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In the midst of shooting his expensive, trouble-plagued 1994 wu xia epic Ashes of Time--which opens in a new recut version this week at Green Hills--Wong Kar-wai took some of the stars and made this effervescent pop wonder to clear his head. The first half concerns a lovesick cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and his fleeting involvement with a mysterious bewigged blonde (HK action heroine Brigitte Lin). Midway through, the focus abruptly switches to another jilted cop (Tony Leung, from Wong's In the Mood for Love) and a mischievous noodle-stand counter girl (Faye Wang). When this was released here briefly in 1995, the movie's peculiar fascination with dates and deadlines--including a memorable subplot involving the shelf life of canned pineapple--was taken for anxiety over Hong Kong's then-imminent handover to the Chinese. But those concerns didn't subside in Wong's post-1997 films. With cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/production designer William Chang, Wong creates a slurred-neon wonderland that's like walking through the innards of a jukebox. And his use of pop music is unerring: You'll never hear "California Dreaming" again without a wistful pang. Criterion's new DVD includes audio commentary by Tony Rayns and an episode of the BBC's Moving Pictures show with Wong and Doyle. Also new in stores on DVD: Criterion's two-disc edition of Wes Anderson's delightful debut feature Bottle Rocket; the David Frost-Richard Nixon Original Watergate Interviews; this summer's hits Step Brothers (with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly) and Wanted (with Angelina Jolie); and the incendiary doc The Rape of Europa, which tracks the masterpieces looted by the Nazis during World War II.
Mondays-Sundays. Starts: Dec. 2. Continues through Dec. 8, 2008
Mondays-Sundays. Starts: Dec. 2. Continues through Dec. 8, 2008
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