Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

My mom does Tai Chi sword. She extends and lunges at the same time, and she actually does stuff with the nonweapon hand.

And there's a martial artist type person at my fencing club. He's fast, but his attacks are fairly predictable.

Crouching Tiger was great, but I thought it was overhyped. People who saw it were like, "Oh my Bob, it's the best movie I've ever seen!" but to me, it was fairly average. A martial arts film, hurrah. Even though it sucked in many ways, I got more of an adrenaline rush from the Phantom Menace, cuz George Lucas knows his eye candy. Woo! Rolling droids! Pod racing! Explosions! Massive battles!

Crouching Tiger was sort of like a Chinese period drama with 15 minute uninterrupted bouts of people kicking and slashing each other, and swinging on wires. By the time we got to the awesome tree scene, wires weren't all that special anymore.

To her credit, Jade Fox is a great villainess. Uh. Jen is stupid and doesn't really redeem herself from her dementia. (She's the symbolic "hidden dragon" of the title, BTW). The desert dude is cool. The music and scenery was awesome. I wish I didn't have to read subtitles while watching the movie at the same time, but aw well.

Okay, that's my 30 second review.

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I AM FENCING GOD! Wait. You're atheist? D'oh.

[Mengarath the Dragon]

I FINALLY got to see it last weekend. I think it was great. I agree that the whole thing about Jen was a little ambiguous and psychological and she didn't redeem herself in the end, but I don't think she was stupid. I think she was trying to find a place for herself in the world were she really felt she belonged. The think the martial arts were wonderful, thand the flying about wasn't bad at all considering some of the really bad stuff I have seen. I like the story. It's kinda like a legend. I'd like to see it again. Movies like that get better on the second time around for me, because I begin to understand more of what is going on and the psychological undercurrents. I'll probably buy it when it comes out.

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Mengarath the Dragon

Life is too short to be ordinary.

[darius]

Cripes-- I hope nobody reads this thread who hasn't seen the movie, since y'all give away the ending!!!!

Fortunately, I saw it weeks and weeks ago...

darius

Mengareth: Jen still got on my nerves. MWAHA! DESERT GUY IS *MINE*! Interesting that she can shoot at him at point blank range and miss, and then throw the whole bow at him and hit.

The tree scene rocked, even though it didn't really give me that type of 'fencing battle rage' you get when you're fleching someone or watching a really good movie. The wires didn't seem to make it stand out for me.. just the atmosphere. It was really graceful, sort of like dancing swans or something. Odd for a fight scene. You know, they actually filmed that scene in trees. With cranes. I wanna do that..

[Oor Wullie]

Hmmm,

I think I will be the only dissenting voice and say that I found Crouching Tiger to be largely comical. The fight scenes were great when they stayed on the ground, and the film was beatifully shot with a very poignant ending.

However, as soon as they started flying, and in particular when Li Mu Bai pointed his hand up in the air and took off like Superman (all he was missing was the red pants), I couldn't help but start laughing.

Equally, the rooftops scenes, where they were quite obviously dangling on wires, trying to aim their feet in the general direction of the roofs, looked a bit daft.

Mind you, I did like that most of the fighting was done by women. Throughout the whole film I can't recall one fight that involved two men.

Oor Wullie.