Began with Tianxia Wushuang/ 天下无双, and the Cantonese soundtrack, and then realized the lip movements didn't synch. Or didn't synch for half the charas, so I switched to mandarin. My ear has been forever turned by Woxin, because now mandarin sounds better than Cantonese, unless it's the real silk-stuffed-in-the-mouth Beijing dialect.
Evidently nothing has changed in the HK film industry. It's still as silly, anarchic, and self-referential as it was in the 90's: all those anachronisms ha ha, which would be funny if I hadn't seen them so often even in my (again, extreeemely limited) wuxia viewing.
Still, this one is sweet; it has its moments and a semi-intelligent translator, who takes the King Bully of the main role and calls him Bully the Kid. Also has Tony Leung who begins to grow on me. Might even have a nod at Utena-ish screwing with gender givens, only not so much.
rasetsunyo somewhere early on in the Woxin watching said that HK films may play with edginess in the sexual line but are ultimately very safe, as opposed to Woxin which is not. Truly, mainland productions are beginning to look better and better to my eye. There's some substance even amid teh pretteh.How you get Chinese Odyssey 2002 out of what I guess to mean 'matchless' is something I won't think about. And does HK use simplified hanzi now?
Continued with something called in English Butterfly and Sword. It has Michelle Yeoh. It has Tony Leung. It is still too damned HK action film for me in spite of both of them. I must move on to my Woxin rewatch and the longueurs of the Fan Li/ Xi Shi plot.
