important, pretty much the most typical of an "arthouse director".
though brighter summer day was kinda good.  He's good with coming of age dramas.  the more "adult"/"mature" he gets, the lamer you realize he is.  you also have to give him credit for giving Christopher Doyle his first DP job.
he's been wanting to collaborate with Jackie Chan forever now though, I'd love to see that.

Let's say Crash vs. Yi Yi.  Why like one and not the other?  It seems to me that all of the criticisms you put against Yi Yi are what the honkeys and crackers put against Crash.  Do you suppose that perhaps you are being harder on the movie because it is Asian cinema?
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

pete

it's very hard to talk about movies with you 'cause the questions you ask seem to stem from boredom instead of genuine curiosity.  you don't really care about how I feel about yiyi, you just want some words beneath your post.  it's kinda condescending, in fact, the cutesy honky and cracker thing.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

w/o horse

I asked a pretty simple question I think, and to me it seems like you stretched yourself to make that characterization of me.  Were you just trying to give me an example of pretension for reasons of comparison?  I've never asked you about a before movie and certainly never talked to you about a movie, so I don't know why you'd make an off base assumption like that for any reason other than to self-satisfy.  You could have just ignored my post, rather than try to make me feel guilty for actually wanting the opinions of the posters of this board.  You make me sound like a housewife.

You're wrong.  I do care about what you think about Yi Yi, or I wouldn't have asked.  

Anyway, I thought my reputation was of bluntness and unnecessary honesty.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

pete

I was right, you just want words and spaces.
okay I'll give you words and spaces.
I didn't think Crash was pretentious.  It might've been overwritten and its view of race might've been dumb, but it sought to reach out to a mass audience and it preached to them in a very accessible manner.  Yiyi on the other hand wanted to be a textbook arthouse film, with, like I've said before, stolen aesthetics (with no new insight), indulgent self-references (regarding video games and watching slow movies), and some very predictable instances of "magical realism" (spoiler: with the grandma waking up in the girl's dream).  I liked the little boy as an actor and liked his character in the movie, but the movie got indulgent when the adult characters were all amazed by the brilliance and the soulfulness of the child.  in the end it was a boring movie about the banality of life, with very little freshness for it to cover like four different character arcs over three hours.
I don't think edward yang ripped off magnolia though, I just think it shows what magnolia would be like if it was actually as "arty", pretentious and tedious as its critics labelled it.

now onto personal stuff.  I like George Washington and Abe Lincoln and MLK, I have no problem with honesty.  but from the beginning of this thread you've said nothing that leads me to believe that you've seen these movies or cared about them.  You just wanted people to talk about them.  You weren't stimulating discussion; you demanded it.  now, that's not really how discussion works around here.  you don't just say "lets everyone talk about the film".  even after I gave you my opinion I was still not even sure if you'd seen the film.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

grand theft sparrow

What impressed me about Yi Yi is that it wasn't pretentious.  It was just a straightforward film; never mind all the smash cuts and whip pans and all that shit and just tell your fucking story.  Maybe the pretension gets lost in the translation?

w/o horse

Quote from: peteI was right, you just want words and spaces.
okay I'll give you words and spaces.

now onto personal stuff.  I like George Washington and Abe Lincoln and MLK, I have no problem with honesty.  but from the beginning of this thread you've said nothing that leads me to believe that you've seen these movies or cared about them.  You just wanted people to talk about them.  You weren't stimulating discussion; you demanded it.  now, that's not really how discussion works around here.  you don't just say "lets everyone talk about the film".  even after I gave you my opinion I was still not even sure if you'd seen the film.

I hadn't seen the film pete, and I was asking what you guys thought about it because I was thinking of purchasing the film as a blind buy.  No Netflix, see.  You're right, I was trying to stimulate a dead topic in order to learn more about the movie.  It's a new superower that also gives me the ability of question asking.  It sounds like you're on a really fucking tall high horse, and good for you, because this board doesn't have enough people going around telling everyone how they should post.  I appreciate an elistist principle as much as the next man, but, if you don't mind, next time just don't post.  I don't know what you mean by caring, but I certainly was interested in the movie in the sense that I wanted it to be talked about, and I always, always come back into these threads and talk about the movies after I've seen them.  There has been no crime here.

I've read your posts too, and I know how this well end, so let's end it now.  Because honestly, you haven't said anything of value in this thread outside of your film talk, and it is tangents like this one that hurts the board, I don't know how you possiblycouldn't see that.  But, in all sincerity, I appreciate you talking about the movie and I hope that in the future you're less of a cunt.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

Pubrick

why did u just ignore the actual response he gave to ur question (the bulk of his post)? instead u chose to focus on the stuff u knew would derail the thread, and then u go blaming him for it. at least he combined his personal comments with sumthing of value.
under the paving stones.

w/o horse

Haha, too true.  Flair for drama?  Plus it's pete.  I felt this compelling need, perhaps by virtue of precedence, to argue with him.  And I haven't seen the movie yet.

But maybe now people will be like "man this Yang topic is hot, I better check that guy out."
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

cron

context, context, context.

pete

this is getting kinda irritating, with losing the horse knowing nothing about the films but demands everyone to submit information to him just so he can spend his parents' money on dvds in walmart.  and then calling people cunts afterwards.  why are you such a big whiner, losing the horse?  you're the mark mcgrath of xixax.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton