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"The Return of the King" (1980 version)

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:11:00 +0000

I recently bought this DVD in a fit of nostalgia. What a terrible cover! It's nothing that appears in the movie (and are those dwarves!? The dwarves don't even appear in this movie) and in a completely misleading style.

What about the movie itself? Well, I've always had a fondness for these old Rankin/Bass animated productions. "The Last Unicorn" is still my favorite fantasy novel adaptation (and maybe my favorite fantasy movie, period.) "The Hobbit" is a close second (if you accept it as a musical!). For me, "The Return of the King" comes in somewhere behind "The Hobbit". For Rankin/Bass, it's both a sequel to "The Hobbit" and a sequel to Ralph Bakshi's completely unrelated "Lord of the Rings" animated movie covering the first half of the story. Nowadays, of course, everyone thinks of the Peter Jackson trilogy when you mention the "Lord of the Rings". Perhaps surprisingly, I actually prefer the Rankin/Bass animations in many respects!

For Rankin/Bass to attempt to make a 90 minute animated movie of (basically) the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy as a fun musical for little kids was COMPLETELY BATSHIT INSANE! That they succeeded as well as they did was a miracle. Obviously, they had to chop out major sections of the plot and dump most of the characters and skim quickly over what remained. They chose to focus on Sam and Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring, with the battle of Minas Tirith in the background. Not a bad decision. (Now, choosing Glenn Yarbrough to be the "Minstrel of Gondor" and warbling "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" in that irritating way...THAT was a bad decision.)

So. I think the best way to view this is NOT as a movie, but as a selection of set pieces punctuated by amusing musical numbers. Keep the books in the back of your mind and ignore the narration where it's forced to make up some kind of coherent story and find something for Merry and Pippin to do. Then you find that this movie in fact presents many scenes word for word straight from Tolkien! In fact, many of the best ones, the very ones I was hideously disappointed about when Peter Jackson choose to leave them out/distort in his version! (For example, Sam and the Watchers at the tower at Cirith Ungol, Denethor's death, Gandalf vs the Witch King, Eowyn vs the Witch King, Sam and Gollum, Frodo's "I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do." at the Crack of Doom, etc.)

Voice actors: On the whole, pretty good. The accents were all over the place, and many of the names mispronounced, but it could have been worse. Orson Bean is fine as Frodo, and Roddy McDowall does a great Sam! John Huston is good as Gandalf (who serves as the narrator here). And Theodore returns to play Gollum. Ever since I watched "The Hobbit" as a kid, he will be THE Gollum to me.

Art: The visual design is good. Not as good as "The Last Unicorn" or "The Hobbit", I thought, but still impressive. Minas Tirith! Mordor! Mount Doom! The scenery was all excellent. The characters were mostly good, too, except for Frodo's eyes, which I found irritating (especially when you see him next to Sam). Worst design: Skeletor Nazgul on flying black horses?! No no no! This is especially egregious when you see the Witch King himself finally riding the big reptilian/draconian creature, and you realize they did the horses ON PURPOSE. I just feel it was a bad idea! The animation itself is obviously low-budget, and you can see them re-using bits over and over.

Music: Not bad. Again, not as good as in "The Hobbit" (which they did re-use some music from) or "The Last Unicorn", and the minstrel's songs were especially grating, but it's all made up for by the "Where there's a whip, there's a way!" song! YES! That one! It's hilarious! It's wonderfully catchy! Highlight of the whole musical! And "The Bearer of the Ring, the wearer of the ring" isn't bad, and the Men's Chorus of Mordor has a few decent songs. Although "Dooom...the cracks of doom!" was a bit generic.

My thoughts as I watch the movie:

Gandalf's "This is an epic" voiceover and segue to Bilbo's birthday party at Rivendell: Not bad as a framing device. Takes away some of the suspense (you know everyone survives) but probably reassuring for little kids as things do get grim later. And this was even in the book (sort of) with Bilbo asking "what's become of my ring, Frodo?" But I want to strangle that minstrel already.
Time to summarize the first two books! They "had many brave adventures" indeed! Ha ha ha! Stop saying "Ssseeerith Ungol!"
Take a drink every time Gandalf says "festering malignancy"! The tower of Cirith Ungol looks good, though. Right. Time for another song and the opening credits. And yay, show them walking down the map. Yeah, they sure did a lot of walking in the books!
Why is the Ring just lying there on the ground? Never mind, I'm sure Sam will pick it up after he's done hammering at the gates. Oh look! There's Sting and Frodo's "hero's cloak" (his what?) also on the ground. There's webs on the tunnel walls suggestive of Shelob, but they never actually mention any giant spider.
"The Bearer of the Ring, the wearer of the Ring": Is Sam getting anywhere yet? No, wait, time for Sam's temptation. I think they had to condense all the Ring's evil corrupting effect onto Sam and Frodo, hence the extended hallucinatory scenes. (No Galadriel, no Boromir, no Faramir, etc. means it's down to the hobbits and Gollum to show the power of the Ring.) "Beware, the power that was simple now has grown"...to explain why the lifesaving tool of "The Hobbit" now has to be destroyed!
DID THAT ORC JUST TURN INTO A LEMUR!? It's little touches like this that Peter Jackson would never in a million years have put into his version! And some may deride the little hobbit babies as the antidote to the Ring, but Sam has a point: the Ring grants immortality in its way, but it's not life, in contrast to living on by having descendants.
Minas Tirith and the lands by the river: Beautiful! Oliphaunts! No! Not the flying horses! *facepalms*
"Denethor?" "He's gone loony, I tell you!" says Pippin in one of the most ludicrously un-Tolkien lines in the movie (but still the sort of thing Pippin would have said, if he had been an American hobbit in the book). And Denethor has indeed gone loony! And he DOES have his lines from the book, one of the most memorable death scenes in it! "Soon all shall be burned. The West has failed..." "Ash! Ash and smoke blown away in the wind!" "Pride and despair! Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind?" Wow. Just wow. Even without Faramir, this was a striking scene. (Ok, so they have to explain the Palantir quickly as a crystal ball, but still...) "So passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion. And so pass also the days of Gondor, for good or for evil."
The stone watchers at the gate of the tower of Cirith Ungol! Yes! I'm really glad they put that in as I loved that bit in the books. Nice design on them, very spooky, and they managed to convey the psychic force-field effect...though the phial was pretty random... "Hey, what's this in my pocket? How conveeeeenient!" And they skip all explanations by claiming it loses its power if explained! LOL.
The whole sequence where Sam goes up in the tower and rescues Frodo is lovely. And Frodo's reaction at Sam having the ring: that's it! That's how it was! But "malevolent trickery" doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.
Sam and Frodo trudge endlessly through Mordor. Their weariness and the bleakness of the landscape come through very clearly. But don't despair...it's time for...
The song! "Where's there's a whip *whip cracks* there's a way!" I never knew orcs were such talented musicians! Sam says "I'd rather be singing a good old hobbit song myself," but what does he know? But I like the scene where he eggs on the orcish leader to fight the Men! All those stomping orcish feet!
Grond the battering ram! Another excellent set-piece, the breaking of the gates and Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch King. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you!" "Old fool! This is my hour! Do you not know death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!"
Frodo's nightmares and dreams: I love the orcs giving the hobbits a cheery wave as they walk by. It's so silly it's brilliant!
"Who causes the minutes to fall dead, adding up to no passing hour, bringing no change from day to night, as the unseen sun fails to filter into the ever-present shadows? Who is this dark lord who turns starless nights into sunless days? How does his piercing eye see through the ever-present darkness? Seeing all and nothing. The Restless Eye, in his dark tower, wearing a veil of protective shadow he has woven from fear. And yet he fears, too. In the security of his protective realm, he fears the winds of the world are turning against him. Tearing aside his veils and troubling him with tidings of bold spies that have passed through his fences." --- Gandalf. Best original (i.e. not by Tolkien) bit of writing in this movie. Amazing stuff, from a writer (Romeo Muller) probably better known for "Rudolph" and other holiday specials!
"Wicked master! Cheats us. Mustn't go that way. Mustn't hurt Precious!" It's Gollum! No, it's not really explained in the movie, but as we already know the story, we don't care! As long as we get all his Gollum-y goodness! And Frodo. "Begone and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom!" And Sam sparing Gollum's life. "Let us live. Just...a little...longer. Lost! Lost! We are lost. And when Precious goes, we'll die. All of us, die. Into the dust. Die. Into the dussssst."
"Begone, foul dwimmerlaik!" EOWYN! It's Eowyn! "Come not between the Nazgul and his prey!" And the Witch King! Another of the highlights of this movie. Great scene! (But of course there's insufficient information in the movie itself to justify it!)
The timing is completely off. They definitely messed up here. Sam and Frodo hang out inside a volcano for days and days (weeks!?) while the Gondorian alliance marches slowly around Mordor to the Black Gate, where...
...they are greeted by the Mordor marching band and men's chorus! "Win the battle, lose the war. Choice of evils lie beneath your feet. Retreat! Retreat! If you win then you will lose! Choice of evils yours to choose. Retreat! Retreat! You are standing in the eye of the storm. Move an inch and you'll be dead. You are standing underneath the Towers of the Teeth and the Eye blazes red!"
The Mouth of Sauron! Looking very Grand Moff Tarkin. "It needs more to make a king than a rabble such as this!"
"I am glad you are with me, here at the end of all things, Sam." *wipes away a tear* Awww.
Gondor's army airlifted out of a collapsing Mordor by a flock of giant eagles! Either a tiny army or a much much larger population of giant eagles than seems ecologically likely.
Let's see, does the ending go on and on and on for as long as it did in the Peter Jackson movie? Let's join them in song: "The end of the ring, the return of the king!" And back to our frame story with Bilbo, in which we learn that this all "really happened", but the elves went over the sea and the hobbits turned into humans! Which is close enough to Tolkien's idea of making up a "mythical past" for England, I suppose. And we say good bye, the elves and Gandalf and the Ring-Bearers sailing away on a rainy day.

