Planet Hong Kong

Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment has been acclaimed as the best book on this vibrant, unpredictable cinema. First published in 2000, it surveys the history of the local industry, its rise to international renown, the dominant genres and stars, and the territory’s unique contribution to world cinema, particularly in its exciting treatment of physical action. It discusses many key films and major figures like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, John Woo, Tsui Hark, Chang Cheh, Lau Kar-leung, and Wong Kar-wai.This new edition, completely updated to 2011, includes new chapters on the massive changes in the film industry since 1997, the emerging artistic trends, the Infernal Affairs trilogy (the source for The Departed), and on important figures like Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer and Kung-Fu Hustle), Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood for Love and 2046), and Johnnie To Kei-fung (The Mission and The Mad Detective). There is also a new bibliography. Unlike the first edition, which had only black-and-white illustrations, this second edition, printed on deluxe paper, contains over four hundred color illustrations, many from 35mm film prints. Praise from reviews“David Bordwell is the most valuable and readable film scholar in America. He makes a persuasive case for Hong Kong movies as great entertainment and sometimes great art.” Roger Ebert “David Bordwell unpacks the shameless delights of Hong Kong cinema with one eye on the vitality of pop culture and the other on surprises and discoveries which redraw the map of film form and grammar. Here, the road of excess really does lead to the palace of wisdom.”Tony Rayns, critic, Sight and Sound “Bordwell seems to be typing in his shorts, with a beer on his desk . . . . Combining the study of film form and movie economics, analysis and field work, the University of Wisconsin professor cogently evokes what separates Hong Kong’s buccaneer directors from Hollywood’s current storytellers.”Richard Corliss, Time Asia “Through his ability to compare how Hong Kong and Hollywood filmmakers work, Bordwell is able to explain just why films like Hard Boiled or Once Upon a Time in China are able to generate a visceral excitement that contemporary Hollywood can rarely match. Although Bordwell has a serious point to make, this is a highly readable book that demonstrates again and again his enthusiasm for his subject.”Robin Brown, University of Leeds “In Planet Hong Kong David Bordwell trains virtually every critical weapon in the film studies arsenal on a film industry that has, ironically, been marginalized by its own popular success. Film scholars will be grateful for its theoretical breadth and acuity; film fans will be happy with the graceful way Bordwell weaves into his chapters an extraordinary amount of telling anecdote; and filmmakers will be thrilled by his wonderfully revealing frame-by-frame analyses of Hong Kong cinema’s most exemplary moments.”James Schamus, producer and writer, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Lust, Caution “Bordwell shows how Hong Kong filmmakers have mixed the extreme acrobatics of their Chinese cultural heritage with the editing techniques of theorists reaching back to Eisenstein. Hong Kong artists, he argues, have obsessively refined their craft in pursuit of maximum emotional effect while recent American action movies have abandoned intelligible action an aim only at sensory overload (are you listening, Michael Bay?).”Paul F. Duke, Variety “David Bordwell is a scholar who writes as a fan. He is in love with the crazy, rip-roaring, vulgar confusion that is Hong Kong cinema, but he also knows how and why it works and explains it in words the layman can understand.”The Economist “What a pleasure it is to read this book!”David Desser, University of Illinois, Urbana—Champaign, and author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema

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