01 December 2005

This month, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is screening a welcome retrospective of the movies of Tony Leung, who, as I've noted before, is my favorite movie star. (Well, almost.) Tonight the festival kicked off with Leung and Faye Wong in Chinese Odyssey, a merciless Airplane!-style parody of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and other art house wire-fu movies, not to mention most of the films of Wong Kar-Wai (who serves as executive producer). It falls flat more often than it works, but there's still something fascinating (and unsettling) about seeing Leung and Wong—who starred together in Chungking Express and 2046—parodying themselves onscreen. It's the weirdest cinematic reunion since Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak starred in Bell, Book, and Candle.

Anyway, there are a lot of great movies coming up at BAM. The Red Shoes may have taken up permanent residence at the top of my list of favorite movies, but I've got to admit that no movie fills me with as much bliss as the last hour of Chungking Express. It's uninhibited Wong Kar-Wai, it's the most joyful movie ever made, and it's playing at BAM on Saturday. If you've never seen it, what's your excuse?

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