Dry Ice Factory

Film critic David Bordwell is releasing an updated version of his 2000 book about the Hong Kong film industry, Planet Hong Kong. I read the book not long after it came out, and I thought it was terrific. I still think it's one of the best film books I've ever read. (I think the blog he keeps with Kristin Thompson, Observations on film art, is terrific too. Amongst other things, he and Kristin write a lot about silent film. They just published a piece on The Ten Best Films of 1920.)

Now Bordwell is trying an interesting experiment. He's revised and updated the book, adding 30,000 words and 150 color stills, bringing his coverage up to 2010 with chapters on post-1998 work by Stephen Chow, Wong Kar Wai, and Johnnie To. The experimental part is that he is self-publishing the book as a PDF, which he will be charging money for. I haven't decided whether I'm going to cough up the money for the PDF. It will depend on how much he's asking and further thinking on my part about whether I'd be willing to read it onscreen or whether I'd want to print it out (and what printing it out would look like). Either way, it's an interesting endeavor that I thought was worth calling attention to.

Here's Bordwell on some of things he's doing in the book:

Readers not drawn to Hong Kong cinema might find my more general arguments of interest. For example, I suggest that Hong Kong shows us how important regional and diasporan networks are in creating and maintaining a film culture. To the claim that films reflect their societies, I reply that Hong Kong films suggest a different way to think about such a dynamic, using the model of cultural conversation. Readers interested in fandom should find something intriguing in the story of how cultists around the world helped establish Hong Kong film as a cool thing in the early 1990s. I also argue against the tendency in film studies to assume that when a film tradition doesn’t follow the rules of classical plot construction it must be based on something called “spectacle.” I suggest instead that we need to study principles of episodic plotting, which are probably quite common in popular art generally. In these and other areas, I wanted to use this cinema as a way into thinking about popular moviemaking as a whole.

I know I've been writing about almost nothing but movies lately, but that's the way it goes sometimes. On Sunday, holyoutlaw and I had a most excellent adventure going to see the Bollywood film Chandni Chowk to China (2009) at the Totem Lake Cinema in Kirkland. Previously we had thought it was only showing at Southcenter, but this week the Stranger listed Totem Lake as well, so we went for that, since it was three miles closer. It was still a 25 minute drive to the outer burbs, and when we got there, I thought we'd been misled. The marquee sign was blank and battered looking, and from a distance the building looked abandoned. As we got closer, however, we saw some movie posters and a few people hanging around. Sure enough, the theater was showing three Bollywood movies, and we were the only non-Indian people there. The concessions stand offered popcorn and some kind of Indian pastry thingy. I was very curious about who was running the theater and what the deal was, because there were probably only ten of us there for Chandni Chowk in China, and I didn't see many other people for the other movies. Maybe this is a non-profit community theater? That might explain why it wasn't listed in the Seattle Times.

Anyway, Chandni Chowk to China has gotten a bit wider publicity in the US than the usual Bollywood film, I think because it's a kung fu film that they probably figured might appeal to people like, well, me and holyoutlaw. It was a lot of fun. It's the story of a nebbishy vegetable chopper in Chandni Chowk -- a market neighborhood in Delhi -- who is mistaken by poor villagers from China as the reincarnation of their legendary hero. He misunderstands what they want from him when they take him back to China to battle the evil, exploitative super-villain, Hojo, who is played by the legendary star of many Shaw Bros. kung fu movies, Gordon Liu. Our hero, Sidhu, also gets confused by the twin daughters (played by the same actress) of an Indian mother and Chinese father, one of whom works for Hojo, and one of whom is looking for her lost father and sister. Much chaos, comedy, melodrama, tragedy, romance, music, dance, slapstick, and kung fu ensues, somewhat in the vein of Hong Kong superstar Stephen Chow's excellent Kung Fu Hustle (2004). It was a blast, and it was fun to see it with a six-year-old kid sitting behind us laughing at all the silly parts and getting in-jokes that we didn't get. Good family fun, eh?

I think that was the first Bollywood movie I've ever seen, and it lived up to everything I've heard about how every movie has a little bit of everything and every genre in it. I was inspired to dig out a DVD that's been sitting on my stack for five years of another Bollywood movie, Dil Se (1998). That one is much more serious, although it also blends together comedy, melodrama, tragedy, romance, music, and dance. No kung fu, but a fair few explosions. It's a story of love and terrorism, with a completely awesome -- and explosive -- ending. The music is great too, especially the first song, "Chaiyya Chaiyya" [YouTube clip], which I recognized from elsehwere, probably from Spike Lee's Inside Man, where it apparently runs over the credits. Crappy, nonanamorphic DVD, though. Oh well.

Update: Speaking of India-China crossovers, my sister who taught ESL in China the past couple of years is doing the same in India this year. And yesterday's Frank & Ernest comicstrip had a lovely spoonerism: "It doesn't get any better than this ... tai chi with chai tea!" (Although granted, "chai tea" is a bit redundant.)