In conclusion:

Strictly speaking, it doesn't stand up on its own as a movie, the animation is clearly low-budget, too much story is crammed into too small a space, it's torn between being a happy kiddie musical and a serious epic adventure, and there's plenty to quibble about. On the other hand, if you watch it as a sequence of dramatized scenes from the book linked together by dodgy narration and music, it's great. The art is lovely, the voice actors are good (mostly), and it's all surprisingly respectful of the original work by Tolkien. Don't tear your hair out because it throws out 90% of it. I'd rather they depict 10% of it well than depict 80% but distort it to turn it into a Movie (well, I'll enjoy the Movie, too, if it's good, but it's not the same kind of experience.)

You call this a snack food!?

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:45:00 +0000

So I was shopping at (one of) the local Chinese supermarkets today, looking for some snacks to bring in for my daughter's preschool's "International Day" when I realized (as I do every time I attempt to do something "ethnic" for the kids' schools) that the Chinese just have very strange ideas on snacking. And dessert.

Exhibit A: "Crispy Dried Crabs"! Look at them! They're tiny little crabs (VERY cute) fried up or something with lots of salt...and licorice, is it? Good grief. This is just one step up from eating the big fat cicadas that overrun Maryland every 17 years (the difference being, someone ELSE cooked and packaged the crabs for me). These are from Taiwan. They also have similar things with fish, cuttlefish, shrimp, etc., some salty, some sweet. The label on the back is also very amusing:

"...All of the "TA YUAN" products will supply high quality of cuttlefish with wonderful ethnic taste for you [we'll see after I try them...]...If the products look strange, to you before or after you open the package please contact us A.S.A.P. to exchange for you [ROFL. For what, a bag of potato chips?]"

And then there's the bizarre misconception that sweet bean paste makes a good pastry filling. Or a good dessert dumpling filling. Red bean paste, black bean paste, in everything except beans on toast (ok, the English are weird, too. Is that what they eat instead of peanut butter?). Yeah...whatever... I hate moon cakes, too.

Then there's all the various spicy dried bean snacks. The wasabi peas seem to be Japanese, but they're very popular among the Chinese, too. (Actually, I love the wasabi peas. It's just that lately I've preferred my cashew/dried cranberry combo.) And of course peanuts go in here, too.

And not content with dried beans, they also have all kinds of dried fruit. The classic being the evil sour balls of death, erm, some kind of dried plum pits. NOT the (actually edible) dried plums you might at Trader Joe's, but REALLY dry little hard wrinkly balls that make your face scrunch up in pain. My mother used to feed me these when I got car sick.

But then again, my mother also insisted that duck gizzards were one of her favorite snacks when she was a kid. DUCK GIZZARDS. She tried (unsuccessfully) to recreate them for me when I was growing up. Perhaps there's some secret to their preparation...

Well. A bit more success with the seeds. Watermelon seeds and pumpkin seeds, mostly. Yes, I eventually learned how to shell and eat the watermelon seeds. And these days I do save the seeds from the Halloween pumpkins and roast them. Even my kids will eat them.

Then there's the various rice cakes, barley cakes, etc. Not exactly Rice Crispies treats, but there you go. I could almost like them, if I liked that sort of thing at all.

And pork (or is it beef?) jerky...I think they make that stuff in Canada these days. Big red boxes of it. Haven't had it in awhile, but I seem to remember liking it.

And bean curd pudding...I wonder if you could sell it in little cups and market it in the U.S.? There seems to be a market for soy products. I mean, the "soy milk" really took off (for which I am very grateful. I much prefer it to cow's milk.) Hmm.

ROCH 2006: Last few eps!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:54:00 +0000

So here we are, in the post-16 year separation. Um. Yeah. All that white hair on Yang Guo looks a bit silly. He's what, 38 or so at this point? Everyone else in the story looks pretty much exactly the same, oddly enough. Well, except for the Guo twins, who are teenagers instead of babies now. I never liked this part of the story that much. And the giant bird still looks silly.

Guo Xiang meets Yang Guo (the Condor Hero) and becomes his number one fan. Or something. A few more groups of weirdos introduced at this point, but I can't bring myself to care. Anyway, she invites him for her 16th birthday, and he plots out this huge "party" for her, and "gifts" that take her as a representative of the city of Xiang Yang. More or less. Guo Fu is bitchier than ever. Poor Yelu Qi. GX's twin brother (I forget his name) is pretty much a nonentity.

Anyway, after some more woe and intrigue around GX's birthday party (With fireworks that rival Gandalf's at Bilbo's last birthday party!) Yang Guo wants to meet up with Little Dragon Girl again. Of course it doesn't work out that easily. He catches up with Huang Yaoshi at last, and learns some disturbing info (all while teaching a couple of idiots that the Force is no myth...or something...err...whatever...). YG screams a lot. Super-powered screams. Geez, I hate those. GX rides off after YG, meets up with the Golden Wheel Monk, who kidnaps her.

Yang Guo finally learns the true story of his father's life and death. Much screaming and carrying on ensues. I liked the old blind bat guy, here. Well played. Also the four men seeking him for revenge.

Somehow Huang Rong, the two cousins (Cheng Ying(sp?) and Lu Wushuang), Huang Yaoshi, the old rascal Chou Botong, Yi Deng, and Ying Gu all end up converging with YG, GX, and the Golden Wheel Monk at the cliff at the Passionless Valley. Big cliff-diving party! Woo hoo!

A reunion with lots of slow motion flying around, spinning camera, flowers, bees, singing, and teary gazes into each other's eyes. I think I fast-forwarded through most of this. Especially as my 8-yr old son was watching with me and he hates it when people kiss...

And back to the siege of Gondor, I mean Xiang Yang. No giant elephants here and no elves, but they did have big siege towers with cannons. Massive battle scene ensues. The final big battles you might expect at this point. One last heroic charge by Yang Guo (riding on 4 horses, no less!). And then cue the semi-happy ending.

So many of these stories set in these historical settings are really depressing, because you know that a few years after the "happy ending", China is violently conquered after all (or there's a civil war, etc.), and our heroes can't change that.

