Fallen Angels

It's Wong Kar-wai revival season: In the wake of Wong's revision of "Ashes of Time" and Criterion's Blu-ray release of "Chungking Express," Kino offers newly remastered editions of "Fallen Angels" and "Happy Together." Expanded from a splinter story originally written for "Chungking Express," "Fallen Angels" (1995) winds together the stories of disconnected individuals: a hit man (Leon Lai) in love with a woman he's never met (Michele Reis), and a mute ex-con (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and the manic-depressive girl (Charlie Yeung) he meets on his nocturnal adventures. Wong punctuates his melancholy narrative with odd humor and unexpected explosions of shocking violence, all shot in Christopher Doyle's sensuous, oversaturated colors. Wong Kar-wai's most emotionally volatile drama "Happy Together" (1997), starring Hong Kong heartthrobs Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as lovers in a love-hate relationship in Buenos Aires, brings an edgier dimension to his work. Shot in grainy, high contrast black and white and delirious dream colors, the film achieves an extravagant, overwrought emotional quality.

"Fallen Angels" features a new interview with director of photography Doyle and three featurettes, and "Happy Together" includes the new Q&A featurette "Wong Kar-wai at the Museum of the Moving Image" in addition to the previously released documentary "Buenos Aires Zero Degree." Both are mastered from fresh HD film transfers and look quite beautiful, which leads me to the obvious question: When will Kino enter the Blu-ray market? The discs list the aspect ratio at 1.85:1 but in fact they have been reframed to the 16x9 wide-screen TV dimensions.