任是无情也动人

Just saw the movie today. Dragged my mom with me since the supermarket she needed to go to was right next to the theater. Verdict? I like it. I would even verge to say I loved it.

The Good: The characters. Definitely. Times 100.

Cap was spot on what he should be, which is a level of goodness and niceness you don't see much anymore in today's emo/snarkiness/cynicism overwhelmed entertainment products. He's humble, which is a lot unlike the other superegoesheroes out there. He's well adjusted...though that credit probably goes to Dr. Erskine for choosing the right person to become a hero (makes you want to ask the GL ring what the heck its criteria were, huh?). He's adorably bumbling when it comes to women. And yeah, I honestly cried in the scene where he said his goodbyes and crashed the Hydra plane (not knowing he'll be on ice for the next 75 years).

(Also, the thought occurs to me that Steve's virtues are the same that Superman/Clark Kent, the iconic character, is supposed to also have. But alas, only one of these characters actually managed to pull it off in the movies...all of their movies combined. -_-)

Peggy was probably one of the, if not the best female lead in a superhero movie so far. She kicks butt and takes names, and can probably shoot a fly at 50 paces. She dominated (and I mean that seriously) all the guys she meets. Alas, she's probably the one who got the least far with her guy as well. One kiss and a promise for a date before he crashed into the ice.

Howard Stark also made me squee... he's a lot like Tony from IM. Same flashiness when he gave his World's Fair demo (though alas I think his son got better engineering skillz), and is totally insane enough to fly behind enemy lines and still make it out alive. And the scene at the end where he's spending his millions to scour the North Sea for any sign of Cap is just heart wrenching. More since we know he died before Cap was finally recovered. *sniff*

Dr. Erskine was a character that was barely a footnote in the comics as part of Steve's background. Here, he's fleshed out in the few times he appears and is probably one of the wiser and cooler "old mentor guy" figures around.

Tomme Lee Jones Col. Phillips... I think all the reviews online have said everything better than me about how he rocked.

The Meh/Bad:

I'll agree with some reviewers that the pacing could use some work. The end where Cap wakes up in the modern world I think should be moved to the post-credits teaser, IMO. Or, at least make it shorter and vaguer. Otherwise it takes a lot out of the emotional impact of Cap's sacrifice.

Also, the unclear end of Bucky (typical stereotype of falling into the abyss...if you don't see the body then they're not dead) I think was kinda unnecessary, since I doubt they're going to do anything with the Winter Soldier storyline of comic fame. IMO it would've been better to go with the Ultimates storyline and had Bucky survive everything and be in his 90's when Steve returns, as the one last touchstone in the brand new world he's thrust into. (Edit: Belated note - since the sequel is Winter Soldier, nevermind about this.)

Making Hydra into a rogue Nazi element was kinda...odd, but I guess I could get where they're coming from. Might even be due to restrictions on Nazi imagery in entertainment that's driving the change, actually. Also, in-story, I guess it's a little too hard to explain why Germany didn't win the war in the Marvel timeline with the gear Hydra had available otherwise. Still. It was kinda odd. And I still think it's a little odd that the US was on the wrong side of the tech parity with Hydra. Even with the Norse superscience that Red Skull had, wouldn't he have been limited by other raw materials and funding like the rest of Germany? Ah well, chalk it up to standard supervillainy handwaving.


Anyway, in summary: Two thumbs up for Captain America!

(Note to self: need a cutesy Shanghai Expo icon to match the Beijing Olympics one...)

Usually, when I travel to China, it's to visit relatives and maybe do a bit of shopping on the side. Thus, I usually only see Shanghai overnight, and then only the inside of shops, before I take the train to Nanjing and basically spend most of my time indoors at home. On this trip, however, I traveled with my aunt and uncle, who are very fond of bombarding our tour guides and any fellow tour-goers who are unfortunate enough to fall into conversation with them with millions of questions about the state of...everything. Thus, I am left with a much more detailed and wide perspective of my motherland.

( Beijing: )

( Shanghai: )

( Pingyao: )

( Xi'an: )

Although our vacation in China isn't wholly over yet, the guided portions of it are. So I thought I'd write a bit about the various tour guides we've had on this journey while they're fresh on my mind, especially since they've been the topic of much discussion among my aunt, uncle, and cousins.

Let's start in order with Shanghai. Although we only had one (and a half if you count the trips from the airport and to the airport) day of guided tour with Kathy, my memories of her were generally ok. She did what a tour guide was supposed to do. Her tour of the French Concession area showed that she knew the area and its history well, and could communicate such just fine with English. Overall, our impressions of her were fair, though not spectacular.

Next was Jessie from Xi'an, who was by far the favorite of the twins and the rest of us. She gave me the impression of a peer much more than Kathy did, though our ages are all about the same, and she could certainly relate to children the best. When the girls joked around about the mistranslations on one of the museums near Yongtai's tomb, Jessie was able to laugh and contribute to the joke. She was also the most loquacious of our guides. On the car trips to/from our tour spots, and even during the tour, she would engage in long and deep conversations with my uncle about every topic under the sun - politics, religion, economy, history, China's place in the world and in the eyes of the people. She wasn't afraid to give her own opinions of everything, and it was very obvious that she loved learning and was a very wide-read scholar as well as well-traveled young lady. She also went above and beyond to accompany us through my aunt's very serious and detailed examinations of every item in a museum even though she must have been walking her feet off much as we had felt the first two Expo days. In fact, even after we left Xi'an, the twins kept comparing the following two tour guides against her and found them wanting. Well, I have to agree...

