Edward Yang

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yoloswegmaster
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:57 pm

Re: Edward Yang

#151 Post by yoloswegmaster » Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:49 am

Taipei Story*

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Edward Yang

#152 Post by Calvin » Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:52 am

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:49 am
Taipei Story*
Sorry, brain fart.

Their previous Yang releases are somewhat redundant due to the Criterions, unless you want Taipei Story separate from the WCP box set, but they are lovely to look at:
SpoilerShow
ImageImageImage

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yoloswegmaster
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Re: Edward Yang

#153 Post by yoloswegmaster » Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:10 am

The packaging does look nice but I've heard that the Nova Media releases are typically barebones when it comes to extras. Is that true?

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Edward Yang

#154 Post by Calvin » Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:37 am

Looking at their catalog, there's occasionally an interview or an audio commentary but the majority are nearly barebones. Taipei Story includes a commentary by critic Jeong Sung-il that, unsurprisingly, isn't subtitled. Similar to the Korean Film Archive releases, there's a bilingual booklet that doesn't seem to have been proofread by a native English speaker. It's perfectly readable, just a bit clunky.

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Adam X
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Re: Edward Yang

#155 Post by Adam X » Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:00 am

I’ve been hoping someone’d release Taipei Story separately. Guess this might have to do! Though I really do wish I could buy a Taiwanese film from an east asian label for once, that doesn’t come in such excessive packaging.

EDIT: can you tell me where I could buy it from, Calvin? I just checked YesAsia & JSDVD Mall and neither have it listed. Cheers.

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barbarella satyricon
Joined: Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:45 am

Re: Edward Yang

#156 Post by barbarella satyricon » Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:20 am

I have the Nova Media blu rays of the three Yang titles mentioned, and they are fairly barebones, as Calvin outlines above. Both Yi Yi and Taipei Story have commentaries by the film critic Calvin mentions, but, again, these are not subtitled.

On the upside, the English subs for the main features seemed thoroughly accurate when I viewed the discs. As mentioned above, it might be a handy way of getting Taipei Story outside of the WCF box.

Downside? Low-light scenes in all three films looked pretty noisy, as far as my untrained eye could tell. On the title screen for Yi Yi, there also seemed to be some stability issues. Don’t know if these issues are also present on the Criterion transfers.

A Brighter Summer Day comes in a steelbook with outer box, and the other two in standard cases with boxes. For my tastes, viewed in-hand, they’re just ho-hum, and the printed material inside is nothing special, but I do like the “Fullslip A” artwork for A Brighter Summer Day.

I picked these up as they were being released, as they were convenient options for for me to view the films, but for the English-speaking (English subtitle-reading) viewer/collector, I’d say, without looking up the respective specs or having viewed the transfers, that the Criterions are the obvious better bet.

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Clarence
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Re: Edward Yang

#157 Post by Clarence » Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:59 am

barbarella satyricon wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:20 am
Downside? Low-light scenes in all three films looked pretty noisy, as far as my untrained eye could tell. On the title screen for Yi Yi, there also seemed to be some stability issues. Don’t know if these issues are also present on the Criterion transfers.
I had a similar issue with my Taiwanese blu of The Terrorizers. There was one dimly lit scene with such severe macroblocking I thought I was watching a stream for a second!

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Edward Yang

#158 Post by Calvin » Mon Jun 22, 2020 10:19 am

Adam Grikepelis wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:00 am
I’ve been hoping someone’d release Taipei Story separately. Guess this might have to do! Though I really do wish I could buy a Taiwanese film from an east asian label for once, that doesn’t come in such excessive packaging.

EDIT: can you tell me where I could buy it from, Calvin? I just checked YesAsia & JSDVD Mall and neither have it listed. Cheers.
I ordered direct from Nova. It took a month to arrive in the UK, but arrived in perfect condition.
barbarella satyricon wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 9:20 am
I picked these up as they were being released, as they were convenient options for for me to view the films, but for the English-speaking (English subtitle-reading) viewer/collector, I’d say, without looking up the respective specs or having viewed the transfers, that the Criterions are the obvious better bet.
I agree, there's no reason not to get the Criterion releases of Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day over these but it's great news that they're going to release some Yang that doesn't have a Criterion equivalent.

