11-23-2012, 01:13 PM
Finally caught this on TV. It was playing channel 26. I saw almost all of it, but must admit to being in the recliner and surfing the web on my laptop at the same time. So please don't test me on all the details.
Yes, some amazing sets, and some of the scenes impressed me with their composition and lighting, though others seemed a bit dark. An artsy technique of fading quickly in and out of black again and again to bracket certain characters or events as they unfolded got annoying. Still, overall great cinematography.
There were English subtitles, but I wasn't following them all the time. The first half was setting up the plight of these repressed and outnumbered rebels, and no doubt one of their figureheads was Sun Yat Sen, but I didn't bother figuring it out. The last half shows these rebels trying to protect their figureheads, among them Sun Yat Sen, from 600,000 assassins. Or so it seemed. They were thicker than TV antennae on the rooftops, which I now realize is a terrible analogy. There was crying throughout. In fact, the rebels could have won handily if they'd only weaponized teardrops. My god, so many tears coming from all directions. The sobbing, oh, the sobbing. Big-star rebels got extended death scenes -- and I mean long to the point of channel-flipping (while also surfing porn on the laptop). Way too many static character-building scenes. Way too few fight scenes. The battle between Donnie Yen and Cung Le was much longer than I expected, which was good and bad. Good because it gave him screen time, and you got to see him trying various things. Bad because for all its inventive techniques and ideas, the fight scene wasn't as carefully choreographed as I wanted, and there wasn't much of a "plot" to the fight (there was some redundancy in Cung Le stomping on a fallen Donnie Yen).
But all those death scenes where the noble hero gets picked apart by no-good cowards or meanies were incredibly and sickeningly sadistic. Yes, you're hearing this from Mister "Let's watch Ichi the Killer again!" Cranefly. I haven't looked up the director Teddy Chang, but my goodness he's a sadistic son of a bitch who loves to torture innocents and show their slow agonizing death in extreme close-ups.
It got me thinking about Flowers of War that DM just reviewed. If Teddy Chang had directed that movie instead of Yimou Zhang, those girls in the church would have been graphically eviscerated after a couple hours of graphic rape.
Graphically speaking.
Yes, some amazing sets, and some of the scenes impressed me with their composition and lighting, though others seemed a bit dark. An artsy technique of fading quickly in and out of black again and again to bracket certain characters or events as they unfolded got annoying. Still, overall great cinematography.
There were English subtitles, but I wasn't following them all the time. The first half was setting up the plight of these repressed and outnumbered rebels, and no doubt one of their figureheads was Sun Yat Sen, but I didn't bother figuring it out. The last half shows these rebels trying to protect their figureheads, among them Sun Yat Sen, from 600,000 assassins. Or so it seemed. They were thicker than TV antennae on the rooftops, which I now realize is a terrible analogy. There was crying throughout. In fact, the rebels could have won handily if they'd only weaponized teardrops. My god, so many tears coming from all directions. The sobbing, oh, the sobbing. Big-star rebels got extended death scenes -- and I mean long to the point of channel-flipping (while also surfing porn on the laptop). Way too many static character-building scenes. Way too few fight scenes. The battle between Donnie Yen and Cung Le was much longer than I expected, which was good and bad. Good because it gave him screen time, and you got to see him trying various things. Bad because for all its inventive techniques and ideas, the fight scene wasn't as carefully choreographed as I wanted, and there wasn't much of a "plot" to the fight (there was some redundancy in Cung Le stomping on a fallen Donnie Yen).
But all those death scenes where the noble hero gets picked apart by no-good cowards or meanies were incredibly and sickeningly sadistic. Yes, you're hearing this from Mister "Let's watch Ichi the Killer again!" Cranefly. I haven't looked up the director Teddy Chang, but my goodness he's a sadistic son of a bitch who loves to torture innocents and show their slow agonizing death in extreme close-ups.
It got me thinking about Flowers of War that DM just reviewed. If Teddy Chang had directed that movie instead of Yimou Zhang, those girls in the church would have been graphically eviscerated after a couple hours of graphic rape.
Graphically speaking.