On Topic - How Much Slack...?

Question

...do you cut a film that's from a different culture?

Just watched The Host last night/early this morning - the Korean horror film people have been talking about, here and elsewhere. It's technically very well done - nicely shot, nice effects, overall a solid little film, but the script was very odd. The tone was all over the place, the characters were very broadly comic... At least, to my Western sensibilities. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy, from the beginning until well into the second act, but then again I'm not at all afamiliar with what's normal for Korean cinema. If I saw a Bollywood drama, cold, I'd be just as confused about why everyone was singing and dancing.
What brings this up for me is a conversation I was having, a while ago, about John Woo. Americans have had a lot of good to say about his Hong Kong films, but his American films haven't always fared as well. Are we just excusing his script issues because of his foreign- ness, and then holding him to a more Western standard when he makse a film with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage?

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven

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[nq:1]...do you cut a film that's from a different culture? Just watched The Host last night/early this morning - the ... when he makse a film with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage? Life Continues, Despite Evidence to the Contrary Steven[/nq]
Lots of times I'd rather watch them. One of the most amazingly powerful movies I saw about ten years ago was "A Taste of Cherry" from iran about a morose Muslim who talks to people about committing suicide.

The best, most astonishingly moving movie I've seen this year is Cyrus Nowasteh's "The Stoning of Soraya M." (set in Iran, made from the international best-seller book).
The best one-shot action scene I've ever seen isn't anything from Woo, it's this bit from Tony Jaa (Thai) -

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I remember covering this in Asian film class and stuff, but that was a decade ago. I think the difference is that Woo is dealing with a different studio system, and mafia gangs work differently here. Face/ Off seemed to have the most elements carry over, the turn of events and complicated characters, but maybe the star system means that the actors can't go into certain places of development, either because Clark Gable doesn't go down with the ship, or the turn is too jarring to our expectations.
John Woo in Hong Kong is really a genre onto itself. And I'm all for Jaa kup kuhn, krup. Ong-Bak put Thai action on the map.

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[nq:1]Just watched The Host last night/early this morning - the Korean horror film people have been talking about, here and elsewhere. Â It's technically very well done - nicely shot, nice effects, overall a solid little film, but the script was very odd. Â The tone was all over the place, the characters were very broadly comic... Â At least, to my Western sensibilities. Â I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy, from the beginning until well into the second act, but then again I'm not at all afamiliar with what's normal for Korean cinema.[/nq]
I saw it quite a while ago now, and kind of had the same reaction. Strangely enough I liked it, despite not really understanding it at all.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

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[nq:2]Just watched The Host last night/early this morning - the Korean horror film people have been talking about, here and elsewhere. It's technically very well done - nicely shot, nice effects, overall a solid little film, but the script was very odd. The tone was all over the place, the characters were very broadly comic... At least, to my Western sensibilities. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy, from the beginning until well into the second act, but then again I'm not at all afamiliar with what's normal for Korean cinema.[/nq]
[nq:1]I saw it quite a while ago now, and kind of had the same reaction. Strangely enough I liked it, despite not really understanding it at all.[/nq]
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If it had been the same film, pretty much shot-for-shot but made set in Philadelphia and starring English-speaking actors, would you still have liked it despite not understanding it? A lot of Roger Ebert's reviews of Spike Lee's films struck me as incredibly racist; he seemed to be willing to cut him a lot of slack while simultaneously claiming not to understand what it was he was saying, and I didn't really hear him doing the same with angry young white directors. A lot of people liked Woo when he was making movies about and for 'others,' but when he started making the same sorts of movies about and for 'us,' we seemed to suddenly hold him to a higher standard, or at least a different standard.

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]...do you cut a film that's from a different culture?[/nq]
None whatsoever.
Then again, I've been watching both Hollywood and HK movies all my life.
I've not watched a lot of Korean movies, but I "got" THE HOST. I didn't think the tone was all over the place. Actually, thinking back on some other Korean movies I've watched, perhaps that kind of deadpan black humor really is a Korean thing.
But if you're talking "tone all over the place", man, HK movies take the cake on that one. What starts out as a goofy, good-natured slapstick comedy will suddenly put its most likable character in a sickening torture scene. Sometimes I think the defining characteristic of HK film is that everything must be broad. If there's humor in the movie, it has to be knee-slappingly funny. If there's an action scene, you need the most spectacular stunts. If there's a dramatic scene, it's gotta wring buckets of tears from the audience. And if it's all in the same movie, so be it.
And sometimes, it works. Check out PEKING OPERA BLUES if you can find it.

