Wen 丨 Ganlin
For "well-trained" Chinese film fans, they need to know more "expectations" and "disappointments" than foreign fans.
When looking forward to the new works of their favorite directors, actors, etc., they must create dazzling film dreams with eagerly awaited expectations, and on the other hand, they also need to accept the irresistible creative crisis that does not know where to emerge from.
This article takes stock of films that Chinese film fans have been looking forward to in recent years, and have been completed or even post-production, but they have not been released due to various natural and man-made disasters.
"Hidden Behind the Knife", "Poetry Eyes Weary of the End"
Xu Haofeng's short and medium stories, short, broken, and fast, are naturally waiting for the material to be made in the film, of course, the person who shoots it must be himself, and the idealistic martial arts and self in the story are difficult for other creators to properly express.
This self-expression of the self-produced and self-marketing industrial chain has been indulged for a long time, and it is inevitable that it will encounter the slashing and killing of the producer of the sober or chaotic "knife extraction" instead of the "hidden knife". "Hidden behind the Knife", which was filmed in 2016 and screened in Golden Horse in 2017, has experienced more than four years of "hiding" and still has not been able to meet the audience.
"Hidden Behind the Knife"
Probably "hiding" out of the tone of the gods, "Poetry Eyes Tired of The End of the World", starring Zhou Xun and Chen Kun, who was killed in 2018, has also not been able to meet the audience.
The novel "Poetic Eyes Tired of the End of the World" can be seen in the "Harvest" magazine in 2019, or the kind of shell that wraps the narrative of the love of the children of the jianghu and the "Tao" of the jianghu that is exclusive to the writer Xu Haofeng.
"Poetry Eyes Weary Of The End"
Of course, there will be fans looking forward to the stable output of Xu Haofeng, but there are definitely many viewers waiting for Zhou Xun and Chen Kun to combine on the screen many years later: Chen Kun plays the wild night sky in a robe, Zhou Xun plays Daogu with a bloody machete, and Little Song Jia is stunning anti-swordsman Wen Shanchun. To paraphrase Xu Haofeng's novel, the joy of the art of war is to win or lose, the fun of the competition is life and death, and the fun of the fans is to expect the unknown in the known.
Inglis
Chen Chong is probably the rare lady in the "Thirteen Invitations" who is in the same frequency as Xu Zhiyuan. When they sit in a San Francisco restaurant discussing the heroism and intellectualism of John Christophe, no viewer thinks they're pretending, because they're supposed to be.
When the level of modern Chinese written expression of domestic stars still remained at the level of indiscriminate land and abuse of punctuation, Chen Chong, who had filmed "Heavenly Bath", went around for thirty years, still unable to step on the artistic reasons for self-expression and relief, and still chose to adapt the novel set in the cultural revolution:
"At the foot of the Tianshan Mountain, a group of young boys and girls met an English teacher like a martyr. His kindness and grace make teenage children fall in love with "Ingles". Liu Ai looks at the absurd world of adults with the eyes of a scrutinizer, and describes to people one by one the group portraits of intellectuals in that particular era in an innocent and humorous tone."
"Inglis" has been completed in 2017, and whether the story of how Shanghai Zhiqing and the "Second Generation of Xinjiang" lived and grew up in this special period has gradually sprouted more social significance beyond the text. In the current information cocoon era, an intellectual who shows a slight sense of sighing resentment and hypocrisy can be sniped at by the public if he is not careful, and it is unlikely that he will become a guide for children's pursuit of truth like the teacher in the story of Ingles.
Set photos of "Inglis"
Empty ideals are just like this, willing to sacrifice is heroism, according to Chen Chong, "Inglis", which has never met with the audience, has also completed its mission.
