When I met David Bordwell at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival last spring, he had recently returned from Hong Kong with a cool new Fuji FinePix camera, a model that wasn't available in the United States. It's really good in low light and he had the luscious pictures to prove it -- what he called his Wong Kar-Wai shots.
"Hong Kong just LOOKS like one of his films," says the Jacques Ledoux Proffessor of Film Studies, Emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bordwell, as all film students know, is the author of such books as "Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment," "Figures Traced in Light:" and "The Way Hollywood Tells It." He and his wife, Dr. Kristin Thompson (who has a book coming out called "Frodo, Fantasy and Franchises: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood"), are also the authors of the two most popular film textbooks, "Film Art" and "Film History."
David made me the star (or, as Robert Bresson would say, the "model") of some impressively elaborate, Coen Bros.-style demonstrations shots, taken in movie mode, inside the warm light of the Virginia Theater between movies. Kind of like intricate, hand-held crane shots, from close-up to long shot and back again. But these eye-popping Hong Kong images were so delicious I asked him if I could post a few to share with you. Feast your eyes! (And Christopher Doyle -- eat your heart out!)
(More images after the jump.)
View image: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell at the Overlooked Film Festival, 2006. (Photo by Jim Emerson)
Terrific images! The middle one reminds me of one of my favorite shots from The Limey.
That David Bordwell sure is talented. I thought he only knew theory. Obviously I was wrong.
After teasing us with these stunning pictures, it's only fair if you also mention the type of the camera, isn't it? :-)