"Actor: Yuanyuan Gao"

• Romancing in Thin Air (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (20/04/2026) from £15.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Movie star icon Michael (Louis Koo, Throw Down) sinks into a depression after being publicly dumped at the altar by his former fiance. After embarking on a drunken bender, he is found in a mountain forest, lost and barely responsive, by Sue (Sammi Cheng, Internal Affairs), who runs the local guesthouse and is still grieving the loss of her husband, who mysteriously disappeared in the woods several years prior. As Sue slowly nurses Michael back to health and the pair learn more about their shared pasts, they embark on a journey to find catharsis in each other. While best known for his crime and action films, legendary director Johnnie To (Election, Drug War) also directed over a dozen romantic melodramas, and Romancing in Thin Air is one of the very best in its genre: a powerful and moving mediation on loss, grief, and the power of cinema itself.BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURESHigh-definition digital transferDolby TrueHD 7.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 audio tracksNewly recorded interview with screenwriter Ryker ChanNew audio commentary by Hong Kong cinema expert Dylan CheungNew visual essay on Johnnie To's romantic melodramas by Sean GilmanExtended behind-the-scenes footageMaking-of featuretteTheatrical trailerNewly translated English subtitles by Dylan CheungReversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time TomorrowLimited edition booklet featuring new writing by Jake ColeLimited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

• Beijing Bicycle | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Beijing Bicycle kicks off like an updated Chinese reworking of the 1948 Italian neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves: a worker, dependent on his bike for his job, has it stolen and doggedly sets out to get it back. But pretty soon Wang Xiaoshuai's film mutates into something more elemental: a battle of wills between peasant lad Guei, original owner of the bike, and Jian, a surly urban schoolkid who claims to have bought it second-hand. For both the bike is status: for Guei it secures him his job as a courier, while for Jian it lets him keep up with his peers and chat up the girl he fancies. Each sees himself as the rightful owner and neither will give way, so the bike swaps hands back and forth, stolen and re-stolen, as the duel waxes increasingly personal. There's a diverting subplot about a beautiful, stylishly dressed girl glimpsed by Guei who turns out be something other than she seems, but essentially the battle over the bike is the meat of the film. The fascination of Beijing Bicycle--perhaps especially for non-Chinese viewers--is its portrait of present-day Beijing as a buzzing, high-pressure, neo-capitalist boomtown, impersonal and seemingly as lawless as any Wild West frontier burg. At no point, in all the thefts and counter-thefts and mounting violence, does anyone think to call the police--everyone is left to fight his own battles. Wang, one can't help suspecting, is slipping in a hint of social criticism in this vision of an uncaring society where possessions are all that matter. On the DVD: Beijing Bicycle on disc has the original theatrical trailer (the French version, oddly enough), filmographies for the director and four of his lead actors, notes on the film by Nick Bradshaw and trailers for other Metro Tartan foreign-language DVD releases. The transfer's in the full anamorphic widescreen of the original, with good Dolby Digital sound. --Philip Kemp

• Shanghai Dreams | DVD | (22/01/2007) from £6.98   |  Saving you £13.01 (65.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In the 1960's encouraged by the government a large number of families leave Chinese cities to settle in the poorer regions of the country in order to develop local industry. The film's main character is a 19 years old girl who lives in the Guizhou province where her parents have settled. That's where she has grown up where her friends are and where she first experiences love. But her father believes that their future lies in Shanghai. How can they all keep on living together when they don't share the same dreams?