I don't have the equipment to take any screencaptures of the Taipei Story release, but to my untrained eye it looks pretty consistent with this site's review of the Criterion: "The film is grainy and grain can get heavier in the darker scenes"

They've also announced Eat Drink Man Woman, another CMPC title, so with any luck they'll also give us better-value in-print alternatives for the Hou and Tsai restorations that were released in Taiwan years ago.

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zedz
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Re: Edward Yang

#159 Post by zedz » Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:05 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:10 am
The packaging does look nice but I've heard that the Nova Media releases are typically barebones when it comes to extras. Is that true?
Looks like A Brighter Summer Day comes with a soundtrack album.

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barbarella satyricon
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Re: Edward Yang

#160 Post by barbarella satyricon » Mon Jun 22, 2020 7:12 pm

zedz wrote:
Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:05 pm
Looks like A Brighter Summer Day comes with a soundtrack album.
Yes, about that soundtrack: I knew there was a reason I never played that CD more than once, but I didn’t have a chance to confirm that reason before posting yesterday.

Listening to (and skipping through) it now, and confirming that all the tracks are cover versions, not recordings by the artists most popularly associated with the songs (Elvis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, etc).

If I’m not mistaken, the recordings are the ones that the kids in the band “perform” in the movie - i.e. the songs that the actors lip sync and pantomime to. The instrumentals and backing tracks (and if I’m going to uncharitable, the vocals too) all sound like karaoke.

Interesting extra, but not my idea of dinner music.

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Adam X
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Re: Edward Yang

#161 Post by Adam X » Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:13 pm

Thanks Calvin. Of course, now with the Barnes & Noble sale coming soon, I'm still torn between which edition to buy. Guess I'll see on the day. I suppose one other consideration other thatn the AV, is how the subtitles compare between the two.

Calvin
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Re: Edward Yang

#162 Post by Calvin » Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:08 am

No date yet (as far as I can see), but Nova Media have confirmed that their next two Edward Yang releases will be In Our Time and The Terrorizers. I remember reading that the encode on the Taiwanese In Our Time release was a bit dodgy so hopefully they can improve on that.

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knives
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Re: Edward Yang

#163 Post by knives » Fri Sep 04, 2020 6:12 am

It’s been streaming in a fairly good quality.

Calvin
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Re: Edward Yang

#164 Post by Calvin » Tue Nov 10, 2020 4:40 am

Image
1) Pre-order date/time: 20th Nov, 2020. 2 PM (Korea Time, UTC+9)
2) Release date/time: 4th Dec, 2020
3) Price & Print run
- FULL SLIP : 700 copies, numbered : $ 28.99
* 31p Photo Book
* 6x post card
* 4x character card
4)Technical Information
- Aspect Ratio & Format : 1.94:1 / 1080P FullHD
- Audio : Chinese LPCM 2.0, Commentary by Korean Critics Jung Sung Il
- Subtitles : Korean, Traditional Chinese, English
6) Special Feature
-Trailer (1' 52")

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whaleallright
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Re: Edward Yang

#165 Post by whaleallright » Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:00 am

I finally got around to watching Mahjong, since I managed to get a custom-subbed version of the Japanese DVD and no longer had to put up with the idea of watching a horrendous-looking VCD with mediocre subtitles. (I'll give Confucian Confusion a shot next.)

This is really a response to zedz's typically astute comments on the film from... 12 years ago (yikes). I have to admit that although I enjoyed and admired the film, the problems with it, minor and not so minor, stood out for me on first viewing. That's doubtless in part because the other Yang films I've seen (Taipei Story, Terrorizers, Brighter Summer Day, and Yi Yi) are so heroically achieved that my expectations were extremely high.

The most obvious problem is the one zedz singles out: Nick Erickson's performance as Markus. It's very bad--he yells the entire time, even when it's not called for--but I'm not sure I blame the actor entirely, since most of the English-language performances in the film seem off to differing degrees. I suspect Yang just wasn't sufficiently comfortable directing in his second (or third?) language. (That said, there isn't any of the similar awkwardness to the English-language scenes in Yi Yi.) Ledoyen is, at best, OK--she's a fine actress who often seems uncertain in this film.