Under the Ice
"Under the Ice" began filming in 2015, still belongs to the false prosperity of Chinese film and television by the influx of hot money, director Cai Shangjun in the elaboration of the creative concept, but also said, "I just want to find a place that feels particularly cold to shoot, because now China is hot, the social atmosphere is boiling and absurd, but everyone does not know what they are busy with every day." 」
Today, "Under the Ice" has been covered for nearly five years, although In 2017, Huang Bo was also sent to the honor of the best actor at the Film Festival, but the news of the theater release has not been filmed. The cold winter of film and television has blown for several years, whether it is the film and television circle or the domestic environment, there have been changes in the change of things for stars.
Cai Shangjun independently directed not many films, the last film won the Venice Silver Lion Award, "The Sea of People" caused a lot of controversy among domestic fans, still stuck in the comparison between the public version and the film festival version, the audience seems to be a little tired of this kind of poor mountain and bad water out of the narrative of the people.
Perhaps in order to prove that he has a real control over the narrative characters, Wang Haibo, the protagonist of "Under the Ice", has more behavioral trajectories and emotional motivations than "The Sea of People", and is also selling intelligence, picking up guns, robbing, and meeting deadly women on the Russian border.
The various sinking and chaos that Wang Haibo has experienced, coupled with the various nesting of natural metaphors, are the director's overflowing desire for expression, but the expectations left for the audience may be slowly weakened in the year after year.
"When the Wind Rises Again"
The subject of the 500 million detective police collusion has been filmed back and forth too many times by Hong Kong movies, and the rise and fall of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption is not a government file that needs to be revealed in Hong Kong film and television dramas. But it is such an old bottle, Weng Ziguang will continue to fill the new wine, the reason he gave is:
"I liked the lame and Leiluo of that era, and I felt that I wanted to shoot one that belonged to my Weng Ziguang." I don't think "When the Wind Rises Again" is so good, but this is a love letter to Hong Kong movies."
Jiang Zhiqiang of Anle Pictures once described Weng Ziguang as the second stubborn director after Xu Anhua. In addition to the "Blood And Plum" that won the Academy Award, which was marked by more than 100,000 people in Douban, the previous "Micro-friend Girl" and "Bright Sunshine" were not understood by many mainland film fans, and there were many bad reviews, as if the "author effect" had no effect on Weng Ziguang.
But no matter how much, Weng Ziguang believed in his authorship attributes. He hopes to use his own way to look back at the real Hong Kong and look forward to the future of Hong Kong.
"When the Wind Rises Again" cannot be as hot as "Chasing the Dragon", and inexplicable big scenes are impossible, and it is possible to use 16mm film to chase spring and summer. In short, this is weng Ziguang's Hong Kong times plan.
Wind Forest Volcano
Fans' expectations of Mai Junlong have always had a curious mentality.
Mak Junlong, a singer with mediocre singing skills, used three self-intertextual pop songs spanning more than ten years, "Geng Geng Yu Nostalgia", "Never Forget", and "Rashomon" to tell everyone that popular music can also tell stories and play concepts like movies. In 2013, Mai Junlong, who loves storytelling, directed "Zombie" as he wished, and fans finally gained the curiosity of the middle.
Zombie
The tribute of fu second-generation directors to Lin Zhengying's zombie films is not exploitation or waste, but indeed creates a feast for the souls of the abandoned old era of Hong Kong around the theme of "Sound and Appearance". In the organic soul mixture of The horror elements of China, Japan and the United States, it can be seen that this is a rich second generation who wants to carve out the ambitions of the new world in the old order.
From the beginning of filming in 2017 to the current editing and review, when Mai Junlong's second film "Wind Forest Volcano" is about another anti-genre film about the New World Order, the fans' unfinished curiosity mentality has of course been hung up.
The declaration wants to build a more international and humane crime world, Mai Junlong, who has attracted more than 400 million Hong Kong dollars in investment, spent four years writing scripts, half a year of time as an actor, built a 1:1 Causeway Bay live studio in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, and filmed with eight months of domestic and foreign travel, completing the gray world construction of "its disease is like the wind, its Xu is like a forest, its aggression is like fire, and it is not moving like a mountain".
