Whaddayathink

In this film, Forbidden City Cop directed by Stephen Chow, there are some thematic and stylistic motifs from the previous films by Stephen Chow that I have watched, although it's not as similar as the rest of the films had been to each other. Starting off with the thematic motifs in this movie, there is, once again, a theme of love, and sort of follows Stephen's basic template for most of his movies. Ling Ling Fat in the beginning of the movie was one of the emperor's private body guards, but got demoted into being a person who does all the "low life" jobs around the palace after being rather dimwitted. So, following Chow's template, there is the slightly dimwitted man. Then he just goes about living his life until he goes to a doctor's convention and finds the emperor in an alien outfit while doctors around him was getting killed. That was the strange situation the dimwitted character was thrown into. Throughout the rest of the story, he goes around to try to find the guy who killed everyone and put the emperor in the alien outfit, and ultimately captures the person who did it through utilizing his love of his wife. As for stylistic motifs that fits in with the director's body of work, the whole movie was made up of "nonsense comedy", a style invented and used by Stephen Chow. What this means is basically everything in the movie is just pure nonsense and does not even make sense half the time, but it just **works.** For example, one second a bunch of people are fighting each other in a whorehouse back in the days where there were still emperors in China, and the next thing you know, there's a spotlight shining on characters and the emperor is just handing out Chinese Oscar awards to the characters. The mise en scene also helps in creating this kind of nonsense comedy, as the props like the "helicopter", the "alien", the actors, the nose hair, and mouth-gun contraption makes the whole movie very silly and full on nonsense.
 * 1. For this assignment, think about some of the thematic, and stylistic motifs that you've seen in the four previous films by the director that you've watched. What do you notice in this film that fits in with this director's body of work? **


 * 2. What are some of the most iconic director's choices that you've seen in any of the five films you've watched? What directors choices stood out the most to you? These examples don't necessarily need to be repeated in multiple films, but have helped define the director's image. For example, Kubrick might be known for the iconic scene of Danny riding his bike in one continuous steady-cam shot, or the most famous match cut of all time in // 2001: A Space Odyssey // (which we will talk about later). Both of these examples are inherently 'Kubrick' moments, even though they don't have 'echoes' in his other films. **

There are some famous and iconic choices of Stephen Chow's that I have seen in his movies, with one being the tracking shot in //Kung Fu Hustle// in the part where the landlady was chasing Sing away from the complex. This, I feel, is an iconic shot, because when combined with the editing (like the blurred spinning legs, the dust trail, etc) it's made into a rather memorable scene, and also helps to define that Stephen Chow as a man who likes making parodies of things, as the scene was made to be a parody of coyote chasing roadrunner scenes in the Road Runner Show. This scene was important to the movie as it was used to introduce one of the superpowers that Sing possessed. Another iconic choice of Stephen Chow's that stood out to me in that movie was the Buddhist Palm scene, where Sing was propelled up into the sky, stepped on a eagle to boost himself higher, see a cloud in the shape of Buddha, and descend rapidly in a fireball and imprints a giant palm print on the ground. This shot is iconic of Chow's work, as quite a bit of special effects were used to make this scene possible, and Chow is known for loving to use special effects. The jump cutting between the Beast and Sing during this scene worked really well as well, because it shows how what Chow was doing affected the Beast.

From the movie //ShaoLin Soccer//, one of the iconic scenes was the scene where Sing was talking with Mui and then everyone just started to dance. Before a person started to dance though, there are closeup shots of the person's face, and the cameraman zooms rapidly into the person's eye to create an extreme closeup shot of the eye, where a flame bursts and the person gets into the mood. This reflects Chow quite a bit, as it is a prime example of his "nonsense comedy" style, with everything being so random and not really making any sense. Another iconic director's choice in the movie was in the final soccer match, the scene where the ball tornadoed into the other team's goal. it stars off with a canted shot of Mui with the ball, already spinning in her hand, symbolizing that she was going to do something weird with the ball. Next, with the jump cutting shots between Mui, Sing, Sing's patched up shoes, and the ball, it showed one of the main themes of Chow's movies, redemption through love. Again, the editing with the special effects and all created the nonsense comedy which Chow is well known for.

From the movie //From Beijing With Love//, one of the iconic director's choices being the props (part of mise en scene) that were used in the movie to create the "nonsense comedy" style of Chow. The props like the crazy inventions of the Chinese version of "Q" in this movie are really funky and doesn't make any sense at all, unlike the movie it was based off of (the James Bond series.) Another iconic choice of his in that movie was that the whole movie was a parody of the James Bond movies. It's iconic of Chow because he often parodies movies into a more Cantonese style and makes it really funky too, again creating his "nonsense comedy" style.

From the movie //Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons,// one of the iconic director's choices was the editing that was done to the movie. As stated before, Chow loves to, and often uses a lot of special effects in his movies, and it really adds to his "nonsense comedy" style of movies. In this particular movie, special effects were used to make people fly, add in demons, and used on weaponry as well. An example of one of the "weapons" added in via special effects would be the enlarged foot, which, when watched in the movie, is rather comical and complete nonsense. Another iconic choice of Chow's in this movie is the choice Chow made during the scene where the female demon hunter dances in front of the moon and gets killed. The reason why I say that is because with the low-key lighting in the scene, the emotional non-digetic sound of the music combined with the diegetic sound of her singing, combined with the mise en scene of the dance choreography and the white costume makes it a very memorable and emotional scene.

From the movie //The God Of Cookery//, one of the iconic choices made by Stephen Chow was that the whole movie was a parody of a couple different popular Cantonese movies and shows. Stephen loves making parodies of things, and with this movie, he took the different popular Cantonese movies and shows, mashed them up together, made them all into parodies, and created the whole movie into "nonsense comedy". Also, another iconic choice of Chow's in the movie (along with all other movies mentioned in this page except //Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons//) was to star himself in the movie, following his basic plot structure of "A slightly dimwitted, but talented man gets thrown into strange circumstances, where he ultimately finds redemption and resolution through love". The character that he plays also has Chow's real life traits, which is pretty iconic to his movies.

From the movie //Forbidden City Cop,// one of the iconic choices made by Chow was the match cutting between a head being sliced open with a watermelon being hit by a stick, a guy getting kicked in the testicles with cracking eggs, and a guy getting his bones shred apart with a chicken being torn apart. I find that this shot is very iconic of Chow in this movie, as it creates a violent and gorey, yet comedic mood. Another iconic choice of Chow's in this movie is the random dancing scene that was added into the movie. Chow has added seemingly random dance scenes, with sudden non-diegetic music, random people starting to dance in synchronization, and with curious choreography in quite a few of his movies, including //Kung Fu Hustle, ShaoLin Soccer,// and this movie as well. I think that this is iconic to Chow, because even though it seems completely random and out of place, it just **works** in the movie, creating that "nonsense comedy" style of Chow's.