A Valentine’s Day homage to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ang Lee's gorgeous 2000 masterpiece has awe-inspiring martial arts stunts and a tragic love story for the ages.

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I loved that movie. Watched it multiple times and was always enthralled.

If not for CTHD I never would have seen Jet Li's Hero, which is one of the best uses of color I've ever seen in a film. Not to mention all the hype about 2 people taking on the 3000-strong imperial guard ... then actually showing that battle. Hells yes.

My immediate reaction to reading this article was to make me want to watch both movies with my son. Hero's visual design is among the finest such work ever done in movies, period.

 

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I like musicals - if the music is good. Wicked definitely qualifies. Part 1 more than Part 2, but that's a flaw that applies to the original material rather than the film.

LaLa Land is an example of a not-great musical, for me anyway. Within minutes of seeing it, I couldn't remember a single tune - although there were a lot of them, and a typically stunning performance by Emma Stone, but for me it failed as a musical. They probably should have just done it as drama.

Moulin Rouge is a great movie and a great musical - a juke box musical, in this case - that features probably the best cover ever of Madonna's Like a Virgin. Baz Luhrmann pretty much peaked here, and has disappointed me ever since, although his earlier Strictly Ballroom (since converted to a stage musical) was quite good.

And if you either like or detest musicals, Apple TV's Schmigadoon is probably worth a watch. It's on both sides of that fence. Jane Krakowski and Kristin Chenoweth chew the scenery like nobody's business, especially in Season 2 (Schmicago).

Moulin Rouge has also been done as a stage version.

 

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I never watched it but now it makes sense why Michele Yeoh was treated as such a big star when she as introduced as the empress of earth in STiscovery.

It will impress you even more when you watch her fight scene with Jen and are told she had a torn ACL while doing those stunts.

 

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Imagine a year in which you got to see that AND O Brother Where Art Thou in the theaters...

...and die of eye rolling when Gladiator won Best Picture.

At my signal, unleash Hell.

 

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I imagine many people miss that the "happy ending" we associate with Hollywood, is actually a very rigid requirement of traditional Chinese folk entertainment. Having a dark or tragic ending was considered an attack on the audience, not just being "edgy" or unconventional(as the case in Hollywood). Ang Lee threads the needle by purposefully making the tragedy ambiguous. With all the fantasy already in the film, one can imagine Jen might get her wish. But, there is also enough realism, and enough hints from the outstanding soundtrack by Dun Tan, that the wish will not come true. PS -I have a hard time saying that this or any of the details in article are "Spoilers," because even knowing the plot doesn't take away from actually watching the action, watching the story unfold. And that is also an aspect of Chinese folk stories, where everyone except the children are aware of everything that's going to happen in the story being told.

Bear in mind the difference between Shakespeare's tragedies and his comedies comes down to the latter ending with a wedding, and the former ending with a funeral. By and large the groundlings were entertained similarly up until that point.

 

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However, it is a "plot hole" I have had people repeat to me constantly.

My problem with it as a solution is that it ignores the entire metaphor of the journey, and especially the structure of the myth Tolkien is trying to create. You can argue that Tolkien is being pretentious, and why wouldn't you, but to try and reduce the entire story to "Well, they could have just flown there..." kind of ignores the whole point of writing the story.

And the same goes for saying "Why couldn't the super-humans just fly over to get the antidote?", which is what I was responding to. It's missing the point of the story.

Oh, and was it a suicide mission? Only one person lost their life at Mount Doom, and that was just Gollum. Not counting Sauron, I suppose, but the whole point was to destroy Sauron, so that doesn't count.

That and all the other stuff happening to distract Sauron so he didn't have the Nazgul handy to shoo away the eagles...

We also have the subtitle to The Hobbit reminding us the point IS the journey.