Concluding thoughts: This was a decent serial. Not my favorite, but then I never liked the story that much in the first place. Luckily I didn't watch it immediately after reading the books, so I wasn't quibbling too much over details. It seemed a fairly faithful adaptation of the novels. The acting was good, for the most part. EXCEPT for the actor who played Yang Guo. Maybe he's just difficult to play convincingly, but I just didn't like this portrayal. He looked and sounded wrong to me. The scenery and costumes were good. (No cheap styrofoam wilderness here!) The CGI animals were pathetic. The music was all right. Not really to my taste. Overall, I thought the pacing was too slow. Too many slow scenes to try to play up the romantic elements, but it had the opposite effect on me.

ROCH 2006: get over it!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Eps 31-33 or so. Finished up the Passionless Valley plot and the LMC (evil Taoist nun) plot (more or less). A different song! Woot! (LMC's "Ask the world, what is love" etc.) This section ends with the 16 year separation.

Sure, we can sympathize a bit with LMC, but still, being unfortunate in love once is not a license to slaughter tons of innocent people! Get over it! Perhaps that's what annoys me about ROCH, that it's a great virtue to only ever love one person in your life, ever ever forever! And half the girls have to fall in love with Yang Guo. Bleah. I would have hoped for the two cousins (Cheng Yin and Lu Wushuang) to get more of a life outside YG, not stay single forever. And poor GS Lu-er. What a way to die. What horrible parents she had. And Ci En (the former Iron Palm leader who became a monk, the brother of GS's wife/Qiu Qianzi)...interesting character there. His sister demanding vengeance on Huang Rong, his master telling him to let it go. No wonder he's a bit crazy.

Cat fight! Heh. I was amused by the scenes with Lu Wushuang and Guo Fu. LWS has a mouth on her! Ha ha ha.

But it all seemed to drag on forever. Will this series ever end!?

ROCH 2006: More baby tag!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:41:00 +0000

And swarms of spiders! Bees! Episodes 25-30ish. Not bad. Not great, either. Yang Guo finally catches up with Little Dragon Girl again. The two Wu brothers are more clownish than ever. Not that their dad is much better. (Dad: You can't ruin your lives over love of a woman! The boys: But you did! LOL.) The three sudden blossomings of twue wuv are not all that convincing.

And now it's Little Dragon Girl's turn in the "I'm dying!" chair. I suppose she'll stay there for a few more episodes. Of course, YG is still poisoned.

The Taoists don't come off very well in this series, do they? LMC is supposed to be a Taoist nun, and she is just cruel and heartless. Poor Hong Lingbo (her apprentice.) The Quan Zhen sect 3rd generation are either useless or power-hungry goons who sell out to the Mongols. The older generation isn't much better. They get beat up on by just about everyone and growl at Yang Guo a lot. And poor Qiu Chuji either sucks as a teacher or just has really bad luck with his disciples.

ROCH 2006: Oops! She ran off again!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Eps 21-25ish of the 2006 mainland production of "Return of the Condor Heroes". My interest level: fading, fading, fading...urge to fast forward...increasing... Yeah. It's been over a year since I last watched any of this show. Maybe I overdosed on that SONG. Ugh. It came back to me all too quickly.

This is a bad sign, since this is the part of the novels I really liked: Yang Guo decides who he's going to be, whether he's going to try to kill his "uncle" Guo Jing (the big patriotic hero here) or not (and the choice is even harder because now he's poisoned and his own life depends on him killing GJ and trading it for an antidote) and we have the crisis with Guo Fu and the two Wu brothers, and the choppity-chop and the giant eagle.

Things I liked: the siege of Xiang Yang. Some good combat scenes (even if they did have a tendancy to Force-blast in a cheesy way now and then). Nice sets. Decent acting. LMC (the evil Taoist martial sister of Little Dragon Girl) is back. I laughed when she thought the baby was YG and LDG's. The Golden Wheel monk's gleeful tricking of Nimoxing into stepping onto the poison needles too. ("Now we're even! Ha ha!")

Things I disliked: Huang Rong still looks freaky with the eyes. Horrible looking leopard and giant eagle and snakes. Sheesh. That SONG and the ultra slow-mo moments. Gah! Yang Guo's laugh.

Headdesk moments: Look! She's drooling blood again! (Must be emotional if she's drooling blood AND fainting.) She's running away again! More idiotic misunderstandings! Magic finger Force! (Ok, ok, I guess it's either show it this way or else have little captions appear on the screen whenever you use some esoteric stance/style/move.) Glowing caves! (I understand why they have them, but it's still silly to look at.)

I'm going to try to make it through the rest of this...heh... Maybe I just don't like the ROCH story all that much. The only version I've really enjoyed is the anime version (but I still need to track down season 3).

Ashes of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:17:00 +0000

I was reading about the new cut of Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time (Ashes of Time Redux) in the newspaper the other day. On the one hand, I'm delighted to have a new, good looking version out there (the current DVD prints look faded and dirty), but on the other, I'm sad that they decided to mess with it (NO! Don't mess with the beautiful score!) and probably won't release the original alongside the new cut. Anyway, it inspired me to watch my old DVD (I have the Mei Ah version, which while it isn't great, is much better than the World Video version) of it once again. This is one of those movies I like to watch over and over.

In fact, that's its main flaw. Ashes of Time is hideously confusing on first watching (most people don't even like it) and you may not realize it's any good at all until you watch it after already knowing the movie. I'm not a Wong Kar Wai fan (haven't watched his other movies yet) but I am a wuxia/martial arts movie fan. This is NOT a wuxia or martial arts movie. It's not an action movie. It has action sequences, but they're blurry and not there to show off the gymnastics skills of the actors. (On the other hand, they're much better than the laughable CGI sequences in certain more recent TV serials that seem to be there to show off the pretty faces of the actors while their enemies drop like flies.) I'm not sure it's even a "movie" at all. I suppose there's a plot, but it's dropped in bits and pieces not necessarily in chronological order. It's more like a painting, or a poem, or an impressionistic piece of music. Love, loss, regret, lost opportunities, ambition, the desert, chivalry, pain, confusion...played out with characters from a famous series of wuxia novels by Jin Yong (Louis Cha).

So ARE they really the characters from the Condor series? The movie's Chinese title is "Dong Xie, Xi Du" ("East Heretic, West Poison"), which refers to the nicknames of two of the characters from the Condor series. This movie purports to show how they became what they are in the actual series. In that sense, it's non-canonical. But the movie loses something if you DON'T assume they are the same characters, just people who happen to have the same names as other fictional characters. I prefer to think of it as variations on a theme. A professional-quality fanfiction that is emotionally true even if it takes liberties with the story.

The acting is excellent throughout. I was surprised at how well Leslie Cheung (whom I was used to seeing as the "kid" character in other movies) played Ouyang Feng, the cynical, rather villainous "West Poison". We have Tony Leung (Chiu Wai) as the blind swordsman, the other Tony Leung (Ka Fai) as Huang Yaoshi ("East Heretic"), Maggie Cheung as the woman (the one who married Ouyang Feng's brother), Carina Lau (the blind swordsman's wife), Charlie Yeung as the girl trying to buy revenge with a basket of eggs, Jacky Cheung as Hong Qi ("North Beggar), and Brigitte Lin as Murong Yin/Yang.

Ah, Brigitte Lin. I love Brigitte Lin. But what is it with Brigitte Lin and the gender-challenged characters? Did they cast her because Murong Yin/Yang was ambiguous that way? Or is the character like that because she was cast? Even when she's not playing someone transgender (Dong Fang Bu Bai, I'm looking at you!), she's in male drag ("Peking Opera Blues", "New Dragon Gate Inn", etc.) Is it some traditional thing? (Women played the Young Scholar roles, in certain older films, as I seem to remember - was that some operatic tradition?) Sometimes the men play women, sometimes the women play men, depending on the type of opera... In any case, that was a very interesting take on Du Gu Qiu Bai (Loner Seeking A Loss), who was a cryptic, legendary character in the novels.

So who are they here?

Ouyang Feng, whose lover married his older brother, now lives in the desert running an inn and a business as a middle-man hiring out penniless swordsmen to kill people for others. Every year, his friend Huang Yaoshi visits him. One year he brings a wine, that he says someone gave him, which has the property of letting people forget: memories are what make them unhappy. Ouyang Feng is skeptical, but Huang Yaoshi really does begin to forget. And then there's the swordsman, slowly going blind, a friend of Huang Yaoshi, but also an enemy. Who loves whom in the end? Who won, who lost? Is it love or the idea of love? Can you buy your self/honor back with an egg? The story goes between Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi's points of view (I got confused about that at first). In the end (which is where we begin) it all makes sense. Sort of.

