Reply to Topic
"never wrestle with a pig, cause you both get muddy....and the pig loves it." george bernard shaw
Quote of the Day
"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
"'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul."
"Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart."
"Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart."
"'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul."
"Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart."
"Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart."
__________________
Best College Football Ending Ever!
Tennessee VS. Georgia 10~1~2016 (The Highlights!)
The Final 2 Minutes ~ A Game for the Ages
♥ I am madly in love with Jack Carlson! ♥
Tennessee VS. Georgia 10~1~2016 (The Highlights!)
The Final 2 Minutes ~ A Game for the Ages
♥ I am madly in love with Jack Carlson! ♥
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Weirdly fractured views on moving from Vietnam, to Hong Kong, to the U.S. in the 60s/70s, from two interviews with Tsui Hark:
On screen-writers and producing films in Hong Kong:
On some of his own films, in his early days as a "new wave" director:
I'm guessing the TIMEasia interview was translated from Cantonese, hence the lack of broken English.
Originally Posted by Tsui Hark, TIMEasia website
Hong Kong was a totally different world. It compared to nothing I'd seen in my life to that point. That's odd too, because when I went to Texas to study, everything was Saigon, Saigon, Saigon and Vietnam was the word on every American's lips. I felt instantly more at home there than I ever did in Hong Kong.
Originally Posted by Tsui Hark, Hong Kong Babylon by Frederic Dannen
QUESTION: What was your impression of Texas?
TSUI HARK: I was very confused and frustrated. I couldn't get used to that kind of place, where the houses are very scattered. It's quite different from Hong Kong. After three years, I feel like, it's boring here - better to go back home and start from zero. But I wanted to go around America first. So in 1974, I went to New York. And I got stuck there.
You found New York to be more like Hong Kong?
Just like Hong Kong. Very business, very crowded, very stink, and people very nervous.
Where did you stay?
I rent an apartment with a friend on Delancey Street [on the Lower East Side of Manhattan]. That was terrible. One day they broke through the wall and got our money - all twenty buck. There's a big hole in the wall, and we didn't know how to fix it.
In New York, you worked with Christine Choy, the documentary film-maker?
Yes. She had a grant to make a film called From Spikes to Spindles, a history of the Asian-American.
TSUI HARK: I was very confused and frustrated. I couldn't get used to that kind of place, where the houses are very scattered. It's quite different from Hong Kong. After three years, I feel like, it's boring here - better to go back home and start from zero. But I wanted to go around America first. So in 1974, I went to New York. And I got stuck there.
You found New York to be more like Hong Kong?
Just like Hong Kong. Very business, very crowded, very stink, and people very nervous.
Where did you stay?
I rent an apartment with a friend on Delancey Street [on the Lower East Side of Manhattan]. That was terrible. One day they broke through the wall and got our money - all twenty buck. There's a big hole in the wall, and we didn't know how to fix it.
In New York, you worked with Christine Choy, the documentary film-maker?
Yes. She had a grant to make a film called From Spikes to Spindles, a history of the Asian-American.
Originally Posted by Tsui Hark, TIMEasia website
TIME: How did Hong Kong manage to develop such a script-less industry?
Hark: There are a few reasons. One of the problems before was that if you gave a script to an actor, it would sometimes end up in somebody else's hands, and no director or producer wanted that to happen. Or you would have a script but couldn't get the actor you wanted for it. Hong Kong is such a fast place--if an actor/actress that you want to use for an idea you have is available, then the script can follow later.
TIME: You make some of the grandest, most complex films in Hong Kong. I imagine you'd have trouble with scriptwriters.
Hark: Yes. My common experience is to fight with them all the time. As a result some people think I'm very demanding.
TIME: Some directors call you dictatorial?
Hark: Yes that too. But the creative process needs that.
Hark: There are a few reasons. One of the problems before was that if you gave a script to an actor, it would sometimes end up in somebody else's hands, and no director or producer wanted that to happen. Or you would have a script but couldn't get the actor you wanted for it. Hong Kong is such a fast place--if an actor/actress that you want to use for an idea you have is available, then the script can follow later.
TIME: You make some of the grandest, most complex films in Hong Kong. I imagine you'd have trouble with scriptwriters.
Hark: Yes. My common experience is to fight with them all the time. As a result some people think I'm very demanding.
TIME: Some directors call you dictatorial?
Hark: Yes that too. But the creative process needs that.
