Movie of the Day – The Forbidden Kingdom

I will admit, this is pretty much the Americanized version of kung fu films.  This is the sort of movie for the kung fu addled teens whose parents wouldn’t let them rent some of the Shaw Brothers film from the rundown video rental store on the corner of the street.  The Forbidden Kingdom is a wide reaching film for the masses, rather than the specific movie that kung fu enthusiasts had hoped for.  To be honest, there is only one reason that you need to see this movie, actually two reasons to see this movie.  Jet Li and Jackie Chan on screen together for the first time in their careers.  Glorious!!!

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Movie of the Day – Lust, Caution

Time for sexy spy, thriller, Asian film, which I am certain that statement has filled some niche fetish out there, but I am talking about a classy sexy spy thriller.  Lust, Caution is another phenomenal from Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) that is both a historical, period piece and also a finely tuned spy thriller.  The film though is more so remembered for the controversy that it courted as it was rated NC-17 for explicit sex scenes.  Sadly this movie will be remembered for that fact rather than the beautiful acting and engaging story.  It’s weird that if you bring up this film, the sex scenes are probably the only thing that people will recall if they have heard of the movie.  What the fuck is the deal with people being hung up about a little acrobatic sex in movies?  Well I want to do this film justice and also talk about the sex scenes for some additional page views.

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Movie of the Day – Jade Warrior

If there was anything special that I got out of my time spent abroad in other countries, besides friends and some stories, is that I was able to experience world cinema in actual foreign countries.  So while I was in Finland visiting a friend, I was watching some television and came across a trailer for a rather interesting movie.  Jadesoturi, was a mix of Chinese wuxia and a Finnish Kalevala mythology.  I had to have the latter explained to me as I don’t even know what Kalevala is and the only words I knew at the time were phrases to pick up women and order another beer.  Both were useful in their own rights, but from a movie fan perspective, I had to know more about this movie.  So I was excited that it was playing at the local theater in Turku, Finland, but my American mind didn’t comprehend that the foreign language film in Finnish and Chinese were only going to be subtitled in Finnish, so no luck there.  I did finally get a chance to watch this movie 3 years later and well, it was worth it.

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