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HOST was all over the place - and if you watch a Jackie Chan flick, they often have big drama and then pratfalls. I think it's cultural.
I'm a Woo fan - and love his HK movies and think his US movies are blah... and it's all about the script. The HK movies are about something - honor and self sacrifice and other themes. BULLET IN THE HEAD and A BETTER TOMORROW are two of my favs (because everyone else loves THE KILLER and HARD BOIILED... and I love them too) - in A BETTER TOMORROW a trio of friends on the wrong side of the law get double crossed and abushed. One goes to prison, one gets his leg blown off (Mr.

Fat) and one is the double crosser - and takes over the mob. Years later, these three are on a collision course, and the old friendship and pain of betrayal work themselves out in big dramatic scenes and, of course, slo mo gunfights. But the characters are the center of the story. In the USA I think Woo ends up being the band aid they throw at action flicks that don't work - the script doesn't work, so let's hire Mr. Woo to spice it up visually.And I think you can see some of the cultural differences in HOST, too - it's a monster movie about a family in crisis. When the girl is kidnapped by the monster, the family comes together and the drunk father steps up to save her. Father's estranged brother and sister show up to help, along with Gramps. But for a while they keep pointing fingers at each other. Then, after a few dramatic scenes (and some monster scenes, and some government conspiracy scenes) Gramps has that great speech that brings the family together - and then the monster attacks and they split up, and come together for the big monster killing end where everyone deals with their character arc thingie (sis with the bow and arrow, bro sheds his suit and becomes less of a ***, and dad just kicks some monster ***).

And look a the scenes where characters die - they are emotional. The dead people aren't just lunchmeat, like they might be in a US film.
You can't just plug in some director or star from some other country and end up with the same quality movie.
- Bill

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PS: There are a bunch of HK crime/action films, but we don't get many here. Another director who is really goof is Johhny To - his ELECTION movies are like THE GODFATHER - big sweeping gang films about familes and friends and businessmen who do one little favor for the mob and get pulled in so feep they can't get out. I also have THE MISSION on DVD which is about a group of mob bodyguards who are all pals... and only a couple of them survive. Every time I go to HK I pick up some DVDs and see a couple of movies.
- Bill

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PPS: And Ringo Lam - CITY ON FIRE and that gay gangster movie with Chow Yun Fat. He was signed to direct my MANHUNT script before the whole thing crashed and burned. Lam is another HK director who gets hired for his style in the USA, and made movies with soul in HK.

Speaking of Korea - one of my favorite film fest finds, the Korean movie DIE BAD is being remade with Marc Foster directing.

- Bill

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[nq:1]A BETTER TOMORROW a trio of friends on the wrong side of the law get double crossed and abushed.[/nq]
Are you sure that's A Better Tomorrow? I thought ABT was the brothers film good cop, bad cop. I remember less of Bullet in the Head because I didn't see it on a big screen. Hard Boiled was considered the John Woo calling card, more Hollywood than Hong Kong. I didn't feel the jolt I got from Woo's other Hong Kong films.

Nobody's mentioned Wong Kar Wai yet.

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[nq:1]HOST was all over the place - and if you watch a Jackie Chan flick, they often have big drama ... in A BETTER TOMORROW a trio of friends on the wrong side of the law get double crossed and abushed.[/nq]
One Woo movie I like a lot, though it's markedly less violent than most of his HK movies, is ONCE A THIEF.
One of my favourite cinema memories is seeing A BETTER TOMORROW II as part of a festival of "extreme cinema". These one-day events were an offshoot from something called The Jackie Chan Fan Club and they, pretty obviously, celebrated martial arts movies. At these screenings everyone was given a whistle and advised to stamp, cheer, clap and blow the whistles when it got exciting.
What I didn't realise when I went in, was that the last twenty minutes or so of A BETTER TOMORROW II is pretty much constant gunfire, explosions, bloodshed, and bodies flying left and right. And the cinema was packed with around 400 fans armed with whistles. I was deaf and dizzy for about half an hour afterwards. I'm not sure, but I think Chow Yun Fat might have been in attendance that day; he definitely showed up at one of these events.

It's a pity about Woo's Hollywood movies; HARD TARGET's just not very exciting; BROKEN ARROW is entertaining but pretty dumb. That said, I really like FACE/OFF a lot. But he did a few genuine duds: A Canadian TV movie called VIOLENT TRADITION (vaguely based on ONCE A THIEF) and a ridiculous thing called BLACKJACK, in which Dolph Lundgren is scared of milk.

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