What is so special about Chungking Express?
What is so special about Chungking Express?
Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express contains multitudes. It’s a lovingly crafted meditation on heartbreak and the need to open your heart back up to the world.
Where was Chungking Express filmed?
Hong Kong
Chungking Express was shot in Central, Hong Kong, China. Filming locations included Lan Kwai Fong and Chungking Mansions on 36-44 Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui.
What is Faye doing in Chungking Express?
But unlike Masculin féminin’s Chantal Goya, a pop singer playing the role of a pop singer, Faye Wong in Chungking Express plays a waitress, albeit one who becomes identified with two songs—the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” and a Cantonese cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” by a singer named Faye Wong—which …
What was Chungking Express shot on?
The camera movement in Chungking Express gives the film an almost documentary-like feel: shots frequently start by tracking or panning towards the relevant action as if catching it for the only time, and many shots appear to be recorded on handheld cameras.
Is Chungking Express worth watching?
Chungking Express is a breezy little Hong Kong movie that has more life, energy, humanity and sheer visual zing than most other shows you’ll see in a month or so. May 28, 2014 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review… Dull it is not, but Wong’s trademark sense of romantic melancholy fails to jell amid all the excess.
Is Chungking Express about loneliness?
Ultimately, Chungking Express is about lonely people longing for connection and finding it in passing moments, unable to hold on to what they find. And despite the inherent melancholy in the futility of these connections, Chungking Express remains somehow hopeful, understanding the romance in the ephemeral.
How many voiceovers are there in Chungking Express?
All four actors have voiceovers (passing the baton like Goodfellas does a little before, but so do films that would come after like The Thin Red Line), WKW spends a little more time on the Tony Leung/Faye Wong story (and I think their achievement is a little greater as well) and that is the segment shot by Christopher …
Is Chungking Express a real place?
“Chungking” in the title refers to Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, where Wong grew up in the 1960s. “Express” refers to the food stand Midnight Express, located in Lan Kwai Fong, an area in Central, Hong Kong.
Are Chungking Express and Fallen Angels connected?
Fallen Angels was originally conceived as the third part of 1994’s Chungking Express—a movie divided into two distinct stories linked together primarily through motifs—and an observant viewer could find the traces of that film in this one.
Why does Wong Kar-wai use step-printing?
Wong Kar-wai’s use of step-printing is used to effectively communicate to viewers how Cop 663 is feeling. In this moment, it seems like he is separated from the world around him. As people go by him in the background, Cop 663 is slowly moving within the foreground.
Why did Faye go to California?
You can think about the soundtrack on a surface level: Faye wants to visit California, so she often plays “California Dreamin. ‘” Or you can think about it on an emotional level: Faye feels lost in the urban environment of Hong Kong and wishes to escape to the dreamy, sunny land of California.
Why is it called Chungking Express?
Is Fallen Angels connected to Chungking Express?
How long is Chungking Express?
1h 37mChungking Express / Running time
Which Wong Kar-Wai movie should I watch first?
The best place to start: Chungking Express Wong has a reputation as the master of melancholy romance but he knows how to make you laugh too. Chungking Express (1994) is the best example of this as well as being a gentle introduction to his signature style.
Why are Wong Kar Wai movies so good?
This relationship, along with production designer and editor William Chang, has given Wong’s films an unmistakable visual style with slow motion, coloured lens filters and extreme wide angles giving an irrepressible vitality to his melancholic works. Collaboration is a key feature of Wong’s work.
Does Wong Kar Wai use scripts?
He has a unique style of filmmaking. “He shoots his films without scripts and we shot ‘The Grandmaster’ also in that way. We didn’t know the whole story in the beginning but we started understanding it gradually with each day on the set,” Ziyi told PTI. Wong Kar Wai will receive the lifetime achievement award at IFFI.
Who invented step-printing?
And that’s how Wong Kar-Wai created his signature smeared imagery. He combined the techniques of Step-Printing and under-cranking. By combining film frame duplication and various frame-rates, one can create infinite variations within this look.
What is the theme of Chungking Express?
The urban environment of Chungking Express is crucial to understand the three main themes of the film. An abundance of buildings, a lack of space, packed to the brim with people—it’s enough to make you feel small and out of place. That’s at least the case with the main characters in Wong’s breakout film.
Where is Chungking Express filmed?
A look back at the iconic locations from Wong Kar-wai’s love letter to Hong Kong Chungking Express is one of the defining movies of 90s Hong Kong cinema. Directed by Wong Kar-wai and shot by Christopher Doyle, the film is a tour-de-force of space and time, chronicling love, longing, and loneliness in 90s Hong Kong.
Where is Chungking Express located in Hong Kong?
It would be remiss not to feature the sprawling labyrinth which Chungking Express owes its name. One of Hong Kong’s most infamous buildings, the Chungking Mansions is located in the low-rise area of Nathan Road and has a reputation to locals as a dark underbelly rife with crime, sex, and drugs.
What is Chungking Express trying to say about identity?
As the characters of Chungking Express painstakingly attempt to break free from their solitude, we see them trying to discover who they truly are. In their urban environments—where there’s a new person everywhere you turn—this can feel daunting. Two of the characters (Cop 663 and the women in the blonde wig) don’t even have names!