Originally Posted by Tsui Hark, Hong Kong Babylon by Frederic Dannen
How was Butterfly Murders recieved?
It's really a flop. People get very disappointed in the film. And it was supposed to be low budget, but I think I get a big head, and I spent maybe 3 million Hong Kong dollars. I was quite scared that I ruin some people's life, that I use too much money.
Nevertheless, you turned around and made another movie, about cannibalism - We're Going to Eat You.
That's a film with a lot of Roger Corman elements. It didn't turn out to be good, either. This glorious title of new-wave director! (Laughs.) I became very disappointed in myself. I was thinking about not making film any more - do something else, teach in school or something.
Instead, you directed Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind - a nasty piece of work.
At that time I was quite angry, and I tried to do something anarchistic. When you don't care what you put on the screen, a heavy burden is lifted from your shoulder, and you start to make film like a student. And that becomes effective in some way. That film did not do good business, because too violent, and it doesn't have a star. But I enjoyed the process of it.
[...]
You've been called the Stephen Spielberg of Hong Kong.
I've heard that. But I don't know - it's unfair to him, I think (laughs). It's unfair to me too: he's so rich.
It's really a flop. People get very disappointed in the film. And it was supposed to be low budget, but I think I get a big head, and I spent maybe 3 million Hong Kong dollars. I was quite scared that I ruin some people's life, that I use too much money.
Nevertheless, you turned around and made another movie, about cannibalism - We're Going to Eat You.
That's a film with a lot of Roger Corman elements. It didn't turn out to be good, either. This glorious title of new-wave director! (Laughs.) I became very disappointed in myself. I was thinking about not making film any more - do something else, teach in school or something.
Instead, you directed Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind - a nasty piece of work.
At that time I was quite angry, and I tried to do something anarchistic. When you don't care what you put on the screen, a heavy burden is lifted from your shoulder, and you start to make film like a student. And that becomes effective in some way. That film did not do good business, because too violent, and it doesn't have a star. But I enjoyed the process of it.
[...]
You've been called the Stephen Spielberg of Hong Kong.
I've heard that. But I don't know - it's unfair to him, I think (laughs). It's unfair to me too: he's so rich.
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me, I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about Jaws is the fact that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again."
"People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong."
"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages."
"I have a philosophy about the two extremes of filmmaking. The first is the "Kubrick way", where you're at the end of an alley in which four guys are kicking the ***** out of a wino. Hopefully, the audience members will know that such a scenario is morally wrong, even though it's not presented as if the viewer is the one being beaten up; it's more as if you're witnessing an event. Inversely, there's the "Spielberg way", where you're dropped into the middle of the action and you're going to live the experience vicariously - not only through what's happening, but through the emotional flow of what people are saying. It's a much more involved style. I find myself attracted to both styles at different times, but mostly I'm interested in just presenting something and letting people decide for themselves what they want to look at."
- David Fincher
"People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong."
"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages."
"I have a philosophy about the two extremes of filmmaking. The first is the "Kubrick way", where you're at the end of an alley in which four guys are kicking the ***** out of a wino. Hopefully, the audience members will know that such a scenario is morally wrong, even though it's not presented as if the viewer is the one being beaten up; it's more as if you're witnessing an event. Inversely, there's the "Spielberg way", where you're dropped into the middle of the action and you're going to live the experience vicariously - not only through what's happening, but through the emotional flow of what people are saying. It's a much more involved style. I find myself attracted to both styles at different times, but mostly I'm interested in just presenting something and letting people decide for themselves what they want to look at."
- David Fincher
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
Two quotes tangentially related to power and Japanese women.
No matter how [Yukio] Mishima tried to conquer his lack of political sense, there was no way he could succeed insofar as politics involves influencing others. Mishima knew nothing concrete about the type of people to whom he should assert his beliefs. Consequently, the groupe that ultimately formed, called the Shield Society, consisted only of pure, innocent youths. Their very purity and innocence, however, wouldn't influence others. Mishima influenced only himself. And because Mishima was paying for the Shield Society with his own money, this was not politics. Politics is something done with other people's money. People become political by spending money, and the basis of political action is getting other peopel to spend money. Spending your own money to get some youths together is not politics at all. For the most part, politics is asserting yourself to old women. Whenever the reform movement loses in a local election, my old mother, for example, says "Darn! Those incomprehensible old women voted for the Liberal Democratic Party," sighing and disregarding the fact that she herself is an old woman... Thus, Mishima's urging the members of the Self-Defense Forces to rally was a heart-breaking act. Politics is influencing old women and setting them in motion. If you can't set old women in motion, how are you going to be able to move the members of the Self-Defense Forces?
