[Trailer] Hero

[Viking Bastard]

Might have been improved with subtitles, I'll admit. It did get a little confusing at times...

When you say 'without subtitles' do you mean dubbed, or do you mean
you understand chinese?

Just curious.

 

[barsoomcore]

I mean, neither. I've seen a Chinese version without subtitles. Which kind of took me back to the early 90's when I was watching Tsui Hark films in Japan -- in Cantonese with Japanese subtitles. Didn't speak Cantonese and don't read Japanese. Had a LOT of fun.



Hero wasn't so much fun that way. I assume we saw multiple re-tellings of the same encounter a la Rashomon?

 

[ShadowX]

Other than the already mentioned films what other films in the same vein as Hero do you recommend?

 

[Krug]

House of Flying Daggers

 

[dreaded_beast]

Luckily I have a Chinatown where I live, so I've had the DVD for a while as well.

In my opinion it is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. I enjoyed it immensely, but still felt something was lacking. Maybe because of all the hype I had heard about it over the Internet, I already formed a biased opinion while watching it.

It's still a good piece of film, so watch it if you have a chance.

 

[Mog Elffoe]

Baby.

But you know, deep in my heart of hearts, I suspect that the budget alone makes things less interesting to me. I LIKE seeing the roughness in things. I like having to use my imagination to REALLY convince myself that Jet Li is running on the tips of the grass blades. I like how to show someone flying up a canyon wall you get a close-up of their foot on a rock, and spiralling sound effect and a guy on a wire shooting up into the air.

When it's all done for me, somehow, I think it's less satisfying.

Maybe it's cause I feel a sense of comradeship with the film-makers that way -- like we've collaborated to make my heart beat faster, rather than me just sitting there while excitement is DONE to me. If you see what I mean.

It's also very true that tight resources inspire creativity. We probably will never see the kinds of story-telling we got out of Hong Kong from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties. Not from Hong Kong anymore, I think. They just don't need to be that creative.

Plus, the concentration of talent there, when Jackie Chan, John Woo, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, Chow Yun Fat, Brigitte Lin, Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Yuen Biao, Michelle Yeoh, Sammo Hung, Tony Leung, Anita Mui and so many others were all working simultaneously -- that doesn't happen too often. And when the "critical mass" doesn't exist, everybody suffers -- even those who were brilliant at the time.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Hero and may even buy the DVD (if I can get past my dislike of Zhang Zhiyi) -- but I'll take Dragon Inn any day.

I agree wholeheartedly (except that I'd choose Iron Monkey or Kung Fu Cult Master over Dragon Inn, but that's just me.) There's something about the *way* they showed it back then that had its own charm and had its own visual language. And I do agree that shoestring budgets can stimulate creativity and that if some of the same filmmakers had real money to make their film with I might not like them as much. I certainly wouldn't want to see a single change in my Mr. Vampire, for example. Sometimes, though, it's just cool to see guys actually DO those super stunts without the old-school camera trickery. I thought it worked pretty well in Hero, which I personally enjoyed much more than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the film that it will most likely be compared to over here in the States. I also loved the effects in Shaolin Soccer.

A good example of over-reliance on special effects was Legend of Zu. I think I read somewhere that Tsui Hark had something like a $100m budget to work with for that one, and while some of the visuals are really, really nice, it isn't near as good as his own Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain which was made for a teensy little fraction of that amount back '83 or so.

How about this hypothetical? Swordsman 2 (or Dragon Inn, or whatever) with only the *cinematography* budget of these newer films, like Hero or CTHD?

I don't think that we'll see the kind of energy that we got from HK in the 80s and 90s again either. It's too bad. I still enjoy the newer films coming from HK, but they don't have quite the verve or the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ness of the old stuff.

Now I'm getting all nostalgic and wistful...
I miss Lam Ching Ying. And Anita Mui. And Leslie Cheung.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I mean, neither. I've seen a Chinese version without subtitles. [snip]

Hero wasn't so much fun that way. I assume we saw multiple re-tellings of the same encounter a la Rashomon?

Yes. It's understandable you didn't think much of it, then.

The movie is all about seeing the truth being revealed through multiple
retellings of the same story and then with a twist ending (although, a
bit forseeable ending). I liked the movie a lot. It was a tad too long,
though, for my tastes.

 

[hong]

I mean, neither. I've seen a Chinese version without subtitles. Which kind of took me back to the early 90's when I was watching Tsui Hark films in Japan -- in Cantonese with Japanese subtitles. Didn't speak Cantonese and don't read Japanese. Had a LOT of fun.

I know that people are always more profound when you don't know what they're saying, but this is ridiculous.

 

[talinthas]

i love this movie. i saw it months ago on an import dvd (with subs) and i must say that cinamatographically, this is one of the most beautiful films i've ever seen. the story, being funded by the chinese government, has a lot of 'the collective over the individual' issues, but the acting is sublime. and Maggie Cheung is the hottest chinese woman alive =)

The only problem i have is that the trailer completely misrepresents the film.

 

[barsoomcore]

I know that people are always more profound when you don't know what they're saying.

Not everyone, hong. Just you.

Maggie Cheung is the hottest Chinese woman alive

You have two unnecessary qualifiers in that sentence. Hero is entirely and completely worth watching simply because she's in it.