Ducking back to Twitter now.

My Twitter comment last year was based on comments I found in this forum:
http://heroesoftheeast.forumotion.co.uk

It had nothing to do with your previous HKMDB comments.

What made me wrote this was T’s comment saying that this site’s reviews may drive people away from HK cinema. I’m just the opposite of that. I started fancying HK cinema very, very late when most followers already left the field. It was actually Kozo’s witty, funny, warm and honest (could be biased) reviews that helped me stick around. Now, when a new movie’s out, I first check this site. No, nowadays, I scan through his twitter messages & updates, and eagerly anticipate its arrival in Australia here. This site made me watch, cheer, be disappointed and joyful for HK cinema. Like T described, I too spend way more than what I should to keep this little hobby of mine. I even started learning this foreign language. Sometimes I think I’m a little crazy doing what I do. If I have to complain for my gradually increasing insanity, I blame LoveHKfilm.com for it.:) **sigh**I just thought T’s claim was unfair. Besides, when HK cinema barely produces movies in the language of own people and struggles with relevant themes, restricted rules and funding issues, where is HK cinema now anyway? Isn’t it natural to rant about the situation if one’s a genuine lover?
I don’t want to cause controversy and degrade other faithful sites, but I have my own reasons to sticking with this site other than going elsewhere and reading their reviews.

One more thing, if I may. Personally I feel, no one should advise anyone to write long or short, or write this or that. You’re not marking your student’s paper, right? I think we, the lovers of HK cinema should feel blessed having this site around.

English is not my first language. I may have expressed things in a rather stupid way here, but I have no problem understanding this site’s reviews and having smile on my face.

If anyone is doing a disservice to Hong Kong cinema, it’s the industry itself. It has never been about high art, or hell, even pleasing audiences. The latter is just a means to an end: to make lots of money. The entertainment industry here is a twisted place with self-indulgent people who care more about fame and money by any means necessary, and that is the system producing these films.

Then, why does Kozo (and to a very small degree, myself as well) keep doing this? Because this site is not just a fan site where we excuse anything out of love. This is a site that informs people about movies and the state of the Hong Kong film industry (and poke a little fun at it in the process). Yes, it’s for the people, not some industry promotional tool that will play the PR game just because “it helps the industry”. Helping the industry is one thing. To blindly love everything it does is just spoiling it. Besides, wouldn’t recommending bad movies to people be a bigger disservice to fans of the site?

On that note, I apologized to people who saw VIRTUAL RECALL.

Hong Kong is my home (and now Kozo’s as well, of course), and we do not look at HK cinema with an exotic eye here. We give it the same standards that Americans would give Hollywood cinema and the French would rate their own cinema by. We don’t make excuses for bad movies, because a bad movie is a bad movie, no matter where it’s from or who’s doing the action. Then again, Hong Kongers do give plenty of slack to Transformers, so maybe the exoticism works both ways.

By the way, I was there for that scientific calculation, and the 70-30 ratio holds up. Perhaps you’re thinking of my work. In that case, you should read that parenthesis at the end of the reviews more often, because I’m the guy who only wrote one positive review in all of 2011. Hell, I still don’t get why Kozo likes half the movies he does.

Anyway, I’m not jumping to defend Kozo because I write on the site or he’s my friend or he sits next to me at work and can kill me with one swift blow. It’s because the site is unfairly labeled as virtually negative. We (the so-called LoveHKFilm movie group) sit through more Hong Kong films than most people in the world here, meaning 80-90% of general releases. Every industry produces good films and bad films, and as much as it breaks my heart, Hong Kong produces more bad films than good films. It’s the sad truth, and if we don’t reflect that reality here, that would just make us republicans. Ha ha?

Thanks for leaving the comment. Honestly, you’ve interpreted a lot of what I’ve written differently than I had intended. Since you are the guy who said the site’s reviews are “virtually always negative,” I can see how you would connect yourself to this blog post, but I did not have you in mind at all when I wrote that thing about people popping up to ridicule the site. That was just some off the cuff remark.

I’ve read forums (HKMDB and a smaller one) where you disparage the site on more than one occasion. Honestly, it hurts to have a Hong Kong film fan knock the site multiple times about its negativity, its poor writing, etc. Like I said to you on Twitter, it just feels lousy because I thought that longtime fans of HK Cinema would at least appreciate the effort that goes into this site. This, obviously, was my mistake. Similar interests do not equal mutual appreciation or respect. I did learn a lesson there.

I did take your comments harder than I would most because it was casually thrown around the HKMDB forums - a place that I respect and care about. But in the end, I lumped your negative comments in with the other negative comments I receive, through email or on forums or whatever, and that’s what informed the mention in this blog post. The “opinions are like assholes” comment was just an extension of a commonly used phrase. I didn’t say that the people who actually said those things about the site are assholes. I just said they have opinions. Big difference.