... Someone of Mishima's intelligence must have known this, even if unconsciously. However, Mishima's only possible political act was his appeal to the members of the Self-Defense Forces. To put it another way, Mishima may have selected the peole to whom it was most difficult to appeal. Even if someone had cautioned Mishima to appeal to the nearest old woman, he probably would have refused. That was Mishima's political aesthetic sense. Terribly self-indulgent, terribly conventuional. lll However, Mishima must have foreseen that the members fo the Self Defense Forces wouldn't heed his appeal. We shouldn't ask now whether he thought they would listen to his speech more kindly and whether at the last instant he thought he had been betrayed in that respect.
Nagisa Oshima, Mishima Yukio: The Road to Defeat of One Lacking in Political Sense (1970); collected in Cinema, Sensorship, and the State.
---------------------------------------
Japanese girls, for some reason, are among [Jackie Chan's] most obsessively loyal fans, and, largely for fear of upsetting them, he keeps quiet about his many romantic involvements, and about the existence of his teenage son, Jackson, the product of a long-dissolved marriage to the Taiwanese movie actress Lum Fang-gew. When, a few years ago, it was falsely reported that Chan planned to remarry, one Japanese girl swallowed poison in front of his office building, and was narrowly rescued; another jumped in front of a train, and was killed. "This makes me a lot of trouble," Chan said, adding that other female fanse have stalked him. "Some of these girl, they scare the ***** out of you."
Frederic Dannen, Hong Kong Babylon (1997)
No matter how [Yukio] Mishima tried to conquer his lack of political sense, there was no way he could succeed insofar as politics involves influencing others. Mishima knew nothing concrete about the type of people to whom he should assert his beliefs. Consequently, the groupe that ultimately formed, called the Shield Society, consisted only of pure, innocent youths. Their very purity and innocence, however, wouldn't influence others. Mishima influenced only himself. And because Mishima was paying for the Shield Society with his own money, this was not politics. Politics is something done with other people's money. People become political by spending money, and the basis of political action is getting other peopel to spend money. Spending your own money to get some youths together is not politics at all. For the most part, politics is asserting yourself to old women. Whenever the reform movement loses in a local election, my old mother, for example, says "Darn! Those incomprehensible old women voted for the Liberal Democratic Party," sighing and disregarding the fact that she herself is an old woman... Thus, Mishima's urging the members of the Self-Defense Forces to rally was a heart-breaking act. Politics is influencing old women and setting them in motion. If you can't set old women in motion, how are you going to be able to move the members of the Self-Defense Forces?
... Someone of Mishima's intelligence must have known this, even if unconsciously. However, Mishima's only possible political act was his appeal to the members of the Self-Defense Forces. To put it another way, Mishima may have selected the peole to whom it was most difficult to appeal. Even if someone had cautioned Mishima to appeal to the nearest old woman, he probably would have refused. That was Mishima's political aesthetic sense. Terribly self-indulgent, terribly conventuional. lll However, Mishima must have foreseen that the members fo the Self Defense Forces wouldn't heed his appeal. We shouldn't ask now whether he thought they would listen to his speech more kindly and whether at the last instant he thought he had been betrayed in that respect.
Nagisa Oshima, Mishima Yukio: The Road to Defeat of One Lacking in Political Sense (1970); collected in Cinema, Sensorship, and the State.
---------------------------------------
Japanese girls, for some reason, are among [Jackie Chan's] most obsessively loyal fans, and, largely for fear of upsetting them, he keeps quiet about his many romantic involvements, and about the existence of his teenage son, Jackson, the product of a long-dissolved marriage to the Taiwanese movie actress Lum Fang-gew. When, a few years ago, it was falsely reported that Chan planned to remarry, one Japanese girl swallowed poison in front of his office building, and was narrowly rescued; another jumped in front of a train, and was killed. "This makes me a lot of trouble," Chan said, adding that other female fanse have stalked him. "Some of these girl, they scare the ***** out of you."
Frederic Dannen, Hong Kong Babylon (1997)
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"We have forsaken the magic of the cinema. We have gotten too far away from the cinematic effects achievable by camera angles and creative editing."
"The most important critic is time."
"You can have all the philosophy you like; if a film doesn't come across in graphic terms, it falls short."