The set of "Wind Forest Volcano"
Needless to say, Mai Junlong, who advocates nostalgia and sadness, will definitely place many classic Hong Kong film scenes in the movie, and will do various renovations in form, just like the snowy Hong Kong in "When the Wind Rises Again", which is different and anxious.
Wisdom Teeth
Mainland film fans' requirements for Zheng Baorui are actually very simple, don't touch the Spring Festival stalls, don't talk about monkeys.
Although he has been an executive director with Du Qifeng for a long time, and has also produced "Accident" that seems to be a very galactic team, Zheng Baorui believes that he is not a galaxy, and he still recognizes Lin Lingdong.
The black, fatalistic belief motif of the Galaxy team does not apply to Zheng Baorui's works, and it can be seen from the "Dog Bites Dog" and "Monster" before galaxy that Zheng Baorui loves to dig out the brutal and cruel cross-section of Hong Kong culture in filth and violence.
Although the original novel of "Wisdom Teeth" is from mainland writers, the whole film is produced in Hong Kong, and the space where the story takes place is also a very geographical old community in Hong Kong. When Zheng Baorui talked about this work that took eight years from planning to finally completing, he always poured too much emotion into Hong Kong.
In the more than three months of shooting in 2017, in order to create a bloody killing and purgatory scene that runs through the whole film, the set had to prepare 15 trucks of garbage layout scenes every day. Judging from the trailer that has released the bloody style of the early years, it seems that the mutilated limbs and corpses in different dead states that appear from time to time can almost be regarded as Zheng Baorui's release of himself, ignoring the author's intentions in the mainland market.
In this way, at least after the release in Hong Kong in 2021, mainland film fans still have a 100% chance to see the best work.
Detective Wars
"In a serial murder case in Hong Kong, the dead were all unsolved suspects, and the murderer appointed himself a "detective" to sensationalize the whole city. Chen Jun, a former detective who was suffering from mental illness, volunteered to solve the case and assisted Detective Li Yi and Fang Lixin and his wife in handling the case.
Although the name of the movie "Detective Wars" is really very popular, but the familiar taste in the introduction, it can be confirmed that "Detective Wars" is the sequel to "Detective" in 2007, although the production company has changed from the galaxy to the emperor, but the lineup of Wei Jiahui and starring Liu Qingyun is enough for fans to look forward to.
Crime movies with multiple personalities as gimmicks are not new, and What Wei Jiahui is superb in "Detective" is that he can place well-organized reasoning clues and foreshadowing on each doppelganger, and can weave every detail to extend horizontally to the final ending.
How did Gao Zhiwei change his gun, what did Chen Guibin's wife look like, and will Gao Zhiwei's seven-fold personality increase? In this way, these clues that fans still enjoy discussing after watching the film are the myths that belong to Wei Jiahui.
In the pilot trailer that has been released in "Detective Wars", the theme of "everyone has a ghost in their hearts" has become the motto of "fighting with monsters, be careful of becoming monsters", coupled with the disclosure of "burning corpses, crushing corpses, flying corpses, cooking corpses" in Lin Feng's lines, "Detective" is going to deal with in the second part, which is probably a more social and crazy crime than the police throwing guns.
In fact, whether the ending is Liu Qingyun or Lin Feng becoming a monster, it doesn't matter if the galaxy fans who are waiting for it are not released, the obsession of the fans will probably become monsters.
"Siberian Tiger"
I once met Geng Jun at a domestic film festival, and he was stunned to wear a Rotterdam cultural shirt, and compared with the academic director, he had a lot less shelf, and what was more interesting was that he used a set of northeastern identity, not the cultural identity of the director, and communicated with the reporters and peers in the same field.
Geng Jun, who has been on the cusp from the chinese independence video to Jinma and Rotterdam, has said many big truths in front of the media:
"My actors are not kitschy in the images, they don't have a greasy smell, because their looks are not well known to the public, they are unfamiliar." 」
"Ceylon's 'Three Monkeys' is the story on Zhiyin, and he tells it in his own way, and it's a great story."