Also, I wasn’t trying to imply that anyone who criticizes the site is an asshole. The assholes are the people who email saying, “F*ck you, and f*ck LoveHKFilm.com” (Note: a true story!). I don’t think all the people who criticize the site are assholes. A commenter above, named Michael, also voiced his opposition to the site’s tone and I don’t think he’s an asshole. You and he are both welcome to criticize the site. In return, I can choose to listen, to doubt the commenter based on their tone or manner, or to reflect on myself because of it. Sometimes the criticism informs my work and sometimes it doesn’t.

So, to make this clear: I don’t think you are an asshole nor did I imply that you are one. However, I can understand how you could infer that, so I’ll apologize for the misunderstanding. I hope that clears this up. If not, you’re free to post again and I’m free to respond or not. That is the magic of free will.

As for the rest of your comment, I’ll take it under advisement just as I did when I first read your criticisms elsewhere, and just like I do when I get criticism from anyone. Maybe it’ll change what I do, and maybe it won’t. I have no idea right now.

One thing: you say you’re a fan of the site and have visited it since 2002 or 2003. Honestly, I want to ask you: why do you visit a site you do not enjoy, and more, is run by a person whom you have a low opinion of? The writing is long-winded, the attitude is negative, the humor does not work, the webmaster handles criticism poorly and lashes out at his detractors - hell, the website itself is damaging to Hong Kong Cinema! You said all of those things in your comment. You also say you respect what I do, but I can’t see how that’s possible because you don’t seem to like anything about the site except that it’s about Hong Kong Cinema.

Really, I say this with no ill will: if you feel that this site misrepresents the cinema that you love then you really shouldn’t be reading it.

And anyway, there are LOTS of sites covering Hong Kong Cinema that you can visit instead. You have So Good Reviews, Far East Films, Film Smash, City on Fire, Eastern Film Fans, HK Neo Reviews, Twitchfilm.com, Eastern Film Fans, A Hero Never Dies, plus all the great blogs by Glenn Griffith, Yvonne Teh, Sean Tierney, Sylvia Rorem, Michael Thomason, Brian Nass, and more. I am leaving out a ton of people who deserve mention, and I apologize to them.

For forums, you have Mobius or your own forum, plus you can always visit HKMDB for reviews too. HK Cinemagic has awesome coverage, plus a fully-functional database that rivals HKMDB. Most of the above sources are likely better for you than LoveHKFilm.com. Visit them instead and I’m sure you’ll be happier.

Thanks again for leaving the comment and for being so open about your issues with the site. In return, I promise never to quote anything you say about this site ever again. If I had just used one of the other online comments where people say that I’m always negative, then this probably would not have happened. Live and learn.

Longtime fan of the site here — since probably late 2002 or early 2003 if I recall correctly — and of all the effort you’ve put into it over the years.

I’m also the guy you indirectly called an “asshole” in the post above. I further suspect you might have had me in mind when you claimed in your Dec. 15 state-of-the-site Christmas greeting that some folks might visit your site “because you wish to ridicule our latest attempts at review writing”.

I’m not so sure it’s just us negative Nellies who need perspective here.

For someone who boo-hoo’d on Twitter late last year about the lack of “mutual respect” between Hong Kong cinema-related sites, you sure have an odd way of leading by example. The fact that you still own and contribute (albeit less frequently, and with more threats of decreased activity than ever before) to one of the most-visited Hong Kong movie-related sites on the web should, in theory, give you no reason to stoop to the level of name-calling (inferred or otherwise). I may find LoveHKFilm to be a sour experience on the surface, but I certainly don’t think you’re an asshole. Hell, I don’t even think you’re the crank you’ve been intent on portraying yourself as for so many years.

Thankfully, though, I’m one “asshole” who’s willing to meet his own critics head-on, as I did briefly on Twitter last year and am doing here—albeit belatedly—instead of hiding away in the security of some barely-functioning discussion forums that few people read anyways.

For those not in the know—if anyone besides me and him actually sees this—what triggered Kozo to lash out above were some comments I made — many moons ago — at the Hong Kong Movie Database (HKMDB) forums (which hardly anyone read about the seemingly chronic negativity that permeates this site. And Kozo’s right; I DID say that the reviews here were “virtually always negative”, because they ARE. Your 70/30% example above may be for illustrative purposes, but I’d wager a dollar that the actual split’s probably more like 90/10% (and would humbly apologize if any kind of scientific measurement were to prove otherwise by a wide enough margin).