But her role points to another problem, I felt, which is the depicition of women. Granted, this is a pervasively cynical film, in which nearly all human behavior is reduced to exploitation (sexual and financial, which are necessarily entangled). The men hardly come off well. But the women, with the exception of Ledoyen's Marthe and the (very minor character of the) schoolteacher with whom Red Fish's father is having an affair, are entirely bubble-brained and sex-obsessed, defined in large part by the tight-fitting minidresses they wear. They were caricatures through and through, while even the more ridiculous Chinese men (like Toothpaste/"Little Buddha") are at least allowed a bit of cleverness, guile, and/or idiosyncrasy that's redeeming, in an entertainment if not a moral sense. This seemed an exaggerated instance of something I've noticed (but which was not as distracting) in other of Yang's films. This isn't simply me crying "sexism" about the movie to score points-- it's something that actively hindered my emotional connection to the film.

I grant that Mahjong seeks to carefully balance the portrayals by rhyming the male and female characters and the situations they find themselves in. The most obvious example is when the character of Hong Kong is set upon--and, ironically, emasculated--by the three harpies led by Angela (who is actually from Hong Kong!), which effectively turns the tables on his and his flatmates' treatment of Alison (even the names echo each other). I had a different impression of these scenes as zedz, I think. Yes, the scene with Angela feels much more genuinely discomfiting--less slapstick--than the orgy scene in the "fuckpad." But this felt to me symptomatic of Yang's inability or unwillingness to register the harpies as anything but cartoons.

Marthe seems the reverse side of the coin. She's not literally virginal (we see her after making love to Markus) but she's portrayed as almost abstractly innocent and trusting. At times Yang puts ridiculous dialogue in her mouth ("Oh, OK, sure!" "Everybody is so nice!"). When her character is supposed to take a more bitter turn toward the end (only to reverse that to give the film a partly happy ending) it doesn't really register as much but the plot gears churning-- once again at the expense of anything resembling a real character. I suspect language difficulties probably impeded a chance that Ledoyen's performance could give this thinly-conceived character more shading.

This also recalls another of the film's (seeming?) flaws, which was a certain strenuousness in its construction and themes. Now, all of Yang's films (of the ones I've seen) have a strongly "conceptual" dimension in two senses. They feature elaborate rhymes and echoes that make the viewer aware of them as, essentially, pieces of narrative architecture. (Often these feel, if not excessive, then like Yang showing off, delightfully. An example here are the two instances of mistaken identity, one obvious and comic, the other only gradually revealed and tragic.) And (to garble a metaphor) that architecture tends to point to a thesis or theses, typically about Taiwan modernity. Usually I don't find this objectionable, because the themes are "digested" so effectively in the narrative goings on (this is particularly true of Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi). Here I wasn't so sure. Yang seemed not to trust the audience to get (or his narrative to deliver) the message, and places the same cynical mantra (nobody knows what they want/ you have to tell them what they want) in the mouths of several different characters. In a sense it's another one of Yang's prized motifs that travel across the intricate network of personal relationships in his films, but in this case it felt relatively ham-handed.

As zedz points out, the most remarkable thing about this film is the tonal mix. The way it mixes relentless bad behavior and humor might recall Yang's contemporary Tarantino, except that Yang doesn't really exult in that bad behavior. The humor doesn't redeem or glorify it or make it entertaining, it just sits beside it in a way that's very unusual. The film then takes a few, rather sudden, ventures into tragedy. These were extremely jarring, but I'd hardly classify them as a fault with the film, since they seem central to its intentions. An ambitious mix of tones is Yang's central authorial signature; I wasn't sure if this instance was more extreme or more clunky.

Maybe this is all an overlong way of saying that, for me, this film had the usual, impressive characteristics of Yang's other films, but it just didn't come together as convincingly and powerfully as elsewhere, at first look.

BTW, was this film commercially released anywhere outside of Japan (where, oddly, it went under the English language title Couples)? That's the origin of its only DVD release. And was it some kind of coproduction? (I wondered if the presence of Ledoyen indicated some French financing, though zedz suggest it's mostly the Yang/Olivier Assayas connection.) Did Yang conceive of one of the film's themes--foreign nationals traveling to Taiwan to take advantage of its "wild west" form of capitalism--as a means of making a film that might have some appeal to English-language markets? (Of course, that theme is also present, more in the background, in Terrorizers and Yi Yi.)

It's remarkable to me how little critical attention this film and Confucian Confusion have gotten, considering they are bracketed by two of the most well-regarded films of the past 30 years.

