Hou Hsiao-hsien

[ford]

Always held off on watching this particular movie, for some reason. I'm excited to be able to see it in high quality soon. Looks very gorgeous, very interesting.

It’s fantastic. Deserving of the hype.

[Michael Kerpan]

It’s fantastic. Deserving of the hype.

It is indeed. But just looking at the gorgeous trailer makes me remember how sad this film made me (in a good way, of course).

[therewillbeblus]

I'm not usually a fan of his work, but it's tied with Millennium Mambo as his best film after The Puppetmaster

[feihong]

So far with Hou's work I've like the early stuff best: The Boys from Fengkui and Summer at Grandpa's. Dust in the Wind I didn't like so much, but...it's had a lot of resonance as time has gone one. Lots of friends from Taiwan seem most affected by that one, and it seems to be not just Hou's story to tell, but a lot of people in Taiwan's story, in a way. I kind of liked The Sandwich Man, too. The later stuff I'm pretty indifferent to, honestly. But I have Daughter of the Nile, and I keep meaning to watch it. It seems like all roads have always pointed to this as his masterpiece, and it looks luminous and great and I'm very excited.

What's left for Hou to do? At this point, I think it would be such a funny idea for Marvel to hire Hou to direct their first X-men movie. I would like to see what would come of that particular train wreck. I could see a long, contemplative scene of Professor X and Magneto drinking tea and smoking cigarettes in the shadows of a room, talking about changing times, etc.

[therewillbeblus]

My first Hou was The Assassin, which I went into having no background on him, only hearing vague effusive praise for the auteur and the film. It was one of the worst theatre experiences of my life- no doubt because I was unprepared for how slow and elliptical it was, and anticipating some kind of thrilling wuxia homage a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I imagine comic book movie fans would experience something similar to that if your idea were to occur, which it obviously won't, but it's funny that I had a similarly jarring experience due to the dissonance between his style and my expectations of the genre he was working in!

[Michael Kerpan]

I like (at least) all of his films -- from the 3 (quasi) musical romances onwards. Millennium Mambo and Dust in the Wind are "sentimental favorites" -- but I'm not sure I can really pick out a few "bests" -- really most of them would fall in that group (rather like Kore'eda's films).

[hearthesilence]

I haven't seen all of them - from what I heard, the earlier ones may be quite different and I haven't seen them yet - but I'm pretty much in the same boat with Michael in liking everything so far. Dust in the Wind is probably the earliest one I've seen unless I'm forgetting something - I was lucky enough to catch a 35mm print at the Mark Lee Ping-bing retrospective at MoMA, and I thought it was excellent. A City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster and possibly Flowers of Shanghai may be my favorites, not just by Hou but in general. (If I was lucky enough to be a Sight & Sound voter, I'd probably stick one of them on there, probably The Puppetmaster - I wish it had a different title though, preferably a good translation of the original Taiwanese title.) Café Lumière is probably the first Hou film I ever saw, and as a tribute to Ozu, it made for an easy entry point simply because Ozu's one of my favorites. I thought it was great, but when I moved on to the '90s films, I was blown away by how much seemed new to me, from a global cultural perspective to the filmmaking itself. Thought Three Times, Flight of the Red Balloon and The Assassin were all great - I may have a soft spot for Red Balloon simply because it was marvelous to see Hou's filmmaking within a much more different culture. It never feels misplaced, awkward or diluted.

[therewillbeblus]

I realize I've been vocal about my love for The Puppetmaster many times over here without ever really getting into why, but even though it's such a rich film that I'm sure one could explore in depth, it's one of the few that I can't even begin to write anything about. Hou communicates a feeling there that's just otherworldly. It might've made my hypothetical ballot as well

[Michael Kerpan]

Puppetmaster is tough -- because there has never been a non-butchered home video release -- and because it was also almost impossible to see it screened. I barely recognized the real thing when compared to the awful cropped home video release. The real film was, of course, vastly better.

