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Curse of the Golden Flower


jazzbo

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Wait a minute, when I looked up Fearless I realize I watched half of that over someone's shoulder, who was watching an Asian dvd of it on his laptop on the bus from Houston to Austin.

Not quite my cup of tea. I like the fantastical and "ancient" ambiance much better.

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Two things:

1) Have you noticed that whenever they make trailers for foreign films in the U.S., they look like silent movies? They're so paranoid about alienating the "I hate subtitles" people that they leave out all of the dialogue. I hate that.

2) This movie looks like "The Last Emperor" meets "The Lord of the Rings." I mean that in a good way!

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I'll be seeing this. His movies have been mixed bags as of late. House of Flying Daggers was nice, but the plot fell apart 2/3 way through. Strong visuals. Hero is actually a movie that has grown on me over time. I thought it was okay at first, but gets better on subsequent viewings. I miss the small budget films from the 80s. Lon, if you like those mentioned, check out the Banquet and the Promise. I think both are flawed films, but look stunning and have some great moments.

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I'll be seeing this. His movies have been mixed bags as of late. House of Flying Daggers was nice, but the plot fell apart 2/3 way through. Strong visuals.

You may feel the same way about this one. It's even more visually stunning but I think the Chinese have a different idea of narrative than Westerners.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Caught a showing of this one this afternoon. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

The one negative aspect of this movie is that I didn't feel much of an emotional connection with the characters. Can't exactly figure out why this was, becuase the performances were all very good, and the script seemed to work just fine, though it was subtitled and much is always lost in translation. But with Hero and House of Flying Daggers, I felt that connection, and here, not so much.

With that said, this is certainly one of the finest examples of film craftmanship I've seen. It is absolutely beautiful to look at, the story held my interest, and the action sequences were amazing. When a film is this well put together, it makes it much easier to ignore the flaws.

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Caught this yesterday afternoon as well.

STUPENDOUS production, BEAUTIFUL filming and INCREDIBLE sets.

I agree Sal, I couldn't make that empathetic connection with characters as well. I think it may have been self-defense, because I sensed from the start that tragedy was going to befall the whole family and I couldn't get past the "doom and gloom."

The ending. . .well. . . I was struck with how totally bizaare the closing ballad was in conjunction with the ending of the drama!

Edited by jazzbo
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Yes, the production design really sets the bar high for future films to come. Its visual splendors are burned into my brain, and will be for a long time to come.

I really wish I could call this movie great, but its just not quite there. Its in the "very good" catagory. I'll probably still buy the DVD.

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