Also hard to believe the last new film Yang gave us is now 20 years old, or that he's been gone over 13 years.

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HinkyDinkyTruesmith
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Re: Edward Yang

#166 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:19 am

whaleallright wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:00 am
It's remarkable to me how little critical attention this film and Confucian Confusion have gotten, considering they are bracketed by two of the most well-regarded films of the past 30 years.
While A Confucian Confusion may be my favorite Yang, my theory for why it and Mahjong are so unpopular––and this is probably a prevailing theory as well––is for how theatrical they are in style, at least compared to Yang's extremely elliptical films that precede it, which follow such a standard of modernist austerity that usual art house fare is acclaimed for. Which is of course a shame given how rich they both are, even with the later film's admitted flaws.

If anyone hasn't seen the recorded play that Yang did immediately after A Brighter Summer Day, I highly recommend it––I think it's on that film's disc, and on the Criterion Channel. It not only points towards the more dialogue-heavy following films but contains material that gets recycled into Confucian Confucian, if I recall correctly.

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feihong
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Re: Edward Yang

#167 Post by feihong » Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:39 am

I always assumed that the fact that Mahjong and A Confucian Confusion are so hard to see is what made them less critically attended than the other films. YiYi was an arthouse hit, and A Brighter Summer Day was a little more available to begin with (for years there was a decent VCD set of the film), and it also had the element of such large ambition, which I think made the film harder to ignore. That Mahjong borrowed elements of the thriller genre and A Confucian Confusion used elements of a screwball romance I think also kind of seemed to reduce both films' potential cache for prospective viewers, I think. YiYi and Brighter Summer are the kind of films that transcend genre to the point that they really scream "art" a little harder. It really hasn't been fun to try and see Mahjong and A Confucian Confusion. The source material is just so lacking. I did enjoy Mahjong, though seeing it is far enough in the rearview mirror that I only remember a few of the broadstrokes of the film. I've always found it easy to dismiss the poor performances by caucasians in Chinese movies, so I remember not being bothered by how wooden those actors came off. One of my favorite films is Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly, and in that case you really have to accept a lot of shaky performances having trouble clearing the language barrier (and also some really great ones––Hiroshi Mikami plays my screen namesake and gives a great performance without understanding almost anything of what he's saying). I remember that part of Mahjong not bothering me. I didn't quite get the bit with Hong Kong and the harpies, so I can see what you mean about being bothered by it. A Confucian Confusion I was much more impressed with, and that's one I think it's a shame hasn't been released in a quality edition. Hopefully a restoration is somewhere on the horizon.

bluesforyou
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Re: Edward Yang

#168 Post by bluesforyou » Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:32 am

feihong wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:39 am
Hopefully a restoration is somewhere on the horizon.
If you look on the previous page of this thread, you will see a post about a restoration. Given the time that has passed since then, I would assume the restoration has been completed. Now we just wait for someone to release that restoration on home video.

Tim
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Re: Edward Yang

#169 Post by Tim » Sat Dec 05, 2020 6:12 am

My 2011 BluRay of The Terrorisers has browned and died, though it played fine when I got it three years ago. I've ordered the 30th Anniversary edition in replacement.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Edward Yang

#170 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 05, 2020 12:15 pm

I may have to check my copy of Terrorizers then. :-(

On the topic of Terrorizers, am I alone in liking this more than either Yi Yi or Brighter Summer Day?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Edward Yang

#171 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:37 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 12:15 pm
On the topic of Terrorizers, am I alone in liking this more than either Yi Yi or Brighter Summer Day?
I think they're all essentially perfect, so it's futile to try to rank them, but I think depending on the day I could be convinced. They're all very different though, or I like them for different reasons, and The Terrorizers in arguably more different than the other two in its depth of focus. A good reminder to see it again- it's been probably five years.. is there an optimal blu-ray release out there?

