Wong Kar Wai

"ALL memories are traces of tears," says Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) at the beginning of "2046," Wong Kar-Wai's long-awaited follow-up to "In the Mood for Love," and a gorgeous, fevered dream of a movie that blends recollection, imagination and temporal dislocation to create an emotional portrait of chaos in the aftermath of heartbreak. In 1966 Chow returns to Hong Kong after having spent several years in Singapore, where he went to escape the memory of his affair with Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung).

BERLIN - The 63rd Berlin Film Festival opened Thursday with an elegant bang - of fists, feet and questions. Kicking off the 11 days of cinematic offerings was jury president Wong Kar Wai's epic martial arts drama, “The Grandmaster” - a graceful telling of the history of Ip Man, the mentor of Bruce Lee. First, though, came the morning's presentation of the jury to the international press in a conference full of polite but pointed queries and...

The impassive Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, blinking behind sunglasses that almost never come off and shrouded in his own cigarette smoke, tends to pause before speaking. He offers slow, thoughtful answers about film and filmmaking in accented English. When asked, though, what he might do if he weren't making movies, he doesn't waste time. "I'd like to be a bartender," he said. "It would be very specific: It would have to be happy hour, or else very late at night.

Harris Savides, who was widely considered one of the most influential contemporary cinematographers, earning acclaim for his canny visual sensibility on such films as "Zodiac" and "Milk," died Wednesday. He was 55. The Skouras Agency confirmed the New York-based cinematographer's death but released no other details. "If you were looking for a cinematographer with both sizzle and substance, you couldn't find a more adept visual stylist than Harris Savides," Patrick Goldstein wrote in The Times in 2007.

Given that it settled on a title scant days before its world premiere last year at Cannes, "In the Mood for Love" is remarkably well-named. A swooningly cinematic exploration of romantic longing, both restrained and sensual, luxuriating in color, texture and sound, this film raises its fascination with enveloping atmosphere and suppressed emotion to a ravishing, almost hypnotic level.

PRETTY BUT slight, "My Blueberry Nights," the first English-language film by the revered Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai, will seem both familiar and disappointing to many of his fans. This languid road movie, out on DVD Tuesday from Genius/Weinstein Co., recaps all the themes this filmmaker has long nurtured -- loss, longing, memory, regret -- but for the first time in his career, they seem less like obsessions than ingredients in a formula.

When THE Asian financial crisis hit Hong Kong a decade ago, the lab where director Wong Kar Wai stored his prints went into bankruptcy. On extremely short notice, Wong had to retrieve all his materials in just one evening. Much to his chagrin, Wong discovered that the lab hadn't been storing his prints in ideal conditions. His first independent production, the 1994 martial-arts epic "Ashes of Time," was in dire straits.

"Sooner or later most filmmakers want to make a film about their childhood," muses Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, sitting on a balcony of a Los Angeles hotel and languidly puffing a cigarette. "The 1960s was the era in which I grew up." And how fondly he remembers it. Born in Shanghai, Wong landed in Hong Kong in 1962, at the age of 5.

"Eros," the new omnibus film that includes short movies by three world- renowned directors, stands perhaps as a testament not so much to the cinematic appeal of erotic love but rather to the lasting worldwide influence of contributor Michelangelo Antonioni and the deep affection for his work felt by younger directors Wong Kar-Wai and Steven Soderbergh.

WITH his ever-present sunglasses and cultivated mystique, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai has become one of the most distinct brand names on the international cinema circuit.

When THE Asian financial crisis hit Hong Kong a decade ago, the lab where director Wong Kar Wai stored his prints went into bankruptcy. On extremely short notice, Wong had to retrieve all his materials in just one evening. Much to his chagrin, Wong discovered that the lab hadn't been storing his prints in ideal conditions. His first independent production, the 1994 martial-arts epic "Ashes of Time," was in dire straits.

PRETTY BUT slight, "My Blueberry Nights," the first English-language film by the revered Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai, will seem both familiar and disappointing to many of his fans. This languid road movie, out on DVD Tuesday from Genius/Weinstein Co., recaps all the themes this filmmaker has long nurtured -- loss, longing, memory, regret -- but for the first time in his career, they seem less like obsessions than ingredients in a formula.

WITH his ever-present sunglasses and cultivated mystique, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai has become one of the most distinct brand names on the international cinema circuit.

The road to romantic recovery is meandering, far-flung and thousands of miles long in "My Blueberry Nights," Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film. Norah Jones, in her bland screen debut, plays a brokenhearted New Yorker named Elizabeth who sets out on a road trip across America after a bad breakup, presumably in search of oblivion or at the very least a change of scenery.

RE "A Slow Hand" [Aug. 14]: This piece brings to mind the lack of history background most blockbusters have come to entertain. What can possibly lack character richness and development in telling history the way it was? Although history can never be stagnant, the possibility of offering another point of view, one with an "outsider's" eye, should be interesting. Films such as "Alexander" and "K-19: The Widowmaker" take a slice of history and mold it around "bigger than life" situations only to climax at a flat line -- the same good guy always wins and justice/heroism/morality prevails.

Some five years in the making, "2046" is one of the year's most highly anticipated films in cineaste circles. Hong Kong filmmaker and art house hero Wong Kar-Wai has revived the lead character from his previous film, "In the Mood for Love," to continue the romantic misadventures of aspiring writer Chow Mo-Wan, played with dash and daring by Tony Leung.

RE "A Slow Hand" [Aug. 14]: This piece brings to mind the lack of history background most blockbusters have come to entertain. What can possibly lack character richness and development in telling history the way it was? Although history can never be stagnant, the possibility of offering another point of view, one with an "outsider's" eye, should be interesting. Films such as "Alexander" and "K-19: The Widowmaker" take a slice of history and mold it around "bigger than life" situations only to climax at a flat line -- the same good guy always wins and justice/heroism/morality prevails.

Harris Savides, who was widely considered one of the most influential contemporary cinematographers, earning acclaim for his canny visual sensibility on such films as "Zodiac" and "Milk," died Wednesday. He was 55. The Skouras Agency confirmed the New York-based cinematographer's death but released no other details. "If you were looking for a cinematographer with both sizzle and substance, you couldn't find a more adept visual stylist than Harris Savides," Patrick Goldstein wrote in The Times in 2007.

"ALL memories are traces of tears," says Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) at the beginning of "2046," Wong Kar-Wai's long-awaited follow-up to "In the Mood for Love," and a gorgeous, fevered dream of a movie that blends recollection, imagination and temporal dislocation to create an emotional portrait of chaos in the aftermath of heartbreak. In 1966 Chow returns to Hong Kong after having spent several years in Singapore, where he went to escape the memory of his affair with Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung).

The impassive Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, blinking behind sunglasses that almost never come off and shrouded in his own cigarette smoke, tends to pause before speaking. He offers slow, thoughtful answers about film and filmmaking in accented English. When asked, though, what he might do if he weren't making movies, he doesn't waste time. "I'd like to be a bartender," he said. "It would be very specific: It would have to be happy hour, or else very late at night.