The cinematography: I don't know. It might be good. The desert landscape is very striking. But it's hard to tell because the video is so degraded on the copy I have.

The score: Wow. One of the best I've ever heard for any movie, period. GREAT GREAT MUSIC. So good they stole it for other movies/TV series. In fact, even if you hate everything else the first time you watch this movie, I hope you can appreciate the quality of the music.

Conclusion: Watch this movie! Watch it again! Enjoy it for what it is, not for what it isn't.

Chu Liu Xiang (Chor Lau Heung) 1995

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:29:00 +0000

This is the 1995 Taiwanese production with Adam Cheng as Chu Liuxiang. I recently bought the VCD set from yesasia.com and watched it over the course of a week or two (probably not how it was meant to be viewed!), which is a tribute to its power to hold my attention over 40 episodes (27 discs)!

For me, Adam Cheng is THE Chu Liuxiang. Obviously, he's older in this version than when he played the part in 1979, but I thought he carried it off with charm and verve. I have no idea who the other actors were, but I liked most of them, even if at times CLX's 3 ship maidens got to be a bit much when added to the other random women he collected along the way. (Actually, the one I personally found the cutest was the woman chasing after the old wine fiend, Hu Tie Hua.) The action scenes were fun to watch: not overburdened with crappy CGI like more recent series, not too much intrusive wirework. Sure, there were cheap effects (smoke! exploding "rocks"! sparkly lightning and fireworks!) but people MOVED, they didn't just strike artistic poses and stand there waiting for the special effects to be filled in. And yes, the scenery and sets looked fairly cheap (especially all those secret tunnels), in comparison to the lavish mainland productions that have been made since c. 2000. The music was also repetitive and too loud (I couldn't hear the dialogue at times, really wishing for subtitles!) and the opening theme song was rather crap (in my opinion).

Plot...hrmm...what can I say? I've only read the first of Gu Long's CLX books, so I can't swear to what is or isn't based on them, but my impression was that the writers just made this one up themselves, ripping off ideas from all over the place. I recognized a few major plot tokens from Jin Yong's "Xiao Ao Jiang Hu" (Smiling, Proud Wanderer/State of Divinity). But just the tokens, not the actual plot or characters. But this isn't surprising, considering that they already made a CLX series in 1979, then 1982, then 1984...heh. Anyway, they did a reasonable job, kicking things off with the ever-popular "hero falsely accused and must clear his name" cliche. Not TOO many people pretended to die, and the number of "there would be no plot if people would just TALK to each other" threads was reasonably low. No one fell or jumped off a cliff! Ha ha. And maybe 15 eps out of 40, one of the main characters was taking a turn being poisoned/dying/etc. Quite a lot of people being idiots and falsely blaming one of the protagonists (granted some of them were planted/coached by the villain, but still, you'd think they'd think things through a bit more).

Mainly, the CLX series are just fun to watch. A nice trio of heros we have: one likes women, one likes wine, and one likes money. Personally, I liked the merchant (Ji Bing Ye) best. At least he's one Jiang Hu character where we see how he makes his money (and he doesn't just go and steal it like the other two!) And I loved how he went into business with the woman chasing after Hu Tiehua. Heh heh! As for Shangguan Wuji (CLX's main love interest in this series), she was all right. Had a tendancy to want to run off in a huff, but luckily didn't do it TOO often. Not sure how happy she'd really be in the long term with CLX (or vice versa), but, well, it's a TV show, so it works well enough. Of the lesser supporting characters... my favorites were the restauranteur who was once a cook in the royal palace and the honest imperial cop (Muo Yan?) who was also a friend of CLX.

Villains...the main villain was well-played. He had charisma and carried out his villainy with flair. His main minions were good, too.

Plenty of quirky mechanisms and odd action scenes to keep me amused. (A dance with stools where the woman places the stool in front of her intended. Guess where the princess puts hers? GASP! Fun with umbrellas! Barrel fighters! A weird semi-magical gramaphone! Invisible writing!? That is actually...something even more bizarre? Choosing a leader by waiting for someone to complete a drawing! etc.)

In sum: highly enjoyable, not terribly original wuxia series

Sarah Jane Adventures - The Lost Boy (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:25:00 +0000

Gah. The "Sarah Jane Adventures" are a strange mix. Ok, so it's even more obviously a kiddie show than the current Doctor Who, which is good and bad. At least they don't have the lame juvenile sexual innuendo of RTD's DW, but then they have to do the idiot kid show things (skateboards! "Girls?!"!!! Family Issues!!! Silly All-knowing Computer!)...but that's ok.

Just PLEASE stop with the damn Slitheen! I don't like the Slitheen. They're not as clever as you think they are. They don't look as good as you think they look. Yeah, yeah, an evil alien clan that specializes in hiding inside human suits. Keep them inside...they'd look scarier. At least they stopped with the fart jokes this time.

I really liked the first part of this episode. It's very daring in some ways that nuWho didn't manage to be. It hit Sarah Jane in two (three?) vulnerable spots, which we were lulled into thinking were "safe" by genre convention. First they finally let Maria's dad in on the Cool Secret Stuff. Threatened to take Maria away. So we're set up when they actually DO take Luke away. I was thinking at the time "I hope this isn't a trick by some alien to kidnap Luke"...

...and it was, and about that time the story started going downhill. Even worse with the "Oh, it's the Slitheen again" reveal...bratty Slitheen kid is ok (as a human. Just looked silly in the alien costume)...stupid Slitheen...

But then they hit Sarah Jane at the other "assumed safe" bit: Mr. Smith is in on the plot! That's like the TARDIS turning evil (which they haven't done in nuWho yet). Wow.

...so I suppose we'll hit a reset at the end... but I hope not. Get Luke back, but Maria's dad still knows what he knows. And maybe lose Mr. Smith. Stupid looking alien computer anyway...find out where it came from (I'd been assuming the Doctor had something to do with it), dump it. Get K-9 back (ok, not likely...I just like the silly tin dog a lot better than Mr. Smith.)

Doctor Who - Children in Need 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:15:00 +0000

Just watched the 2007 Doctor Who mini-episode ("Time Crash") for "Children in Need". Doctor #5! Peter Davison! Possibly my favorite! Yay! Written by Stephen Moffat. Yay!

David Tennant!... Ugh. WHY did they have to make him such a ridiculous fanboy? At least Doc 5 calls him on it. It was still excruciatingly painful to watch. Maybe I won't mind as much next time. It was a bit like School Reunion (where he meets Sarah Jane Smith again) except a hundred times worse. It's a "real" ("canonical") episode, so please please please don't DO that. "The Curse of Fatal Death" was much better (and funnier) and it wasn't even a canonical episode.

Peter Davison is awesome, of course. Normally I like David Tennant as the Doctor (when he's not being over hyper or playing Tinkerbell) but this...ow. I know it's only seven minutes long, but if they used the seven minutes for an actual story (instead of Ten playing fanboy) it might have been good.

Bian Cheng Lang Zi/Bordertown Wanderer

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:55:00 +0000

("Bordertown Wanderer", aka "The Black Sabre" and "A Warrior's Tragedy")

I originally saw the movie version of this ("A Warrior's Tragedy"), which
piqued my interest enough to hunt down the books it was based on.
After I read the books, I tracked down the TVB serialization of the story
and watched that.

The books: A three volume set by Gu Long, set as a sequel about a generation
after his "Duo Qing Jian Ke, Wu Qing Jian" ("Romantic Swordsman, passionless
sword") (featuring Flying Dagger Li, Li Xun Huan, and the swordsman
A Fei). As I can barely read Chinese at all, I won't attempt to
critique the writing style, except to say that it's rather choppy and
distinctive to read.

It features the usual convoluted plots and crazy characters. Fu Hongxue
is kicked out of his home with only one purpose: revenge! His mother has
raised him to pursue and kill his father's killers. Apparently, his father
and his entire family (Fu Hongxue's mother was a lover, not the wife, and
Fu Hongxue himself only an infant when his father died) were murdered by
a group of masked assassins. Fu Hongxue, trained in the use of his father's
famous black sabre, now has to figure out who the assassins were and kill
them all. He seems to have one lead, which takes him to the Bordertown
and the local lord there, Ma Kongqun, of Ten Thousand Horse Hall.

