Legend of the Sacred Stone (2001)

[Drunk Monk]

I mentioned this acquiring this one earlier, but hadn't watched it all the way through until last night. It's the Taiwanese kung fu puppets movie. I know, I know, you're all thinking like Meet the Feebles or something, but it's not like that. It was done by this family of traditional Taiwanese puppeteers and it has lots of cheesy Taiwanese CGI on top. I got it a while ago, watched about half an hour, then shelved it. The next hour gets much better. The only thing I can equate it to is Legend of Zu, which is a CGI-eye-candy spectacle. LotSS is similar as eye candy, and equally incomprehensible (I still don't really know what happened in LoZ, but I don't really care). I'm sure there's a cohesive plot, but I only follwed a smattering of it, just enough to get me through. There's this one dialog scene where a character is talking in some sort of bizarre poetic riddles - in fact it's the first break in the action, the first chance we get to have something explained, and it is so nonsensical, it's got to be art.

Puppets can do some really good kung fu. In fact, it's really amazing from that standpoint - an extraordinary lift of kung fu film cinematography. I don't think it's up to DOOM showing quality, but I'm sure ED will want to rip it for his collection, and he's welcome to do so whenever.