My day off
Tim Chmielewski
Before the movie I had a look through a few book shops in the city and
found the following books of interest:
Cowboy Love Poetry
Radical Melbourne 2
Eat Me! (a graphic design book about food packaging)
1000 Video Game Heroes
Effective Logo Design
Designing Logos and Letterheads (included a 'K' logo inside)
Science Fiction Movie Posters (including the Polish version of Return of
the Jedi in which Darth Vader's head explodes.)
Don't Make Me Think! (famous web design book)
The design books are really good to look at, but they all cost about $80
each due them being specialised (some of the more serious books were
plastic sealed and cost over $100.)
===
The Heroic Ones
A rollicking adventure tale, this story follows the "13 Princes" who are
under orders of the Emperor to track down rebels. While they are not
doing that they drink and party all the time, drinking straight from the
bladder wine casks and bull horns.
The King boasts that any of his 13 princes can defeat the enemy general
who is at their gates, so a visitor named Shun Wen asks where is the
13th one. It turns out he is asleep at his post from drinking too much.
When they wake him the Wen bets him his Jade belt that he can't capture
the general, prince bets his head and is told "this is no joke!"
When the 13th Prince wins, Shun cracks it and doesn't want to give up
his belt. He gets to keep half of it in the end, but he still isn't
happy. The king tells everyone to drink even more and the 13th Prince
sculls 3 horns in a row.
The main part of the movie follows a mission by nine of the princes to
infiltrate the rebel city and try to abduct the king. This seems to go
well for them until two of the princes try to take advantage of the
woman who is hiding them and the leader of their group (the 13th prince)
sends them away. The two plot revenge later.
When they finally get back the king rewards them and punishes the two
who came back early and they attack the rebel city again. After this Wun
Shen sends an invitation to the King to come to his castle. The two
shifty princes are sent and given false information to try and get the
king to come back (the bloke is still annoyed about his belt.)
The king's visit to the traitor is where the film really takes off, but
the amount of action in this sequence makes it hard to describe, so I'll
let you see it for yourself.
I really enjoyed this movie as it had loads of great action sequences
and managed to change who the main characters were fighting against
several times without it being confusing. I also liked that you didn't
know which characters were going to make it in some of the battles and
other scenes.
It was good to see a movie based on Chinese history in which the main
characters were not all Kung Fu masters, but just fighting for the
Emperor to clear up the rebel scum. I would recommend this move to
people who like action adventure movies and don't mind a bit of scenery
chewing from some of the cast.
====
After the movie I went down the National Gallery of Victoria which has a
blockbuster exhibition on French Impressionism on at the moment (I am
going to see it with my parents when they come back from the USA.)
The exhibition I went to see was called
"From Paris with Love - French Graphic Artists from 1880 to 1950"
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/frompariswithlove/
The gallery put it on as a companion show to their main one, fittingly
as some of the Ukiyo-e prints from Japan that inspired the original
artists were also on display. If you think you are cooler than your
friends as you got into Manga first, think again - French artists got
into it during the 1880's.
Some of the more interesting prints were actually advertisements Henry
Toulouse-Lautrec did for various Paris cafes. I also liked the woodcuts
by Felix Vallotton including "La Manifestation" (the protest.)
As the gallery was open until 5pm I also went up a few levels to see
a show called "The Art of Zen" - http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/artofzen/
This was a very interesting exhibition as most of the works were just a
Zen koan on a large scroll. If anything depended on how they were
written it would be these. My favourites were the one with the woman's
portrait inside a single brushstroke skull and the "Say something and I
hit you with a stick! Don't say anything and I hit you with a stick!"
(rough translation), which had a big brushstroke representing the
"stick"
Thanks.
--
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Hong Kong Movie Reviews: http://hkmovies.timchuma.com