Things get violent very quickly. Fu Hongxue is not the only martially
inclined visitor: there is also Yue Kai (who claims not to need a sword),
a famous thief "Flying Spider", an arrogant young lordling, a hunchbacked
assassin, and many others. When people start dying at Ten Thousand Horse
Hall, everyone is a suspect.

As for the women...there's Shen San Niang, Ma Kongqun's mistress. Ma Fang Lin,
his daughter. Cui Nong, a local prostitute. Ding Lin Ling, who's in love
with Ye Kai. Fu Hongxue ends up in a tragic relationship with Cui Nong...

Once they leave the Bordertown, Fu Hongxue starts coming across evidence
that perhaps his quest is not as black-and-white as he once thought. Maybe
there was a good reason so many people ganged up to kill his "heroic"
father? Thick-headed and gullible he may be at times (a contrast to the
quick-witted, smooth-talking Ye Kai), Fu Hongxue doggedly pursues truth
and revenge.

The most annoying thing (for me) was probably the preachiness (especially
towards the end) and the hero-worship of Li Xun Huan. While the parable-like
encounter with the Guo family was amusing in taking the inherited vengeance
obligation to ridiculous extremes (in lining up the whole family, grandparents
and grandchildren alike --- if we're going to feud, let's get it all over
with once and for all!), the lectures got old quickly, and the ending
felt cheap.

Movie: maybe 50-60 % accurate to the books.

Someone wanted more chariot chases, guns, and explosions.
The golden armor vest seems to be taken from the prequel novel series.
The cloak of invisibility...I have no idea. Maybe it really was in one
of Gu Long's other novels. The stories of the women was probably the most
mangled, followed by the Lu Xiaojia storyline (they didn't even give him
his trademark peanuts!)

I'm really very fond of the movie, actually. (Despite a few silly bits,
and the unfortunate moustache on Ye Kai.) Just watched it again. Ti Lung
as Fu Hongxue is awesome. The man has charisma.

And compared to, say, Tsui Hark's adaptation of Jin Yong's "Smiling Proud
Wanderer" (the "Swordsman" trilogy of movies), this is totally faithful
to the original story. (Why quibble about relatively minor changes, heh.)

TVB series: maybe 80-90% accurate.

Looked cheap! Ten Thousand Horse Hall looked like any other TVB "ancient"
rich guy's house. The wilderness sets and cave sets looked ridiculously
fake. Costumes on the drab side, too, and the Spiderman costume for the
"Flying Spider" takes the cake for sheer silliness. Didn't like Fu Hongxue's
hairstyle. And I watched the Mandarin dub, which in TVB serials, usually
lacks somewhat. Ha.

All those interpolated scenes! They take away from the mystery, although it
may make things easier to understand (and avoid too many scenes where
Ye Kai explains what's going on). And they often use the actual dialogue
from the books, but change the context (and the speakers, sometimes!)
which can be irritating.

Both movie and TV series made drastic changes to the ending.
In this case, I felt they made the right decision. I didn't like the book's
ending very much myself. And the story started with Fu Hongxue and his
mother. I'm glad they let him have some sort of "closure" with her.
They treated Ma Fangling a bit more sympathetically in the series, too,
and I liked the way they concluded her storyline.

Bottom line: enjoyable, but rarely brilliant, and sometimes annoying

The Illusionist

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:46:00 +0000

Decent movie, but forgettable. I watched it shortly after I saw "The Prestige,"
which came out around the same time.

By the trailers, it seemed like another Victorian era stage magician movie, this time in Vienna. Well, actually, Prague stands in for Vienna, but it plays its part beautifully. Pseudo-Euro accents, I suppose just to avoid sounding like Americans. But I don't care too much about accents, or I would have complained about Christian Bale's in "The Prestige".

Oddly enough, this movie also uses the same type of "end back where we began, except this time we know what it means" technique that "The Prestige" did. However, the tone of one movie was very different from the other.

Hmm. This one is not so much about revenge and obsession, nor the philosophy of magic, nor magic itself, nor even obsession with magic, but rather obsession with love. A more romantic story with more fantastical elements visually. A magician in Vienna (around 1900) ("Eisenheim", played by Edward Norton) is a master of his art, but he is still a "commoner", and being in love with his childhood friend, now a duchess (Jennifer Biel), well, it won't do. It won't do at all. Especially when the Prince (Rufus Sewell) wants to marry her. The Prince, an arrogant, highly intelligent rationalist fed up with the chaos and incompetance he sees in the empire he plans to inherit, sets his pet police inspector (Paul Giamatti) on the magician. The Chief Inspector is also anintelligent man, but more sympathetic to the magician. As for the duchess, she has always been in love with the magician. So they must perform their ultimate illusion, their audience the Prince and the Chief Inspector.

I preferred the "Prestige". While that one did have one very "unrealistic" (SF/fantasy) element, it did treat it honestly. And everything else felt solid. I thought the "Illusionist" cheated a little. Too many effects were too obviously CGI. Even if it was meant to be a subjective point of view (what the audience thinks it sees), it still was too much, I think. I didn't believe
in it. And if I didn't believe, the whole movie was...not as satisfying.
If we decide that it had a fantastical element a la "The Prestige", that also
is unsatisfying in this case. For "The Prestige", it didn't matter. For
"The Illusionist", it renders the movie rather pointless.
Perhaps the whole thing took place in the Matrix.

While the story, acting, music (Philip Glass!), and visual style of it were
good...yet...

It was all rather predictable. And this time I didn't have the excuse that
I'd read the book first! When the characters say things like "Make us
disappear!" and "He won't stop hunting us until we're dead!" and the
quarry is an illusionist, what else are we to expect? Eh?

Iconic image: an empty wooden chair alone on a stage...

The Prestige (book and movie)

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:30:00 +0000

This was a novel by Christopher Priest which was later adapted into a movie, directed by Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins", which I didn't like, and "Memento" , which I did).

It's not the secret. The secret is trivial. It's how you use the secret that's important. It's how the secret contorts your life around it. It's how the secret affects those around you. THAT matters. Deeply. That's why it doesn't matter if you know the "twist" or not. It's still a great
story. For the same reason, it doesn't matter (to the meaning of the story) that a device that works in the story might not be possible in reality.

We have two young stage magicians in Victorian England. One way or the other, they end up as bitter rivals, constantly provoking each other and spying on each other to learn the other's secrets. In the book, it starts when Borden attempts to expose Angier as a fraud (when Angier performs as a spiritualist). In the movie, the two are initially friends under the same mentor. Borden is perhaps guilty in the death of Angier's wife.

Either way, it's bound to end in tragedy.

Now add in the magic and mystique of Nikolai Tesla! It's the dawn of the modern age, and where does science begin and magic end? Which is the true performance? The man onstage, or the
man offstage? Are you watching closely? Do you see what you see or what you expect to see? Illusion, deception, obsession.

I thought the movie was a very good adaptation. It dropped most of the framing devices (with the modern-era man who finds out about the past by reading diaries and so on), but still keeping some of the diary/journal idea by having the two rivals read each other's diaries instead.

In fact, this is one of the few cases where I felt the movie version was a bit stronger!
In the book, the ending just made me go "eh? what was that? why end it that way?" (But then, I thought that about Christopher Priest's The Glamour, too.)

The movie, of course, Hollywoodized it with extra doses of drama, but that isn't always a bad thing (for a movie!). Nolan did that "end where we started, except this time the same scene means something different". Perhaps he tried a little too hard (making the movie seem pretentious or heavy-handed at times, especially the very end), but it was still excellent. I really felt for the characters, even though they were not very likeable as people. Talk about making sacrifices for your art!

Since I'd read the book first, it wasn't really a surprise. The changes weren't quite what I expected. They made the character's choices scarier, I think, and the tone as a whole was perhaps darker/more violent. And Angier's machine...I felt it made more sense for it to work (if such a thing was possible at all!) the way it did in the movie rather than the way it did in the book. It felt as if Christopher Priest wimped out on it,
and went the less troublesome path with it.

