Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[Steve C.]

The martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has opened nationwide in the US. What's your opinions of this movie?

Check out this month's cover story on Kung Fu Online for my review and some cool pics from the film.

http://www.kungfuonline.com

[cho]

I really liked it. The choreography was great, the flying actually looked good, especially the tree-top fight. Michelle Yeoh looked better than Chow Yun-Fat.

The only thing I didn't like was that they went a little overboard with the people flying. The rooftop traveling I could take, but the jumping on water was a bit much.

[HuangKaiVun]

Some of the story was hokey, but the acting was superb and so was the martial choreography.

Sans wires, the movie truly would've been awesome.

I didn't think Chow Yun Fat looked worse than Michelle Yeoh did.

[Kung Lek]

It was an epic love story.

I finally got to see it and I really liked it.

A love and morality tale at the top of the queue.
The flying was fine! That was a big element in the heroes stories anyway. This is not a commanality in the west unless you start equating the heroes of ancient china with the heroes of the western world (batman, daredevil and those guys). Same concept.
Besides, from what I understand, the flying was one of the secrets from the wudan manual that jade fox stole. So it f with the story inasmuch that only those that were trained at wudan or had access to the stolen manual were the ones who "flew" in the movie.

As a love story it was superb!

peace

Kung Lek

[HuangKaiVun]

To me, this movie was a nice "chick flick".

I'm not fond of the perversion, and the actors weren't very convincing from a martial standpoint.

Their doubles weren't bad, but they obviously weren't true traditional martial artists due to their lack of power.

[Jimbo]

In spite of what I think of the flying around, overall it was a very fine film. But I think demographics can play a part in what people think of the film.

I saw it a couple times...once in a downtown art-house theatre and it was a big hit there...the audience had a lot of Chinese or non-Chinese who seemed into Chinese culture.

The second time I saw it was in an upper-class area shopping mall multi-plex, and the reactions were very mixed. After the movie I could hear some elderly Caucasian couples proclaim that "that was terrible, just terrible." And "I couldn't understand the story at all."

I think if you're the type of person open to new things, or are familiar with these wu-xia films, you'll like it. But certain people only go to movies because they are rated four stars by the critics, and they expect the story to conform to Western standards, like The English Patient or something. Then they're disappointed when it does not, or when they actually have to read subtitles.

As for the fight scenes, I thought Chow Yun-Fat was very convincing (though he had a Wushu double in the sword form scene). Michelle Yeoh also looked good, but she too had a Wushu double for parts of the weapons fight. IMO Zhang Zi-Yi was not very convincing at all, and unlike Chow and Yeoh, she appeared like an actual Wushu athlete, but had zero power at all.
Jim

[8stepsifu]

perversion??? YOu mean the dessert nookie? That was great!

King of the Assyrians

[HuangKaiVun]

But the REPEATED perversion of the sifu-student relationship was not.

A Taoist master sleeps with his girlfriend, that girlfriend steals his manual and kills him, HER student steals the manual from her, that student goes on and nearly kills her friend, and then the master's student gets caught up in his maniacal lust for revenge and gets killed himself.

Soap opera stuff like this is why perversion SELLS.

[meltdawn]

I think it beats everything out there. it's not Fist of Legend, but any kung fu movie is better than no kung fu movie!

The most powerful line, summing up the angst in the film was:

"Wudang is full of *****s!"

Whew! I won't be taking my master to see this one!

"Waiting is bad." - Musashi

[billy_pilgrim]

But I'm a sucker for surreal cinematography and left field narration.
As far as the punching and kicking goes, we've all seen better, but rarely filtered through a lens like the one Ang Lee possesses...

[mad taoist]

Did anyone think to ask, how did Lo put up such a good fight with Jen ? He grappled!

'If we do not go within, we go without'.

[GeneChing]

It is so gratifying to see CTHD succeed. For years, I think we all believe that kungfu movies were great cinema, not just "B flicks" as the general public perceives. But to see a kungfu movie get 10 academy award nominations! That takes us to a whole new level. Never thought I'd see the day...

CTHD was a great tribute to the classic wu xia pian genre, really the first martial arts movies prior to Shaw and Golden Harvest. Casting Chang Pei Pei was Ang Lee's acknowledgement to those great early movies. CTHD had one thing that kungfu movies have always lacked - high production value. Hopefully, this will raise the bar for other filmmakers.

It was a shame that Michelle didn't get a nomination. I can only think of one Asian that was ever nominated - Haing S. Ngor for supporting in Killing Fields. The academy has always overlooked asians, but maybe with CTHD this will change.

I also think Chow has yet to really show his talents in a US film. In line for CTHD, I overheard someone say "Did you see CYF in Replacement Killers? He was awesome." If he only knew...

BTW, if you followed Kungfu Qigong, we busted out with a CTHD teaser in our exclusive CYF interview after he did Anna and the King in April of LAST year...

I've got my fingers crossed for CTHD to sweep. It's the first Academy Awards show that I've been really excited about in years.

Gene Ching
Asst. Publisher
Kungfu Qigong Magazine & www.KungfuMagazine.com (http://www.KungfuMagazine.com)

[Jimbo]

Gene:
I also think Chow Yun-Fat has never shown his true acting talents in films that get U.S. release. He's a great actor with a lot of screen presence, but movies like "Replacement Killers" or the one he did with Mark Wahlberg waste him and make him one-dimensional. And CTHD only had him a little bit.

I hope Hollywood eventually allows him to show his best onscreen, and also Michelle Yeoh, so that Asians can start to be taken seriously as actors (Jackie Chan and Jet Li certainly will not be). I've seen Anglo films where the actors had less screen chemistry/presence than Chow or Yeoh, who got academy awards for their performances.
Jim