[feihong]

My first Hou was The Assassin, which I went into having no background on him, only hearing vague effusive praise for the auteur and the film. It was one of the worst theatre experiences of my life- no doubt because I was unprepared for how slow and elliptical it was, and anticipating some kind of thrilling wuxia homage a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I imagine comic book movie fans would experience something similar to that if your idea were to occur, which it obviously won't, but it's funny that I had a similarly jarring experience due to the dissonance between his style and my expectations of the genre he was working in!

I'd already seen about 5 or 6 Hou movies by the time The Assassin rolled around, and I still found it jarringly bad, too. Frankly, I think you're being too generous to it; for the length it was drawn out to, I thought it had a criminally simple story and a plot and themes we've seen rehashes so many times...sort of like Zhang Yimou doing House of Flying Daggers, I just expected something more (and eventually, with Zhang, I learned not to care too much, anyway). But I think your call in on-point, that is exactly what would happen, and the film would be a giant failure––one that Youtubers would resurrect in 15 years' time, as they did Ang Lee's still-terrible Hulk movie, as an example of why we can't have nice things in wave 23 of the MCU.

But I think Hou has some advantages that put him in the running for this X-men movie. 1) He's been interested in working in foreign languages in the past, and he's handled those assignments without, so far as I can tell, the awkwardness of some other filmmakers working in an unfamiliar language. 2) He's been willing to lean commercial, casting well-known stars and working with big-name people––even some not known for their spectacular acting talents, like Shu Qi. 3) One of the defining elements of the X-men is the idea that they are outcasts, socially-estranged from their society––and it's been the element the previous filmmakers have struggled with and mostly failed to make really hit home in a meaningful way (so much has gone into this, from deliberate obfuscation of this purpose to just plain incoherency in a passel of different films). Hou has spent so much of his career depicting people alienated from their society––and he excels at tracking those specific alienations with laserlike, pinpoint accuracy (he should cast himself as Cyclops, maybe). This is the director who could set the stage for the mutants' quintessential struggle, in unquestionably clear terms. 4) Like the MCU, Hou has a great sense of humor. You can see it in his movies, usually about one time per film. So if the MCU top brass can merely adjust their expectations, I'm pretty sure Hou can play ball on this, and put in a single, solitary joke somewhere––a good one. 5) MCU plots are pretty straightforward. When they get convoluted is when they frequently start to lose people. Marvel? Meet one of the most straightforward filmmakers you will ever see. Hou will make straightforwardness seem like a virtue of the film––something the MCU often had problems sticking to and/or making people happy with in their pictures. With a cast of, one imagines, at least about 16 mutants, and varied supporting characters, Marvel's eventual X-men movie will need someone with Hou's clarity of vision and preference for cutting directly to the point. Anyway, that, Mr. Feige, is why I nominate Hou Hsiao-Hsien to direct your X-men movie. He has the talent, the drive, the moxy. And the Taiwanese New Dollar has a terrible exchange rate via US currency, so you could maybe get him at a bargain even, perhaps? I don't know. Failing that, I don't know, maybe lean into the BDSM angle, with the Hellfire Club and the Shadow King. We're just a minute too late now for the Just Jaeckin X-men, but maybe Harry Kumel could be tempted out of retirement? Failing that, I don't know, maybe Clarence Fok.

[ballmouse]

I don't see any mention of Goodbye South, Goodbye, which doesn't surprise me as it's hardly ever mentioned. But that and A Summer at Grandpa's are 2 of the films of his I've seen and enjoyed. As someone who visited Taiwan to see relatives, these 2 films to me capture contemporary Taiwan well (at least from my outsider perspective). His period pieces I find less interesting.

[Michael Kerpan]

Maybe I'm a pushover, but I liked Assassin . . . a whole lot. Not my favorite HHH film, but one I appreciated.

My very favorite part of GSG are the scenes of the train gliding through little villages etc...

[cowboydan]

American Cinematheque is playing the Millennium Mambo restoration a handful of times in LA over the next 2 weeks. I got tickets to see it on Friday

[mrb404]

the upcoming French UHD (HDR) release of Millennium Mambo by Spectrum Films is now available for preorder:

https://www.spectrumfilms.fr/prochainem ... 71679.html

no English subs.
artwork by Tony Stella.
release planned for April 7th.

