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World of Wong Kar Wai (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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Format: Blu-ray March 23, 2021


Description

With his lush and sensual visuals, pitch-perfect soundtracks, and soulful romanticism, Wong Kar Wai has established himself as one of the defining auteurs of contemporary cinema. Joined by such key collaborators as cinematographer Christopher Doyle; editor and production and costume designer William Chang Suk Ping; and actors Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Wong (or WKW, as he is often known) has written and directed films that have enraptured audiences and critics worldwide and inspired countless other filmmakers with their poetic moods and music, narrative and stylistic daring, and potent themes of alienation and memory. Whether they’re tragically romantic, soaked in blood, or quirkily comedic, the seven films collected here are an invitation into the unique and wistful world of a deeply influential artist. Seven-Blu-ray Special Edition Collector’s Set Features • New 4K digital restorations of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046, approved by director Wong Kar Wai, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks • New 4K digital restorations of As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • New program in which Wong answers questions submitted, at the invitation of the director, by authors André Aciman and Jonathan Lethem; filmmakers Sofia Coppola, Rian Johnson, Lisa Joy, and Chloé Zhao; cinematographers Philippe Le Sourd and Bradford Young; and filmmakers and founders/creative directors of Rodarte Kate and Laura Mulleavy • Alternate version of Days of Being Wild featuring different edits of the film’s prologue and final scenes, on home video for the first time • Hua yang de nian hua, a 2000 short film by Wong • Extended version of The Hand, a 2004 short film by Wong, available in the U.S. for the first time • Interview and “cinema lesson” with Wong from the 2001 Cannes Film Festival • Three making-of documentaries, featuring interviews with Wong; actors Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Chang Chen, Faye Wong, and Ziyi Zhang; and others • Episode of the television series Moving Pictures from 1996 featuring Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle • Interviews from 2002 and 2005 with Doyle • Excerpts from a 1994 British Film Institute audio interview with Cheung on her work in Days of Being Wild • Program from 2012 on In the Mood for Love’s soundtrack • Press conference for In the Mood for Love from the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival • Deleted scenes, alternate endings, behind-the-scenes footage, a promo reel, music videos, and trailers • Plus: Deluxe packaging, including a perfect- bound, French-fold book featuring lavish photography, an essay by critic John Powers, a director’s note, and six collectible art prints as tears go by Wong Kar Wai’s scintillating debut feature is a kinetic, hypercool crime thriller graced with flashes of the impressionistic, daydream visual style for which he would become renowned. Set amid Hong Kong’s ruthless, neon-lit gangland underworld, this operatic saga of ambition, honor, and revenge stars Andy Lau Tak Wah as a small-time mob enforcer who finds himself torn between a burgeoning romance with his ailing cousin (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, in the first of her iconic collaborations with the director) and his loyalty to his loose- cannon partner in crime (Jacky Cheung Hok Yau), whose reckless attempts to make a name for himself unleash a spiral of violence. Marrying the pulp pleasures of the gritty Hong Kong action drama with hints of the head-rush romanticism Wong would push to intoxicating heights throughout the 1990s, As Tears Go By was a box-office smash that heralded the arrival of one of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying talents. Days of being wild the breakthrough sophomore feature by Wong Kar Wai represents the first full flowering of his swooning signature style. The initial entry in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes In the Mood for Love and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie is a dreamlike drift through the Hong Kong of the 1960s in which a band of wayward twenty somethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) hopelessly enamored with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau Tak Wah) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—pull together and push apart in a dance of frustrated desire. The director’s inaugural collaboration with both cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who lends the film its gorgeously gauzy, hallucinatory texture, and actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who appears briefly in a tantalizing teaser for a never-realized sequel, Days of Being Wild is an exhilarating first expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, longing, dislocation, and the restless search for human connection. Chungking Express the whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of 1990s cinema and the film that made Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu Wai), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take out food stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing. Fallen Angels Lost souls reach out for human connection amid a glimmering Hong Kong in Wong Kar Wai’s hallucinatory, neon-soaked nocturne. Originally conceived as a segment of Chungking Express only to spin off on its own woozy axis, Fallen Angels plays like the dark, moody flip side of its predecessor as it charts the subtly interlacing fates of a handful of urban loners, including a coolly detached hit man (Leon Lai Ming) looking to go straight; his business partner (Michelle Reis), who secretly yearns for him; and a mute delinquent (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who wreaks mischief by night. Swinging between hard-boiled noir and slapstick lunacy with giddy abandon, the film is both a dizzying, dazzling city symphony and a poignant meditation on love, loss, and longing in a metropolis that never sleeps. Happy together one of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that is by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes. In the mood for love Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career. 2046 Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to In the Mood for Love combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure and avant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his role as writer Chow Mo-Wan, whose numerous failed relationships with women who drift in and out of his life (and the one who goes in and out of room 2046, down the hall from his apartment) inspire the delirious futuristic love story he pens. 2046’s dazzling fantasy sequences give Wong and two of his key collaborators—cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/costume designer/production designer William Chang Suk Ping—license, to let their imaginations run wild, propelling the sumptuous visuals and operatic emotions skyward toward the sublime.

