The White Dragon 小白龍情海翻波 (2004)

World Region: Hong Kong
Starring: Cecilia Cheung, Frances Ng, Andy On
Director: Wilson Yip (SPL: Sha Po Lang/Kill Zone)
Rating: 5.5/10
Visuals & Art Direction: 6
Creative wuxia comedy, witty anachronism

White Dragon is a fun film. I really liked Cecilia Cheung. The music and some of the gags are period-modern fusion, so in places this movie feels like A Knight's Tale. Some of this period fusion and playing with modern culture also reminds me of one of my all-time favorites, the Korean film The Duelist. I love this type of period-modern fusion because it gives the directors a full range of tools to pull the viewer in, including modern music that directly keys into our modern culturization.

In The White Dragon, the anachronistic gags are also great. I laughed so hard when Cecilia Cheung rocked her concert and then smashed her pipa-biwa to shreds at the end. I also loved the "power download" of a kung fu master's power. On broadband. ;P
I can't tell you how much I loved to see a woman in a strong role while not discarding her beauty and her own life. I want to become 小白龍!













(There a few dude jokes that made me go "ugg, please!") but overall The White Dragon is a fresh film that allows women to be in effective, active roles. This movie is sometimes reflective and endearing, and is always fun.

Butterfly Lovers 武俠梁祝 (2008)

World Region: Hong Kong
Starring: Wu Zun, Charlene Choi Cheuk-Yin
Action Director: Ching Siu-Tung
Rating: 4.5/10
Visuals & Art Direction:7

Butterfly Lovers is a beautiful movie. I felt so, so happy watching Zhu and Liang "Big Brother" falling in love in the beginning. High-ranking Zhu goes to a mountain martial arts training center where Liang has lived all his life. Zhu dresses as a boy so that she can go out into the world and start training at the mountain martial arts school.

Both Charlene Choi and Wu Zun are good actors, and both were a pleasure to watch. Choi sounds a little whiny at first, but she later unfurls her sophistication as the plot thickens. I love how Wu Zun thinks and feels things out with his eyes, like many people do in real life. His acting seems natural, lifelike, and subtly spunky to me.

The martial arts were surprisingly good and exciting. I haven't seen Wu Zun in his pretty boy dramas, but the man has got some serious Hong Kong wuxia moves. I can't wait to see more period and action films starring Wu Zun!

Oh! No wonder I liked the action sequences! Butterfly Lovers was coreographed by Ching Siu-Tung, the guy who does some of the most awesome work in HK action like A Chinese Ghost Story, My Schoolmate the Barbarian (Nic Tse), Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower.



Unfortunately for my still Western tastes, this story is very similar to Romeo and Juliet. The butterfly lovers is a very popular story in China that has been written and produced in many variations. The two are lovers who met in heaven and have been cursed to go through ten unhappy incarnations together. It's a beautiful movie. The end is beautiful, but it is so bittersweet to me. I'm starting to expect most East Asian movies that focus mostly on romance to end in this tragic, bittersweet way. The essence of East Asian arts is often this bittersweet beauty.

To my Western culturization, bittersweet beauty hurts and it seems like fatalism. I'm like, "Why does the more powerful guy always screw things up and kill one of the main characters in the last three minutes of the film? Why can't they just live together and be happy for once?! My god, it's a match made in heaven, no, a match made in heaven for ten lives!" I want to feel saccharine fuzzy by the very end, not that wrenching bittersweet tug all the way to the credits.

I guess I really don't have a sense of next incarnations. That would help a lot. Because they will be happy in their next incarnation for a while. And does it really matter if they live or die? Because they loved each other deeply, and even a second of that is wonderful. On the other hand, strangely (but right on for traditional Asian culture), the bittersweetness and tragicness of romantic love in Asian movies seems to be saying that romantic love makes people do stupid things. Too much attachment maybe?

Butterfly Lovers is a beautiful, delightfully romantic film. If you watch it, just prepare yourself for the usual fare of bittersweet candy. I think this is the kind of movie that grows on you. I ended up writing a lot more about it than I was planning. Recommended.

Initial D Live Action 頭文字D (2005)

World Region: Hong Kong
Starring: Jay Chou, Edison Chen, Anne Suzuki
Rating: 7/10
Music Innovation: 8
Good fun and great music plus Jay Chou

This is the live action version of Initial D, which is a manga series and anime in Japan. I have not read the manga, so I was watching this fresh. For this rendition, a Hong Kong production crew led by the amazing Andy Lau took it on and did a surprisingly good job. They added a lot of nice Japanese touches like a Jizo statue on the side of the drift road, techno-house pieces that use tradional Japanese vocals with rap, the things Tatsuki's dad sees when he gets drunk, geta at home, and shoji doors.

The best thing about this movie is the music. It's a swinging and creative and emotional mix that really adds to the movie. There's low-key flow rap paired with sunrises, pinging techno-rap for race scenes, and warm-fuzzy vocals and gentle traditional Chinese string instruments for romantic scenes. The sound editors have mixed some fresh techno-house/rap by the HK group Ghost Style for car scenes with soothing piano and flutes for softer scenes. They add in some stylish and breathtaking feminine vocals into some of their downbeat grooves. These guys have also added taiko drums on the front end of some of their techno racing songs, and the effect just makes my heart race. Overall, words that come to mind when I think about Ghost Style in Initial D are "tasty fresh" and "innovative." Kinson Tsang King-Cheung, who lead sound production for this film, won the award for best sound direction at the 25th Hong Kong Awards.

There is a short segment of candy laden electronica, "A Racer's Dream (飄移世界)," that was so nice and simple that it made me go, "Oh so this is life. Take it easy and everything is okay and happy. Pay attention to the small things." One of my favorite tracks is the smooth, swingin' "Gloves 2 Ali (豆腐宅急便)." One of the other songs I love, "Tanning in the Sunray (沙灘戀曲)," is used for a cute romantic scene. It has a clean, sparkling warm electric piano intro that flows into gentle orchestrals in the background with sunny, soothing lyrics.

Okay, I love the music. I also really like Jay Chou. He was a perfect pick to play Takumi, the low-key, cool-headed tofu delivery guy who learns how to drift because he wants to deliver the tofu as fast as he can. The story is good fun, and I really like it. Takumi probably doesn't know what "touge 峠" (drifting) is, but that's exactly what he does in his beloved AE86. And he does it better than the pros in their high-powered, tricked out cars. Takumi is the underdog, the ghost rider who comes out of nowhere and coolly blows everyone away. Jay Chou is great for this role with his "Mmhmm, okay, but watch this" kind of style. He's also an endearing low-key, love-struck sweetie when he's with his girlfriend. Initial D is a movie that was so good it surprised me since I wasn't expecting much from a HK remake of a popular Japanese manga. Recommended for lovers of sound and Jay Chou fans.