February 24, 2007
What are the best Chinese movies and movie lines?
“你知不知道有一种鸟没有脚的？他的一生只能在天上飞来飞去，飞累了就在风里睡觉，一辈子只能落地一次，那就是他死的时候。(Did you know that there's a kind of bird that has no legs. They spend their whole lives flying around, and when they get tired they sleep on the wind, and the only time they ever touch the ground is when they die.It's a typical Wong Kar-wai line—the faux-poetic, existential schmaltz so essential to the unique atmosphere of his films. This line of dialogue leads all with 23% of the vote.
The best overall movie goes to Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬), which, in the voting that started from Feb. 9, accumulated 75% of the vote, with the runner-up being Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (卧虎藏龙) at 7%. The films are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, with heavy doses of Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou.
To see all the entries in the dialogue vote, go here and cast a vote. To vote on a film, go here.
The best movie dialogue and the best movie do have one thing in common: Leslie Cheung (张国荣), the famed Hong Kong actor that committed suicide a couple of years back. He is the one that said the line Days, and his performance as the "concubine" in Farewell can safely be said to be one of the finest in his career as well the thing that really made that film.
Photo from 163.com
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Definitely the best line from that movie was when Carina Lau snaps "don't fall in love with me!" I guess it doesn't make any sense out of context, though...
Crazy list of best movies. Really of the wall. "Days of Being Wild" is off the list, but "Curse of the Golden Flower" and "House of Flying Daggers" is on it? At least they left off "The Promise." I think the selection of movies was rigged to make "Farewell My Concubine" the only movie on there with a chance of winning. Maybe Chen Kaige paid them off.
Yeah, and the other thing was that it was all movies made in the last 15 years or so...what's up with that? I mean those are all decent movies, more in line with "art cinema" standards around the world, but it still seems they discounted any films from before that. What about "Yellow Earth" by Chen Kaige? Surely better than some of the others on the list.
Yeah, and I just don't get who's pre-selected the 'cult quotes' - besides 顶你个肺！ they all seem dull... I know that context is importaint, but even placed within context, most of them are just lines... Plain lines...
"schmaltz"? Channeling Jackie Mason are we?
What about movies like "cell phone"?
Not that anybody asked me, but I'll put "Days of Being Wild," "Needing You," "PTU," "Chungking Express," "Master Killer (the 36th Chamber of Shaolin)," "Fist of Legend," "God of Cooking," "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Hard Boiled," "Flowers of Shanghai," "Farewell My Concubine," and "Comrades, Almost a Love Story" as tops of the pops.
Days of Being Wild is the best ever. The best line ever is something from Stephen Chow.
Zhang Yimou sucks and sucks hard.
what about "To Live"(活着) by Zhang Yimou. I think that's got to be up there with "Farewell My Concubine" and much much better than "Curse of the Golden Flower" and "House of Flying Daggers".
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