When I first saw this movie a while ago, I wasn't too thrilled or impressed but this time around I thought it was hilarious. I definitely enjoyed the east meets west feel to it and the sort of cartoonish feel. It really reminded me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets the Roadrunner cartoons I used to watch as a kid and it was enjoyable for nostalgic reasons as well. I was never into kung fu movies but martial arts interested me (I took tae kwon do for a week in middle school). I definitely saw the correlation between this movie and Bruce Lee movies and also the different fighting "styles", whether they are ancient or modern, some where referred to in this film.
I really saw endless references in this film, like many different movies such as The Shining, The Blues Brothers, and Gangs of New York. I saw a movie a while ago, The House of 72 Tennants, and the Pig Sty alley reminded me of that movie too. When Donut dies, he says "in great power lies great responsibility" and all I could think of was Spiderman. This is post modernism that I saw in this film. So many references to other films just for the sake of references. This really makes the film enjoyable (assuming you understand the references) and really does make it very accessible to a wider audience.
I kind of wish I had a reading here because I ran out of things to talk about but I guess this is it!
I like that you pointed out the spiderman reference. But the one that was bothering me is the one where the landlord masters say "we swore that we would never fight again." I could swear that was from something but i have no idea. The discussion in class was interesting about whether people 100 years from now would find this as entertaining as we do now.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you talked about the references in this film, but what i liked the most is that you mentioned the cartoonish feel that was also put in. The whole who framed roger rabbit thing really didn't hit me when i first saw the film, but as i watched it for class i really noticed it in the sounds more than anything, like the pinball machine sounds when he was kicking people at the end of the film, that was really funny. the other part of that i noticed would have to be the big lips he had at one point. haha it was interesting to say the least
ReplyDeleteI could be way off with this assumption but I really liked how relaxed and playful Stephen Chow was with his film. He didn’t take it too seriously which is something that I think is an interesting aspect that, while it can be a part of any film, is found quite a bit in post modernist works.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the conversation we had about where this is all going in 100 years as well. Someone mentioned in class that they feel like films that have post-modern elements can almost fool us into thinking that something is good, or pass off a poor film for something that is worthwhile. I don’t necessarily agree with this and I think that we’re kind of throwing around the term. I think there’s a difference between referencing other people’s material because you are embracing the history of the medium and various milestones versus using past material because you are not able to express your own unique perspective or thoughts.
Talking a bit more about postmodernism, or the unusual move of combining Eastern and Western traditions of filmmaking might be a place to start. Even if you're not familiar with kung fu movies, there are some definite thematic and aesthetic differences between Hong Kong and Hollywood movies. Still, this is just fine.
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