Let's be clear from the start: I love Zhang Yimou films. Absolutely adore them. House of Flying Daggers is without doubt one of my favourite films of all time. I even managed to blag my way into one of the first UK preview screenings of it. So it was with great anticipation that I watched Curse of the Golden Flower. I missed it at the cinema - mainly because it can be a real pain in the arse trying to find anywhere playing World Cinema outside of Dublin - so I finally got round to watching it on DVD this weekend.
And... it's not very good.
Don't get me wrong, it looks incredible, as can always be expected. It's even more extravagant than his previous films; the palace is literally stunning. It's an utter explosion of colour, the costumes are beyond extravagant, and, somewhere between House... and Curse..., he discovered boobs. This film is cleavagetastic. Seriously, Gong Li could use her cleavage as a shelf. The openng sequence is just boobs.
Anyway, enough about the boobs, and onto what's wrong. For a start, this is barely a martial arts film. It's true that Yimou's films have always been more than martial arts; hell, House... is a love story with kicking. But this is just a period drama; the final battle withstanding, there's very little action that sticks in the mind.
More criminally for me is the storyline - while it's as twisting and turning as its epic predecessors, it's also predictable and quite dull. All the characters are very two-dimensional, and are all unlikeable, despicable, back-stabbing shits. There isn't a drop of sympathy or empathy for any of them at all, meaning that quite frankly, I couldn't care less about who came out on top of the family power-struggle. They're all just bland. It's not like the characters from Hero or House; just think of the fantastic characters in those films: Maggie Cheung as Flying Snow, Donnie Yen as Sky, Jet Li as nameless, Zhang Ziyi as Xiao Mei, Andy Lau as Leo, Takeshi Kaneshiro as Jin... they were all fantastic creations, larger-than-life. Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li are both pretty good, but there's just not a lot below the surface. They're both plotting, scheming, evil shites.
It's all surface and no depth. Without the backbone, Yimou's visual opulence just accentuates how shallow the film is. There's very little to recommend about the film apart from just how pretty it is - and what's the point of that when you could just watch something with beauty and depth?
Hooray! Interplay have just announced that they're re-launching Earthworm Jim - and not only the game (which is great news) but the cartoon too (which is fucking AMAZING news!). The original creator, Douglas TenNapel, is on board, so hopefully it won't be arse like Earthworm Jim 3D was. Douglas TenNapel. What a great name that is.
So GTA IV should be arriving at work in the next two days. I'm well looking forward to it. Even though San Andreas was a bit shite, I have high hopes for this one. I'm just wondering if I can get away with playing it on our 360 at work without Rockstar's team of elite ninjas hunting me down and eating my face. I think I'll just avoid Live until Tuesday, and then suddenly sign in at 00:01 with all the achievements. Ha ha! Eat that, score whores!
It's looking superb. I'm looking for a new game world that's massive and all-enveloping; everything I've played recently I've enjoyed, but it hasn't had me utterly addicted. Hell, I didn't even finish Super Mario Galaxy. In fact, I haven't been properly addicted to a game since Oblivion. I still play that fecking game now, even though I've finished almost every single quest, got every achievement, bought all the DLC, finished that, and have now wasted over 160 hours of my life in Cyrodiil. I'm hoping Liberty City will cure my Morrowinditis.
There was a selection of these in last weeks Guardian. I was reading the Guide while waiting for my food, and ended up sat in La Salsa with tears streaming down my face. I must have looked like a right tard.
I have to say, I haven't been so underwhelmed by a console in a long time: The Playstation 3 has pretty much nothing that interests me. Every good game out for it is also out on the 360, where it-
a) costs less b) has a better controller c) has a better online service d) has those lovely, scrumptious, oh so addictive achievement points.
The only exclusive title that's even piqued my interest is Singstar, and I am not paying 400 for a fucking karaoke machine.
Plus, I already bought 9 discs of it for my PS2...
Anyway, Metal Gear 4 has me interested, but not enough to buy the machine. But with this trailer for Siren hitting the net, now I'm considering it. It looks bloody terrifying. All I need now is Fumito Ueda to announce a new game and there'll be a party in my trousers.
Resident Evil 5has been picking up press ever since it was first announced; mainly because, following the incredible Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube, anticipation was higher than for previous entries in the rapidly-going-stale series. However, the press has been growing hostile ever since the newer trailers began to appear. Accusations of racism arose as soon as they hit the net.
Resi 5 is set in Africa (or Haiti, it's still unclear). From the trailer, it does seem that the game consists mainly of a lone white man shooting crowds of black people. Here, take a look:
Allegations of racism are being thrown at Capcom, and it's clear to see why - the trailer makes the black people seem like primitive animals, being mown down by the big white man. For the ones that are now 'zombies', this is fair enough... in Capcom's defence, if the game is set in Africa, then the zombies are going to be African. There was no allegations of racism about Resident Evil 4, despite all the enemies being Spanish. However, the worrying thing will be decided on it's portrayal of the non-infected inhabitants - for example, the citizens at the start of the trailer seem to be uninfected, yet are still made to look unusual and frightening.
For me, its going to be a hard one to call until the entire game is available. As Crystal Dynamics' producer Morgan Gray pointed out earlier this week, Japanese games are not noted for their reasonable portrayal of black people, resorting usually to a strange soul-brother stereotype that hasn't really existed in about 30 years, if ever. Trying to think of black characters in Japanese games conjures up images of Barratt in Final Fantasy VII - who says 'sucka' at the end of every sentence and has a gun for an arm - or the customary South American / Jamaican guy in beat 'em ups (see Dee Jay in Street Fighter II: The New Challengers or Eddy Gordo in Tekken).
The problem with Resi 5 lies in the fact that the usual Japanese portrayal of black characters as loveable, dancing, 'yeah mon!' brothers or Mr.T wannabes is not so much offensive as just hopelessly naive. Portraying them as packs of murderous creatures could start to cross the line. With this one, we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
I watched Atonement last night. I've had it sat around the house for a while but, as usual, have been put off watching it by the fact that Keira Knightley a) only has one facial expression and b) can't act (the former may affect the latter).
I must say, however, that I was pleasantly surprised. Well, I say 'pleasantly'; despite stunning cinematography and an utterly fantastic score, there's very little pleasant about the film. Based on the Ian McEwan novel, it details how one lie by a young girl can have such an effect on three lives - that of her sister, her sister's lover, and ultimately, herself. Special mention must go to the acting - James McEvoy is as brilliant as ever, once again proving he's one of Britain's finest actors. And Saoirse Ronan was amazing - she portrays a frosty, precocious, hateful little English girl, despite being a wee Irish lass. It's hard to say she's good in it because I hated her character, but that, I suppose, is the sign of some seriously good acting (well, perhaps not; the urge to strangle teenagers is quite a common one). And yes, I'll say it - even Keira is good in it.
It's the way it is shot that surprised me most, though. After the oscar nominations, the cast, the marketing, I was expecting a fairly straightforward romance. It's not. It's languid, almost dream-like at points; long, drawn-out shots, unusual framing - and the single-shot Dunkirk sequence is amazing, one of the finest pieces of cinema I have seen in years.
It's a fantastic film; surprising, moving, brave and ambitious. It comes highly recommended.
So here I am, joining this 'blogosphere' malarkey. Which means I'll just be emptying my brain out on to this page at semi-regular intervals. I'd imagine it'd be musings about games, books, films, music, football, the news; but it'll mostly be posting about things that get on my tits.