I’m not calling for 90% unqualified raves, but something’s been amiss here for awhile now. Your disillusionment with the Hong Kong film industry clearly informs most of your reviews and other writing, and because you’re pretty much the only guy covering all the bases and therefore a defacto arbiter of taste regarding Hong Kong cinema to readers in the west, the industry rarely seems to benefit from your coverage. You may in fact be causing more damage through your informing of public opinion (particularly in the west) than your supporters here realize.

If, as you’ve claimed in this post and on Twitter, the site’s negativity isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but evidently IS taken seriously by more people than just myself (sez you above: “About that “virtually always negative” statement, I get that a lot”), then why continue adopting such a posture? As an ersatz “character” for the site, I sort of understand it, but it just doesn’t work on the whole. Not everybody “gets” that your “cranky old man” persona is just that: a gag, a lark, a laugh. Not all of your readers speak English as a first language. And when you shoot back at your critics (yes, the interwebs are full of them) by labeling them “assholes”, the “persona” seems all too discomfitingly real.

You’ve lamented the loss of contributors and viewers repeatedly over the years—including throughout this blog post—yet have you ever stopped to wonder if the general demeanor of the site may have privately driven them away, or more importantly, that it might deter NEWCOMERS from embracing Hong Kong’s utterly unique brand of cinema?

LoveHKFilm comes up near the top of search results when a user Googles many Hong Kong film titles (well, post-late-90’s titles, anyways). So, they click through, read an interesting, involved review, most likely negative. Maybe they read another, then some more, but they start to realize that you don’t really like a lot of what you watch, or at the very least, the negatives of a particular film far outweigh the positives. Then, perhaps, they jump to your front page, or maybe this blog, and confront your years of personal messages bitching about how Hong Kong cinema is dying, or dead, or producing so much crap (like the industry wasn’t capable of that during each of the past five or six decades?), or the frequent moaning about how the site itself is a ghost town, nobody visits, nobody contributes, nobody cares. If I was just starting to get hooked on Hong Kong cinema—and believe me, it’s still entirely possible, even via movies from the past couple of years—I’m not sure I’d come back here too often because, “hey folks, this joint might not even exist by the next time you check in!”

Life gets in the way. THAT I can understand. Your marriage should come first. That’s all the rationale I need to hear in a blog post or site update. But repeatedly running the industry into the ground and declaring its demise isn’t helping the industry in the long run.

Seriously, man, a LOT of us out here respect what you do, and for how long you’ve done it, and we DO take your comments seriously. And therein lies the problem: on the surface, it seems like YOU take them seriously, too, because that’s how they read (even moreso to the uninitiated that I’ve directed here over the years), no matter how many times you tell us not to take them seriously. As a result, you’re bound to hear some of us react harshly here or elsewhere if the mood arises. Such is life. You should also keep in mind that many travelers to this site may not recognize the hipster irony in your words, which only does the site, and Hong Kong cinema, a further disservice.

As I said, no one is asking for sunshine, lollipops and rainbows in every reviews or plastered all over the site, but a little bit more of all three wouldn’t kill you, particularly if it’s genuine and not intended to mock those who might appreciate it. It’s been 10 years.

I wouldn’t have written this if a) I wasn’t surprised at how poorly you handled some fleeting internet criticism I posted on the forum of another site that I do not represent nor do have any financial interest in, and b) if I didn’t still care passionately about Hong Kong cinema, and still enjoy a great many of the altogether UNIQUELY LOCAL pictures they produce in the course of a year (and even some of the co-productions). Like you, I’ve got literal mountains of discs here that I intend to plow through as my schedule permits. A great deal of my income goes to purchasing every new release that comes out, as well as plenty of oldies I discover in my city’s ever-contracting supply of Chinese video retailers. Finding LONG reviews of many of them is never a problem. Finding thoughtful, though-provoking ones is.

One last thing: if down deep you really want to write MORE reviews, as you say, then write SHORTER ones. Like so much free web criticism, there seems to be this unwritten edict that an amateur/unaffiliated/unpaid review will only be taken seriously if it’s in the ballpark of 800 to a thousand words. As a magazine editor in the real world, and in spite of my very long-winded response here, I can truly say that I could condense many a run-on web review to about half or two-thirds of its extant length, and not have to jettison key points, or the tone, or useful bits of trivia or gossip. Write shorter, and you’ll have time to write more. Believe it or not, some of your “Skinnies” are near-perfect encapsulations of both a film’s plot and your opinion of the finished product.

Anyways, I can only hope that your response to this is a measured one, and not another implication that your critics are assholes or douchebags or whatever the nom-du-jour is for those who would stand in mild opposition to the general tone of your site.

Regards,
T

Not to change the subject, but are people voting for their Top Hong Kong Movies of the Eighties? Taken in close to 20 submissions so far and will be pushing this like a madman for at least a couple more weeks.