2006 December | Expansive Perspective

Archive for December, 2006

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Giant octopus attacks shark

Monday, December 25th, 2006

Watch this video with a little patience and you’ll get to see a spectacular battle between two of the most feared creatures of the sea.

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Curse of the Golden Flower

Monday, December 25th, 2006

Large production directed by Zhang Yimou and casted by big-shot stars Gong Li, Chou Yun Fatt and Jay Chou.

I was skeptical before stepping into the theatre. Having seen Zhang’s previous film the Red Lantern, which I find rather boring. Anway I decided to give it a shot because this is one of the few films that Chou starred in and he is a great actor. Shortly after the show started, I was put off by the bright colours of the setting. It was so piercing to the eyes. Bright yellow, orange and red colours tend to arouse disturbance to the mind and it sure did in me. However as the story unfolded, I got more and more interested.

Gong Li’s acting is superb. Her emotions flowed so readily. I could empathise with her in the heartwrenching scene where her son (Jay Chou) killed himself after the foiled attempt to assasinate the king (Chou). I was never a fan of hers, but I sure am after this.

Chou as usual displays good acting skills. But in this film, Gong Li is really the big player with the most number of scenes. Jay Chou sucks at acting. One would think that he’s wearing a wooden mask. The most “expressive” expression is frowning, which where this is the only display of emotion at the heartbreaking scene of watching his mum (Gong Li) being forced to drink poison disguised as medicine, one can only say that his acting is really amateurish. I’m quite impressed by the acting of Li Man (Xiao Chan). The scene where she went berserk and ran like a madwoman after hearing that her lover is in fact her brother - you can feel how desperate she was.

Overall this is a good film. Even if you don’t know the actors well, I would still recommend anyone to go watch it. Just to see the kind of scale - the setting, the props and costumes, the Forbidden City, the grandeur of Chinese Tang Imperial family, the bold use of colours. In Chinese, big is good - this is definitely portrayed in this film.

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