mv00_house of flying daggers
it's been eons since i last blogged. but my computer's finally internet-ready after the wireless card's been changed. sigh. it's such a relief to be able to surf from my comp again.'ve been thinking of revamping this blog. but of course that will take a lot of effort from me.. so will take things nice and slow. anyway i thought it would be nice to blog my views of movies. so here's the first one:
title: house of flying daggers
director: zhang yimou
main cast: zhang ziyi, kaneshiro takeshi, andy lau
random thoughts: it's really a rather mushy love movie packaged as a wuxia flick. the cinematography's ok i guess. compared to zhang yimou's previous wuxia flick, hero, i prefer hero. hero was kinda cryptic. i didn't really get the movie, but i only watched it once. i only remembered that i love what the cinematographer did. the misc-en-scene was took my breath away.
house has more scenic shots, but somehow, they feel a bit forced. even when i was enjoying what i was seeing, i couldn't help but think: that was achieved by computer effects.. or i wonder how he placed all those red leaves on such a green ground. somehow house just gave this contrived feel which hero didn't as much.
[spoiler] one critique about house is the ridiculous fight scene between jin (kaneshiro) and liu (lau) that spanned seasons. maybe coz i was prepared for it, i didn't feel as repulsed by it as i did when mei (zhang) revived miraculously for a SECOND time after suffering a stab in the heart.
i was kinda glad to see jin and mei huffing and puffing while fighting off the constables. at least zhang tried to be more realistic. but why did he have to revive mei TWICE?! there's only THAT much physics one can defy and get away with. reviving mei a second time (after seasonal changes) is simply too much. [spoiler]
the plot isn't really very strong. but then again, it's a wuxia flick. i guess one characteristic about wuxia flicks is the swordplay and stuff. actually the plot might be able to surprise audience more if not for infernal affairs. somehow watching house after infernal just makes house seem like some wuxia copycat.
one question though, what constitutes good acting? tony leung chiu wai's supposed to be good, but really most of the time when he appears on screen i'm just too busy drooling. think i'm too infatuated with him to judge on his acting.
and since i'm a fan of kaneshiro, i'll have to admit i was drooling when he appeared on screen every time too. i'm just obsessed with beauty. i like to look at beauty and try to understand why is something beautiful, and hopefully i can replicate it somehow (drawing.. something...)
but i thought zhang ziyi's not bad in the show. i'm not a fan of hers. she just has this look that kind of puts me off, but i think she did pretty well in the film.
but andy lau! i was actually impressed with his performance in infernal affairs. (despite tony leung winning the best actor award -from some HK film awards ceremony i think- i love leung. but he's always pretty good an actor, well he is to me.. but lau made a breakthrough in infernal! it's really quite rare, so despite being a staunch leung supporter i was kind of let down that lau failed to win the award) in infernal, he managed to shake off that typical lau-ness. usually when lau acts, no matter what role he plays, he never fails to bring a bit of andy lau into the character. but, despite my lack of knowledge of what good acting is, i feel that acting should be about bringing a character to life. not about bringing you into the character.
argh. need to run an errand. anyway, i was disappointed by lau's performance in house.
posted by who? at 07:19 |
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