Memorable novel, memorable film!

Iconic image (movie): a bunch of Victorian top hats strewn in the woods...
(And the rows and rows of birds in cages...very unsettling. Strips the humor
away when it's birds rather than hats.)

A Warrior's Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:22:00 +0000

A Warrior's Tragedy

("Bian Cheng Lang Zi")

Fun martial arts (mostly swords) soap opera movie from 1993, directed by Frankie Chan (who also played the "comic" hero) and starring Ti Lung as the "dark" hero.

Gu Long /is/ Gu Long.

Even though I've never read the book this movie is based on, the dialogue is distinctively Gu Long. I'm not sure how much of the book made it into the movie (now I'll have to look it up and read it!) but what's there is enough, maybe more than enough. I had a hard time keeping track of the various characters.

Lovely movie. Before the wirework and CGI got out of hand! But stylish looking, with decent actors and a good story (even if it does feel like the complicated plot was ruthlessly chopped down for the sake of the movie. If they made a series based on this of the same quality, that would be even better! Apparently the DVD version is already cut down from the original 3 hour theatrical release.)

The usual Gu Long tropes. Cool heroes, seemingly cold-blooded until their sentimental side is revealed. Beautiful sexy women throwing themselves at the men. A dark hero (who plays the assassin) and a light hero (who plays the clownish skirt-chaser). An old feud. Revenge and more revenge. Secrets. Gadgets. A bit of magic. Invisibility! Super armor! Houses blowing up! And much much more!

Ok, it's a bit silly, but I had lots of fun watching it. I liked it a lot better than many of the more recent "epics" (e.g., "Seven Swords", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "House of Flying Daggers", etc.). The fight scenes weren't as ridiculous, the characters more appealing, and the ending less artistically tragic and pointless.

ROCH 2006: Now they're BOTH drooling blood...ew!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:30:00 +0000

Bad sign. Very bad sign. Ok, that really was written in the book (I just double-checked). Some things need to be cut before they reach the screen, and this (IMNSHO) is one of them!

"Gu-gu!" "Guo-er!"

So, let's see. While searching for his Gu-gu (Little Dragon Girl), Yang Guo runs into more trouble. Surprise, surprise. It's Lu Wushuang and her cousin with the scary-looking human-skin mask. Li Mochou's back. There's the old crippled blacksmith. Some more fights. And we have a scene or two with East Heretic Huang Yaoshi (Huang Rong's father). From HYS's mentally handicapped martial granddaughter "Sha Gu", Yang Guo finds out that it was Huang Rong who caused his father's death.

This is a good time for a potty break, as Yang Guo goes into the throes of horrible acting and emoting on the screen. Good lord.

Right. I'd have quit watching by this point, but I've already paid for the damn series and now I want to see the train wreck. Yang Guo witnesses the cruelty of the Mongol invaders (more histrionics! Yes, it's a terrible thing, but they could have done the scene better), then meets up with the Golden Wheel monk again, and this time allies himself with him to kill Guo Jing (and Huang Rong). (Remember, these are Yang Guo's foster parents, his "Uncle" and "Aunt").

And we have the first appearance of Zhou Botong, the Old Urchin, at the dinner with Khubilai and the various recruited martial artists. The actor is unexceptionable. The strangest casting choice was for one of the "guest" heros: Ma Guangzuo. In the book, he's about 8 feet tall. In this version, he's a little dwarf! Very odd.

And here we have them going to Rivendell. Excuse me, the "Passionless Valley"... except they made it look like a cross between Rivendell and Lothlorien, with the trees, and the green-clad people dancing around with the flowers (what the hell?) and the airy-fairy music... And the vegetarian lifestyle...

We could have done without all the previous scenes of Little Dragon Girl meeting the lord of the valley and so on and so forth. That just kills the surprise of the scene where Yang Guo finds out. Ok, it wasn't that much of a surprise. When I first tried reading the book, that was where I quit in disgust. I hate those stories where the female love interest almost marries some other man, pretending for some reason not to recognize the male love interest. Well, you can pretty much guess what will happen. Up to a point.

This was never my favorite part of the books, and here it felt especially slow and draggy. And we have some cliches going: the daughter of the evil lord falls in love with the hero, etc. etc. But after the hero gets tossed with her into a pit full of crocodiles, the story gets more interesting. Even the crocodiles know martial arts (and lightness kung-fu!).

Magical "passion flower" poison. Heh heh. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be on a Doctor Who episode (the loveless planet where everyone is poisoned by the flowers! *cue spooky music and metaphorical discursions*). But there you go. Useful plot device.

This adaptation actually seems to follow the books pretty closely. If only they didn't drag everything out with such a heavy hand.

Alien life forms! Well, aquatic insects...

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:17:00 +0000

A Walk around the Pond: Insects in and over the Water

by Gilbert Waldbauer

As the title says, it's a tour of life as an aquatic insect, written by an
entomologist. Beautifully illustrated (I only wish there were more! A few
diagrams might have been useful) by Meredith Waterstraat. Most aquatic insects
live in freshwater (or salt marshes near the ocean) rather than in the oceans,
where the ecological niches seem to be filled by crustaceans and such, so
it's really a walk around the pond, streams, swamps, rivers, tree holes,
puddles, inside water-filled plants, and other spaces one might not immediately
think of.

Insects live on such a different scale from humans that they are almost an
alien life form, as far as our intuitions and expectations are concerned.
The water is less turbulent, and surface tension is a major factor.
Everything: how they move, how they breathe, and how they eat, hunt,
and reproduce is strange (from the human point of view).

Waldbauer has a chapter on each aspect of aquatic insect life, starting
with a "cast of characters" introducing us to each of the orders found
in the water. Many insects only live in the water for one phase of their
existence (usually the larval and nymphal stages). The discrete changes
in insects from one form to another is in itself startling to a human. (We
keep our infants close by, and feed them our food!)

Highly recommended.

Animals are autistic?

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:03:00 +0000

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior

by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

Very interesting book from a different point of view than the evolutionary biologists and so on I've read more often. Temple Grandin has years of knowledge as a scientist working in the livestock industry. It's a different perspective than someone who spends her time in the field observing wild animals, or someone who conducts experiments on them. I don't necessarily agree with all her speculations and theories, but they're good ideas and worth thinking about.

People are constantly trying to find something that makes humans unique among animals. It's like a Holy Grail (and like the Holy Grail, probably a mythical object: whatever humans have, some animals out there have it too, if not to the same degree.) Here, Grandin suggests that autism in humans may point to one of those differences. "Normal" humans are blind in ways that "animals" (here meaning mostly mammals and birds) are not. Interestingly, this blindness extends to the human scientists studying animals! Autism may be a help in overcoming that blind spot, as autistic humans may lack (to a greater or lesser degree) the same types of mental abstraction that animals lack, enabling the autistic human to perceive things better from the animal's
point of view. This also helps in understanding the talents that an animal may have which humans don't.

Highly recommended. Great insights and examples. VERY sensible approach to regulating meat-packing plants. Keep it simple, focus on the goal (humane treatment of the animals) by having a short, easily quantifiable checklist, rather than drowning the issue with complicated 100-item forms and administrivia and detailed regulations, which only causes people to ignore
the whole thing. Regulate the results (unstressed animals), and let the plant take care of the implementation. The speculations about the co-evolution of humans and dogs is also fascinating. Definitely worth further research!

Animal trainers in training!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:22:00 +0000

Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers
by Amy Sutherland

This book is pretty much about what it says in the title and subtitle. The
premier school referred to is the Exotic Animal Training and Managemet
program (EATM) at California's Moorpark Community College. An
interesting topic, marred by the annoying (to me) "journalistic" style of the
writing. I.e., skip about from one "character" (usually a student or
a teacher) to another, telling a bit about each with some quotes and some
background, summed up with the writer's impression of each. Here and there
she marvels at this or that, and intersperses vignettes of life at the school
with some infodumps about this or that animal or school program.

Sounds like a fascinating place, and it's interesting to read about how the
humans and animals interact and influence each other, as well as the culture
of the "hard core" animal trainers. I would have preferred a more
in-depth view, something with more focus, perhaps a book written by someone
who WAS a student there, rather than someone following them around for a
year. At the end of the book, you still feel like a tourist.
Fun but superficial.

