In the Mood for Love did for Hong Kong what La Dolce Vita did for Rome. Just as the Trevi Fountain was relatively unknown as a tourist spot before Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni’s iconic embrace, In the Mood for Love is a sensuous, colourful masterpiece that eroticizes cramped living spaces and romanticizes the gritty alleyways […]
movies
Asian Representation in Pop Culture: A Lifelong Passion
I’m very much interested in exploring Asian philosophies and culture in both my academic and personal life. Of course, in academia today we must be mindful of our contexts and horizons. While I consider myself Chinese, I’ve grown up in an English-speaking environment. English is my first language rather than Cantonese or Mandarin. There are […]
The Noble Reporter: Lessons about Right Speech and Media from “Roman Holiday”
Roman Holiday is one of my favourite movies, not only because it’s a moving comedic romance (one of the few romantic comedies I enjoy) but because it touches upon a timeless issue in journalism: what stories are worth reporting? It gets more complex than simply bad or boring stories versus good and entertaining ones. It’s […]
Shaolin (2011): A Guilty Pleasure
I have mixed feelings about films that have an overtly religious element, especially when the religion plays a central role in a movie focused on bone-crunching action, head-crushing martial arts, and temple explosions. I class Shaolin, which is an overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the martial art masters in Republican-era China, as one such guilty indulgence. […]
Identity in “In the Mood for Love” and “2046”
When work on the film 2046 began before 2004, Hong Kong film star Tony Leung lobbied hard for director Wong Kar-wai to let him grow a mustache. This was because his character, Chow Mo-wan, was totally different to how he was in 2046‘s prequel In the Mood for Love: whereas Chow in Mood was a gentlemanly […]
What was Possible, and What is no Longer: A Buddhist Dimension in La Dolce Vita
It’s a classic moment in film, one of quite a few from Federico Fellini’s black and white cinematic masterpiece. The charismatic but emotionally lost gossip columnist Marcello Rubini, played by Marcello Mastroianni, is at the beach, holding his hands up in bemused resignation as he struggles and fails to discern the shouts of a young […]