beijingrocks

Interesting topic. An eye opener to Beijing underground bands, rock and youth culture, nice cinematography by Mr Pau, exciting soundtrack.
There's a scene during the first 15 minutes, Ping Lu's(Geng Le) band got into fight with the pub's boss. From fast editing and loud music, turned to slow-mo and soft instrumental music. Very nicely done. The music alone moves the heart, almost forcing tears out(nothting to do with the story). If it's going to have a soundtrack album, I'll definitely buy(for the original music composed by Li Yun Wen), although I'm don't really appreciate Beijing Rock, the lyrics are still quite interesting.

You may laugh like as I did when the first monologue of Michael(Daniel Ng) appears chroma-keyed with background of computer effects. There are funny animations going on as he talks about his background. There's one picture with 2 posters of Kelly and Mo Zedong. ???comparison of new and old idol???
But it didn't bother me as much because it might be Mabel trying to replace VOs of characters with another method. Monologues of Yang Ying(Shu Qi), Ping Lu and another band member will also appear as the film goes on. However I felt monologue of the main 3 is already enough. I have no idea why she added another one of the band members.

In this film, not only can listen to China rock music, see China landmarks, life of rock bands, you can also learn a lot of interesting China slangs. There's a game in the movie's official site where they test how well you know the meanings of China slangs. Quite fun.

The story is quite smooth throughout and doesn't have the mushy stuff as in "City of Glass". But to me, it's not enough deep exploring into Beijing youth and rock groups. She may just want to tell a simple story but I still feel the "thing" leading to the climax is very "hand in homework". There's not enough reason to cause the "change" and "ending".(I'm not saying everything out, watch yourself).

However, there are still many good handling of scenes, eg.Ping Lu and his father, comparison of Pop culture and alternative- audience can't stand the rock music and wanted to leave. Michael started to play rock version of "Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin" and Yang Ying starts singing, then won back the audience and their applause.