Movie Review: House of Flying Daggers

Due to a combination of thinking "Hmm, I haven't seen any wuxia films, except for Jade Warrior, in a while" and a headcold which told me it was totally a good idea to check out Chinese action movies/graphic novels that cross western and eastern comics (I'm too scared to even look at them yet), well, you have the reason for this week's review. The movie Hero was produced by the same people who made this film and I've seen that film but didn't like it that much. It was too slow for me and I just didn't care about any of the characters, obviously other people have liked it and I hoped that this movie was a bit faster paced and that that might help me enjoy it more.


House of Flying Daggers

Summary: The Tang dynasty is falling and the law has started to succumb as corrupt politicians and police everywhere run free. The House of Flying Daggers is a group of people who oppose them and steal from the rich to give to the poor which leads to a number of clashes between the groups. 

The Good: Funny enough this film did the same thing to me that Hero did, for about three-fourths of the movie everything seems rather straight-forward and the plot seems more like an excuse to string together fight scenes than anything else, and then they reveal that everyone's personal politics are actually much more complicated and it certainly makes looking back on this movie at least a lot more interesting. 

The Bad: I still maintain that a lot of the plot was there just so there would be fight scenes which, given the number of fight scenes and how some of them could have been cut out, that is a bit of a problem. I'm not sure which film I liked more (to be honest I keep thinking "I should really watch that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon blu-ray we have now") but I think that Hero was the stronger film since it's plot was a bit more complicated and certainly more intriguing by the end. 

The Audio: I watched the film in it's native Chinese and didn't notice anything particularly noteworthy about the audio. There was a good use of silence when called for and there was plenty of what I refer to as "generic marital arts drumming" in the background. It all worked but just didn't stand out to me when everything was said and done. 

The Visuals: While many of the fights looked fairly nice, even though they had to be using wire work for over half of them it was very subtlety done, it was other parts of the movie that really caught my eye. There were some scenes in the second half that were almost all green (green scenery, green outfits, everything!) which made me realize that you really don't see mostly green scenes in American films or such and I was impressed that they managed to have such monochromatic scenes yet still look interesting (and not remind me of The Wizard of Oz at all). Another bit that really caught my eye was a conversation between two characters and the camera was very carefully positioned so you could see everything of one character accept their eyes and, while this normally annoys me in anime (since usually the artists just don't draw the eyes in/put shadows in where there shouldn't be shadows), it turns out that this is a fairly cool framing technique in live action material.


In the end, it was an alright film. I was doing some other stuff while watching it and if I hadn't I'm afraid I probably would have gotten bored. Oh well, considering what I could've checked out to watch while I was sick I think I got off lightly. 

TV Series Review: The Legend of Korra

I have decided to start my end of spring/beginning of summer reviews a week earlier than planned since once again I looked at my list of shows and realized at this rate I'm not going to finish up until August (as it is I might have to start reviewing two shows a week, we shall see) and since I finished up Korra about 12 hours before I finished Fate/Zero 2 it's up first! Obviously I haven't had a chance yet to get along with my re-watch of the first show but given that the second season is still in production (so I'm not expecting it before fall 2013 to be completely honest) it'll give me something to do during the break.

The Legend of Korra

 Summary: 70 years after the end of the first series and 17 years after the death of Aang, the new Avatar Korra has masted water, earth, and fire bending and is eager to start her airbending training (despite the fact that she is the complete opposite of spirituality from Aang and as a result has never been able to airbend). But Tenzin, Aang's son and the only airbending master in the world, has other matters on his plate since he is also in charge of governing a new nation, Republic City (formed from the oldest Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom whose cultures had become so entwined it was decided that it was better to let them continue to co-exist than separate), where anti-bender sentiments are on the rise. Korra decides that she will go to him then and gets entangled in pro-bending, romance, and politics.

The Good: I will admit that Korra isn't a terribly original character if you were to genderflip her, she's rather similar to a lot of shonen protagonists, but I still do love the concept of having a late teenaged, female, not-white, protagonist of a show, not in a school setting, who is, well, brash and young for lack of a better phrase. I do believe Korra grows in the show, not tons but certainly some, but more than that I do hope her presence of tv (combined with stuff like The Hunger Games and Brave) show off that yes, people will watch action shows with a female lead. I do like a lot of the characters on this show regardless, Asami in particular (I do like how she and Korra were female characters but more nucanced than "one is a girly-girl and the other is a tomboy") but also some of the older cast including Tenzin and Lin Bei Fong. I also loved the setting, partially because (as I have made it clear before) I love the 1920s as a setting and technology was always a part of the original show from very early on so I didn't find it jarring. Finally I was amazed at just how political a kids show got to be (yes people, this is rated Y7 or youth, seven year olds, Nick is clearly crazy) and those episodes were my favorite ones of the show. 

