Return of the Condor Heros 2006: ARRGH!

It's another damn remake. I complain about Hollywood having no imagination, about them recycling old movies and TV shows, etc., but the Chinese are even worse. It's getting to be like a folk art, where the point is not the newness of the story (everyone already knows the story), but how interestingly you tell it. So there's a seemingly endless stream of Jin Yong and Gu Long (probably the two most famous wuxia writers) and to a lesser extent Liang Yusheng (sp?) adaptations, whether chopped up (and nearly incomprehensible) movie versions or TV serials. TVB (Hong Kong) has done lots of them, and now mainland China's getting into the game. I was very impressed with their Xiao Ao Jiang Hu (Smiling Proud Wanderer/State of Divinity/whatever) 2001, not so much with their Legend of the Condor Heroes.

And now here's their version of Return of the Condor Heroes. As usual, the scenery is nice. Beyond that...heh...so far I've watched the first 2-3 episodes.

Music. Bleah. Woman singing Ah ah ah ah ah, something like that. Got on my nerves, so I fast forwarded through it.

So. They decided to start with the bloody handprints: Scarlet Fairy Li Mouchou (excuse my pinyin, can't be bothered looking it up now)'s calling card. One handprint for each person she's planning to kill. Ok, very dramatic, but right away we see the serial is going to have way too much CGI and frozen shots of people hanging in the air and not so much in the way of "grounded" fight scenes. They skip over a whole bunch of backstory, completely omitting the crazy man and his wife and their two sons who are mixed up with the LMC tragedy. Blah blah blah.

When we see Yang Guo, he's already been adopted by Guo Jing. And oh boy. What an irritating little brat he is. I suppose he was a bit of a brat in the book, but this depiction just makes it worse. I like the child Yang Guo from the...1985? TVB version better, actually.

And there's tooo much of him. Geez, this is dragging... They skip over a lot of Yang Guo meeting West Poison, and his time on Peach Island (he explains it later, but they never SHOW it). They take WAAAAY too much time with Uncle Guo taking Yang Guo up the mountain to the Taoists. The Taoists are ridiculous. They can't fight, but they can do cool synchronized sword dancing with a good deal of CGI assistance. (Yeah, yeah, Big Dipper formation yadda yadda yadda...it wasn't that plausible to begin with, but they make it look COMPLETELY USELESS!)

Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. More later, as I watch more of it. I'm hoping it improves once the adult Yang Guo is introduced. I can't take the little kid YG's whine whine whine cry cry cry woe is me....agh. Yeah, he had a hard life, but still...does he have to whine about every little thing?

Huan Zhu Ge Ge (Princess Returning Pearl)

So this Taiwanese TV series came out in 1998, and as usual, it takes me years before I bother to buy myself a copy (just to see what the hoopla was about) and watch it myself. (In Mandarin, with Chinese subtitles. There's probably an English fansub out there somewhere.)

My verdict? Sappy but fun!

Ziwei, can you be any more weepy? Come on, girl, get a grip!

Little Swallow, wipe that stupid cute smile off your face! You know you get away with everything just because if you died, it wouldn't be funny anymore...

Based on a novel by Chiung Yao, this is...hmm...a romantic comedy of sorts, set during the reign of the Manchu emperor Qian Long (for some reason, he's one of the more popular emperors to hang these stories and TV shows off of. I've seen at least 2-3 other ones.) 24 episodes. Stars Zhao Wei as Little Swallow, Ruby Lin as Xia Ziwei, Alec Su as Yong Qi (the fifth prince), Zhou Jie as Fu Erkang, and Chen Ziping as Fu Ertai. Most of the actors did a pretty good job, I thought. At least, no one stood out as particularly annoying. The villains were convincingly sinister, the emperor convincingly paternal yet lecherous (which led to a squicky moment or two before everything was sorted out.)

Plot: Xia Ziwei is an illegitimate daughter of the current emperor (apparently he had an affair with her mother, then got distracted and forgot about her), seeking out her father now that her mother has died. Accompanied only by her loyal maid servant, she has a hard time penetrating the walls around the emperor, and is lost in the capital as her money runs out. Luckily for her, she runs into the Little Swallow, a thief and conwoman with a heart of gold (apparently) who grew up an orphan in the streets of Beijing (more or less...she's not quite on the streets now, having an adoptive family of sorts and a place to call home.) Ziwei and Little Swallow hit it off, swearing sisterhood with each other (a serious oath in that culture). The Little Swallow promises to help Ziwei deliver a painting and fan once given to Ziwei's mother. Then various plot twists ensue, and it's the Little Swallow who gets "recognized" as the emperor's daughter, under the name/title of "Huan Zhu Ge Ge" ("Return Pearl Princess")! Naturally Ziwei is beyond upset when she finds out. What's going on? Oh noes! But to deceive the emperor can mean a death sentence, so everyone is afraid to tell the truth. The rest of the series is all about how an "uneducated street girl (of the wrong ethnicity)" tries to fit in as a princess, how the cute boys fall in love with them, how their love is Impossible, and how they cry and suffer their way to a happy ending, with some humorous interludes along the way.

And a lot of it was fun to watch. I loved the costumes, and for once we had someone wearing them who wasn't trained from birth to it! Look at those princess shoes! (And I thought heels were bad...) And what's with those handkerchiefs the court women constantly carry around!? And the hairdos! Ha ha ha! The scholarly Ji Xiaolan (famous historical figure: in fact, there's another TV series about him, with the same actor playing the emperor, but that's a different story) as her tutor!

