hero

"Hero" wasn't directed by Tarentino:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hero/

The overwhelming positive reviews leaves you in the minority -- the IMDb user reviews are also at 8.2, a very high rating.

"Kill Bill Vol I and II" are great movies of a genre you obviously are not tuned into. The emotions of the final scenes of II are devastatingly real and I won't reveal anything as it would be a SPOILER.

Could you provide a link to this exceptional indictment of Tarentino? They obviously don't know who directed "Hero."

Yes, 'Hero' is simply presented by Tarantino. There is another thread here regarding this movie, which I do want to see. Just a note to LW, we finally got Kill Bill II on DVD, so I had a chance to watch it, and thought it was gripping, and brilliant. One day, when I have more time, I will watch both volumes back to back for improved context.

I think I want to see 'The Blind Swordsman' before 'Hero', as I am a fan of the original movies.

The burial scene in "Kill Bill II" had be mentally squirming in my seat.

You are right that Tarentino was involved with the film as an endorser, much like the blurbs on a book's dust jacket. He's nowhere given credit as a producer or anything else:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/fullcredits

I'm not a Kung Fu nut but I do enjoy a good action epic if it's well filmed and has a coherant story.

Hidden Truths in the Court of a King Who Would Be Emperor
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: August 27, 2004

Miramax Films
Metal to metal: Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Broken Sword and Maggie Cheung Man-yuk as Snow in Zhang Yimou's film "Hero."

In "Hero," an ambitious period epic about the birth of the first Chinese empire, warriors fly through the air like birds of prey, their swords cutting through enemies and lovers alike. Set during the third century B.C., the story of an assassination plot against a powerful king unfolds with such dazzling bursts of color and blurs of furious action it might be easy to miss the nationalistic message tucked amid the visual enchantments. Roll over, Chairman Mao, and tell the comrades the news: the history of the empire now comes wrapped in kaleidoscopic kung fu cool.

And now this birth of an empire also comes with the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino. The reigning king of Amerasian cinema, Mr. Tarantino has lent his name to "Hero" (it looms above the title), a bit of commercial calculation no doubt meant to seduce the director's fans, some of whom have probably already watched the 2002 movie on imported DVD's.

Mr. Tarantino's name is a nice touch, but the real auteur here is the Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who until now has been known for far more modestly scaled features such as "Raise the Red Lantern" and "The Story of Qiu Ju." "Hero," which opens nationwide today, shows Mr. Zhang working in a new genre and on a new scale, and handling the demands of both with relative ease, which partly explains why the movie stands as the most successful release in China, second only to James Cameron's "Titanic."



BALANCE OF NYT REVIEW

Reviews nowadays don't mean anything, the public screams for high concept, the media shovels it out faster than <insert texas phrase>. Look at reviews lately and you'll notice a lot of really low quality movies getting high scores.

Kill Bill volume 1 was a joke...it's not the genre I dislike, it's the canned lines and the lack of excitement and buildup. KB2 was much better than KB1, but still not the greatest.

stuh, I would be interested to hear what films in the genre you really like. I have a few, but I'd like to see what your choices are.

I too hated KBI but am aware that my tastes are not universal.

Tarantino talked about the martial arts move on the dvd features on KB1 - gotta make you wonder if they sought him out?

IMO KB1 was better than 2 but I have to re-watch I was just out of the hospital and still drugged.

Cav,

I like movies from all genres. dramas and action dramas are my favorite though.

I'm not sure what genre you put this in.

Something broad like "action"?

some action movies I thought were good were Fight Club, Braveheart, borne identity (borne supremacy I thought was good also but I saw it while high so I won't mention that), the usual suspects (kind of an action drama though), gladiator, terminator 2

Or "modern kung fu"?

I'd say Iron Monkey, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Matrix 1 was alright (this does not include 2 and 3 mind you)

Or "high concept"?

I hate the whole high concept thing, but I thought X Men 2 was pretty good.

Or "plotless cheap thrill"?

I don't like anything with a bad plot or bad development...

But this movie hero...the acting was just horrible! I felt so uncomfortable watching the actors because their lines were so canned, their motives so contrived, their emotions so unbeliavable, and their actions so ridiculous. so, I just found it very boring.

I have to admit, I haven't seen Braveheart, believe it or not, but I loved Crouching Tiger and Iron Monkey. I also enjoyed Fight Club, classic. Gladiator was cool, but they could have nixed the romantic sub-plot. I wanted to see Hero because it was from the same producer (?) as Crouching Tiger. Have you seen Phone Booth? I'm not a huge Joel Schumacher fan, but this movie had me riveted.

yeah I have seen Phone Booth, it was an enjoyable movie and I think it was well produced and directed.

Reviews are sometimes only a good guideline if they universally pan a movie or praise a movie and I'm not talking about the movie critic of the Hoboken News. There has to be some critic that one generally agrees with. I saw the film yesterday afternoon and it was influenced more by Kurosawa than Tarentino. There are many scenes where the cinematography combined with artful visual effects which were stunning. I didn't find any of the things detracting from the film to be valid.

the cinematography was very good

however the production of the fighting special effects was pretty crappy...you could almost see the strings attached to their backs as they flew through the air, many times their motion was directed in the direction of a "swing" rather than the direction they had supposedly jumped at

the kung fu elements were very poorly correographed, as a practitioner of kung fu i was very dissappointed at the way they portrayed it...which was very innaccurate

many of the "emotional pauses" were simply uncalled for

i guess you could compare it to "the cell" in that it had good cinematography, bad everything-else, but the cell had much better cinematography..