Spectrum Films offered to collaborate when Kino announced its US release a few weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/SpectrumAsie/status ... UigN8h1PMg
Not sure of any follow up to this tweet.

[dwk]

If it is up to Kino (I'm not sure how their deal with Metrograph works), I would assume there is little chance that they releases Millennium Mambo on UHD. Hell they didn't want to release The Italian Job on UHD and have said no to UHDs of Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. and Dr. Who and the Daleks. All of which would likely be more marketable in the US than Millennium Mambo

[yoloswegmaster]

The way KL chooses what to release on 4K is pretty baffling. Kino only released The Italian Job because they got the 4K rights to it for only $5K instead of the usual $50K-$80K that they would have normally had to pay for it and had to finish the HDR grade that Paramount started but abandoned due to COVID. That's not to mention that they also publicly stated they weren't sure if Double Indemnity was going to sell well on 4K but then release Nobody's Fool and Rawhead Rex. I wouldn't be surprised either way if they did or didn't release Millennium Mambo on 4K.

[bad future]

If I'm not mistaken, I think their UHD releases so far have all been under their Studio Classics line, with none for films they've actually distributed or their partners like Cohen, Milestone or Metrograph? I hope it's just that an ideal candidate hasn't come along yet since they ventured into the format, and not some formal policy that they aren't going to budge on. The fact that they haven't released the 4k restoration of Possession on UHD would seem to suggest the latter, if not for the fact that it has bafflingly not been released yet on any physical format in the US...

[hearthesilence]

If anyone is going to see The Puppetmaster tonight at Lincoln Center, does the print open with a Bard College logo? I was hoping to go tonight but it’s looking unlikely. I’m wondering if they got Bard’s print or the one that was used for the traveling retrospective from some years back.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Bard's print was the one used for the traveling retrospective. At the time it was said to be the only known print in existence and I haven't heard of any others since (it screened on 35mm with Japanese subtitles at the 2015 Tokyo FILMeX, but that could very well just have been the Bard print with electronically-projected Japanese subtitles).

[beamish14]

I have to wonder when Bard will finally have to retire that print. I suppose they could theoretically make a dupe, provided they got the legal clearance to do so.

[hearthesilence]

Apologies, too many details to remember about Hou's films in general. I went through this thread again and tried to straighten out my memory. Just to have it all in one post, here's what people reported on The Puppetmaster when they had the touring retrospective in 2014/2015 plus what I reported in 2016 at MoMA:

23 Sep 2014

The print of The Puppetmaster was very nice, but not new I don't think. In any case, it is apparently the only English subtitled print in the world, according to [the retrospective's organizer] Richard Suchenski...It was the most difficult print to obtain in the entire series...

03 May 2015

I just got back from The Puppetmaster screening in Chicago. There was a pretty lengthy lecture beforehand, as well as a Q&A with Suchenski...he did emphasize how difficult it was to get this film screened. It's a personal favorite of his, and he held back the retrospective for a year and had to get Hou to intervene in order to show it. He couldn't comment too much on the rights issues, but did mention that from a preservationists standpoint, steps are being taken to ensure that this film will be protected for posterity even if it is unlikely that the rights will ever be sorted out.

Very excited that I got to see this, and despite the subpar picture quality I would encourage everybody to seek it out while it is showing. During the Q&A Suchenski made a comment that the physical film had the darkest print he had ever seen, and there's a special quality to the way a projector bulb opens it up, so it's well worth seeing this last remaining English subbed print.

I haven't seen the DVD beyond DVDBeaver caps, but Suchenski said it may be the worst DVD he's ever seen. It was pretty disappointing when he said home video rights are stonewalled, since this will likely be the only time I can see this film in decent quality. He mentioned that they tried to track down other subbed prints, but they all seem to have been destroyed in the last two decades. His comment about taking steps at preservation was in response to a question about whether the negative or other materials exist, so that was heartening.

