Cantonese film is sadly dying a slow death. Last year, the Mandarin film Curse of the Golden Flower ruled the box office, though Andrew Lau/Alan Mak’s Confession of Pain gave it a run for its money. This year, the big Chinese flick is once again a Mandarin film, though the director and one of its star are Hong Kong-based. Thankfully, Pang Ho-Cheung comes to the rescue with Trivial Matters - an adaptation of seven short stories Pang wrote and directed himself. This time, Pang and producer Chapman To called in all their favors and got a ton of young stars - including Eason Chan, Edison Chan, Juno Mak, Gillian Chung, Stephy Tang, Stephanie Chang, Chapman’s wife Crystal Tin, Jan Lam, Shawn Yue, Conroy Chan, and even director Feng Xiaogang and composer Peter Kam.

The films themselves range from 3 minutes to 15-20 minutes, and push the limits of the II-B rating. It’s amazing that they would give Mad Detective a category III for an ear slicing when Trivial Matters got passed with a II-B, despite Cantonese curse words, nudity, sex, and drug content.

There are short clips from almost all the short stories floating around online, but I won’t post them here. I can assure you that not watching these clips actually help the enjoyment of the film, though they really helped raise expectations. I can also tell you that the good shorts far outweigh the bad. The only one that really didn’t need to be there is the short 3-minute film (more “scene” than “film”, really) with Edison Chan and Stephanie Chang that is completely in English. Amusing, but needless.

So instead of watching a ton of money spent on screen blowing shit up, why not spend a few bucks to support the last true Hong Kong movie of the year? I highly recommend Trivial Matters.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under review, Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.