Compared with the small team production of "Hammer and Sickle All Rest" and "Easy + Happy", "Siberian Tiger" is the biggest project that Geng Jun has operated since he started, and the leading actor has become a star for the first time - Ma Li and Zhang Yu, which is what Geng Jun himself said at that time, a greasy image. The use of stars is actually understandable, and the more capital is injected into the pool of creation, there must be a corresponding price.
"A Siberian tiger, a dog, a forklift driver, a middle school teacher, a poet, a debt collector, a pregnant woman, they broke out into contradictions, more and more intense, more and more bizarre, more and more humorous, and then they went to tolerance, a way of tolerance that belongs to the north." 」
"Siberian Tiger" is a story that Geng Jun formed in his head in 2013, and after more than five years of polishing, it has been completed in early 2019. From the film introduction given by the film side, this is actually not a story that will violate many red lines, the human proposition of survival and crime has long been tortuously staged in too many domestic cinema films, and what fans are looking forward to is only in the northeast Hegang narrative space and capital that belong to Geng Jun.
"She Kills"
The cover of the official poster released on the Douban of "She Kills" looks quite lamentable, and the four big characters of "Boot Today" occupy the entire page, but it is a pity that Cao Baoping's "Burning Heart" series of works that were completed in 2018 have not yet waited for the amnesty of "today's release".
Poster of "She Kills"
Cao Baoping, who is good at the black crime genre, has made many movie emperors with his own films, but this does not mean that he will not shoot women. In "Dog Thirteen", the adolescent girl Li Play's change from rebellion to obedience to patriarchal education has shocked many people who have come over, and the adolescent triangle relationship between Li Play, her cousin and Gao Fang has also been handled appropriately and not pretentiously. To be precise, what Cao Baoping is good at portraying is the oppression and violence of various men and women under the shadow of China's patriarchal society.
The story prototype of "She Kills" is one of the famous cases in the domestic Internet, the Tsinghua Zhu Ling poisoning case. How will Cao Baoping direct a film about female crime, four female college students living in the same room, after experiencing a lot of jealousy, confrontation, compassion and cruelty, will choose to use silent evil to persecute their own and others' future.
There are too many subtle female adult friendships, which Cao Baoping rarely touched as a director before, and it is difficult to imagine how this "film emperor manufacturing machine" will train Fan Bingbing, Li Qin, Wang Ziwen, Xin Zhilei, these screen women with different forms.
"She Kills" promotional photos
Fans who are really difficult to portray the female group portrait of Cao Baoping in "She Kills", of course, do not need to be too stubborn, and turning their heads to look forward to Zhou Xun in "Wading through the Sea of Anger" is also a good choice.
"No Other Love"
If the "No Other Love" that was successfully released in 2016 will probably become the "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" in the film circle that year, after all, the female cast of Yuan Quan, Tranquility, Yu Feihong, Qi Xi, Chen Chong, and Han Hong, coupled with the influence of director Zhao Wei, is really difficult to make up a second round in ten years.
At the end of 2020, Zhao Wei revealed in an interview that "No Other Love" from four years ago has been sent for review, and after remake some content replacement, if the progress is fast, it is expected to be released next year. It is unknown how credible this sudden disclosure is, but for the countless "Huaxia Wang Cailing" who must spontaneously sigh "I am touched by myself" in the "Lichun" festival, their heartache is more of Teacher Li Fan's book.
"No Other Love" set photo
There are not many screenwriters in the mainland who can mix the twists and determinations in women's stories and write the word woman on a sad background, and Li Fan counts as the holder of this minority.
"When the horticulturist Zhi Ning felt that her emotional path had reached a desperate situation, she met a middle-aged scholar Kou Yi who haunted her and began an emotional adventure like a moth to the fire."
Judging from the brief plot summary released by the film, Zhi Ning's moth fighting fire is almost an upgraded version of Wang Cailing's dream chasing. If Zhao Wei's consolation for trial is true, the members of the major Huaxia Wang Cailing Association should not only be moved by themselves in the spring season in the future, but at least for Zhao Wei.