Masterofoneinchpunch wrote:The more I have learned about film in general the more I learned that I need to learn more (my knowledge of my ignorance has grown).
It's as true as it's said. In a way, the slow decline of DVD—and the phenomenal bargains that have accompanied it—has meant that now is probably a better time than ever (in the past, at least) to learn more about cinema both domestic and international, to rediscover it for oneself rather than having to trust, in the case of Hong Kong cinema in particular, decade-old reviews by people who were often misinformed despite their best intentions. The bargains at Big Lots and Amazon are obviously great places to start for not a lot of money, and certainly the local library system
here has turned out to be a gold mine for Criterions and nearly everything else, and the more I watch (and read!), the bigger the "bigger picture" becomes, which subsequently informs my reviews to a greater degree than in years past. Thankfully, I've always tended to err on the side of caution in my reviews—brief though they are
—which means revisions have (thankfully) never been reversals of opinion so much as expansions of existing thoughts (unlike so many bygone "experts" who've ended up doing flip-flops on Hong Kong films vis-a-vis their writings from the earlier days of the internet). At this point, I've almost reached a saturation point in discreet storage capacity (don't like having the "collection" on display - it's an eyesore), which is the primary reason I end up selling off a lot of recent purchases, occasionally jotting a note or two into the computer when the little "this reminds me of Hong Kong movie X" light bulb goes off.
I have a few films with Simon Loui, but have not seen any (I had a link to his films in my past post
). I am concerned about this as well.
No worries!
Your list as it stands is largely composed of mainstream (and uniformly excellent) Hong Kong fare, which is not surprising. I find
most "Top" lists of Hong Kong movies usually feature some variation on, or selection of, the very films you explored, and were I to compile my own, a substantial number of the titles on your list would make the grade for mine. I find this a blessing and a curse, though, in that most such lists remind me of the types of HK films given coverage in nearly all mainstream western books on the form, such as the books by Logan, Hammond, Server, VideoHound, among others, where if you actually wrote down the name of every film discussed/reviewed in each book, you'd find a tremendous amount of overlap, much of it involving the usual suspects (Chan, Chow, Li, Yeoh, Girls 'n Guns, Wuxia, Old School Kung-Fu, New Kung Fu, Category III and Horror). Those categories do indeed cover a lot of interesting productions, but nearly as many (if not more) productions fall outside of them. Heck, even Bordwell, as you mention in the preamble to your Top 50, wrote Planet Hong Kong after having seen around 380 films, and yet the ones he dissects in the book are, by and large, are the
same ones feted, albeit in far less scholarly fashion, in virtually every other mainstream book on Hong Kong cinema, so to say he barely scratches the surface in terms of film count is apt. However, his saving grace is his clinical analysis of the
construction of these pictures, something I've yet to see another scholar or popular writer tackle.
As valuable as existing studies are, all of their authors have in effect limited themselves to the
upper echelon of Hong Kong cinema, the top, let's say, 500 movies one could—and should—label as quintessentially Hong Kong. That's fine on its own, but I've found virtually
no book that explores (even in a simple review format) the
complete breadth of Hong Kong cinema genres or the full range of budgets, especially, for example, the kinds of films in which Simon Loui made regular appearances. I mentioned him previously as an in-joke reference to previous threads throughout the forum due to his prolific resume and willingness to help out even the most destitute of filmmaking hopefuls, but he's just one representative (and one talented enough to straddle and A-list and B-list production worlds for a time) of a massive segment of the industry that, were more people to seek it out and explore it, would force many writers and even fans to seriously adjust their sliding scales of quality. Once one has experienced the likes of the SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE, MYSTERIOUS STORY, NEW OPTION or BOND'S ANGEL pictures (to name but a few out of hundreds), suddenly that 1-star review they may have confidently assigned an A-list mainstream film they thought they hated becomes a bit of an albatross, frankly.
Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether you should call a MA film Taiwanese or HK (sometimes they are collaborations). Taiwanese generally have lower production values though have some great martial artists. I watched Shaolin vs. Ninja last night
. I noticed many books have problems identifying which country it should belong too
. I do tend to prefer HK MA films.
The whole ownership issue regarding a lot of old HK/Taiwan/Korean pictures will still a long some time to clear up I suppose, especially when much of that work is being done by the likes of folks like us right here, as well as those at a handful of other forums (and a few scholar/authors spread out around the globe), in large part because the people who actually made and/or distributed the pictures never took the proper precautions to ensure their film history could be accurately cataloged from a
much earlier point in time than the dawn of the internet. I'm sure with just about any given picture, there's
somebody out there
somewhere (cast/crew, author, fan, etc.) who knows its true pedigree, but corralling their information into one place (like the HKMDB, where it absolutely
should be) is a Herculean and ongoing task.
. The more I have learned about film in general the more I learned that I need to learn more (my knowledge of my ignorance has grown).
My only gripe, and I suppose it's a minor one when a satire is this strong on the whole, is that it seems to morph into a spoof of Hospital-based soap operas in its final sequence (if I recall correctly), rather than sticking to its indictment of the real-life medical system that it lays out from the very beginning. Still one of the sharpest HK comedies of the past decade to these eyes. 
Definitely time to revisit his book, methinks! 
) that will be top of my list!