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Aug. 6th, 2005 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickToday, instead of cutting the grass, I finally got around to watching House of Flying Daggers. I gotta say, this Zhang Yimou fellow knows how the hell to do color. O'course, I liked that in Hero too -- it was a visual aesthetic I could spend all day with. (I should buy me a copy of Hero, speaking of.) I don't know why the fuck Merkin filmmakers can't do this -- where the hell is our visual aesthetic? Do we HAVE a visual aesthetic? (I understand that what we're being sold here is pretty much SCA/RenFaire history, but I'm buying. It's pretty. I want to believe. I'm not even asking any difficult questions about the women's feet.)
With a movie this pretty, you don't need a plot. You can have a plot-free hundred and nineteen minutes and STILL not be bored. But, y'know, these movies come with decent acting, a tolerably good plot, quite (quite) lovely people, and a coherent vision with so fucking much color it feels like something Fauvist, maybe by Matisse.
Yeah, it's a subtitled (I find Chinese soothing when I'm not trying to make it Japanese) martial arts film with people flying through the air on wires. I admit that this is not entirely realistic, but I didn't hear any of you people complaining when the fucking bus jumped over the broken bridge gap thing in Speed. I also noted a distinct lack of complaining about the coach chase scene in Van Helsing even though that was also entirely the opposite of realistic. You can be buying that stuff, then you damn well ought to also buy ninjas with excellent hang time and fantastic, otherworldly skills.
This is our hero in the, er, House of Negotiable Affection at the beginning of the film. Vibrant, lush colors. Also, I like the expression on his face. He's a very pretty man and I can watch rather a lot of him before getting bored.
This is our heroine in the House of Negotiable Affection.
This is after our heroine gets captured by the, er, sanctioned government, more or less. Please to be contrasting this austere shot in browns and greys with the lush colors from the House of Negotiable Affection scenes, directly above.
This is our heroine taking a bath. Note framing and the way the leaf greens bring out the luminous quality of her skin. She's also lovely, another one of those people I can look at for a very long time without getting bored.
This is the other guy in the movie. (There are basically three people in the movie, a guy and a girl and another guy. Damn near everyone else is cannon fodder or scenery.) He's pretty much the bad guy insofar as the film *has* a bad guy, and he gets severe colors and a uniform.
Our heroine (Mei) in a field of flowers, drawing a dagger to kill some of the cannon fodder. This isn't a shot on screen for a huge amount of time, about a second and a half, but I'd like you to look at how all the browns work together so nicely, there. This is a film with a visual aesthetic.
I think the guy's got a thing for green. The greens in the last movie (Hero) were also highly memorable.
So, yknow. Visual aesthetic. Very pretty film. It's probaby worth an afternoon of your time, particularly if you're putting off yard work.
With a movie this pretty, you don't need a plot. You can have a plot-free hundred and nineteen minutes and STILL not be bored. But, y'know, these movies come with decent acting, a tolerably good plot, quite (quite) lovely people, and a coherent vision with so fucking much color it feels like something Fauvist, maybe by Matisse.
Yeah, it's a subtitled (I find Chinese soothing when I'm not trying to make it Japanese) martial arts film with people flying through the air on wires. I admit that this is not entirely realistic, but I didn't hear any of you people complaining when the fucking bus jumped over the broken bridge gap thing in Speed. I also noted a distinct lack of complaining about the coach chase scene in Van Helsing even though that was also entirely the opposite of realistic. You can be buying that stuff, then you damn well ought to also buy ninjas with excellent hang time and fantastic, otherworldly skills.
This is our hero in the, er, House of Negotiable Affection at the beginning of the film. Vibrant, lush colors. Also, I like the expression on his face. He's a very pretty man and I can watch rather a lot of him before getting bored.
This is our heroine in the House of Negotiable Affection.
This is after our heroine gets captured by the, er, sanctioned government, more or less. Please to be contrasting this austere shot in browns and greys with the lush colors from the House of Negotiable Affection scenes, directly above.
This is our heroine taking a bath. Note framing and the way the leaf greens bring out the luminous quality of her skin. She's also lovely, another one of those people I can look at for a very long time without getting bored.
This is the other guy in the movie. (There are basically three people in the movie, a guy and a girl and another guy. Damn near everyone else is cannon fodder or scenery.) He's pretty much the bad guy insofar as the film *has* a bad guy, and he gets severe colors and a uniform.
Our heroine (Mei) in a field of flowers, drawing a dagger to kill some of the cannon fodder. This isn't a shot on screen for a huge amount of time, about a second and a half, but I'd like you to look at how all the browns work together so nicely, there. This is a film with a visual aesthetic.
I think the guy's got a thing for green. The greens in the last movie (Hero) were also highly memorable.
So, yknow. Visual aesthetic. Very pretty film. It's probaby worth an afternoon of your time, particularly if you're putting off yard work.
