 |
|
|
| Yi Yi - Criterion Collection |
 enlarge
|
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $27.99
You Save: $11.96 (30%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 44 reviews)
Sales Rank: 2996
Category: DVD
Director: Edward Yang
Publisher: Criterion
Studio: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Label: Criterion
Format: Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Taiwanese Chinese (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 173 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 715515018623
EAN: 0715515018623
ASIN: B000FILVOG
Release Date: July 11, 2006 (In 15 Days)
Theatrical Release Date: November 30, 1999
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Not yet released
|
|
Similar Items:
| " |
A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection |
| " |
Koko, A Talking Gorilla |
| " |
Viridiana - Criterion Collection |
| " |
Six Moral Tales By Eric Rohmer - Criterion Collection (The Bakery Girl of Monceau / Suzanne's Career / My Night at Maud's / La collectionneuse / Claire's Knee / Love in the Afternoon) |
| " |
A Nos Amours - Criterion Collection |
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
A wedding and a grandmother's illness reveal fault lines in the lives of one Taipei family in Edward Yang's extraordinary film. Yi Yi is built from deceptively simple elements that together create a complex, warm, and utterly convincing portrait of family life. NJ Jian is a businessman facing bankruptcy, but he has to juggle his financial problems with family strife when his mother-in-law falls into a coma. NJ's wife, Min-Min, brings her mother home, and each family member--including daughter Ting-Ting and her delightful little brother Yang-Yang--spends hours talking to the old lady. These conversations become confessionals and the characters gradually re-evaluate their relationships. There are no catastrophic conflicts, only the ordinary, sometimes troubled, unfolding of lives. Yang enhances the film's sense of reality by frequently holding the camera back from the action. The use of long shots and unexpected angles makes it seem like the audience is eavesdropping, catching glimpses of lives passing by. Yi Yi is almost three hours long, but it flies by. Yang is both a consummate, restrained technician and a subtle director of actors. The combination is a magical one. --Simon Leake
Description
With the runaway international acclaim of this film, Taiwanese director Edward Yang could no longer be called Asian cinemas best-kept secret. Yi Yi swiftly follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-aged father NJs tenuous flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yangs attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, Yang imbues every gorgeous frame with a deft, humane clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.
|
|
Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
kicking little men and screechy women May 12, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm not going to try to get all the characters names right in Yi Yi. And there are a lot of characters, an extended family and various lovers and children. Taiwan is a modern, impressive city, a place rarely seen on American television or film. I might be looking at Manhattan rather than Taipei. The computer engineer's family, the wife with spiritual emptiness, the teen daughter involved in her first serious sexual activity, the grandmother on life support, and the eight-year old son teased to exhaustion by little girls, they live in a high-rise condominium over a raised superhighway. Then there's the ner-do-well brother-in-law, so superstitious that he marries his pregnant wife only on a Chinese lucky day. His old girlfriend shows up at the wedding to raise hell. She returns at the babies Chinese confirmation for more of the same. A fight breaks out, kicking little men and screechy women.
Our engineer had walked away from a young love, and while wife is with the monks, he renews the relationship on a business trip to Tokyo. He is in love. So is she, but, I can't tell you what happens without giving away this poignant part of the plot. Engineer's daughter is having a rather unusual fling as well. I've left out a ton of information as this film was close to three hours long, but watch the beautiful cinematography of Edward Yang, and his brilliant pacing. One thinks it is real life.
 Nice story but... May 1, 2006
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I agree with other viewers that this is a very nice story, but it drags too much. If it wasn't for hilarious dialogues and a few ironic moments i.e. the baby-shower that turns into a fight or the brother-in-law failed suicide attempt, the movie would have been a little boring. The actors which I enjoyed watching most were the brother-in-law and the little boy : perhaps because both never acted before, they were quite funny and spontaneous. I personally wasn't impressed by the other main characters' acting: I thought they lacked charisma on the screen. I was also somewhat disappointed by the picture from an artistic point of view, perhaps because I've been used to watch Asian movies of unique esthetic quality (i.e. "Spring in a Small Town") Or perhaps this impression was due to the poor quality of the DVD.
 Dull, tedious, melodramatic February 24, 2006
1 out of 15 found this review helpful
A dull, tedious, melodramatic effort that wastes the cast and the craft of scene setting. Everything goes out the window once people start moving and talking and it takes hours for the story to reach the predictable non-conclusion. The film is laden with cliches and burdened by a lack of focus. Pick a story out of here and you can make 20 films, but don't throw together teasers and expect everyone to appreciate the slow-mo trainwreck of family tragedies that this movie encompasses.
A nice film if you hold on! August 27, 2005
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The film drags at the beginning to a degree that I had to keep myself from stopping it many times if it weren't for the money I had spent on it! Later on as the events began to unfold, I started enjoying the film. It is a nice and touching story about a family in China, depicting human deepest interactions on all levels starting with the little clever boy Yang-Yang (whos words and ideas I found most amusing) to his father who's on the verge of losing his business and relives an old love story.
The worst thing about the DVD edition is the poor quality of the picture. It's really disappointing. The translation is neither good nor clear, and many times you can't tell who is saying what.
Bottom line: a nice story but it drags too much, very poor quality of the film transfer.
 No thank you. January 30, 2005
1 out of 13 found this review helpful
I found Yi Yi to be a tedious film, at times the action and characters felt quite contrived and cliched. The subtitles were poorly highlighted and I often could not figure out who was speaking the line. The only refreshing thing in the movie was the final scene at the grandmother's funeral, but it was not worth a three hour wait to get to this poigant scene. Do yourself a favor, and skip this one.
|
|
|
Copyright Runningonkarma.com 2006
|
|
|
