So because I don't always have much in the way of news or anything interesting to say, I thought I would start something a bit different and see how it goes. I call it my Photo Mysteries (oooo-aaah).
Whenever I feel like it (notice the careful avoidance of any term that might imply some regularity like 'daily' or 'weekly') I will put up a photo of something from around the house that I have taken a photo of and with any luck you people out there might try and guess what it is (leave your guesses as comments). Of course, the things I take photos of may not look like what they are, and therein lies the challenge and (hopefully) a bit of fun. The first photo is below. I look forward to seeing the guesses, and if anyone gets it right! One final thing: none of the pictures will be digitally altered, so what I post will be what comes straight from the camera.
As you may have read from Kirsten's blog, every Tuesday is now our $1 DVD movie night. It was my turn to pick a DVD to watch this time, and I had already made up my mind last week that we would get The Life Aquatic: with Steve Zissou. Well, as many good plans are wont to do, this one fell apart in the execution. You see, some complete arseholes (or assholes for all the Americans out there :) ) decided to rent out the three copies that the video store had. Was I impressed by this? I think not.
So, what to do? Plan B, methinks. On our first $1 DVD movie night, we wandered round the store, and the Jet Li movie Hero caught my eye. I missed it at the cinema (that’s kinda the point of our movie nights, to see flicks we didn’t catch on the big screen in the first place) and had been wanting to see it for a while, however I didn’t get it at the time, and other films were higher on my priority list anyway. Due to the lack of Aquatic, I decided to go the Hero route this time round. I felt I had to convince my fiancée on this one, as she isn’t normally into action movies, thought Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was alright, and was worried this might be another Kill Bill-style blood and gore fest. After a few “are you sure?”s and some “yes, I’m sure”s in response, we rented out Hero.
As always, I’ll try to write as much of a spoiler-free review as I can for the benefit of those who have not, but might want to, see the movie.
By about a third of the way through Hero, both Kirsten and I were thinking that the plot was pretty standard and a bit boring. This however, was only to lull us into a false sense of security. The plot then got very interesting, jumping back and forth in the films timeline, and presenting different viewpoints. No wonder Tarantino liked it so much and gave it his “stamp of approval”. I can’t say much without revealing the story, but do not think this is the simple tale of one man’s revenge that it initially appears to be.
I should also mention that to enjoy these particular type of Asian martial arts movies you have to be able to suspend your disbelief, or believe (for the purposes of enjoying the movie) that these warriors possess some measure of supernatural skills and powers that enable them to perform feats such as being able to all but fly, and skipping across large bodies of water in such a way that would make Jesus Christ green with envy. If you can’t get over that, don’t bother. Fortunately for me, I can :)
This is an intensely visual film. Slow motion is used frequently (perhaps a little too much, but this is only a minor gripe) and often to great effect. Probably my favourite example of this is where Jet Li’s character must pick out a single white arrow from the hundred or more black ones that come falling down together. The fight scenes are exquisitely choreographed as you would expect, with quite a few ‘cool’ moments thrown in for good measure (such as a spear being thrown then hit back to its owner).
By far though, the most impressive visual element of this film is the colour. Almost, if not every, scene in this film uses colour to describe the atmosphere of the scene or the moods, thoughts, and feelings of the characters. Sometimes this is subtle, but more often the colour is intensely vibrant. It is quite a feast for the eyes.
I haven’t much to say about the sound, except for the score. The music in this film was by Tan Dun, who also did the music for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The score is both percussive and very rhythmic, but counterbalanced by the strings, and combined together can evoke a variety of emotions that on the face of it, you would not necessarily think they could. I enjoyed the music very much, as did Kirsten.
As I can’t speak a word of Mandarin, I can’t really tell how well the actors deliver their lines, and so I must judge the quality of their acting solely on their expressiveness and how well they can emote. I don’t know if it is just me, but I find that Asian actors are nearly always totally convincing in their performances, much more so than their English-speaking counterparts. Needless to say I believed the actors in their roles, and of course they are all accomplished dancers, gymnasts, martial artists, or a combination of those. Plus Zhang Ziyi is cute (but I worry that she might get a little pigeonholed as the young and beautiful, but petulant ass-kicking apprentice). Unfortunately there’s not much eye candy for Kirsten in this one.
I really enjoyed this film, and I think Kirsten was surprised by how much she enjoyed it as well. Now I’m looking forward to seeing House of Flying Daggers (same director, and also features Zhang Ziyi), but only when they bring out a version that has the original Mandarin soundtrack, and not the dubbed English language version.
Il buono:
- The character relationships and interplay. OK, so a lot is already set up by the comics, but I still enjoyed it. Particularly the Human Torch/The Thing semi-playful animosity.
- Johnny Storm's sense of humour. Though a lot of reviewers seem to have found him annoying.
- The visual effects in general. Exceptions were Mr. Fantastic's stretchy bits (oooer) and Ben Grimm as The Thing (see Il brutto below).
- Funnily enough, the Doom costume. Not so far from the comic as I thought it would be, and a damn sight better than the Green Goblin's (I hope they do a revamp for when Harry becomes GG2).
- That truck smacking into The Thing.
- Jessica Alba. She's hot as a blonde, as well as a brunette (but not quite as much in my opinion). Plus slinky, skin tight uniform. Plus one scene in just undies. Worth the price of admission by itself. (Hey, if Kirsten can comment about Christian Bale, I can comment on my movie babes.)
Il cattivo:
- Nothing that I can quite put my finger on. It's like the X-factor score from Strictly Dancing. In FF's case, Ramon scored them low. But whatever it was missing, it was needed to pull it out of the gutter of "just good" to the bright shining boulevard of greatness. But hey, I'll still buy it on DVD.
Il brutto:
- The Thing's constume/make up/whatever you want to call it. Half the time (generally when it wasn't up too close) it looked rock like. Sometimes though, it did look like a latex suit. Though they could have sold it more, by having more prominent scrapey rock noises when he moved.
- Julian McMahon. Not in the movie, just in real life. Every interview I've seen him in, he seems just like the characters he plays: vain, self-centered, attention-seeking. Maybe that's why he plays them so well...
Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It was reasonably faithful to the source materials, with some obvious changes, that I didn't really object to, though I thought I originally would. It was no Spider-Man or X-Men (maybe cos it didn't have hyphen in the title - would "Fantastic-Four" have been better?) but not the worst comic book adaptation by far.
There's quite a few second-shelf titles that are coming to the screen in the near future, which I am hopeful will turn out to be quite good:
Bring on Ghost Rider!!!
Bring on Silver Surfer!!!