Doctor Who: Human Nature/Family of Blood

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Eh. Very well executed (in parts), but still irritating. Creepy scarecrows, forsooth. We've had the robots, the cyborgs, the pepperpots, the clowns, the tentacled faces, the animated shop dummies, etc. So why not scarecrows? At least they can do a better job of scaring humans than scaring crows. And there's a psychic boy, and an evil little girl. There's always an evil child, isn't there?

Not a very original plot (see also Harlan Ellison's Outer Limits story "Demon with a Glass Hand" Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn", Diana Wynne Jones's "Dogsbody", to name three off the top of my head) but still entertaining, and we haven't seen it done onscreen with the Doctor before. This was written by Paul Cornell based on his New Adventure "Human Nature", adapted for the tenth Doctor and Martha. Probably an improvement (for one thing, David Tennant pulls it off much better than Sylvester McCoy would have.) There were lots of great scenes in this two-parter. It benefited tremendously from having the luxury of time for some character development.

But it's still a cliche. (And full of plot holes.)

"Every single time! I tell them, 'Don't fall in love with a human.' Rule one. Don't fall in love with a human!"

Real humans go to ridiculous lengths to find the right person to fall in love with, but every time these transformed folks find True Love. It just falls on them. Even if the immortal turns into a freaking DOG ("Dogsbody" by Diana Wynne Jones) they STILL fall in love.

The plot goes the same way every single time. Every single time! The temporary mortal has to turn back into a supernatural being in order to save lives (which wouldn't have been in danger if the supernatural being hadn't gone there in the first place). Someone who knew the person both as an immortal and as a mortal observes and shakes head in exasperation and knowing. Someone is sad. The immortal can't or won't turn back into a mortal once the crisis is past. Whee.

And he did it to be kind?! Since when was Mr. "No Second Chances" Doctor that nice? Well, I suppose the scene where he says "Don't come after me. Consider yourself warned." is just implied.

The Doctor should just admit to his human fetish already. He wanted to be a human, and this was just a convenient excuse. The ending shows he could easily handled things without going to so much trouble to turn into a human.

I miss the old days when the Doctor was an alien wanderer, not a god. But I suppose once they slap the "Last of " label on someone, the mythical factor goes up.

But I like David Tennant's Doctor a lot more this season. Maybe it's that his performance has improved, or just that the Rose character is gone. Lovely portrayal of a human "John Smith". And this Doctor seems to have a talent for acting (unlike, say, the seventh Doctor).

ROCH 2006: She left me again! Oh noes!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:07:00 +0000

Still watching the 2006 mainland adaptation of Jin Yong's "Return of the Condor Heroes." Some of it's all right. Then it all collapses into another attempt to convince us that Yang Guo and Little Dragon Girl are really, truly, deeply, forever, seriously, in love love love. I'm sorry, but the chemistry between the two actors is just not there, and these music video scenes do nothing to convince me otherwise. The time would be better spent showing us their character by their words and actions. If I wanted to stare at someone's face, I'd buy a damn poster.

Lu Wushuang: the actress who played her was ok, could have been better. In the book, I always felt that she and Yang Guo could have been a nicely matched couple. Both have sharp wits and sharp tongues, can be playful, but have hair trigger tempers and can hold a grudge. Too bad they cut much of their interaction. And I missed the ox! They had Yang Guo do all his LWS rescuing on foot. And there wasn't as much with the Beggar Clan.

Cheng Ying: wore a freaky "human-skin mask" through most of this. When we finally see her face, she looks all right. I suppose they must cast this show with Little Dragon Girl as the most beautiful, then Guo Fu and Huang Rong. At any rate, Cheng Ying, unlike her cousin, is much more of a traditional demure maiden with some martial arts skills.

Yelu Qi, Wanyan Ping et all: Decently acted. This little subplot has Wanyan Ping seeking revenge for her family's death on Yelu Qi's father, but unable to, and Yelu Qi's father explaining how his actions were in turn vengeance for Wanyan Ping's family's slaughtering of /his/ family back in the day... at the end of it, she can't kill Yelu Qi after all, and maybe that feud can end. It's something for Yang Guo to reflect upon...

Li Mochou: There she is again! The actress needs to work on her evil laugh. It wasn't terribly convincing. It's almost as irritating as Yang Guo's silly laugh. Gah!

Hua Shan (the mountain), Hong Qi Gong, and Ouyang Feng. Damn, they cut out almost all of this section. I was looking forward to seeing HQG's centipede feast. No sign of the bandits known as the Five Tibetan Clowns (though they were mentioned in passing later.) Ok. Now this is going overboard. Hong Qi Gong can TELEPATHICALLY (through some manipulation of his inner energy, I suppose) transmit the Dog-beating Stick methods to Yang Guo? That was just silly. At any rate, here we have the end of another old feud... I found it very touching in the anime version, but here it left me a bit flat.

The horse! They cut all the cool parts from the scenes on Huashan, but elaborated for many minutes of screen time on Yang Guo and the horse? Sheesh. It was the Yang Guo/Little Dragon Girl loooove goop all over again.

Hero's Meet: Aha, here we are with Guo Jing, Huang Rong, Guo Fu, and the rest. Guo Jing finally finds out that Yang Guo hasn't been safely stashed away with the Quanzhen (Taoist) sect all this time. Yang Guo hangs out with the other kids for awhile. Then here's the meeting and the Golden Wheel monk (they all seem to have turned into Mongols in this version) and the big fights. They cut out one of the combats in the contest, too bad. Yang Guo has a magic nose! Apparently, just /seeing/ Little Dragon Girl isn't good enough. Here, he sniff sniff sniffs...while the LDG Enya-esque leitmotif starts playing. Please. Just. Stop.

Guo Jing: I liked the actor, but I felt they should have cast someone bigger, with more of a physical presence. I always pictured him as something of a brute, with his 18 Dragon Subduing Palms. Here he almost looks smaller than Yang Guo.

Huang Rong: What's with the unnaturally wide eyes? It looks distractingly strange. Other than that, I liked her. She is supposed to be clever, seeing what GJ can't, and using words to separate YG and LDG. Which this actress pulls off pretty well.

Guo Fu: GJ and HR's spoiled daughter. Pretty actress. Sympathetic so far.

Wu brothers: Guo Fu's foster brothers (in effect, though technically, they're just Guo Jing's students.) About what they were supposed to be, that is, chasing after Guo Fu, not too clever, with middling skills in martial arts, and generally resentful and contemptuous of Yang Guo.

Huo Dou: the Mongolian prince. I liked the actor they cast here. He plays him as an arrogant princeling, slightly effete (after all, he does use that fan as his main weapon!), quick to take advantage and not terribly honorable.

Golden Wheel Monk: the strongest of the "enemy" here. Powerful inner energy (demonstrated via CGI, but relatively tasteful CGI). Looks good. Telekinetically controlled wheels o' death! Had some decent fight scenes between him and Little Dragon Girl (what happened to the golden bell/sphere thingies on her white sash o'doom?) and Yang Guo. Speaking of telekinesis, I'll try to erase from my mind that earlier parasol fight (Parasol fight!) between Little Dragon Girl and Li Mochou.

Fight scenes...apparently no one ever moves their feet or legs anymore to move around in a fight. That's so passe. Instead, they slide around magically, or simply fly like Superman. (In the old days, when people jumped off roofs and they just ran the film backwards, at least we some idea that they had to use their own muscles.) Oh yes, and in keeping with genre tradition, no one ever bleeds or even gets bruised. They show their injury by spraying blood from their mouths. Originally, this happened when the characters had internal injuries, but now, it's universal. But they didn't do the Jedi mind tricks from the 9 Yin Manual...awww...too bad. It would have been funny to watch the big monk (Da Er Ba) copying Yang Guo and tricked into whacking himself in the face.

Fight scenes...now they're telekinetically tossing huge boulders around! I suppose the mystically confusing rock formation business was never going to be convincing, but this... Ha, it does look cool. Nice effects. Big rocks whizzing around at the enemy. But...still stupid.

