Links for 2010-10-15

“Stephen Chow seems to understand the limits and potential of CGI action better than anyone. If CGI is fundamentally inadequate in giving realistic action the same punch it has with real stunts and practical effects, then why not go completely in the other direction? The violence and mayhem in Chow’s action-comedies Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle are spectacularly unreal, and the audience doesn’t mistake them for reality any more than they would the Warner Brothers cartoons that partly define Chow’s goofball sensibility. CGI has been making the impossible possible for years now, but rarely have films embraced the impossible as fervently as Chow. It’s one thing to have to super-cool curvy bullets in Wanted, but another to have a chain-smoking, middle-aged landlady in curlers dash after gangsters with Road Runner speed. His movies are endlessly elastic, and there’s real artistry in the way he digitally bends and stretches the martial-arts genre into a silly cartoon doodle. “