any good hk films?

[TSkillet]

Movies from Mainland which have won international acclaim(not by zhang yimou or chen kaige): Beijing Bicycle, Not One Less, Shower - there's a few more which I'm not thinking about because it's the end of a long day of work

Recent Movies from Hong Kong which are a step above Stephen Chow's (highly entertaining but ultimately dumb movies) - the Infernal Affairs series, In the Mood for Love, the Fruit Chan Trilogy, Where a Good Man Goes, etc .etc.

So I htink it's difficult to denigrate either place's movie industry.

[Ian_Lee]

I don't want this topic to evolve further into personal argument. So this will be my last post.

Sunyata:

If you say awards from Cannes, Berlin and Taipei Film Festivals all don't count, then whose opinion counts? Who can be ascertaining which movie is "high" or "low" culture? You? Me?

Quest:

Regarding low or high budget production, so far I still haven't seen any Mainland studios capable of producing those megabudget Jackie Chan made-in-HK movies.

Tskillet:

I am in no mood to denigrate any movies made in Mainland. But it was Beijingslicker who first started denigrating HK as a "cultural desert".

Well, if HK is a cultural desert, the guys north of the border shouldn't be addicted to Jin Yong or Andy Lau.

[amperel]

I am not trying to be rude, but Hongkong and singapore are usually referred as "Culture Desert" in Mainland and Taiwan, despite the fact that the average Hongkong people and Singaporeans are financially better off and receive better education.

talk about superiority complex. have you ever been to hk or singapore? do you have enough authority in the cultures of either places to warrant such statement? or just hearsay? trying to place everything else with relation to you and you only - now that is indeed very rude. and crude. guess people living in "middle kingdom" still think everything revolves around them? come on! it's the 21st. century, we need more perspectives!

It seems to me that the only criteria HK people use are fame and fortune. So its definitely more appealing to them to make commercial music and movies, like 谢庭风 or 周星驰, rather than high culture stuff which tend to put many people to sleep.

o i'm sorry - is there no pop stars and pop movies in china? you mean china is not opening its door to commercialize its marketplace, and chinese are not money-grabbing and fame-hungry people after all? and, "high culture" according to whom? you? or the propagandist government? or the people who spit on the streets?

I am not against entertaining stuff at all, but I just think its pathetic if thats all you have. 成龙 movies are good stuff and very entertaining, but I dont want westerners to think thats all we have.

no you are not. you just want something that is "high culture" AND still entertaining. how hard is that? and why do you care so much how westerners view us? do you see yourself only in other people's eyes? you know what's pathetic? the pathetic thing is the need of denigration for self-importance. and have you not heard of pop art? andy warhol ring a bell? if a toilet seat can be an object of art for marcel duchamp, nothing is "low culture" enough to not to be put on screen.

[Quest]

Quest:

Regarding low or high budget production, so far I still haven't seen any Mainland studios capable of producing those megabudget Jackie Chan made-in-HK movies.

Ian, haha why bring up the mainland again. I've already commented on that. To be fair, there are many good HK films out there, but the number of 得啖笑 ones overshadows the good ones.

Let's not get too carried away. I suggest 麦兜菠萝油王子

[Ian_Lee]

One last word.

Since you guys north of the border show so much disdain towards Stephen Chow's movies, then why have you been keeping watching the pirated VCDs & DVDs of his movie?

How many copies of pirated DVDs & VCDs of "Shaolin Soccer" were sold in Mainland China?

78 million copies

Read:

http://www.pwcglobal.com/Extweb/industry.nsf/docid/9C8D438A16B39E9385256C91005D43A2

Despite the fact that the quixotic Culture Ministry banned the wide release of the film, the people in Mainland still watched the film as usual -- without paying a penny of patent fee to their "compatriots" in Hong Kong.

You guys love to watch it free (most likely without guilt feeling) and still simultaneously badmouth it as nonsense. Real Ah Q

[sunyata]

There was only one person (BeijingSlacker) who had something against Stephen Chow movies...even that is not certain, because he just used him as an example.

Why generalize from 1 person to the whole of Mainland China? Surely, BeijingSlacker's views are not representative of the whole 1.2 billion population...

As for pirated movies, that's a whole another topic...let's not get into that here. It has nothing to do with being from the Mainland - movie and software piracy is a big "problem" in most developing countries...the poor HK film directors must be starving

[Ian_Lee]

Sunyata:

Be frank. If piracy had not been that rampant in Mainland, HK's movie industry would never have been in limbo.

With pirated VCDs on sale at RMB8 in Shenzhen on the same day the new movie debuts in HK, who would pay 6 or 7 times more to watch it in the theater?

That is why HK movie tends toward low-budget. If you were the boss, would you risk committing so much money on a product that would be so easily stolen?

[geraldc]

IMHO HK tends to produce better comedies and thrillers. Mainland movies tend to be more depressing, i.e. they're good films but you never come out of them smiling.

[Ian_Lee]

I tend to agree. Even comedies made in Mainland always leave you somewhat uneasy at the end of the movie.

It seems their Directors have to whine about a lot of mishaps.