unimpression

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A desire, yet to be met - except by PLURIBUS, SINNERS, and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER- of being impressed by something again (replays, like my last-night completed RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2) don't count but my god was that, is that, an amazing work of game-art): Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN left me wanting and, indeed, increasingly annoyed the more I think about it; MOBLAND was a great series for someone who's a never watched a mob movie / series before nearly brought down by stunt casting of Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren in roles they were anything but born to play and saved only by, as ever, Tom Hardy (and Paddy Consadine) who I'll watch in anything (MOBLAND being a case in point); Wong Kar-Wai's BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI put me to sleep for the three episodes I watched: It's not that I don't think there's good stuff out there, it's that 98% of what I've encountered feels so anodyne and neutered that, ack, IDK, maybe it's just a phase - a fucking dispiriting phase, but a phase nonetheless. Speaking of dispiriting, more fucking snow.

BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI (finally!)

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At last: news that Wong Kar Wai’s series, BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI will premiere on The Criterion Channel. Fall-ish?

“Blossoms” is an adaptation of Jin Yuchen’s novel of the same name which follows the lives of Shanghai residents from the end of China’s Cultural Revolution, in the early ‘60s, through the end of the 20th century.

Wong, who oversaw the show, directed 19 of the 30 episodes. The series started airing in December 2023 in China and consisted of around 25 hours of television.

When it was announced seven years ago, “Blossoms” was supposed to be Wong’s next film, but it then morphed into a TV series. It’s received positive reviews in China and, after an initially slow start, became an immense cultural success in the country. Some of the filming locations in Shanghai have even become tourist attractions.