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Gone with the Bullets
InMovie Reviews

Gone with the Bullets (Review)

July 3, 2017By

Gone with the Bullets

aka 一步之遙 aka Yi Bu Zhi Yao aka 隨子彈飛 aka One Step Away
Gone with the Bullets
2014
Written by Jiang Wen, Wang Shuo, Guo Jun-Li, and Shu Ping
Directed by Jiang Wen
Gone with the Bullets
Jiang Wen’s followup to Let the Bullets Fly goes in a completely different direction, a period satire of the entertainment industry, a scandalous crime, and a China carved up by colonial forces. Basically they gave Jiang Wen a dump truck full of money and he made the most ridiculous razzle-dazzle he could craft that also spent a good portion of the film mocking the very razzle-dazzle it celebrated. Yet the whole thing is hard to engage with, not even bothering to spend time to keep the audience and just flies off in whatever direction it feels like as the story rumbles along. It is certainly a spectacle, but the whole thing just isn’t my cup of tea.

Jiang Wen is Ma Zouri, a local scam artist who is so good at self-promotion that a warlord’s son comes to him for advice in an effort to switch from new money to old money to impress foreign women. Ma Zouri and his partner in crime Xiang Feitian (Ge You) see this as the perfect opportunity to fleece this guy out of all his money while simultaneously putting on the biggest talent show for ladies of the night in the history of the world, which will put Shanghai on the map. The pageant for President of Escort Nation features women from across the globe and is a huge production with multiple numbers, but in the end Wanyan Yin (Shu Qi) emerges victorious. She’s a former flame of Ma Zouri as they were growing up together, and soon the pair are racing around town high on opium until Wanyan Yin is dead in a car accident and Ma Zouri is on the run, assumed to be her killer.
Gone with the Bullets

Assassin
InBad, Movie Reviews

The Assassin (Review)

July 5, 2016By

The Assassin

aka 刺客聶隱娘 aka Nie yin niang
Assassin
2015
Written by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Chu Tien-wen, Hsieh Hai-Meng, and Zhong Acheng
Based on a story by Pei Xing
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Assassin
The Assassin is a great film that will bore the living crap out a whole bunch of people thinking they’re going to see something that it’s not. It’s one of those films that makes me feel like a bad movie review website guy because it should be a film I’m jazzed for, but I just don’t really have strong feelings for it. I’ve even seen some of director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s other work, thanks to a particularly well-stocked Blockbuster that had Millennium Mambo (great!) and Flowers of Shanghai (greater!). This was before I moved to an area with great independent video stores, and also way before movies became easy to find on the internet, but that’s a whole different topic! But that meant The Assassin should have been right up my alley. And yet, I never really connected with it.

The Assassin has beautiful cinematography, some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. If anything the cinematography is too beautiful, every shot of the landscape looks out of a storybook, it’s a wonder how anything was ever done in 9th century China as everywhere people looked they would just see beautiful landscapes and spend all their time admiring them. The plot is steeped in historical characters as the story is literally dropped in the middle of actual history. I don’t know if Shu Qi’s character actually existed, but much of the rest of the characters are actual historical figures. Historical spoiler alert, Tian Xing, the guy who is exiled, will eventually have Tian Ji’an’s job. If anything, The Assassin got me to read up more on Chinese history, something I hadn’t done as much as I would have liked before.
Assassin

InMovie News, Science

Links Complex

January 13, 2014By

Hey, it’s about time I put up a new wall of links. In fact, I had so many that I had saved in various drafts I combined several together for this entry, and will get a separate entry that is links to cool posts on movie blogs later in the week. Learn from me and finish your articles! But let’s get on with the show…

**An awesome graphic about gender inequality in film. Especially relevant since this is the first time in forty years a female-lead movie was tops at the box office.

**Can it be December already so I can watch the new Jiang Wen movie? Gone with the Bullets (一步之遙) will be the followup to Let the Bullets Fly, which was spectacularly awesome. Jiang stars along with Ge You, Shu Qi, Wang Zhiwen, Wen Zhang, and Zhou Yun, and the plot involves a beauty pageant.

**In yet another short gets optioned into a feature film news, Beyond has been optioned by SyFy. Beyond was created by Raphael Rogers, who wrote and directed it on a budget of $1000. Beyond is about a woman who can teleport across space and time, and is the last of her family.

You can watch Beyond here, it is less than 9 minutes long.

