Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

This is another one of those films which I was looking forward to watching. This was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2000, losing out to Gladiator, and was, for all accounts, fantastic. It’s completely in Chinese, and as a result it is not a light watch. The plot revolves around Li Mu Bai trying to recover his stolen sword from Jade Fox. He has the help of Yu Shu Lien (who is in love with him), who has to try and persuade Jen Yu to turn away from Jade Fox’s path of ‘bad’ and follow the ‘light’ of Li Mu Bai.

As Crouching Tiger was subtitled it made it a lot easier to follow, but you cannot turn your head away from the screen at all really, otherwise you miss a lot of the dialogue. Unless you speak Mandarin (which I studied in my first year of University, and now cannot remember), it is quite a tough film to follow. The plot is really good though, and it provides some intricate twists which keep you watching. There are several stories running throughout the film, and these are all very enjoyable. For example, forbidden love is a massive part of Crouching Tiger. Jen Yu has to wrestle with her arranged marriage despite being in love with another man, and Li Mu Bai and Yu Shen Lien have been in love for a long time, but were unable to express this for a variety of reasons.

The best part about Crouching Tiger though is, without a doubt, the fight scenes. As with many films, there is a massive build up to the ‘final showdown’ between the two good guys and the two bad guys. This sees Li Mu Bai blocking a large number of poisoned needles with his sword, which is just epic. However, more impressive is the scene where Jen Yu takes on near enough a whole building of fighters who all believe they can defeat her. This scene reminded me massively of the last scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (or more accurately, the scene in Kill Bill reminded me of this one). Also, the initial scene where Yu Shen Lien fights ‘the thief’ in order to gain back the sword is magnificent. The only thing that spoils most of the fight scenes for me is the graphics. Granted it was 2000 when the film was released, but the special effects of the characters jumping across rooftops and stuff is awful. In some cases I don’t think they even touch the roof before they jump. Now I know that the laws of physics are ever so slightly suspended in Crouching Tiger, but it would have been nice if the effects looked more realistic.

I thought that Jade Fox was an interesting character. To me she seemed to be portrayed as the archetypal ‘wicked witch’ as she looked a little bit older, a little bit more unkempt and a little bit more devious than any of the other characters. Naturally she is underhand, and displays none of the honour that Li Mu Bai possesses. Her use of poison is also very sneaky. Obviously this is the most shameful way to kill someone as they can’t face you or fight back, and Jade Fox is known to have repeatedly used this technique. Ironically enough it is poison eventually is her undoing. I thought though that her poisoning of Jen Yu was more interesting though. Jen lives a life where she is presented as the sweet innocent little girl, but has really been twisted by Jade Fox for most of her life. This is why she finds it so hard to commit to a life of learning under Li Mu Bai.

Having done some research for this blog (believe it or not, I do research these posts a bit) it seems that many people, particularly Chinese-speaking individuals, were annoyed about certain castings in this film. The fact that the four main actors speak with four different accents throughout the film, and are all from four different backgrounds, none of which include the Mandarin in which the film is spoken, is a bit of a problem. This is justified by Michelle Yeoh, who argues that her character comes from outside of the region and so didn't have to speak with the accent (Interview with Cinescape, 28/12/2000). However, if a film involving four Londoners was released in which the characters spoke with a Liverpudlian, Yorkshire, Birmingham and Newcastle accent then questions would be asked. After I researched this I thought that this was the main failing of the film, but seeing as I didn't pick up on it while watching it, it’s not that big a deal for me.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was the first Chinese film to really ‘make it’. It has led to the rise of Chinese cinema, and as a result, other films have gained population, such as House of Flying Daggers. Any film that wins four, yes four, Academy Awards (Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography) cannot be ignored, and if you are going to watch any film from the Asian Cinema scene, this would have to be it I think.

The 85th Academy Awards Special

Well it was the Academy Awards last night, and while I wasn't able to watch the ceremony, I was following avidly on twitter. There were a few surprises, a few obvious winners, and a few questionable decisions, but that was to be expected. Life of Pi turned out to be the big winner, bagging 4 awards having been nominated for 11. I’m going to attempt to give you a few of my thoughts on the winners and losers, and I’m going to skip over a few of the awards that it would be wrong for me to talk about.

So, not having seen any of the films in the category, I don’t feel suitably qualified to talk about Best Live Action Short Film, Best Animated Short Film, Best Feature Documentary, Best Short Subject Documentary, or Best Animated Feature. What I will say though is that it didn't surprise me that Brave won this award.