The Bad: One big thing that the internet has been practically screaming about for the past few days, yes this show had some serious pacing issues which were most apparent in it's finale. Given how well the original show was paced I cannot believe that the creators weren't aware of the problems here (which I know I know, doesn't make it better) and, based on some information from interviews, I do wonder who made the final call that the show should be 12 episodes instead of 20, Nick or the creators. Again the finale had the most trouble here, it also created some problems with the romantic subplot I wasn't as happy about (although I have no trouble with that subplot as a whole) and I desperately hope that the second season ties up some of the loose ends here otherwise I will be unhappy with it. The show simply had too many things it tried to include (hence my thoughts that it was the decision of Nick, not of Bryke, to make the show only 12 episodes) yet I cannot figure out a way to cut anything major in order to help with the pacing.

The Audio: The Track Team returns in to continue composing for the show and, while I don't think they quite suceeded with the premise of "if jazz was invented by the Chinese" the tracks were gorgeous regardless. There are some more jazzy pieces in this series and there are plenty that make full use of the more traditional instruments that serenaded the original show and really hope that the music gets a full release this time around. As for the voice acting, I didn't like some of the voices oddly enough (Older!Aang and Older!Toph sounded off to me and Dante Basco's character sounded at least five years younger than they looked) but overall I liked the main cast and thought they did a good job throughout.

The Visuals: While there were several shows airing this season that had some great looking fight sequences, such as Fate/Zero 2 and Accel World, they often had so many effects and fast cuts that the fights themselves were almost hidden from the viewer and at times it was hard to tell how good looking everything was. Korra never had this problem and was able to show off it's amazing choreography to the fullest and even when the characters weren't fighting there was a great amount of detail in the backgrounds. I do wonder if Nick plans to release this show on BR (given that the original show was released on DVD I do believe there is at least a DVD release planned down the line), although I'm not 100% sure that the visuals are enough to make me choose a BR over a DVD.

In short, I still love the show but there are certainly problems with it (outside of the finale the biggest problem is that there weren't any downtime episodes to get character development, I think Asami probably had more than Mako and certainly more than Bolin did) but hopefully those next 14 episodes will help. Fingers crossed in any case! 

Manga Review: Mai the Psychic Girl (volume one)

Another book I had seen lying around the local library near my college and, since I needed more manga to read and they had all four volumes (ie, if I liked it then I’d easily be able to read the rest of it) I decided what the heck, let’s go with the 1980s, flipped manga!

Mai the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudo & Ryoichi Ikegami

Summary: The Wisdom Alliance is a powerful and mysterious organization that seeks to control those with strong psychic powers and, as the title suggests, Mai is one of these people. But her father isn't having any of that and and the two are soon on the run to keep Mai safe.

The Good: The story gets moving right off the bat and moves along at a good pace through the entire volume. There aren't too many characters to keep track of either so the story makes for smooth reading. So far the story hasn't done much to distinguish itself from many other stories like it but it's moving along well enough so far.

The Bad: Mysterious psychic powers? Everyone knows kung-fu? Must be the 80s then, the story really does date itself with a lot of elements that well, just aren't that cool anymore. Mai isn't that interesting a protagonist so far, bubble-headed teenagers rarely are, and the premise of "girl/boy with special powers that everyone wants to use for themselves" isn't that interesting either. Perhaps once the villains are fleshed out a bit more (using the term "villain" lightly, clearly there is a big, possibly governmental organization behind the scenes but their intentions are completely unknown) the story will pick up but there's just as good a chance it won't.

The Art: As mentioned above, the book is flipped, not surprising since it was published in the US in the late 80s, unflipped manga wouldn't become the norm until the 2000s. Aside from that, there isn't anything special about the artwork that stands out, wikipedia even says that the manga was chosen because it was neither "too Japanese or too American" and this is reflected in the art as well as the story.

So, in the end there isn't anything in it that really makes me want to continue with the story so I think I'll spend my time reading something a bit more to my taste (also, moving out in less than a week so I don't really have time to read the other volumes, guess it all worked out in the end!).