{"id":14466,"date":"2021-09-11T21:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T01:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=14466"},"modified":"2023-12-30T17:38:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T22:38:36","slug":"sparrow-2008-johnnie-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/14466","title":{"rendered":"Sparrow (2008, Johnnie To)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bird-tossing right out of the gate. The sparrow looks like a finch, but I’m immediately happy that there’s even a bird and the title wasn’t a metaphor, though lbxd says it’s also slang for pickpocket. Back to that opening scene, Simon Yam is smiling too much and gliding around his artfully lit apartment like he’s in a musical, which nicely sets the tone for this movie, a HK crime flick where nobody gets killed and the climax is a wordless slow-mo umbrella dance. Johnnie To gives Throw Down<\/a><\/em> fans another romantic balloon incident, and uses some kind of wide-angle lens distortion throughout. It looks and moves differently than his others, light on its feet, and a movie about a pickpocket gang gives him ample opportunity to show off his mastery in staging and visual design. Perfect movie.<\/p>\n

Kelly and sparrow\/finch:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Simon, Bo, Sak, Mac:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The Girl is Kelly Lin – she and the protege pickpocket Ka Tung Lan are returning from the previous year’s Mad Detective<\/a><\/em> and Triangle<\/em>. Lead dude Simon Yam was Lok in the Election<\/em> series<\/a>. Pickpocket Mac (the one with the busted head) has had some small roles, and Sak with the glasses is To’s assistant director and editor, who would later make a Donnie Yen movie about ancient warriors time traveling to modern-day HK. Suet “Fatso” Lam works for Kelly’s boss\/captor Mr. Fu, and the umbrella showdown pits his skills against our guys’ for her freedom.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

EDIT 2023:<\/strong> Watched again with Trevor, who then asked for all my Johnnie To films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bird-tossing right out of the gate. The sparrow looks like a finch, but I’m immediately happy that there’s even a bird and the title wasn’t a metaphor, though lbxd says it’s also slang for pickpocket. Back to that opening scene, Simon Yam is smiling too much and gliding around his artfully lit apartment like he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,1898,879,444,2915],"class_list":["post-14466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2000s","tag-bird-tossing","tag-johnnie-to","tag-pickpocket","tag-simon-yam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16128,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14466\/revisions\/16128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}