In terms of the award for Best Visual Effects there was only going to be one winner for me. While the visual effects in The Hobbit, The Avengers and Prometheus were incredible (and I haven’t seen Snow White and the Huntsman so I can’t comment on that), Life of Pi absolutely eclipses anything that these films could do. This was perhaps the most obvious winner of the night for me, and it completely deserves its success. Life of Pi also won the award for Best Cinematography which I thought was interesting. This was perhaps one of the closest awards of the night, because any of the five nominees (Life of Pi, Anna Karenina, Django Unchained, Lincoln and Skyfall) could feasibly have won. After I saw Anna Karenina, and after slating the film because I thought it to be very weak, the best thing I could say about it was that the cinematography was brilliant. However, that doesn't mean that the cinematography of Life of Pi wasn't  and so this is another deserved award. In terms of Best Original Score, I thought Life of Pi was, again, a deserving winner. The other films in this category just didn't quite match up for me, and Mychael Danna deserves the credit (and the award) for creating the soundtrack for Life of Pi. Finally, Ang Lee won the Best Director award for Life of Pi, and I have to say I was a bit surprised at this. I was sure Steven Spielberg would be nailed on for this award for Lincoln. However, having seen Life of Pi, I’m sure there are very few that would begrudge Ang Lee his second award for Best Director.

Lincoln bagged two awards last night, after having been nominated for 12. For many people, Lincoln was the favourite to sweep the board and win more than it did. Now I haven’t seen Lincoln, so I’m going to have to keep this relatively brief. In terms of Best Production Design I’m sure the production of Lincoln was fantastic, but Life of Pi, Les Miserables and The Hobbit are all films which are fantastically produced. I’m sure that this decision is justified, but I need to see it to make a judgement. Believe me, Lincoln is high up the ‘films I want to see’ list. I didn't think the decision to hand Daniel Day-Lewis the Best Actor award was particularly surprising. At the end of the day, Bradley Cooper was never going to win for a rom-com, and Hugh Jackman for me, didn't do enough to be considered a deserving winner. From the bits I have seen of Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis is marvellous and is definitely deserving of this award.

Ben Afleck’s film Argo won three awards, including the big one, Best Picture. Again, I haven’t seen Argo, but I mean to, and so my comments will have to be speculative. Best Film Editing is probably deserved, and I didn't think that Zero Dark Thirty or Life of Pi should have won it (as these two were the second favourites for me). I have no major objections to Argo winning Best Adapted Screenplay, but I thought Life of Pi was unlucky to miss out. The adaptation of Argo from the sources that it is based on is fantastic, and likewise, Life of Pi is fantastically adapted from the book. Now Argo was widely tipped to win the Best Picture award, and of the front runners (I thought that Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty were all in with a shout) any of them would be deserving winners. It is a fantastic achievement for Ben Afleck, and settles much of the debate around the Zero Dark Thirty versus Argo arguments. This year though there were a couple of surprises on the nominations list. Silver Linings Playbook raised a lot of eyebrows for its inclusion, as did Amour, and I don’t think either of these were in with a chance. Django Unchained deserved its nomination but it was a bit too controversial to ever really win, and in the end, Argo is probably a very good winner.

Now there are a lot of awards that I don’t really have anything to say about at all. Anna Karenina won Best Costume Design, and yes, the costumes were good in it. Les Miserables won Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and yes, the makeup and hairstyling is very good. Les Miserables also won Best Sound Mixing, which was good. Best Sound Editing caused a bit of a stir as it was the sixth time in the history of the Academy Awards (85 different ceremonies) that two films have been tied for an award. Skyfall (the first Bond film to win an OSCAR) and Zero Dark Thirty won this award, and of the other nominations (Argo, Django Unchained and Life of Pi) I think any of them could have won, because the sound editing was very good in all of them. Skyfall also won the award for Best Original Song, adding another award to Adele’s growing list. This can’t have been a surprise as it was in the charts for such a long time that it was bound to win. Amour won Best Foreign Language Film which isn't surprising considering it was the most widely known on the list. Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables and this was so unsurprising that I’m fairly sure that if I were a bookie I would have paid out on this before the ceremony began.

On a more positive note, Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Django Unchained, and I feel this is definitely deserved. He is simply glittering in the roles that Tarantino writes for him. His mix of humour and incredible acting means that he stands out from the other nominees as the best supporting actor from 2012. This represents a much more light-hearted victor from the Academy, with Tommy Lee Jones many people’s (including mine) favourite choice for the award. Another tip of the hat goes to Quentin Tarantino and Django Unchained for winning Best Original Screenplay. This was up against a number of excellent films like Amour, Flight and Zero Dark Thirty, and winning this award is a move towards a greater appreciation for the comedic yet controversial bloody movie that Tarantino specialises in. I think Zero Dark Thirty was unlucky not to win this award, but Django Unchained is definitely the one to lose out to.

