While I would never deign to disagree with the sundry rabble congregated on IMDb's forums to howl their opinions at the moon like quasi-literate werewolves, the Hong Kong critical establishment, many of whom have written and analyzed Tsui's entire body of work at exhaustive length and detail, generally agree that "Dangerous Encounters" and "Peking Opera Blues" are his masterpieces. I wholeheartedly agree, with a personal nod towards "Green Snake," mostly for dint of its stunning visual design.
His later output has increasingly regressed into hoary CGI spectacle *specifically* designed to pander to its audiences. The sentiment that he's recently become a visionary genius who is "reforming his audience's tastes" is one of the most preposterous things I've ever read, akin to claiming James Cameron and Steven Spielberg are at the forefront of the avant-garde, 'challenging' us with their 'visionary' use of, well, CGI and a whole boatload of money. "Time and Tide," in particular, is a dim shadow of what this guy used to be doing. And I'd take the gonzo craftsmanship of "We're Going to Eat You" over any of his recent CGI oom-pah-pah parading any day of the week.
Not to be confrontational or anything, but you're as much of an authority on this subject as I am on neutrino mechanics.
reply
share
Manny-54
12 years ago
I haven't noticed that anyone tried to come off as some authority like the last poster was claiming, personally I think that ppl are only expressing their opinions, and I dont think most people care whatr some critical establishment thinks of his work when more and more people are embracing his later work as well, if anything its the new generation that will define what the majority thinks. This was a really good quote that I would totally agree with -
*These days he doesn't conform or compromise his vision, he's literally forcing the audience to conform their own.* If anything the reason his latter output didn't fare so well cause he was not pandering to the mainstream anymore, he was working on new trends and paradigms for the audience to follow. He is an extremely challenging filmmaker who doesnt try to make it easier for the audience, but he also has commercial populist aspects of cinema in mind so many snobs easily write off his films just based on the aesthetics alone, which is wrong and misleading. Personally I think Tsui Hark has become a much better overall artist and far better filmmaker than in his beginnings when he really didn't quite know what he was doing yet.
reply
share