abtw3 and tsui hark

Please do me a favor, will you. Don't be so ignorant and don't talk about something you don't even know much about. Now, if you really think about it it's very far-fatched even thinking J.Woo is better than T.Hark. It's quite ridiculous. Why? first of all, A Better Tomorrow1/2, The Killer are 50% Tsui Hark movies!!! That's a fact. Secondly, what you're talking about is the accessibility of John Woo's films due to their conventions in the genre, style and overall familiarity to American audience's expectations; it's only your restrained knowledge of the cinema when you're daring to say what someone's remembered for. In fact, the recent HK awards commitee ranked Tsui's 5 films and John Woo's only 2 films (both co-directed by T.Hark) among the 100 best Chinese films of all-time. And you say that Hark is remembered only for OUTIC movies, you're forgetting one little fact that it is only you who remembers only these films; Oh boy, those who are very familliar with TH's work would tell you right off the bat what he's remembered for and what his movies being usually talked about - Butterfly Murders, Dangerous Encounter-1st Kind, Zu:Warriors from the Magic Mountain, Shanghai Blues, Chinese Feast, Peking Opera Blues, A Better Tomorrow III, OUTIC trilogy, Swordsman II, The Lovers, Green Snake, Love in the Time of Twilight, The Blade, Time and Tide, Legend of Zu, and now Seven Swords - all these films have strong cult following all over the world. And i didn't even start mentioning his produced work. You should know as well that Tsui Hark is responsible for over 30 classics... J.Woo made hardly more than 3. It's not so much about how someone's remembered; it could also sound like Wong Kar-Wai or Howard Hawks are not as remembered as Steven Spielberg, though, we know that all are great artists in their own way. It's just daft as hell classifying these directors the way you do.

Hark's movies are being constantly rediscovered. You know, his best movies were usually very ignored at thier time of the release, we're in fact talking about mostly very misunderstood and extremely demanding, innovative and hardly digestible artistic filmmaker in the world. He's one of the best grand filmmakers still working out there and the fact is that John Woo has not really made to this day at least one film that would reach the high caliber of T.Hark's best efforts (The Blade, Dangerous Encounter-1st Kind, The Lovers, Seven Swords or Butterfly Murders). That's how i see it. And sure, ABT 3 is much better than the previous two installments, (certainly than the first horrible sequel) probably also because it happens to be a completely different film in style and theme from those two films, they shouldn't be compared to one another i think. The 3rd part is more memorable film in my eyes as well. The reason why the first two films lost their magic should rather be ascribed to their copycats too, ask yourself how many times we've seen typical bloodshed movies like these ABTs over the years. ABTIII is on the other hand very singular and unique and still very, very powerful film. It didn't get old not a little bit.

Look at it this way, it's easy to see why T.Hark's films are probably not everyone's cup of tea. It's not like watching any other movie. Take me for example, his movies after some time really opened my mind and the view on the filmmaking in general, and i also started watching movies absolutely differently than before. I could even dare to say that he changed my life. His movies are unpretentious, humble, singular and one of their kind, whereas Woo's trademarks are repeated over and over in many other films, nowadays and even before ABT. His style seems really behind the times now. He was the one trick pony all along, not a true artist, and you all bought that.

It seems that if anyone will have the last laugh, it's Mr.Tsui Hark.