03-25-2013, 04:33 PM
Chow Yun Fat as Cao Cao, in his final years, fending off - you guessed it - assassins. Guan Gong and Liu Bei are already dead - the only reminder is their weapons, honored in Cao Cao's regal antler rack armory. Chow is always cool. He gets to glare a lot, which is all he really needs to do to have screen presence.
I'm coining a new phrase to describe this genre of Chinese film: Embroidered epics. The costumes in this film are outrageous. Opulent embroidered silks, cool armor, awesome funky hats - Imperial China at it's most baroque. It's gorgeous to look at, with lots of palace intrigue. There are sword fights and blood spitting. No bollywood, but the color schemes are worthy of a bollywood production.
It also stars Crystal Liu Yifei, a fav of both Greg's and mine as we've both been up-close-&-personal with her. She's Cao Cao's concubine and I'm still not sure if she can really act or not. This is a juicy role for an actress but I was too distracted by the costumes to notice.
SPOILER Crystal is an orphan, trained to be an assassin by a sinful dwarf who whips her butt nekkid (actually her character doesn't get whipped - the butt doubles get whipped) - she falls in love with another assassin trainee then the trainers cut of his penis and feed it to a dog. He gets really frustrated when Crystal comes on to him and, well, he has no dick. There's an awesome armored ninja attack where the ninjas shoot roped quarrels across a courtyard to make a web tight enough to work as a trampoline and then bounce into the castle. END SPOILER
I'm coining a new phrase to describe this genre of Chinese film: Embroidered epics. The costumes in this film are outrageous. Opulent embroidered silks, cool armor, awesome funky hats - Imperial China at it's most baroque. It's gorgeous to look at, with lots of palace intrigue. There are sword fights and blood spitting. No bollywood, but the color schemes are worthy of a bollywood production.
It also stars Crystal Liu Yifei, a fav of both Greg's and mine as we've both been up-close-&-personal with her. She's Cao Cao's concubine and I'm still not sure if she can really act or not. This is a juicy role for an actress but I was too distracted by the costumes to notice.
SPOILER Crystal is an orphan, trained to be an assassin by a sinful dwarf who whips her butt nekkid (actually her character doesn't get whipped - the butt doubles get whipped) - she falls in love with another assassin trainee then the trainers cut of his penis and feed it to a dog. He gets really frustrated when Crystal comes on to him and, well, he has no dick. There's an awesome armored ninja attack where the ninjas shoot roped quarrels across a courtyard to make a web tight enough to work as a trampoline and then bounce into the castle. END SPOILER
Shadow boxing the apocalypse