Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies

Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies

by jeep 12/26/2004, 11:45pm PST

Lurker Shoomoser wrote:

Crouching Tiger Hidden dragon actually was based on a Chinese fiction written of the same name in the 50s. How Americanised is the movie version I don't know, because I have never read the original, but *surely* not much.

It isn't any more westernized than Kurosawa's Ran. Ang Lee said he wanted to make a movie like the Wudan genre he grew up watching, but he wanted to bring it to a wider audience. the WGA doesn't force you to add who wrote what to your script credits, so we'll never know.

You mean Gong Li? Gong Li used to work to Zhang Yimou, the director of Hero. Zhang Yimou like to have Gong Li in almost every one of his pre-sell out pre-Hero arty-farty movies (Raise the Red Lantern etc.), until she got married to some rich guy (another Cinderella story).

I swear I'm quoting this guy, and I did call him a 'gossip' (this programmer also had seperate email folders for his wife and girlfriend, so I guess I'm a gossip, too.) They break up, she marries a "Cigarette Industry Executive"...

He also used the "Hot Actress", Zhang Ziyi, just like he used to cast Gong Li consistently in the pre-sellout days, hence "Little Gong Li" (but I think she is prettier than Gong Li, ahem.)

...he goes from 'Chinese Martin Scorsese' to 'Chinese Roman Polanski'...D'OH! (Also: yes, she is hotter than Gong Li was. He calls her Li Gong, he calls the director of Crouching Tiger Lee Ang, and the Fight Choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, and he corrected me if I used the Americanized pronounciation. Weird guy.)

This guy is a sell out because his new movie, "House of the Flying Dagger" or something, is also some kind of martial art movie set in ancient China, along the lines of Hero, only the story is so much weaker. In fact the new movie is a pool of alcohol induced vomit.

A real Pool of Radiance 2, eh? I guess I'm used to directors cashing in a bit, Spielberg alternates between profit movies and art movies, Scorsese had to make Bringing out the Dead before Disney would even consider paying for Gangs of New York, and rumor has it even Kubrick had to direct Cruise and Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut to get the studio to finance AI. if this guy is trying to break into american cinema, there's worse ways to do it than making kung fu movies.

Actually Miramax spent some of its own money on Hero, it partnered with some Chinese film studio. In total they spent ~$30m ($240 Hong Kong Dollars), the most expensive film in the entire Chinese cinema history. What a fucking waste. The second half of the movie would have made you believe that it is a love story, but the first half is more like some wi-fu rehash with a dash of political intrigue. It is pretty disjointed.

Yeah but having seen tons of martial arts movies, when you see a movie called Hero you're not expecting much in the way of romance or political complexity. You're not expecting the mind-fuck where the emperor turns the story around, even if it seems a little ham-handed. You're expecting the old local-boy does good Star Wars plot, and while I guess you get it in the end, you certainly don't get there the normal way.

I did not know Miramax (ie Disney) paid for the production, but it's certainly not an unbelievable development that they'd pick a director and set up a multi-picture deal, they do it with directors (Miyazaki, Scorsese) and actors (Lindsey Lohan, Jodie Foster) all the time, extending it to a director in China is chump change for them. The amount is surprising, but given the CGI work that goes into removing the wires from these movies, and probably most of the slomo bullet-time stuff, I can see that budget for this film.

/jeep/