I watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on DVD yesterday evening and all I can say is “Wow!!!!” Three great movies in a row – when’s this streak gonna end? 🙂 (I hope never …) What can I say about Crouching Tiger? It’s a poetic, liquid, fantastical movie with great characters, brilliant swordplay and a haunting score. I usually never take notice of the score for a movie – sure I know that it’s there but it never registers conciously on my mind. But the score by Tan Dun for Crouching Tiger has a life of it’s own – the cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma seem to have a haunting, sorrowful note at times that seems to breathe a life of it’s own to the movie. I’ve often heard that Ang Lee’s movies are about strong women and while I have not seen any of his other movies, that is certainly the case when it comes to Crouching Tiger – while the character of Li Mu Bai (played to perfection by Chow Yun-Fat) is central to the story and seems to directly or indirectly affect all the events of the story, it is three women who are connected to Li Mu Bai who really move things along and directly affect events. There’s Shu Lien – the woman Li Mu Bai loves but cannot be with due to circumstances – , Jade Fox – the woman who killed Li Mu Bai’s master and whom Li Mu Bai wants to kill in order to avenge his master’s death – and Jen (though I believe her name in Chinese is different and I hate it when they change names for English :p) – the woman whom Li Mu Bai wants to make his disciple because she has such mastery of wudan -. It is a beautiful story and though I don’t agree with the ending (which I won’t reveal because I hate people who spoil a movie by revealing the ending <vbg>) because I think that particular character was much stronger than the ending gave him/her credit for and wouldn’t really have taken that particular course of action, it is a movie which left me feeling uplifted.
I’m not sure whether everybody would like the movie as much as I did because to understand the characters and their actions, you probably need to understand a bit about the time and the society they lived in and since this is set in ancient China, even I might be deluding myself in thinking that I understand any of it :p But I think the movie is worth it just for the fantastic swordplay and the martial arts. Now if you are into total realism, don’t go see this movie because it is not about reality – it is about a magical world that we know isn’t real but yet we would very much love to see become a reality if possible. Anybody want a dedicated disciple who wants to be taught wudan? (And I’m not kidding there …)
Heard from sinesolis early in the morning and he’s worked his magic again! He’s done some more icons for Blog and let me tell you, when I saw those icons I wanted to use Blog just so that I could look at those icons 🙂 And while I might be exaggerating, I’m not exaggerating much <g> Thos icons look pretty darn good and I can’t wait to get the next release of Blog done so that I (and anybody else who wants to for that matter) can use Blog with these beautiful icons: