Upcoming Metrograph Pictures Releases
HomeUpcoming Metrograph Pictures Releases
Posted October 31, 2023 05:26 PM by Webmaster
Metrograph Pictures will bring to Blu-ray Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) and Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong (1997). The two releases, which will be distirbuted by Kino Lorber, are scheduled to arrive on the market this December.
Made in Hong Kong
Description: The first independent film released in post-Handover Hong Kong, director Fruit Chan's atmospheric shoestring-budget character study is a rough-and-ready piece of work shot on grainy leftover 35mm short ends in the city's overcrowded subsidized housing projects. The result is a tough, pessimistic film, a portrait of a city on the brink that follows the drifting of high school dropout and wannabe Triad tough Autumn Moon (Sam Lee, in a star-making role, opposite a largely nonprofessional cast), who sees little hope for his future or that of his home as a newly created Special Administrative Region within China.
A raw, groundbreaking drama and portrait of nihilistic youth in the same vein as Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991), and The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1995), the film poses questions that remain burningly relevant as tumult engulfs Hong Kong.
The 4K restoration was carried out in the Hong Kong and Bologna headquarters of L'Immagine Ritrovata, made from the original camera negative with the supervision of director Fruit Chan and cinematographer O Sing-Pui.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Description: Like the Royal Theater in The Last Picture Show and the title movie house in Cinema Paradiso, the Fu-Ho is shutting down for good. The Fu-Ho's valedictory screening is King Hu's 1967 wuxia epic Dragon Inn, playing to a motley smattering of spectators. The standard grievances persist: patrons snack noisily and remove their shoes, treating this temple of cinema like their living room. The sense that moviegoing as a communal experience is slipping away takes on a powerful and painful resonance. Yet Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn is too multifaceted to collapse into a simple valentine to the age of pre-VOD cinephilia. A minimalist where King Hu was a maximalist, preferring long, static shots and sparse use of dialogue, Tsai rises to the narrative challenges he sets for himself and offers the slyest, most delicate of character arcs (the manager, a woman with an iron brace on her leg, embarks on a torturous odyssey to deliver food to the projectionist, played by Lee Kang-sheng). By the time the possibility arises that the theater is haunted, we've already identified it as a space outside of time—indeed, two stars of Hu's original opus, Miao Tien and Shih Chun, watch their younger selves with tears in their eyes, past and present commingling harmoniously and poignantly. 4K Restoration by CINEMATEK, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Made in Hong Kong
Description: The first independent film released in post-Handover Hong Kong, director Fruit Chan's atmospheric shoestring-budget character study is a rough-and-ready piece of work shot on grainy leftover 35mm short ends in the city's overcrowded subsidized housing projects. The result is a tough, pessimistic film, a portrait of a city on the brink that follows the drifting of high school dropout and wannabe Triad tough Autumn Moon (Sam Lee, in a star-making role, opposite a largely nonprofessional cast), who sees little hope for his future or that of his home as a newly created Special Administrative Region within China.
A raw, groundbreaking drama and portrait of nihilistic youth in the same vein as Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991), and The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1995), the film poses questions that remain burningly relevant as tumult engulfs Hong Kong.
The 4K restoration was carried out in the Hong Kong and Bologna headquarters of L'Immagine Ritrovata, made from the original camera negative with the supervision of director Fruit Chan and cinematographer O Sing-Pui.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
- Interviews with Director Fruit Chan, Producer Doris Yang, and Producer Daniel Yu
- Audio Commentary by Film Critics Sean Gilman and Ryan Swen
- Re-Release Trailer
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Description: Like the Royal Theater in The Last Picture Show and the title movie house in Cinema Paradiso, the Fu-Ho is shutting down for good. The Fu-Ho's valedictory screening is King Hu's 1967 wuxia epic Dragon Inn, playing to a motley smattering of spectators. The standard grievances persist: patrons snack noisily and remove their shoes, treating this temple of cinema like their living room. The sense that moviegoing as a communal experience is slipping away takes on a powerful and painful resonance. Yet Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn is too multifaceted to collapse into a simple valentine to the age of pre-VOD cinephilia. A minimalist where King Hu was a maximalist, preferring long, static shots and sparse use of dialogue, Tsai rises to the narrative challenges he sets for himself and offers the slyest, most delicate of character arcs (the manager, a woman with an iron brace on her leg, embarks on a torturous odyssey to deliver food to the projectionist, played by Lee Kang-sheng). By the time the possibility arises that the theater is haunted, we've already identified it as a space outside of time—indeed, two stars of Hu's original opus, Miao Tien and Shih Chun, watch their younger selves with tears in their eyes, past and present commingling harmoniously and poignantly. 4K Restoration by CINEMATEK, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
- Audio commentary by film critic Phoebe Chen
- Introduction by film critic Nick Pinkerton
- Light (2019, a short film by Tsai Ming-liang)
- Re-Release Trailer
