(no subject)

[graculus]

Anyone who knows me will know that I love martial arts movies, even before blktauna led me astray into the source of evil that is Yesasia.com. ;)

Ask anyone in Europe or America nowadays about martial arts (or at least the historical side of things) and doubtless they'll be talking about three movies in particular: Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers. Anyway, until this weekend, I'd only seen two of those movies and finally got around to watching the third yesterday, the missing one being House of Flying Daggers.

Most people I've heard talking about these three movies seem to have a particular favourite, one that for them is far beyond the others (and for which I'm going to conduct a poll in a minute, so be patient!) and I have to say that House of Flying Daggers could probably never live up to the hype around it. Zhang Yimou has never made a movie in his life that wasn't exquisitely beautiful (and indeed I look forward to his upcoming Chow Yun Fat movie), so it wasn't that, but I just found that unlike the other two movies, I didn't really care what happened to the protagonists, except in feeling sorry for the Andy Lau character, who finds himself betrayed by the woman he loves for a guy she's only known for a couple of days.

And that's where this movie falls down for me, in comparison to Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I mean, you know if it's a Chinese movie there's a strong chance that everyone will be dead by the end of it, but I'm sure the director would like you to give a damn?

Because I'm curious, here's the poll - please feel free to ignore if you're not into these kind of movies...

[Poll #698270]

Meanwhile, I have Fearless to look forward to, opening in the UK on September 8th. Mmmm. :)

Comments

[mer1973.livejournal.com]

My prejudiced opinion is that House of Flying Daggers had a more traditional love story that was easier for people to hook into the movie with. I'm also not sure that Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger should be in this list since Ang Lee's sensibility is so different from the other director's.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

The three go together, for me, in that they're the three movies in this style that non-genre fans are likely to know of, though you could equally argue that Zhang Yimou's background as more of an arthouse director also separates his two movies from the traditions and background of wuxia, I guess.