A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Friday, August 1, 2025

Breaking News (Johnnie To, 2004)

Richie Jen and Kelly Chen in Breaking News

Cast: Richie Jen, Kelly Chen, Nick Cheung, Eddie Cheung, Benz Hui, Lam Suet, Yong You, Ding Haifeng, Li Haitao, Simon Yam, Alan Chiu Chung-San, Maggie Shiu, Wong Chi-wai, Wong Wah-wo. Screenplay: Chan Hing-kai, Yip Tin-shing. Cinematography: Cheng Siu-keung. Production design: Bruce Yu. Film editing: David M. Richardson. Music: Ben Cheung, Chung Chi-wing.

Johnnie To's Breaking News treats media manipulation as if it were something new, which it isn't. It's been with us at least since FDR used radio for his "fireside chats" and Adolf Hitler hired Leni Riefensthal to make Triumph of the Will (1935). But propaganda is so much a part of our life that although To's thriller tells us nothing new, it cleverly integrates it into a standard cops-and-crooks plot. When a shootout between the police and the bad guys goes wrong, media-savvy police superintendent Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen) takes over with a double aim: to catch the criminals and to save the department's reputation. The failed shootout takes place in a bravura opening sequence, in which Cheng Siu-keung's camera travels through, around, up, and over the scene with breathtaking, apparently uninterrupted fluidity. The movie barely rests after that's over. There are a few bobbles in the movie's storytelling, and it's sometimes hard to see who's shooting whom, but we're here for the chase, the suspense, and a few laughs, so nobody who really matters will mind. 

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