Ashes of Time Redux

The film does show its age but fans of Wong Kar-wai will enjoy the special features on Kar-wai's filmmaking and more.
A complex but beautiful film with characters and a storyline that has so much layers, it's very hard even 15-years later to even describe.

Wong Kar-wai's "ASHES OF TIME" which is an adaption of Louis Cha's popular novels "The Legend of Condor Heroes" but yet unrelated gets remastered and re-edited and has been released in theaters in 2008 under the title "ASHES OF TIME REDUX" and will be released on DVD in March 2009.

The choice of revisiting the film was due to a major film warehouse going into bankruptcy in 1998 and Kar-Wai was asked to pick up his film or lose it. Upon finding the film, the film was in pieces. Kar-Wai knew that he wanted to re-edit the film, part of the challenge that he faced was trying to get the film from International distributors and literally having to go worldwide in trying to get the film footage needed to restore the film and then re-editing it.

Five years in trying to get the pieces and restoring it, the film has been...

Wow Compellig movie
I must thank Newsweek or I never would have heard about this movie. If I Had not read about it in the previous review I never would have known about the supposedly poor quality f the DVD because I never noticed it. I found the cinematography very compelling with its four seasons was striking especially during the Summer portion. I believe that Ashes of Time Redux is a great movie as defined by Roger Ebert, a movie so compelling you want to watch it again. This movie is universal in it themes, has a compelling score, has bold cinematography and a compelling characters and a beautifully sad ending that brought tears to my eyes.

The original movie is better
The original movie Ashes of Time was a masterpiece and gets 5 stars. Every shot of the film was like a painting, every line of dialogue was poetry.

The only thing I like about the redux is the sharper images. The new music is not half as effective as the old music. The added titles severed the film into sections and disrupted the flow of the film. The new editing destroyed Leslie Cheung's narrative and rhythm of the film. I hate the bright yellow tint in desert scenes and green tint in some other scenes that make them look annoyingly unnatural. Brigitte Lin's dialogue was changed from the original Cantonese to Mandarin and sounds stiff, but is tolerable. I wish they had just cleaned up the image quality and kept everything else intact.

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