And for once the eunuchs weren't all evil schemers (like they would be in a kungfu flick, but then, this is set in the reign of Qian Long, who had a strong grip on his government), but a range of sensible and silly people. And Little Swallow with her pathetic bit of martial arts, wistfully asking the more skilled folks of the palace to teach her.

The main issue I had with the show was how long they dragged it out before getting to the end. For too many episodes, someone would declare "I have to speak now! I can't take it anymore!" and then some other character would insist that no no, you can't do that yet, blah blah blah too dangerous blah blah blah. And then it would happen again next episode with someone else. Gah.

Worth watching once.

Instant Natural Jellyfish!

Yes, that's right, you can now buy "Instant Natural Jellyfish" in little 5.2 oz packets. I got mine for just $0.99 each, about the same as a candy bar or two, but ever so much squishier...more rubbery...salty...ah, nothing quite like the chewy crunch of jellyfish salad. These come with even tinier packets, one of oil, one of seasoning (mostly salt and MSG, I think).

Ok, it's not exactly great jellyfish, but when you have that craving for jellyfish, and suck at preparing your own (the last ones I cooked came out like shriveled up rubber bands), this is the next best thing. As the directions say, it would probably taste better if you added some scallions or something, but if you're using an instant package, the whole point is not having to do any more work yourself!

So, if you're bored with chocolate bars, gum, M&Ms, chips, etc., pick up some Instant Natural Jellyfish! Woot! (At any rate, my 2 yr old daughter loved it...kept stealing it from my bowl after she'd finished her own share.)

Bad, but fun: Sanitarium

Sanitarium (the movie, not the computer game)

Directors/writers: James Eaves and Johannes Roberts

Heh. I went into this with low expectations. And ended up rather liking it. I
found this at imdb.com when I was looking up "Sanitarium" (the computer game). I loved the game, so I decided to give this movie a shot.

Dr. Max Warick (now apparently a mental patient) is being questioned about his experiences some twenty years ago with an experimental drug. It seems to work perfectly, yet...yet...something is wrong, as Max slowly comes to realize. The patients NOT taking the drug are getting worse. And then there's the mysterious deaths among the hospital staff.

Obviously low budget. Reminded me of those Bill Baggs not-the-Doctor movies with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Sylvester McCoy, and other Doctor Who actors that came out when Doctor Who was cancelled in the 1990s. Except a bit better.

Yes, as a fan of "old" Doctor Who, I obviously have a high tolerance for wooden
acting, over the top acting, non-acting, and cheap effects. Overlooking all that (and the bad audio), I totally enjoyed this movie. As much as, say, Revelation of the Daleks.

Uri Geller is in this. Uri Geller! Ha ha ha. Actually, he was ok as one of the detectives questioning Max. Maybe it's because I had no idea what he looked like, it didn't stick out in any way. I have no idea WHY Uri Geller, except, why not
Uri Geller? Eh? Even if he's not known for being an actor, neither are any of the other people in the movie, and at least he's known.

Young Max did look quite mad towards the end.

Wish they'd done better with the sound quality. And video quality. I had to turn the volume way up. Was it dubbed? Looked that way at times.

Music...well. They composed one spooky 'insane' sounding tune and played it
over and over, sometimes obtrusively.

Story hung together surprisingly well. At first I was like, this makes NO sense
scientifically (why would giving one set of patients a drug make another set sicker? And why wasn't it a double blind experiment anyway?). But that was explained later. And ok, it was still a horror movie explanation, but it made sense within the logic of the story itself.

Not the most original concept ever (Now, "Saw" was a clever concept...) but not
bad. Some freaky images, some real, some memories, some hallucinations. Just stop with the rotating camera bit. Please.

Oh, and I loved the "Ah, that's the air conditioning. Someone should fix it" moments at the beginning (when reality was obviously warping and so on.)

So, any relation to the game? According to Johannes Roberts, no, but it's an interesting coincidence. The title was originally "Diagnosis." The U.S. distributors changed it to "Sanitarium", maybe to make the connection.

The protagonist in both is a doctor named Max. Both went a bit insane.

Game: more of an inner journey. Max coming to terms with the death of his little sister when they were children. And they're Americans. This movie is British.

Movie: more of an external horror. There was something similar with the death of Max's mother. Ah, hell, I'm a sap...I found their stories moving. Maybe because they weren't such Actors, I could almost believe in them as actual people.

I preferred the game (a classic in the "point and click adventure" genre) but the movie's all right.

Can I recommend this movie to you? Only if you have a taste for "bad" low-budget SF/horror. If you do, sure.

JavaScript, huh?

So, my web site is still pretty basic. Then, I realized I wanted to be able to show/hide a block of text. Say, quotes, or spoilers, or whatever. You'd think it would be something one could do with just a simple HTML tag, but nooo... it has to change what's shown on the page, and that requires some kind of scripting. Argh. Guess that means I'm going to try to learn some JavaScript.

Being too cheap and lazy to buy a book, I spent the day searching the web for some help.

This site, W3Schools Online Web Tutorials, was pretty good.

And after I read enough of that to guess how JavaScript worked, I found what I was originally looking for here. A nice simple way to toggle between showing and hiding a div, AND a helpful discussion afterwards about how to tweak it.

Whee.