"Realism and naturalism are not for me. I think it's too feeble an instrument."
- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].
"The most important critic is time."
"You can have all the philosophy you like; if a film doesn't come across in graphic terms, it falls short."
"Realism and naturalism are not for me. I think it's too feeble an instrument."
- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"We have forsaken the magic of the cinema. We have gotten too far away from the cinematic effects achievable by camera angles and creative editing."
- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].
- Rouben Mamoulain, one of talking pictures' early giants [City Streets, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro (1940)].
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"It is a pity when one, either through force of circumstance or because one is afraid of being ridiculed by others, won't produce and expose to everyone that little spark of something special which is unique to him alone."
"A critic's typical praise is 'Beautifully understated'. That means beautifully false ... I'd rather go the other way - to gamble rather than play it safe. If I err it's by overstating, but I try to get it right."
"Life is too short to make destructive films about people one doesn't like. My films are meant to be constructive and illuminating."
"I know my films upset people. I want to upset people."
- Ken Russell
"A critic's typical praise is 'Beautifully understated'. That means beautifully false ... I'd rather go the other way - to gamble rather than play it safe. If I err it's by overstating, but I try to get it right."
"Life is too short to make destructive films about people one doesn't like. My films are meant to be constructive and illuminating."
"I know my films upset people. I want to upset people."
- Ken Russell
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it."
"We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale."
"Films are subjective - what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity, and when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies."
- Christopher Nolan
"We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale."
"Films are subjective - what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity, and when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies."
- Christopher Nolan
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch."
"I've always felt like I work in a small little area that doesn't represent anything like the rest of society."
"We export films that are full of sleazy [penis] jokes and toilet humor - that's why we've earned the affectionate nickname of the Great Satan. What's seemingly benign, by our standards, is doing more damage to us around the world than anything I could ever do."
"When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up."
- Albert Brooks
"I've always felt like I work in a small little area that doesn't represent anything like the rest of society."
"We export films that are full of sleazy [penis] jokes and toilet humor - that's why we've earned the affectionate nickname of the Great Satan. What's seemingly benign, by our standards, is doing more damage to us around the world than anything I could ever do."
"When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up."
- Albert Brooks
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"There is no one who would have me... I can't cook."
"I never said 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be left alone.' There is a whole world of difference."
"Your joys and sorrows... you can never tell them. You cheapen the inside of yourself if you do. There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead." (She did leave John Gilbert waiting at the altar in 1927 though.)
"Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it."
- Greta Garbo
"I never said 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be left alone.' There is a whole world of difference."
"Your joys and sorrows... you can never tell them. You cheapen the inside of yourself if you do. There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead." (She did leave John Gilbert waiting at the altar in 1927 though.)
"Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it."
- Greta Garbo
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"Life without art is stupid"
I have no idea who said this but I love it
I have no idea who said this but I love it
__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."
"You meet these people who are confident all the time. They annoy me, and I wonder if it's because I'm envious or if it's because they're shallow."
"I always look at films as real stories with real people in real situations. That's why I struggle with the whole notion of calling someone the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy' because I think we all have potential to do good things and all have the potential to do bad things."
"I'm a cat person actually, and my dogs are a lot like cats because they don't bark, they hate water and they climb trees. They are aloof and very feline. I see myself as a cat. I grew up with such an affinity to cats. I adore the way that they think and operate."
- Guy Pearce
"I always look at films as real stories with real people in real situations. That's why I struggle with the whole notion of calling someone the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy' because I think we all have potential to do good things and all have the potential to do bad things."
"I'm a cat person actually, and my dogs are a lot like cats because they don't bark, they hate water and they climb trees. They are aloof and very feline. I see myself as a cat. I grew up with such an affinity to cats. I adore the way that they think and operate."
- Guy Pearce
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last chapter missing."
"Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist, but then what isn't?"
"Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."
- Quentin Crisp
"Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist, but then what isn't?"
"Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."
- Quentin Crisp
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
Franklin D Roosevelt
The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
Franklin D Roosevelt
__________________
Comment is free but facts are sacred
Comment is free but facts are sacred
X
Favorite Movies
X
User Lists
"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body" - Charlie Sheen
Good lad, Charles. Maybe you should get yourself off to bed with a nice cup of hot chocolate?
Good lad, Charles. Maybe you should get yourself off to bed with a nice cup of hot chocolate?
__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan
X
Favorite Movies
X