In Pingyao, our guide was a young man named George. Coming from a much smaller and poorer town, it came as no surprise that his English was not as good as our previous two guides. There were several times where I had to play translator myself between my uncle and our guide. However, he was pretty honest about when he didn't understand something we said. He also put the extra little effort to finding us good restaurants for dinner in the two days we spent there, even though dinner was not included in the tour arrangement we'd originally paid for. My uncle figured that he probably got a kickback from those diners. He was also the only tour guide to actually join us for lunch without a separate receipt (meaning the tour agency paid for his part of lunch too, which is technically against regulations). But since we were happy to find decent (and sanitary!) eateries in such a small town like Pingyao that we really didn't mind the small perks he got out of things. The man did give a general impression of earnestness...

Finally, that brings us to our last tour guide in Beijing, Selena - she who has been the topic of many a dinner conversation. At first impression, she seemed to be very fluent in English and had a pretty impressive resume (lived in Vancouver a few years; lead tours to or in foreign countries). However, the more time we spent on her tours, the more it seemed like...she really isn't suited to her job. Even ignoring the incident at the Forbidden City, and her attempts at talking my aunt to changing her tour program from Mutianyu and Suzhou Street... there are the small things. She would very often lapse into Chinese whenever she wanted to get a point across quickly, despite repeated reminders that we all spoke English as our primary language. She usually addressed only my aunt (half in Chinese), even if it had been my uncle who'd asked the question - as if she expected my aunt to do the translation to the rest of us for her. She hardly spoke a word to the twins and when she spoke to me, it's as if to a high-schooler on a homework assignment rather than an adult vacationing on her own time and money. As well, she would often say that she'd wait for us at such and such a spot for us to be done with taking photos or visiting Such-and-such Hall or climbing a nearby hill to see what was there. She also had a tendency to get picked up in the morning by the driver after we were picked up first, and get dropped off before we were dropped off at our hotel. These are things none of our previous guides had done; they'd always accompanied us no matter where we were dragging them, and saw us from/to our hotel from beginning to end. It just didn't seem quite professional here, since, well, just who's paying for who's time?

I've overheard various other small tour groups with only a few foreigners and an English-speaking tour guide. Most of them act more like Jessie (or Kathy) than like Selena. I guess we just had some bad luck with our last guide. Honestly, I think she'd do better at a desk job arranging schedules than in the field. Other than the last one, I think we had a pretty fair run of guides on the rest of our trip. Anyway, in the end, it's going to be our wallets talking when we do the tipping, and we already know what the math is going to be there.

But, in case anyone else ever thinks about ordering a tour from CTS for Shanghai, Xi'an, Beijing, or with CITS for Pingyao, hopefully this will help you make decisions or know who to request/avoid. :)

Overall, I was pretty disappointed in this film. It didn't live up to the expectations set by DaVinci Code at all. I think they were trying to much to make it into a(n average blockbuster) "thriller" and forgot to include many of the elements that made DaVinci Code good - the riddles, the problem solving, the complicated plans, the outrageous daring on the parts of the protagonists...

( Specifics )

link to cashew's reviews

Background:
赤壁 (Chi Bi) is supposed to be a remake of the famous battle in the middle of the Three Kingdoms period. I heard from somewhere that it's one of the most expensive movies produced in China to date - although, it's hard to tell where all that money went. The director claims that he was trying to move away from the ROTK standards and stereotypes that was set by the classic novel of the Ming Dynasty and the original TV series, and instead be more faithful to the historical documents on the era. Unfortunately, his attempts seem to have failed.

Overall Impression:
In my opinion, Chi Bi is the Chinese equivalent of Troy. A purposeful maligning of classical stories and history with modern "reinterpretations" and Hollywood flash-over-substance. And worse still, it's apparently only the first movie in a duology or even trilogy (cuz I certainly can't imagine them being able to finish the story in just 1 more movie given the pace the storyline is moving). The characters and characterizations have been modernized and "humanized" to their detriment, and have lost many of the qualities that made these characters into cultural heroes in the first place. In the end, the movie leaves the audience (as long as they are not ignorant of Chinese culture and history) with the impression that the Chinese filmmakers have sacrificed their own cultural heritage in order to make a film through the eyes of the modern western world on one of the most famous times of Chinese history. And that is just sad.

( More wall of text )

Starts at 8/8/08 8:08 PM Being time. Which is 5:08 AM here. Which means I've been up since an unholy hour of morning to watch it live over SopCast. With its itty bitty screen. *sigh*

*stabs NBC* Freaking greedy, censoring, capitalist pigs.

( Random initial responses... )

EDIT to add:
linky w/ pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdVBb08HZg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhDoJNN6Ndw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAukz--Ms6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s4zg2O9qiE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nycxfRdvt-E

To ADD:
<<春江花月夜>> is the song I want.

I knew I was forgetting something. This is the last part. Previous two posts: 1 2

( Caution: Graphics Intensive )

The end.

Because I am totally heads-over-heels for the Yang Jian (杨戬) of this show and thus must share my screencaps (and probably not-so-witty commentary). Do note that he doesn't show up until halfway through the show and it's only that half I'm posting.

( Caution: graphics intensive )

OK that's probably enough for one post if I don't wanna kill people's bandwidth or something... Will continue in future posts.

Go to part 2

Okay, first thing I need to tag on is that I'm going to be rambling freely about the movie, so there may well be spoilers in this entry for anyone who doesn't want to be spoiled (mindboggling as the thought might be for as well known of a story as this).

( Read more... )

I was out running errands today and walked past the theater and thought: "why not"?

( The Review. Spoiler warning. )

Well, I'm sure there are other issues I had with the movie, but these are the ones that come to me right now... I'll edit others in if they come to me.