Thursday, September 09, 2010

police story. once upon a time in china 1-6 steamboy. the best days of our lives . bride wars .

it is the opening of police story and that incredible chase down the hill through the slums that most sticks in my mind. no stunt compares to that one through the rest of the story about a policeman assigned to guard a potential witness. jackie chang is fantastic fun. the other hong kong kung fu king whose films i have been watching back to back is jet li.


while chang plays the action for comedy, jet li makes it ballet. and it is not as if his characters are all tension like bruce lee. instead there is a gentle sweetness and often a sort of buffoonery that offsets his seriousness. in fact when he plays wong fei-hung his self-seriousness is often what is funny as he surrounded by his girlfriend and disciples who seem instead to have a better understanding of the world. ji is the distanced slightly eccentric pure soul. he is the star of only 4 of the six films and when he is not around the films suffer terribly. his charisma more than makes up for the interminable lion and dragon dances in the third film and the pseudo cowboy and indian story in the sixth. every film has a white man to hate- the first being american, then the russians, then the germans.. the list goes on. these white people are conniving through business to take over the china. wong fei-hung westernizes just enough to be able to fight them on their terms- but only in the later films. in the first two it is good old fashioned kung-fu that helps win all the battles.


i love the way that space is used in these films. it serves as both obstacle and prop for the body. while containing the action it also becomes something that can be used against the opponent. the body traces out the space in all dimensions and maps the structure and material of the building. the scale of the spaces, their strong and weak joints, the way that they come together are all unravelled the the action proceeds. some of my favourite sequences happen again in the first two films when cgi and wire tricks have not completely made the body weightless.


the action in the anime 'steamboy' occurs during the london exhibition of 1866. across from the crystal palace an enormous steam castle is built which is going to change the world. superb animation includes brilliantly designed steam engines that run off tracks and gorgeous visuals when the steam castle runs out of control over the city of london. the story involves the grandson of a family of inventors and a rivalry between his father and grandfather over science and its relationship with rampant capitalism.


'the best days of our lives' begins with three war veterans meeting in an airport trying to get back home to boone city where the women wait to care for them. the men have trouble fitting in again- one drinks too much, the other is ashamed of his disability and disfigurement and the third comes back to find himself jobless. . the women that they come back to are strong and supportive as they are supposed to be- and if they are not- as one veterans wife is portrayed, she very quicly in villianized. a propoganda film like no other- beautifully made and acted. for me the most beautiful sequence involves the airfield with the discarded carcasses of planes. i am a sucker for ruins.


and 'bride wars'.. if it wasn't for anne hathaway and kate hudson, who really are too lovely for this film, it would be completely unwatchable. like two bridezilla episodes rolled into one. the best of friends vying over each other to have the most perfect wedding which involves every cliché in the book. vera wang wedding clothes and a location to die for. after a while you cant care less about these women and their annoying tiffs.

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