To my mind, there are two truly great books written about Hong Kong cinema. One is Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins’ Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head which is unadulterated enthusiasm in excelsis and a high water mark for fanboy writing done right. The other is straight out of academia and it’s David Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong. Bordwell isn’t about themes and meaning and symbolism. Instead, he takes a movie apart like a swordsman, dissecting every frame and figuring out how it works. He’s not interested in telling us what Hong Kong movies mean, he’s interested in telling us how they’re made and how that’s changed over the years.
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Unfortunately, both books look like they’re out of print, and new copies of Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong go for $99 (used are much cheaper, but still). Seizing the means of production in his socialist mitts, however, Bordwell has just released a new an improved Planet Hong Kong himself. The book is only available as a digital edition but it’s vastly superior to the first edition. With expanded chapters, color photos (the first edition is all black and white), and new chapters about changes in the Hong Kong film industry since he wrote the first edition, it’s a must have. It’s in pdf format so you don’t even need a fancy digital reader to read it. There’s lots of expanded info on Johnnie To that makes this book a must-have for To fans. Bordwell’s had a lot of access to Johnnie To over the past few years and this is the best writing about To and Milkyway Image out there.
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Priced at $15 (which is steep for a digital book – but here’s hoping price might come down) it’s available on his blog here.
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To promote the book, Bordwell is doing a lot of posts on his blog about Hong Kong cinema, including:
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- looking at Jackie Chan’s style of action
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- a precis on how Hong Kong gun action works
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- a long look at the late-90’s Hong Kong film industry
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- a thumbnail guide to 25 HK classics
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