{"id":17736,"date":"2025-08-11T22:00:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T02:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=17736"},"modified":"2025-08-09T13:10:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T17:10:44","slug":"shanghai-blues-1984-tsui-hark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/17736","title":{"rendered":"Shanghai Blues (1984, Tsui Hark)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuba guy (Kenny Bee of some early Hou movies) barely meets short-haired Shu (Sylvia Chang of some early Edward Yang movies) under a bridge when the war started, now trying to meet her at war&#8217;s end as planned.  They each get pickpocketed and rip off pedicab drivers, identities and intentions are mistaken, it works out.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/shanghai2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>An atrociously dubbed comedy.  After buying the <em>Once Upon a Time<\/em> box set and watching some twenty Tsui Hark movies, it cracks me up that this is the one that&#8217;s universally loved by the letterboxders I follow.  Them: &#8220;just <a href=\"https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/jackseibert\/film\/shanghai-blues\/\">pure joy and beauty<\/a> at every turn&#8221; &#8230; &#8220;A work of <a href=\"https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/jakepcole\/film\/shanghai-blues\/\">pure balletic grace<\/a>, and a reminder that Hong Kong&#8217;s romcoms are every bit as ahead of the pack as their action movies.&#8221;  Only <a href=\"https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/notdavekehr\/film\/shanghai-blues\/\">Dave Kehr<\/a> makes sense: &#8220;Hark&#8217;s colors have the almost startling intensity of old Technicolor; combined with his stroboscopic cutting, they make the film seem to fizz and sparkle on the screen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Pure joy and beauty?<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/shanghai1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuba guy (Kenny Bee of some early Hou movies) barely meets short-haired Shu (Sylvia Chang of some early Edward Yang movies) under a bridge when the war started, now trying to meet her at war&#8217;s end as planned. They each get pickpocketed and rip off pedicab drivers, identities and intentions are mistaken, it works out. [&hellip;]<\/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":[357,200,30,1318,1991,1979],"class_list":["post-17736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-china","tag-identity","tag-romantic-comedy","tag-shanghai","tag-tsui-hark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17736","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=17736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17764,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17736\/revisions\/17764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}