**Everyone’s favorite mobile game that’s just the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark will hit the big screen, where hopefully it will be more than just 90 minutes of the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Temple Run becomes the latest of small scale games to get a movie option (preceded by Angry Birds), thanks to Warner Bros., who are increasingly desperate to find a new franchise to milk. Speaking of which, I need to rewatch Raiders of the Lost Ark….

**South African thriller iNumber Number will get an American remake by Universal. No word yet on if writer/director Donovan Marsh will be involved. iNumber Number is about an honest cop who goes bad after being cheated out of a promotion. Soon he has bigger problems when the gang he robs wants revenge.

**I am very excited about the Flawed Dogs animated movie, based on the books by Berkeley Breathed, specifically The Shocking Raid on Westminster.
Flawed Dogs

**Nickelodeon will bring us a film called Boogeymen, where a kid teams with the Boogeyman to investigate paranormal activity. I guess it’s sort of like that old Fred Savage movie Little Monsters, except they do Scooby-Doo stuff instead of just act silly. Boogeymen is based on a pitch from John Sullivan, and Howard Deutch will direct. Howard Deutch directed Pretty in Pink and several random sequels: The Odd Couple 2, Grumpier Old Men, and The Whole Ten Yards

**I’ve been arguing this for years, nice to see it getting some actual attention. It is possible you are made up of more than one genome, due to absorbing other genomes in the womb. It’s a type of chimerism that turns out to be a lot less rare than previously thought.

**From Pyongyang to Mars: Sci-fi, Genre, and Literary Value in North Korea

**Mel Gibson, Taylor Lautner and the 20-Year Effort to Make a ‘Stretch Armstrong’ Movie

**The Adventures of Pete and Pete is back (sort of) in podcast form!

**The MPAA, RIAA, and various ISPs have come up with their own “downloading is bad” school curriculum for California. A bit of advice: unless this crap is on the state exams, no teacher is going to bother. Though I wouldn’t put it past one of those “charter” schools after the MPAA gives them a sizable donation. Because they’re greedy cesspools.

**The awesome story of young Russian WWII heroine Zinaida Portnova

**Explore hundreds of old movie magazines for free thanks to Lantern/The Media History Digital Library! Say goodbye to your free time!

**After the Cinema of Disgust – A close reading of the renegade New Wave of Tamil Cinema

**Remember in The Wizard of Oz when Scarecrow had a gun?

**Air Bud is real!

**Jon Sorensen – Personal recollections and impressions of working on Alien

**The Great Lester proves even a dummy can go to jail!
The Great Lester

InGood, Movie Reviews

Let the Bullets Fly (Review)

December 21, 2012By

Let the Bullets Fly

aka 讓子彈飛 aka Rang zidan fei

2010
Written by Jiang Wen, Jue So-Chun, Shu Ping, Guo Jun-Li, and Wei Xiao
Directed by Jiang Wen
Let the Bullets Fly
An Eastern Western set during the 1920s warring states period of China, where greed, exploitation, and violence were all too common. But it is dark times as those where heroes emerge, heroes that don’t fit the spandex-wearing definition of the word, but heroes that are real people who come in to solve big problems. Let the Bullets Fly sets the hero loose, with his own set of morals and convictions, and he pushes back against those who would stand in the way of his freedom.
Let the Bullets Fly
Based on a book by Ma Shitu, Let the Bullets Fly features action, adventure, and revolutionary language. It is a minor power struggle against the backdrop of larger power struggles. We see how the struggles of life affect all levels, from important businessmen to government officials to the criminal underclass to the village peasants.
Let the Bullets Fly
After a train robbery, Pocky Zhang’s band of “noble” bandits con their way into an unsuspecting town posing as the new appointed governor. But the town is controlled by a ruthless businessman who is used to running things his way as the townspeople suffer. Zhang isn’t about to take crap from anyone, setting into motion a war between to different types of criminals with two radically different philosophies.
Let the Bullets Fly

“Pocky” Zhang Muzhi (Jiang Wen) – An outlaw gang leader with his own code of ethics. Pocky Zhang and his men rob only from the rich, and one such robbery sets in motion his impersonation of an appointed town governor. His gang consists of numbered members for easy signalling. Pocky’s image is of a pox-marked monster, but he’s really a handsome dude.
Boss Huang Silang (Chow Yun-Fat) – Arrogant Godfather of Goose Town who is too clever for his own good. Usually makes short work of the appointed governors, but Pocky Zhang proves to be unlike anyone he’s met before.
Governor Ma Bangde (Ge You) – The real appointed governor of Goose town, who bought the position using all the money he had. A sneaky fink who is out thought on both sides, his opponents more capable than his acts of deception.

Let the Bullets Fly