Yang Guo and Little Dragon Girl openly declare their love for each other: Shock! Horror! The shame! The crowd is squicked by the master-student couple. It's like incest. Theoretically. But in the story, she's only about 4 years older, and she looks about the same age. Well, every romantic couple needs some obstacles. They walk out and plan to live quietly in the Ancient Tomb forever, avoiding the censure of society. Of course, this is not to be.

"Gu-gu!"

"Guo-er!"

"Gu-gu!"

"Guo-er!"

Potato Chip Man

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:03:00 +0000

Scenes from the driveway: spring

"Hi, Bailey." It's a warm, sunny afternoon. The boy is sitting at the end of the driveway, next to the mailbox, not saying anything, not playing with anything, just sitting there, legs out, feet bare. His little sister sits next to him, glancing at him now and then to make sure that she's copying him right. "What are you guys doing?"

"Waiting for potato chips." He looks intently out towards the road.

"You're what? What potato chips?"

"Not telling."

"What, you're getting potato chips in the mail? The mail already came today. Is the UPS man bringing you potato chips?"

"No?" His voice rises at the end of the word, but it's not really a question.

"It's going to rain potato chips?"

He doesn't even look at me. He knows better. And so do I. His father promised him potato chips last night, if he did his homework. And he did his homework. So here he is. I didn't even know he knew how to read the clock, but he's right, his father does usually come home about now.

He's waiting for the Potato Chip Man.

Doctor Who, deja vu (spoilers)

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Sun, 06 May 2007 00:33:00 +0000

I wasn't going to watch it yet, but I succumbed to tempation. So now I've seen the first five episodes of season three, and... it's the first season (of "new" Who) all over again.

"Smith and Jones": here we go with a new companion, Martha. So far she doesn't seem as heartless as Rose, but she's fallen into the making goo-goo eyes at the Doctor thing all too soon. Look, the Sontarans have gone in for a bit of cosmetic makeover and hired out as galactic police thugs! Oh, they're "Judoon". Riiiight. Not that bad, overall. I enjoyed it while I was watching it.

"Shakespeare Code": and here's our trip of a few hundred years back into British history, meeting with a literary genius while foiling the attempt of some quasi-magical aliens to break into our world. Yay. I actually liked this much better than "Unquiet Dead". This Shakespeare was more fun than that Dickens (despite a few lame jokes...some were amusing.)

"Gridlock": and here's our trip to the far future. Where once again, I'm reminded that Russell T. Davies has a sadly limited imagination. I don't think he can truly grasp just how long ten thousand years is, let alone five BILLION years. Only about 15 New New Yorks in that time? That's an average of one only every 67 million years. Please. RTD, do you even know how long ONE million years is? And we get the cat-headed people from the second season "future" episode again. And look, it's the Face of Boe again! Come on, if you have some big secret, why wait until you're on your dying breath to spill it? What was the big deal that he couldn't tell the Doctor before? It makes it look dumber, not more dramatic. But I did like it better than "New Earth" from the second season. First of all, Rose wasn't in it, so it wasn't so insufferably smug. Second, there weren't stupid disease zombies running around. Saving the last human/catfolk population of the planet by having them drive around in circles for years was an interesting concept (ultimately full of holes, but not as badly as the concepts behind "New Earth".)

"Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of Daleks": The Dalek AND the pig-person and aliens invading Earth story for season 3. Didn't we already have the last Dalek? And the last Daleks again? No, wait, this time it's really truly I mean it the very last Dalek in the universe. Oh, Daleks "tainted" with human DNA (thus making them emotionally unstable yadda yadda yadda) again. Why am I watching this? I can't stop myself! The Doctor makes one of his rare trips to
to America, landing in New York in 1930.

Quit mentioning Rose every damn episode! GAHHH! Gah!!!! No, she's NOT your one speshul twue wuv, dammit.

The real romance story is between the Doctor and the Daleks. They've known each other for hundreds of years. A very INTENSE relationship, considering all the times they've nearly killed each other (I count the Daleks more or less as one entity, with a few mutations and Davroses here and there). Now they're both the last of their races. And no matter who the Doctor kisses, and no matter how many humans flirt with him, it's only the Daleks that he's actually mixed his genes with to create new life forms (on screen, anyway.) Poor kids. Killed within ten minutes of their introduction. Very tragic.

So, enough with the emergency time shifts. Clearly the last of the Daleks should team up with the last of the Timelords as companions. As the show girlsaid, "There's someone out there for everyone", even, presumably, Daleks.

ROCH 2006: Ballet with Swords and Flowers!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Fri, 04 May 2007 01:00:00 +0000

"Gugu!"

"Guo-er!"

"Gugu!"

"Guo-er!"

[cue sappy luuuuv music]

And there's what, thirty-plus more episodes of this to go? Damn.

Still, it's picked up a bit now that the "adult" Yang Guo has been introduced (in the middle of a "training montage" at the end of episode 3.) My impression? The actor is a bit too old to play the "teen" Yang Guo, so he makes it up by acting especially silly and idiotic. Yeah. Guess it won't be much of a difference when he pretends ("pretends"?) to be an idiot later. This is an inherent limitation of live action, though, when the story spans many many years. The actor has to "age" somehow.

Speaking of "training": what's with all the flowers? Sheesh. Next time I'm in a fight, /I'll/ swoosh a bunch of colorful petals in the air into sword shapes. I'm sure that will be very helpful. And aren't they supposed to be buck naked or something? Cheats... and those puny little flowers aren't hiding anything anyway...

So we have more with the two evil Taoists: the obsessed/stalker one seems rather sad and almost sympathetic in this version (I could forgive him!). We have the return of Li Mochou and her Fly-whisk o'Doom. We have the first onscreen appearance of West Poison Ouyang Feng. He doesn't walk around upside down in this version, more's the pity. (I actually thought that was rather cool in the other versions when he did that.) The Hama Gong (toad stance) looks ridiculous. Way too literal with the croaking and the computer-enhanced toad hopping.

At least they're out of the Ancient Tomb now. It bugged me that all the characters had perfect darkvision (as they call it in Dungeons and Dragons): no visible source of light, yet everything is lit and they can see fine. I found all the training (sparrow catching! Wall carvings! Goofing off in the water! Flowers!) scenes a bit dull.

So now we're on the road with Yang Guo the flirt (with Lu Wushuang), on the run from Li Mochou. (Lu Wushuang's stolen LMC's poison manual --- the one that has the formulae for the antidotes!) This part is fun to watch, except when they slow everything down for a little music video of Yang Guo remembering his Gugu. All right, all right, we understand! Some more fight scenes... hmm. I miss the old days, when fight scenes bore a vague (if stylized and unrealistic) resemblance to fighting. Oh well, it could be worse.

All this makes me want to reread the book. Yang Guo isn't nearly so irritating in text as he is on screen (much of the time). I didn't need to see all those urination gags, no I sure didn't...

Popcorn with ham!

noreply@blogger.com (Taisch) — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:29:00 +0000

Ok, so maybe you don't care for "instant natural jellyfish" (I admit, it palls by the third time you eat it in the same week). And you're allergic to peanut butter. And chips and candy are still boring, and you're not in the mood for fruit or (gods forbid) celery sticks.

Well, try some popcorn with ham! That's right, don't waste your money on the pre-mixed nasty stinky butter-flavored (or worse, cheese-flavored) popcorn you get in the microwaveable bags, at about a measly three per box. Get some nice cheap popcorn (I like the white kind, personally. It looks prettier with the ham), a brown paper bag (lunch bag does nicely), and some ham (the thinly sliced rectangles people put on their sandwiches: say 6 slices --- more if you're feeling greedy). Put some popcorn in the bag (a couple of generous handfuls, maybe. If you mess up, try again, the popcorn's cheap), fold down the top of the bag a few times, then stick it in the microwave (folded bit down), and microwave on high for a few minutes (about 3-4 minutes on mine, until the popcorn is only popping about once per second).

Meanwhile, slice up the ham into shreds, about 0.5 cm wide by 5 cm long. Put it on your plate. When the microwave goes BEEP BEEP BEEP, take out the popcorn and add it to the other side of the plate. Enjoy the freshly nuked popcorn aroma. Then pick up a piece of popcorn, a piece of ham, and wrap the ham around the popcorn. Mmmm!

I'm serious.

Try this.

This meme must spread!!!