FRI JAN 16, 2009
Stopped in Chinatown after work.Picked up three CDs and four Shaw Brothers films. The CDs turned out to be freaking awesome:
Kong Ling and the Fabulous Echoes, Volume II (pictured above), which you can hear for yourself here.
Pan Wan Ching Sings The Four Seasons. Oh. My. God. An amazing CD, with songs in numerous languages, including Japanese and Italian. She's also known as Rebecca Pan. Googling around for her this morning I discovered this:
a somewhat altered version of one of her songs set to scenes from Last Year at Marienbad.
And, finally, Pathe 100 series #31, Yao Lee. Great, great, great. I am a very happy camper.
The films, which I haven't yet watched, are:
Martial Club (click to see amazing final scene)
Hong Kong Rhapsody
The Bride Napping
The Boxer from Shantung.
Looks like I know what I'll be doing for at least some of this three-day weekend.
Greatly looking forward to Obama's inauguration, the day after MLK holiday, although I'll be back at work, alas.
posted by Gary @ 5:18 AM
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I'm wondering what exactly your interest with these movies is. I was a Hong Kong action nerd before I was a poetry nerd, and lately I've been trying to find ways of letting my love for each of these things inform the other.
I think one conception some people who don't know very much about Flarf have is that the Flarfists are "just being ironic". I often get the same thing from people who discover that I love martial arts films. People say "Oh yeah, those are great, they're so bad". And while I frequently take great pleasure in terrible sub-titles, my love for these films is far from "just ironic". I'm fascinated by the multi-textured spacial-kinetic narratives that take place in these movies. I've been trying lately to identify what the "poetics" of the various ways that fight composition has progressed throughout the years. For instance, Jackie Chan's move from a more Shaw Bros. inspired style to one that is even more rooted in the environment that it takes place in. And his recontextualizing of everyday objects to embarrass more often than to return his attacker's violence.
Great question, Iain.
I'll try to write a response sometime this week ...
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