Genre: Drama


Format: Subtitled, Blu-ray


Contributor: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Wong Kar Wai, Faye Wong, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Andy Lau Tak Wah


Language: Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese


Studio: The Criterion Collection


Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No


MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)


Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 1.27 Pounds


Director ‏ : ‎ Wong Kar Wai


Media Format ‏ : ‎ Subtitled, Blu-ray


Release date ‏ : ‎ March 23, 2021


Actors ‏ : ‎ Andy Lau Tak Wah, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk


Subtitles: ‏ ‎ English


Studio ‏ : ‎ The Criterion Collection


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Top Amazon Reviews


  • All about the packaging
I won't go too much into the films. It's Wong Kar Wai. You're getting great value in this boxset. He's such a master of style and form. All these films are incredible (well, maybe not "As Tears Go By" but it's his first movie. He was still working out the kinks). This is pretty much the only way to get such films as "Chungking Express," "Fallen Angels," and "Happy Together," on Region A bluray at the moment. It's a good deal to get this director's entire oeuvre (minus "Ashes of Time" and "The Grandmaster"). But what I really want to go over is the packaging. It's such an aesthetic and I'm here for it! My first thought when opening it was, is this a bluray boxset or a Kpop album? Definitely looks more like the intricate packaging that the Korean boy and girl groups love to release their cds in than anything movie studios typically do with their special bluray editions. First off, there's no plastic. Nice, we love an eco-friendly packaging. What you get is an origami design where the book and disc holder is encased in an outer envelope shell. Same way a sticky rice cake would be wrapped in a banana leaf. Very minimalist and chic, if you vibe with that. It's sturdy cardboard with a nice matte texture. I don't think it will rip easily, but it definitely will be an undertaking to preserve this thing pristinely from dents and creases every time you handle it. Challenge accepted! So there's that. Secondly, the discs are each kept in its own individual pocket that you have to slide out of the folding cardboard case. The first time I took the discs out, I noticed a few of the discs had a tiny amount of sticky glue residue on the very edge of the disc from the cardboard panel of the case. It wasn't that hard to remove with some rubbing with a cloth. I also noticed one of my discs had some light scratches, however it didn't affect the playback any. Perhaps it would be wise if you bought an empty bluray case and just stored all the discs in that. Which brings me to my next point. This thing is bigger than a standard bluray, or even a dvd boxset. It's literally book size. It might be an issue looking out of place if kept with your other blurays, sticking out like a sore thumb. I haven't decided what to do yet about that. I might just keep the box itself with my other books on the shelf and transfer all the discs to an empty bluray case for ease of use and keep that along with the rest of my Blu-ray collection. Now, about the book. It's a French-fold book, which essentially looks like a long piece of paper folded outwardly widthwise and that uncut edge is just left like that. You think first looking at it that the printer forgot to slice the outer edge so the pages are all cut like a normal book. After all, the underside of the page isn't blank. There's an image you can see, kind of like a peek-a-boo surprise feature. However, it's supposed to be like that. It's aesthetic, it's fancy, it's unusual design, but just think about it. It is so Wong Kar Wai. I couldn't think of a more fitting detail for a film collection of his. So, highly recommend this just for the effort Criterion took to release packaging this unusual and stylish. A very fitting tribute to the aesthetic of a Wong Kar Wai film. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2024 by Noah D.

  • The films of Wong Kar Wai have depth and subtlety
If people watch the films of Wong Kar Wai casually, they might find some of his films chaotic and get frustrated. People might have the initial impression that the story is about several movie characters, each going in their separate directions without any central theme. When the viewers pause and think about how the different elements of the story connect with each other, the viewers can start to appreciate the films of Wong Kar Wai. Wong Kar Wai was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong as a child. He grew up in the central district of Kowloon, Hong Kong, not far from the Chungking Mansions which inspired the making of the movie Chungking Express. Director Wong often starts filming a movie without a completed script and finishes writing the script while filming the movie. He likes to write the script as he films the movie. In Days of Being Wild, Yuddy, played by Leslie Cheung, is a hooligan and a playboy who is able to gain the affection of two women, stadium box office agent Li-zhen, played by Maggie Cheung and cabaret dancer Mimi, played by Carina Lau. Li-zhen is elegant with relatively good manners while Mimi is bold and aggressive in her behaviors. A woman might think that Yuddy treats her specially well and treats other women in bad ways. In reality, he treats all women in the same way, and he is not in love with anyone. Yuddy has a tumultuous relationship with his adopted mother Rebecca, played by Rebecca Pan. Rebecca in the movie is a former top-notch courtesan who is wealthy enough to have her own servant and likes to spend her money on young men. Rebecca Pan like Wong Kar Wai came from Shanghai, and she speaks mostly Shanghainese and not Cantonese in the roles she plays in her movies. The story of the legless bird is repeated three times in Days of Being Wild, and the legless bird is the main character Yuddy whom his birth mother has abandoned. The legless bird sleeps in the wind when it gets tired, and Yuddy fails to find solace from his girlfriends. Yuddy goes to the Philippines to find his birth mother, but she refuses to see him. If the theme of this movie is about Yuddy’s life struggle in search of his birth mother, her refusal to see him is like the legless bird dying and falling to the ground from the sky. At the age of 46, Leslie Cheung who played Yuddy committed suicide by jumping off a hotel, leaving behind a suicide note that he was suffering from depression. His role in the movie foreshadows his own demise. The last scene of the movie with a gambler getting ready in a small room is a preview of the sequel which did not get finished. The director was filming scenes of both movies, but the initial reception of the first film, Days of Being Wild was poor, and the production team stopped the filming of the sequel. Both Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love deal with love and loneliness except that In the Mood for Love has a more compelling story. The cinematography and movie music of In the Mood for love have a dramatic impact on the audience. The director hopes that the audience can empathize with the pain and emotions of the main characters. Sometimes, a sad romance story can be more interesting than a happy one. If someone has time to watch only one movie from this collection, In the Mood for Love is the one to watch. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2023 by T. Ng

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