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whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Edward Yang

#172 Post by whaleallright » Sat Dec 05, 2020 6:37 pm

Tim wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 6:12 am
I've ordered the 30th Anniversary edition in replacement.
where might one order this to be delivered to the US w/o exorbitant shipping?

yoshimori
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Re: Edward Yang

#173 Post by yoshimori » Sat Dec 05, 2020 10:13 pm

dvd.jsdvd.com seems to have it in stock.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Edward Yang

#174 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Sat Dec 05, 2020 10:29 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Fri Dec 04, 2020 1:00 am
This also recalls another of the film's (seeming?) flaws, which was a certain strenuousness in its construction and themes. Now, all of Yang's films (of the ones I've seen) have a strongly "conceptual" dimension in two senses. They feature elaborate rhymes and echoes that make the viewer aware of them as, essentially, pieces of narrative architecture. (Often these feel, if not excessive, then like Yang showing off, delightfully. An example here are the two instances of mistaken identity, one obvious and comic, the other only gradually revealed and tragic.) And (to garble a metaphor) that architecture tends to point to a thesis or theses, typically about Taiwan modernity. Usually I don't find this objectionable, because the themes are "digested" so effectively in the narrative goings on (this is particularly true of Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi). Here I wasn't so sure. Yang seemed not to trust the audience to get (or his narrative to deliver) the message, and places the same cynical mantra (nobody knows what they want/ you have to tell them what they want) in the mouths of several different characters. In a sense it's another one of Yang's prized motifs that travel across the intricate network of personal relationships in his films, but in this case it felt relatively ham-handed.
Wu Nien-jen (who worked with pretty much every major Taiwanese filmmaker of the '80s and, to judge from his retrospective comments, found pretty much all of them severely wanting) has talked about this on a few occasions. Here's what he says in Michael Berry's book Speaking in Images:
Wu Nien-jen wrote:I started collaborating with Edward Yang on the 1983 feature That Day on the Beach. It is quite interesting to work with Yang. He is completely different from Hou Hsiao-hsien. Hsiao-hsien prefers talking about the stories first; he likes to exchange all kinds of stories. When we come upon something that touches us, we will expand it and get a better sense of it. Edward Yang works differently; he usually has an idea of what he wants in the movie before the screenplay is written. For instance, he might want to make a statement about his judgment of society's system of values of express his view of intellectuals. He never clearly spells out what he really wants, but he will listen to the details you fill in and then pick out which ideas suit the movie. As a result, it is a very interesting process to work with him on writing a screenplay, but it is an extremely time-consuming process that often leaves you with the feeling that you are getting nowhere. But over the course of the process he gradually constructs a story out of the little stories and details you present him with. So writing with Edward Yang is really about throwing a lot of ideas at him and letting him make up his own mind. [...] So there is a strong internal force in his films that is very powerful. But sometimes these ideas and internal themes can overpower the plot, and when that happens the movie suffers. For example, I know what he was trying to do with films like A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong, but the story lines of these movies are very weak. He seems to spend too much time exploring the deeper philosophical themes in order to show his own views of the society, and the story gets left out in the cold.
In another interview he sums up his view of Yang's screenplays as "he writes theses, not descriptions." The background of A Confucian Confusion is telling in this regard: Yang was all set to film it as a "light comedy," then completely reconceptualized it after the "Asian values" debate heated up in 1993. Wu also should've noted that A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong were the first films Yang did without any co-writers (he also had sole writing credit on Yi Yi, but Wu claims he rewrote much of the dialogue to make it more natural and idiomatic).

I'm afraid I don't recall Mahjong too well, but I do remember my impressions lining up roughly with yours. Unlike Wu, I'm hugely fond of A Confucian Confusion and it might be my favorite of Yang's. I don't actually think Wu is entirely wrong in his take, but the somewhat obviously "constructed" nature of the screenplay doesn't bother me so much in that one because the construction is laid bare, the film being divided up into discrete sections (or acts, to extend HinkyDinkyTruesmith's theatrical paradigm—Yang used his stage work at the time as a training ground for the new actors and technicians he would use on his films, so not surprising a theatrical quality might leak through) punctuated by humorous epigrams that in some way comment on the plot.

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whaleallright
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Re: Edward Yang

#175 Post by whaleallright » Sun Dec 06, 2020 2:49 am

Thanks for that excerpt. I'd looked at Speaking in Images once upon a time and now I ought to revisit it.

If Wu Nien-jen shares my concerns about Mahjong, I guess I'm not in bad company!

BTW Wu has a small but memorable part in Mahjong as the elder of the two gangsters who kidnap Luen-Luen and Marthe.

He doesn't have a major screenwriting credit since 1998. IMDB says he's working in (I presume Taiwanese) TV. Anyone know what he does there? I have a vague recollection of reading that he hosted a talk show....

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