Siem Reap
And Monday Movie Talk
Hello you good people of Substack! Hope you all had a good weekend!
I had a filmy one. I got to watch three movies over the weekend: Reservoir Dogs on Friday in honour of Michael Madsen, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Sunday, and on Saturday I watched In the Mood for Love in theatre.
This was not the first time I’d watched Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino’s a great story teller. All the actings were good including Madsen-may he rest in peace-, but I was especially impressed by Tim Roth’s American accent, and I have to say, Mr. Roth would be the best actor to play a perfect psychopath.
TTSS is a decent movie, probably not as good as the novel. But early on in the movie, I noticed the muted colour palette of the movie. And the movie was clearly shot on film, so the nerd in me had to know. It turned out the movie was mostly shot on Fujifilm’s Eterna 500T 8573. The look is very different from the Kodak stocks.
The highlight of the weekend, of course, was seeing Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, or 花樣年華, if you read Chinese. It’s been out for 25 years, and I’d never watched it. I am glad I waited this long and caught it in theatre now, having lived in Hong Kong for nearly half of that time.
The subdued romance is paired perfectly with the outlandish colour palette and style. Christopher Doyle’s cinematography is outstanding: the creative angle and framing in confined spaces, the lighting, and of course, the colour. I also love the fact that Wong Kar-wai casually threw in the old lady of the landlord’s family who only speaks Shanghai dialect in a Cantonese movie. If you don’t speak Chinese, you most likely missed it. This movie is now on my rewatchable list.
Towards the end of the movie there was the Cambodia storyline, shot in Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. There was one particular shot in the montage of Angkor Wat that looked very similar to a photo I’d taken there. And this made me very proud, which brings me to today’s post. Here’s that photo and a few others.
Okay, my photo was shot in portrait mode, and I waited intentionally for people to walk onto those steps on the other end of the long corridor. But hey, the idea was the same.
UGH! I mean…. Fuck Instagram! Am I right? There are many other reasons to hate Instagram besides this type of photos, but I am not gonna bore you with an essay.
So there it is! Thank you for visiting me in my corner. I hope you all have a good week ahead of you! See ya!
Ugh yes! Fuck Instagram for those kind of photos. Why the need to turn away and pretend that you are walking away? (I am in a bad mood, hence the rant). Although when I first saw the final image, I did wonder if the guy was proposing and she was trying to walk away. THEN I noticed his camera 😂
Lol, that last bit was gold. The market photos were really nice here, but they were all great. Wong Kar Wai is one of my favourites, In The Mood is definitely a great one and I'd have killed to see it in the theatre, but the one I love most is Happy Together. It's just so unbelievably beautifully shot (another Doyle film). If you haven't it's definitely worth a watch.