Thanks to Grigoris Daskalogrigorakis for his helpful comments.
1.
Larry Gross, “Nonchalant Grace,” Sight and Sound, 6, no. 9 (September
1996), p. 8. 
2.
Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimension (London: British
Film Institute, 1997), p. 244.
3.
John A. Lent, The Asian Film Industry (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press,
1990), p. 118. Also, see Teo, p. 244.
4.
For example, see Tony Rayns, “Hard Boiled,” Sight and Sound,
2, No. 4 (August 1992), p. 21.
5.
For more on the history of Hong Kong cinema, see Lent, pp. 92-121; Fredric
Dannen and Barry Long, Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider’s Guide to
the Hollywood of the East (New York: Hyperion/Miramax, 1997), pp.
1-55; Paul Fonoroff, “Hong Kong Cinema,” in Encyclopedia of Chinese
Film, eds. Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao (New York: Routledge, 1998),
pp. 31-46; Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, City on Fire: Hong
Kong Cinema (New York: Verso, 1999); and Teo, Hong Kong Cinema.
6.
For example, see Teo, pp. 144-49. Some newspaper film reviews have also
called the colony’s action cinema “the Hong Kong New Wave.”
7.
Rone Tempest, “Hong Kong’s Film Business Struggles to Make a Comeback,”
Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1999, pp. C1, 16.
8.
In great demand, Doyle has worked not only for other directors in Hong
Kong, but for filmmakers in other industries as well: Chen Kaige’s
Temptress Moon (1996) in China and Park Ki-Yong’s Motel
Cactus (1997) in South Korea, for example. He made his Hollywood debut
with Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised 1998 remake of Psycho. Doyle
has also published books of his photographs and writings, such as A
Cloud in Trousers (Santa Monica, Ca.: Smart Art Press, 1998).
9.
Stephen Rowley, “Chungking Express, Happy Together, and Postmodern
Space,” http://www.werple.net.au/~lerowley/postmod2.htm (July 15, 1999),
p.3.
10.
See Tony Rayns, “Poet of Time,” Sight and Sound, 5, no. 9 (September
1995), p. 12.
11.
Wong interviewed by Jimmy Ngai, “A Dialogue with Wong Kar-Wai: Cutting
Between Time and Two Cities,” in Wong Kar-Wai, ed. Danièle
Rivère (Paris: Dis Voir, n.d.), p. 113. Ellipses in original.
13.
There seems to be some disagreement whether the kung fu film is
a kind of wuxia pian or a separate category. Lau Shing-Hon refers
to both kung fu and swordplay movies as wuxia pian, but
Teo reserves the term wuxia pian exclusively for the swashbucklers,
which he says were “clearly delineated” from kung fu until the
two genres were combined in the 1970s, when martial heroes were shown
fighting both armed and unarmed. See Lau Shing-Hon, Introduction, A
Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Hong Kong International
Film Festival, 1980), p. 3; and Teo, pp. 98-99.
14.
Jin Yong is actually the pen name of Hong Kong newspaper mogul Louis Cha.
15.
Jeff Yang, “Chinese Pulp Fiction,” in Eastern Standard Time: A Guide
to Asian Influence on American Culture, eds. Jeff Yang et al. (New
York: Mariner, 1997), p. 41.
16.
Sek Kei, “The Development of ‘Martial Arts’ in Hong Kong Cinema,”
in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, p. 27.
17.
For more on nationalism in the films of Bruce Lee, see Tony Rayns, “Bruce
Lee: Narcissism and Nationalism,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial
Arts Film, pp. 109-12; and Teo, pp. 110-21. By “classical” martial-arts
films, I mean in particular those textually conservative wuxia pian
produced by Hong Kong before the 1980s, as well as some later examples,
such as Jackie Chan’s star vehicles. Once the 1997 issue came into
play, the conflation of nationalism and violence became too contradictory
not to rupture the on-screen content (with cross-dressing, surrealistic
geysers of blood, bodies exploding cataclysmically, etc.) of most martial-arts
movies, especially Tsui Hark’s and Ching Siu-Tung’s.
18.
Tony Rayns, “Chaos and Anger,” Sight and Sound, 4, no. 10 (October
1994), p. 15.
19.
Although the film’s soundtrack clearly refers to this character as
“633” (luk-sam-sam), the number on his uniform epaulets reads “663,”
and some sources call the character by this number.
20.
For example, see Tony Rayns, “Fallen Angels” (review), Sight
and Sound, 6, no. 9 (September 1996), p. 42.
21.
For example, see Jean-Marc Lalanne, “Images from the Inside,” in Wong
Kar-Wai, pp. 22-24.
22.
Ackbar Abbas, “The Erotics of Disappointment,” in Wong Kar-Wai,
p. 46.
23.
For more on the relationship between colonialism and narrative, see Ella
Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and
the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994).
24.
Brigitte Lin (Chinese name: Lin Ching-Hsia) is originally from Taiwan
and speaks her voice-overs in Mandarin. Since Hong Kong’s local Chinese
dialect is Cantonese, Lin’s character embodies a Chinese identity
larger than just Hong Kong. For an appreciation of Lin’s career,
see Howard Hampton, “Venus, Armed,” Film Comment, 32, No. 5 (September-October
1996), pp. 42-48.
25.
This genre is known in Hong Kong as the “hero” film. I borrow the term
“heroic bloodshed” from Rick Baker, quoted in Bey Logan, Hong Kong
Action Cinema (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 1995), p. 126.
26.
Most Hong Kong films are given titles in both Chinese and English for
domestic consumption, and sometimes, the two titles have little to do
with each other. However, Fallen Angels is more or less a literal
translation of the Chinese title, (in Mandarin/pinyin:) Duoluo
Tianshi, except that the words have less of a religious resonance
in Hong Kong.
27.
As a heterosexual viewer, I never cared whether Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing ever
patched up their relationship. However, a gay friend of mine told me that
he empathized with the two characters and hoped that the film would have
them end up together.
28.
However, another 1997 Hong Kong movie titled Happy Together,
one directed by Sherman Wong, used a heterosexual cross-border couple
to symbolize the settlement’s new union to the mainland.
29.
Although Wong is very critical of Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing’s particular
relationship—because their personalities are so incompatible—
I don’t think that Happy Together intends to be critical of
gay relationships in general. After all, Yiu-Fai never renounces his homosexuality.
30.
For a brief summary of romantic love as portrayed in transnational Chinese
cinema, see Yingjin Zhang, “Love and Marriage,” in Encyclopedia of
Chinese Film, pp. 230-33.
31.
For more about Third Cinema, see Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino,
“Towards a Third Cinema,” in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976), pp. 44-64.
32.
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,”
New Left Review, no. 146 (July-August 1984), p. 89.
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