One of my fave Kung Fu flicks is still 'Legend of Drunken Master' with Jackie Chan. stuh, I didn't know you were a Kung Fu practitioner...years ago I studied Shaolin. I met my wife at the school, she was studying Tai Chi.

What Asian films of any genre have you seen that you like? Those "emotional pauses" as you call them are typical of Kurosawa and most of the Japanese and Chinese filmmakers.

I disagree that the Kung Fu elements were poorly choreographed on the basis of choreography alone, not simply because they were based on Kung Fu. There's been zillions of Kung Fu movies that now look antiquated.

Don't see any comparison in any way to the cinematography in "The Cell" which was quite good in the Dali-inspired surreal scenes but pedestrian staging in the reality scenes, no better than any cop movie. It even managed to overdo the surreal dream sequences ending up with some kind of plant growing around the screen which made no sense whatsoever.

The other films you mentioned could be classified as "high concept" movies. They were critical and box office successes, "Fight Club" (which I liked) less than the others. "Tigerland" directed by Schumacher is a far superior film.

This movie about a historic China was captivating and incredibly real even with the exquisite fantastic elements. A world worthy of the fictional world of "The Lord of the Rings."

Tigerland was a great flick.

Cav, thats a good one. yes, although I don't keep up nearly as much as the rest of my family....I'm a black belt in Tae Kwon do (which is a joke), I've done aiki-jitsu, jiu-jitsu, mantis style kung fu, and bagua--I actually had the honor of studying with He Jinbao for a week, who is almost without a doubt the world's greatest practiioner of kung fu alive today.



I don't see what difference it makes if it is a typical practice, that doesn't make it a good one!



In crouching tiger hidden dragon, which this obviously copies in terms of the fighting correography, they were able to get into the air and do cool stuff but it all had a "basis" in reality...basically, practicioners of kung fu are reknowned for their control over mind and body, their ability to make themselves be heavy or light, and extremely fast...in crouching tiger, they used the effect to show this, they would need to jump off of a surface to get in the air, and then they would come back down. but in hero, it was much less like that...they could hang in the air for way too long!

every fight can be summed up very simply: the two competitors engage in a perfectly matched exchange of blows, all of which are blocked or parried, until one of them finally gets "determined", they both stop, and the determined one levels his sword, then starts flying through the air like an airplane for about 30 feet and without moving his sword penetrates and kills. how ridiculous is that?

for one thing, a good kung fu practicioner doesn't waste time with all that fluff. Fights don't last more than 3-5 moves if the practioners know what they are doing! And blocking and parrying is much more difficult than attacking, so when they equally exchange blows for a long period of time it means that they must be attacking only half-heartedly.

and how about the "assassins"....kind of silly to cal lthem assassins when their plan of attack is to run hedlong through an army of 30,000 troops armed with spears rather than sneaking in during the night. but when you notice that the troops don't even poke their spears at all, and are easily mowed down like grass, I gues it becomes obvious why no special tactics were required...

how about the ridiculousness of the amount of arrows that were wasted. that's not historical fiction! let me get this straight...there is a village with 1 person they want to kill in it...so they march up to the village with the ENTIRE army and then fire volley after volley of arrows until every single building is pincushioned? notice how the buildings had slate roofs and they didn't have paper walls either, so theres no way the arrows were then coming inside the houses. From my studies of terminal and exterior ballistics in firearms I can say for sure that this is horse hockey

how about when they are fighting over the water...sticking a swordpoint into water is probably the worst way to push off. wait, a drop of water lands near his lover...so he stops fighting, and calmy goes over to her and wipes a tear away, right in the middle of the fight. how anticlimactic!

these 2 words exlain everything "our land". no! why does your lover want to kill you? why won't she talk it over? kung fu is only half physical, there is no way anyone nearly so headstrong would have any skill in kung fu whatsoever...but they were ALL incredibly headstrong!!

how about when the hero was talking in the chamber. somehow all the monks 800 meters away can hear every spoken word, and rush up at the apporpriate time! how cinematic! I mean, dumb!

how about how all 10,000 unrehearsed monks somehow speak in unison, with every word! maybe they could see into the future and they had spent a few hours practicing their synchronized speech before he showed up? hmm..



like I said, the plot was aweful it was nothing more than cinematography...I enjoyed the movie throughly and I found it quite unique, although I think they could/should have just cropped out everything from real life and played it on the Arts channel. because it's more just visual arts.



By high concept I mean a movie that sells purely because it is jumping onto an existing theme that already has fans...aka all the new comic movies, star wars, LOTR, etc.

Fight club I think is one of the best movies of our time...but I have not seen Tigerland so I'll make a point to see that.



huuh? I really don't see where you're coming from. They took a very very light plot and tacked it onto the actual history of China (in the movie, Qui was the place that turned into china and it should be pronounced "chin")..but how do you compare this to Tolkien? I have an encyclopedia of plants and animals by Tolkien which is over an inch thick and contains descriptions of everything down to minor little insect and plant variations...I have an atlas of middle earth that contains details down to the interior design of many of the homes and battle strategy plans, also hundreds of pages. Put together the entire history (hundreds of years of detailed history) and the history in the books does little more than scratch the surface of this world...which is the only fantasy world that is like this to date, nothing is nearly so complete, not even the hastily-made Forgotten Realms that roleplayers use. So ?