I spent pretty much all of yesterday watching Chinese movies with subtitles and listening to the commentaries and here is what I learned.
1) White people all look alike to Asian people, just like Asian all people look alike to us. Zhang Yimou knows this, so at the beginning of House of Flying Daggers he intentionally showed Takeshi Kaneshiro eating peanuts in every scene so the Western audience would know which one he was when he changed costumes.
2) Chow Yun Fat could easily play all the parts in any movie ever. If there was a martial arts movie where he did play all the parts, I would totally watch it.
3) Incest is bad and it will kill you, probably in a really violent way.
4) Chinese people are big on betrayal and dying for love, usually both at the same time.
5) You kill more effectively if you yell really loud while striking in slow motion and jumping to a lower position.
6) If some martial artist is sneaking around in the dark wearing an all black outfit that hides the face, it's probably a woman.
Takeshi Kaneshiro is so unbelievably hot, mmmm... lol, I have nothing intelligent to add to the discussion.
ReplyDelete1) I thought it was an identifying trait, such as Patton with his Ivory grip pistols, Lone-Ranger with Silver Bullets, etc.
ReplyDelete2) I wouldn't mind seeing a remake of the Five deadly venoms with Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Tony Jaa, Robin Shou and Collin Chou amongst others. On the other hand, while I know that the Martial Arts action / gore would be better, they'd probably rewrite the story into an atrocious mess.
3) Their version of an 'Oepidus' tale.
4) Thier versions of 'Macbeth', 'Julius Cesear', 'Romeo and Juliet', etc.
5) Slow-Motion is popular everywhere ... many say too popular.
6) I can't argue that about chinese cinema, in Japan it's more like 50/50 between a woman or a ninja.
About number one - I'm going directly off of what Zhang said in the commentary. That was the non-joke comment.
ReplyDeleteBut what the hell is Takeshi doing in a Chinese fairy tale?
ReplyDeleteSame thing Charlize Theron does every time she has to play an American, I guess.
ReplyDelete