Finally, I thought the decision to give Jennifer Lawrence the award for Best Actress for her role in Silver Linings Playbook was very strange. While it will guarantee her a successful career more than her role in The Hunger Game could ever do I thought that Jessica Chastain was fantastic in Zero Dark Thirty. Now I’m not saying that she did not deserve the award, and I haven’t seen Silver Linings Playbook, so I can’t possibly comment, but I guess when you have nominations for the film in the Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Supporting Actor categories the film is doing something right.

As I mentioned, the big winner was Life of Pi with four awards. However I feel that everyone associated with Zero Dark Thirty can be disappointed not to have won more. There is no doubt that this year’s Academy Awards was incredibly close and many films appeared in several different categories, meaning that one would always come off worse. Before I finish writing I would just like to mention the In Memoriam part of the ceremony. Jack Klugman (appeared in 12 Angry Men and Quincy ME), Ernest Borgnine (the original voice of SpongeBob), Eiko Ishioka (winner of Best Costume Design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992), Richard Zanuck (Driving Miss Daisy) and Larry Hagman (Dallas) all passed away this year, and all will be remembered for their contributions to cinema. Finally, and if nothing else, spare a thought for Michael Clarke Duncan whose most notable film is The Green Mile. He passed away in September at the age of 54 from a heart attack, and he will be sorely missed.

Life of Pi

Having been highly recommended to me by everyone who had seen it, I felt I probably should watch Life of Pi. I was rather hoping to read the book before I watched the movie, but it wasn't to be. The movie is an absolutely spectacular show of visual effects though, and tells the story of Pi Patel who is shipwrecked and spends an incredible amount of time afloat at sea with a tiger, a zebra, a hyena and an orang-utan for company.

There are various twists and turns with the plot throughout the film (unsurprisingly), but there is no doubt (in my mind at least) that the film is centred around the special effects. I didn't realise until after I’d seen it exactly how much of the film was special effects, but when I did discover (and it’s pretty much everything) I was amazed. For example, the tiger is entirely CGI, which is absolutely incredible when you consider how detailed it is throughout the movie. The other animals are CGI as well I think, and the combination of CGI and the actor who plays Pi creates an absolute special effects masterpiece.

The plot itself is a bit lacking though in my opinion. It might be the case that the audience is so distracted by the magnificence of what they are seeing on the screen, but for me, the plot was quite average. I’d imagine that the book would be incredible, so I bought it this morning and cannot wait to start reading it. I’d imagine that in the book, the ending would be a lot more thought-provoking, and I thought the film could have made a lot more of this. Personally, I love the kind of film that leaves the ending totally ambiguous, and for this reason Inception and Shutter Island are two of my favourites (although Leonardo di Caprio may have something to do with that). Instead, it is up to the audience to decide how the story ends and whether they accept the incredible tale of survival and beauty or the horrific tale of a struggle against nature. But the film points you in one direction, and this is a bit of a disappointment for me.

For me, Suraj Sharma, who plays Pi Patel for the majority of the movie, is wonderful in the role. I think for the majority of the film he is acting opposite a green screen, and as a result he does an amazing job of convincing the audience of the realism of his situation. His ability to convey emotion is wonderful, and I found myself experiencing the loss of his family, the fear of the tiger, and the grief at the death of the other animals. Life of Pi is his first listed motion picture, and I think that he will be popping up in quite a few other films from now on.

Most of the plaudits for Life of Pi will rightly go to the Special Effects team. So many people worked on this film in the special and visual effects department that mentioning them all would take ridiculously long. But I think that more credit needs to go to the producers, the director and the author of the screenplay. I think I heard at the BAFTAs that Life of Pi was a decade in the making, which is an incredible level of devotion to a film that is only really seen by the masterpiece films such as Avatar. The producers have done a wonderful job to create such a fantastic film, and while normally I despise seeing films in 3D, to not see Life of Pi in 3D would be a crime. As it goes I think it was filmed exclusively for 3D release, but nevertheless it adds to the experience of the film. Ang Lee directs Life of Pi, and this has to be one of his best works. It is no surprise that he is nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards this year given the direction of this film. However, a better reflection of the film is that it has received 11 nominations overall.

I don’t think it will win Best Picture, and I think Ang Lee will be pipped to Best Director by Spielberg, but for Best Adapted Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effect I consider it the favourite. Only Lincoln has received more nominations this year, and so Life of Pi is almost certainly going to win one. But don’t quote me on that.

Life of Pi is a cinematic spectacle. The visual effects will leave you astounded, and you will thoroughly enjoy it, but I think the end is a bit anticlimactic. Certainly there should be no triumphant scene of survival etc, but I didn't like the forced ambiguity of the end. However, others might, and this is just my own opinion. I would definitely suggest that you see Life of Pi, purely because of the visual effects.