Re: the rights, he said he couldn't get into specifics, but did say it was common for films released after the ending of Martial Law and relative opening of the island in the late 80s through the early 90s to have really tangled rights issues. He also stated that rights holders often don't have any interest in seeing films released. I had assumed that the copyright laws of the time were untested and full of holes, but organized crime taking advantage of newly opened markets could fit that description as well.

I also attended the Chicago screening of The Puppetmaster and want to reiterate the last point in Jindianajonz' post. I was very surprised to hear Professor Suchenski say that the print being shown is the only English-subtitled print currently in existence.

Was also at the Puppetmaster screening in Chicago this weekend. Richard Suchenski, who organized the retrospective and edited the book Michael mentions, spoke briefly about the issues concerning the circulation of the film. Although he understandably couldn't go into details, he did affirm that the film is tied up in a rights dispute that is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. The 20-year-old print screened at the Film Center is, per Suchenski, the only English-subtitled print in existence. He also said that the fuzzy transfer used on the out-of-print Winstar DVD, which is cropped to the Academy ratio, is the only digital transfer of The Puppetmaster he knows of. (And one reason he was unable to use frame grabs in the book.) The film's negative has been preserved, however, so if and when the rights issues are sorted out, new prints could be struck and a HD master could be made. But--sadly--don't hold your breath.

...the problem with setting up a screening is not only that there are so few prints, but that the rights have yet to be sorted out. Legally, you can't charge for a screening if you don't pay the rights holder, so it had to be billed as an educational event. Tickets for the Film Center event were for Suchenski's lecture, with the screening as a "free" bonus. This is not the sort of thing that is very repeatable.

In theory the film might be screened for a class, but you'd have to talk with Hou's company, who I believe are custodians of the extant prints. I imagine they would want to limit the number of screenings, since each time one of the few remaining prints is run through a projector, it runs a risk of irreparable damage.

My understanding was that the various rights holders were willing to allow free (limited) screenings of City of Sadness and Puppetmaster, but couldn't agree to any arrangement involving paid screenings.

That's weird... the Puppetmaster screening in Houston was definitely not free. Either they made a mistake, or we were technically paying $9 for the two-minute introduction by a UT professor.

That's weird... the Puppetmaster screening in Houston was definitely not free. Either they made a mistake, or we were technically paying $9 for the two-minute introduction by a UT professor.

It's the latter. The only thing they were able to finagle was a series of "educational screenings", which is why Suchenski gave a lecture with the film. Likewise, the upcoming showing of City of Sadness in Los Angeles accompanies a book signing by the lady who wrote the BFI Film Classics book.

26 Jun 2016

[For the MoMA screening], like the other films screened in 35mm this past week, it had the Bard logo, the print was fairly worn around the reel changes, and the blacks don't look quite as inky as they should, but the detail and the color still look quite good.

According to Richard Suchenski, and as discussed higher up in this thread, there's only one English-subtitled print of the film in existence, which dates to the 1990s. So it's highly likely we're talking about the very same print the rest of us saw last year, or a dupe of that print. (HHH's company has the film's negative, but can't do much with it until rights issues are clarified.)

FWIW, Apichatpong Weerasethakul was scheduled to give an intro to tonight's screening.

[Cipater]

There's a screening of The Puppetmaster planned for the Copenhagen Cinematek on May 20. I considered going -- it's at the top of the list of things I want to see -- but they've already postponed it once, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again. It's supposed to play with English subtitles, so it ought to be the Bard print that's intended to travel.

I don't know if it's ever played Swedish cinemas. There was a screening planned at the Stockholm cinematheque in 2010, but was cancelled due to -- -- rights issues.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, Jack Eason attended and tweeted this:

"A few reactions to The Puppetmaster print. First off, it looked beautiful, unquestionably, but it was well worn. I wonder about the film's future..."

Also someone claimed they waited an hour in standby and they didn't get in. Crazy.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Can anyone explain this new interest in Hou’s work? I saw a few of his films during his career retro nearly a decade ago, and for sure there were NO standby lines.

[hearthesilence]

FilmLinc’s marketing department? Honestly when I attended the NYFF two years ago and caught some events around that time (like Danny Glover’s personal appearances), they had an extremely difficult time filling every seat. Big difference a year later.