flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2008-04-17 07:06 pm
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In which I continue my wuxia education

It's sad when I have to google my DVDs on IMDB to find out which soundtrack I should be using, and they're still wrong.

Began with Tianxia Wushuang/ 天下无双, and the Cantonese soundtrack, and then realized the lip movements didn't synch. Or didn't synch for half the charas, so I switched to mandarin. My ear has been forever turned by Woxin, because now mandarin sounds better than Cantonese, unless it's the real silk-stuffed-in-the-mouth Beijing dialect.

Evidently nothing has changed in the HK film industry. It's still as silly, anarchic, and self-referential as it was in the 90's: all those anachronisms ha ha, which would be funny if I hadn't seen them so often even in my (again, extreeemely limited) wuxia viewing.

Still, this one is sweet; it has its moments and a semi-intelligent translator, who takes the King Bully of the main role and calls him Bully the Kid. Also has Tony Leung who begins to grow on me. Might even have a nod at Utena-ish screwing with gender givens, only not so much. [livejournal.com profile] rasetsunyo somewhere early on in the Woxin watching said that HK films may play with edginess in the sexual line but are ultimately very safe, as opposed to Woxin which is not. Truly, mainland productions are beginning to look better and better to my eye. There's some substance even amid teh pretteh.

How you get Chinese Odyssey 2002 out of what I guess to mean 'matchless' is something I won't think about. And does HK use simplified hanzi now?

Continued with something called in English Butterfly and Sword. It has Michelle Yeoh. It has Tony Leung. It is still too damned HK action film for me in spite of both of them. I must move on to my Woxin rewatch and the longueurs of the Fan Li/ Xi Shi plot.

[identity profile] rasetsunyo.livejournal.com 2008-04-18 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
But does not Tony Leung have AMAZING SMOULDERING EYES. *______* I watch a lot of nonsense purely on his account.

Yeah HK started using simplified hanzi after reunification I think.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2008-04-18 02:01 am (UTC)(link)
To my mind no one smoulders sufficiently after Uncle Ming. But the blunt and honest features are endearing.

[identity profile] i-am-zan.livejournal.com 2008-04-18 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
* agrees emphatically* - eheheh! guilty of that too! but don't ask me specifics because I get them all mixed up!

[identity profile] rasetsunyo.livejournal.com 2008-04-18 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
That is true. Uncle Ming is truly 天下无双

Oh and r.e. lip synching -- Zhao Wei is from the Mainlnd, and IIRC so is Faye Wong; if filming time is short HK films sometimes have actors speak in whatever language they're comfortable with and dub over. Filming must have been a veritable Babel.

I like Chinese Odyssey though. I like the crack.