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Admiring Gong Li
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cocoa
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 4044
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 Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 11:20 am Post subject: |
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Nice pic!!
Thanks Newpath! |
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Manny
Joined: 28 Aug 2006
Posts: 23
Location: France
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| Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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there's a little Gong Li interview (mostly about Zhang Yimou's movies) in the french "Premiere" of March,and Gong Li says in this interview that she feels that she can play everything after "Miami Vice",because Isabella is the character she studied and worked the most for!  |
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cocoa
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Manny wrote: | | there's a little Gong Li interview (mostly about Zhang Yimou's movies) in the french "Premiere" of March,and Gong Li says in this interview that she feels that she can play everything after "Miami Vice",because Isabella is the character she studied and worked the most for! |
I had no idea she prepared so much for that role. |
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Manny
Joined: 28 Aug 2006
Posts: 23
Location: France
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| Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:16 pm Post subject: |
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| cocoa wrote: | | I had no idea she prepared so much for that role. |
That's what she says in this interview.
She says that she has learnt to speak english with a cuban accent,to use a weapon,to dance salsa,and she also studied the "past" of her character,the personal "life" and psychology of her character,she has learnt about the drug traffic,etc!
But that's nothing really new for a Michael Mann actor/actress,because everyone of his actor/actress studies and learns very much,they must prepare their characters before and during the shooting (for example,Will Smith learnt boxing before shooting ALI,William Petersen met and talked to many cops before shooting MANHUNTER,James Caan learnt how the use real tools for the heist in THIEF,etc!)
Gong Li says that Michael Mann forced her to outdo herself! |
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NewPath
Joined: 22 May 2006
Posts: 1334
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| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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Just found this nice review on Desicritics.org
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Movie Review: A Different Spice Flavors Miami Vice
August 08, 2007
Aspi
In Michael Mann’s undercover drug-bust thriller Miami Vice, everyone goes about doing their thing with calm efficiency. Sure, there are moments of drama – but they are dealt with underplayed emotion and direct consequential action. And tricky though the movie is to get engaged with – especially in the first ten minutes or so – it ultimately pulls you in with a gorgeous seductive vibe.
As a TV series, Miami Vice was a cheese fest that lasted from 1984 to 1989. Having produced the movie under his shingle, Mann is intimately familiar with the franchise. But he is also an extraordinary director – and in the movie he turns the feel of the show upside down and delivers a movie so gritty that it can best be described as UnMiami Vice.
Mann does this first by carefully replicating available light in his scenes. Often the camera is held by hand or mounted on the shoulder in longer-than-usual continuous shots. Mann avoids techniques like jump-cuts to make sure his movie doesn’t completely descend into reality territory. He creates an urgent energy that runs through the film and becomes its signature.
Sound effects are kept deliberately real – although the temptation to punch up a few here and there must have been great, especially for a summer tent pole like this movie. The music is played under the main audio track as opposed to over it.
Although the movie looks wonderful, it has some problems for which it provides its own rather elegant solution. But first, the bare bones plot – one of the two major issues with the flick.
Following a leak and a deal gone bad, the FBI turn to Miami-Dade detectives Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) for help. The detectives set up a front as shipment transporters and start trafficking cargo from Cuba to the US for a mysterious drug lord named Montoya. Slowly, they set Montoya up for a fall.
Farrell and Foxx are both terrific physical actors. But displaying layers of facial emotion is not their strong suit. By keeping the plot loose and thin and the emotion underplayed and real, Mann has to deal with the threat of losing emotional weight in his film. Here, a risky piece of casting delivers in spades.
Gong Li is a fine actress and a strikingly beautiful woman. But none of her previous performances prepared me for her work here as a Cuban Chinese drug dealer’s business manager called Isabella. She slides seamlessly into the challenging format of the movie and makes it her own. She is able to put emotional distance between herself and the other characters in the film, but fill that distance up with a range of feelings. Her face remains a mask with sparing expressions – consistent with a character that has to deal with dangerous criminals on a daily basis and outthink most of them. But her body language around different characters conveys a different story – and acts as a guide to what she experiences internally.
Her turn anchors the movie and ultimately makes it more than an ordinary sleek thriller.
http://desicritics.org/2007/08/08/000444.php
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cocoa
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 4044
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:08 am Post subject: |
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Too bad none of this was on the Directors cut.
| Quote: | I heard there was a Neptune shoot-out, and longer love scenes (with Gong Li's twins and all), but really thanks to the bored and prudish American test audiences these were omitted from the final cut.
"Also, the big shootout happens just after the halfway point, and it’s so good that nothing after it really reaches the same level of intensity. The shootout at the end is good, but it’s just not as good, so as a result, the second half of the film suffers a bit. But hey, that’s what they pay editors to figure out. I just work in a bread store."
Source: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/22999 |
Last edited by cocoa on Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:09 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HighSierras
Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 162
Location: Las Vegas
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Cocoa
(with Gong Li's twins and all)
This means what I think it does? 
"Gong Li is terrific, though. Much like her work in Memoirs of a Geisha, she takes a clichéd role (here it’s the “bad girl” currently involved with Crockett who had a previous history with the main baddie) and brings this raw intensity and sexuality to it. And a certain tenderness too; one scene in particular, where Crockett and her lie in bed during a romantic “time-out” in Cuba and just talk about how they ended up where they did in this stage of their lives, Li brings a real warmth and sensuality that’s quite disarming, especially in the middle of this epic police drama. You almost wish the movie could center on the relationship between these two."
I had to buy this movie. The love scenes, dance scene, and boat ride I play over and over. LOL exceptional !!!!! |
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cocoa
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 4044
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| This aired on regular cable TV(TBS) last night. Still think it's a very underated film and performance by Li. |
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cocoa
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 4044
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| Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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Lost some respect for Farrell.  Gong Li was amazing in the film and its too bad he does not give her any credit. She worked her butt off. I think I recall her telling Bey Logan she liked the film and Very much enjoyed the experience.
"Colin Farrell is Sorry That the Miami Vice Movie Was Horrible"
| Quote: | The Miami Vice movie could've been as great and iconic as the series that preceded it. Instead it was met with decent, but not exactly enthusiastic reviews and managed to only get back about $65 million of its reported $125 million budget at American box offices.
But if you thought it sucked, you're not alone. The film's star Colin Farrell, who stepped into the Don Johnson-role, didn't much care for it.
"Miami Vice? I didn't like it so much - I thought it was style over substance and I accept a good bit of the responsibility," Farrell told British film mag Total Film.
"It was never going to be Lethal Weapon, but I think we missed an opportunity to have a friendship that also had some elements of fun."
If you thought the flick was awesome (you wouldn't be alone, our reviewer loved it), maybe you could chalk Farrell's remarks up to the fact his career hasn't been quite the same since.
Vice was the last big, Hollywood blockbuster he carried. He's done respected work in smaller films, sure, but he's fallen off the A-List. Of course, maybe the drug problems and sex tape had more to do with that than the box office disappointment of Crocket and Tubbs. |
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