Tag: Zhao Wei

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Red Cliff
(Chì Bì,
赤壁);
Red Cliff II
(Chì Bì
Jue Zhan Tian Xia,
赤壁（下）)

Director – John Woo – 2008, 2009 – China, Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 139m + 135m

*****

As a warlord seeks to crush opposition in Southern China, its two kingdoms join forces to defeat him, with the deciding battle taking place at Red Cliff – plays as part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

China, 208 A.D., around the end of the Han Dynasty. With the puppet Emperor more interested in talking to birds than the nitty-gritty of ruling his kingdom, his Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) talks him into a commission to subdue the rival Southern warlords Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen).

After a battle against the former’s forces in which his a loyal soldier is unable to prevent Liu’s wife getting killed but manages to get their baby to safety by strapping it on his back prior to single-handed combat, Liu’s advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sets out to persuade Sun Qian to join them in an alliance against the aggressor.

Despite unanimous opposition from his ministers, who would prefer to surrender to keep the peace, Sun agrees to fight along with his frontline commander Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and, because she insists on joining them, his tomboy sister the Princess Sun Shangxian (Zhao Wei).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

No.7 Cherry Lane
(Jiyuantai Qihao,
繼園臺七號)

Director – Yonfan – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12A – 125m

*****

The tutor of an 18-year-old girl falls for her mother who hired him against the background of the 1967 protest marches in Hong Kong – plays in the Annecy Animation Festival 2022 which is taking place in a 100% on-site edition this year right now as a Screening Event

Insofar as this is like anything else – which it really isn’t – it’s like a reworking of The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) filtered through In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000). Oh, and it’s 3D rendered then 2D animated. Broadly speaking, The Graduate is about a young man seduced by a much older, bored housewife before later becoming romantically involved with her daughter. In The Mood For Love is set in early 1960s Hong Kong and includes a sequence on a sloping pedestrian street where a man passes a women walking in the opposite direction, the whole thing charged with a sense of romantic longing. There;’s a similar scene in No.7 Cherry Lane, although it’s considerably less central to the plot than the one in In The Mood For Love.

Yonfan, here making his first film in ten years, would certainly agree that filmic and literary references abound in the film.… Read the rest