Buffy ,'Sleeper'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Saw Hero today and enjoyed it muchly, partly because of the art direction, and partly because of the way the story of the assassination attempt was gradually refined from lie to something resembling the truth.
What bothered me, in retrospect, was the final message of the film, that the unity and overall peace of "Our Land" could excuse acts of tyranny and so on. I found it chilling in how that message applied to Communist China and a number of other regimes.
Consider who funded it, Anne.
I knew nothing about the movie going in, Betsy. Who funded it? Was it the Chinese Gov't, or was it Mel Gibson?
Heh.
The movie's funded by Communist China ("Beijing New Picture Film Co."). The first Qin Emperor has become an official cultural hero in Communist China. It felt a bit allegory-ish while I was watching it, so I looked up the details. The first Qin Emperor is famous, by the way, for burning all the Chinese books he didn't approve of -- every single copy. He also buried scholars alive.
Somehow, I do not find any of that surprising. I loved the movie while I was watching it. It didn't hit me until the ride home just how propagandistic the thing was.
Yip. That's why I ultimately love CTHD more. Hero is a more beautiful movie, but CTHD has a better text and subtext for me.
For the record, I did like Terminator III. And I managed to watch the whole thing without being distracted by the fact that the lead character is governor of California.
I think I should rent Predator. That movie has two governors in it.
I think I should rent Predator. That movie has two governors in it.
Vote Carl Weathers in '05!
I really dislike T3.
I really liked Hero, but my heart went out most to Snow and Broken Sword. Oh, god, and poor Sky who's just going to hear about all this on the rumour mill.
Something I did notice -- although the subtitles only said "our land" when they were specifically talking about the country, the Mandarin phrase was used a whole lot in the minutes following. Kinda cool.
But yeah, I had a profound sense of sadness knowing how it was going to end as soon as Qin sussed Nameless.
Can you make a wuxia movie with a happy ending?