The Grandmaster – 2013, Wong Kar-Wai

by Allan Fish

(Hong Kong 2013 130m) DVD0 (Hong Kong only)

Aka. Yi dai zhong shi

Once upon a time in Foshan

p Gu Guoqing, Han Sanping, Li Kuo Hsing, Ren Zhong-Lun, Jacky Pang Yee Wah, Yu Dong, Wong Kar-Wai, Yan Xiaoming d Wong Kar-Wai w Xu Haofeng, Zou Jingzhi, Wong Kar-Wai ph Philippe le Sourd ed William Chang m Nathaniel Méchaly, Shigeru Umebayashi art William Chang cos William Chang ch Yuen Woo-Ping

Tony Leung (Ip Man), Ziyi Zhang (Gong Er), Chang Chen (Razor), Song Hye-Kyo (Zhang Yongcheng), Le Cung (Iron Shoes), Zhao Benshan (Ding Lianshan), Wang Qingxiang (Master Gong Yutian), Lo Hoi-pang (Uncle Deng), Elvis Tsui (Mr Hung),

It’s said that when Hayao Miyazaki saw what Harvey Weinstein’s overactive cutting instincts – performed not so much with editor’s scissors as with a meat cleaver – had done to his Nausicaä Valley of the Wind he sent him a Japanese katana with a note of just two words; no cuts. All Miyazaki’s later films were distributed through Buena Vista without the cleaver. It didn’t stop Weinstein, though. Rumours persist to this day over his involvement in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, while his distribution of Asian cinema is notorious. He chopped ten minutes from Yimou’s Hero, thus turning Ziyi Zhang’s role into a cipher, and the full version is still hard to see a decade on. Then he turned his attentions to Wong Kar-Wai’s long awaited martial arts elegy The Grandmaster.

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