Judge a film by it's cover (never helps)
Apr. 22nd, 2015 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAsian movies suffer from some horrible choices in packaging.
For one, every single movie has to pretend to be a Serious Martial Arts Movie. Which I admit is what I'm looking for nine times out of ten. But sometimes I'm looking for a funny martial arts movie, and I have to find those based on knowing the actors or having seen it before, because they'll go really out of their way to look like serious business.
And then there's the movies that are not in fact martial arts movies, but historical epics, or political dramas. I'm sure there's people who want to watch those, but how would they find them when everything is pretending to be kicking movies?
I just got through three movies in two hours.
The first one had a box that was all about armies overthrowing the emperor, but that happened in approximately the first five minutes, after which it turned into some kind of political parties doing voting thing. Also on the box everyone is in costumes I don't recognise, and in the movie everyone is in 20th century suits. Everyone was labelled but they kept dying of guns and I wasn't keeping up. Also serious politics isn't really what I look for in movies, asian or otherwise, so I gave up and stuck it in the resale box.
Second try was a punching movie, but a bad one by my standards. It lacked characters, because they just have fight scenes where people punch each other in the face and then do it again after they spit out the blood. If they were putting any characterisation into the fights it was not in any idiom I recognised. There were sword fights but they all just seemed to be doing the same chopping motion at each other? I think whoever was boss of the fight choreography did the punching martial art. Only guessing though. I actually got half way through the movie on fast forward but it didn't develop characters, just showed a lot of blood and oozing wounds and guys refusing to fall over after all that blood and punching and stabbing. Also the framing was purely weird, I gave up on a scene that, because of the camera placement, made someone's left foot the biggest most important thing in the frame, while they had portentous discussions about whether or not their visitor/prisoner was a bad guy. I can't be clear on whether visitor or prisoner is most accurate, because stuff just happened and then more stuff and if he's a visitor there's a lot of beating him up but if prisoner then there's unusual amounts of pretty girl and little kid hanging out. And either the dialogue was the most terribly obvious rubbish or the translation was more than usually bad. I don't know how it ended but then I was half way through and didn't know what had already happened.
The only interesting bit was the main ethnic group of the movie referring to the Japanese visitor as white. He was very pale compared to them, I could see what they mean, but it was a bit surprising given construction of categories around here. ... I don't know where it was set, I didn't recognise any of the name words or the us-and-them words except Japan. Probably it says on the box. It's in the resale box now though.
Third movie, which I actually watched all the way through and quite a lot at normal speed, was Mr Vampire. I'm going to sell that too, but mostly because it's the kind of hilarious that involves making people punch themselves in the face or sit on sharp objects. It was funny, just, I don't think I will feel the need to rewatch that kind of funny. The box says it's action-adventure with black comedy elements, but it's black comedy with ropey yet proper gross effects and a lot of stupid joking around, plus a couple of pretty cool fights when the real vampires actually turn up. The messing around includes fake vampires, someone turning into a vampire and trying to hide it with makeup but it's girl makeup on the ugly guy so it's like panto dame time, hopping vampires that are scary for like three seconds and then so rubbish they're funny, and a spell to make someone do all the same movements as the caster so they make them strip in front of the pretty girl and then do something dodgy on the stair rail. I'm sure if it's late enough and beery enough a great many people would love it, but it's not quite to my taste.
The fights involved a lot of running up walls and hanging upside down off things and balancing on tall things, so that was very athletic.
They also involved one guy nearly getting bit in the balls by one vampire.
Again, hilarious if you like that sort of thing, a bit funny from here.
I'd say it's very successful at what it set out to do, it's just not something I feel the need to watch them do.
In logic world I should look up reviews and choose movies I'm actually likely to like, but in practical world I picked these up in the supermarket from the discount bin so I might as well watch them.
Still, it's a bit of an odd assortment.
For one, every single movie has to pretend to be a Serious Martial Arts Movie. Which I admit is what I'm looking for nine times out of ten. But sometimes I'm looking for a funny martial arts movie, and I have to find those based on knowing the actors or having seen it before, because they'll go really out of their way to look like serious business.
And then there's the movies that are not in fact martial arts movies, but historical epics, or political dramas. I'm sure there's people who want to watch those, but how would they find them when everything is pretending to be kicking movies?
I just got through three movies in two hours.
The first one had a box that was all about armies overthrowing the emperor, but that happened in approximately the first five minutes, after which it turned into some kind of political parties doing voting thing. Also on the box everyone is in costumes I don't recognise, and in the movie everyone is in 20th century suits. Everyone was labelled but they kept dying of guns and I wasn't keeping up. Also serious politics isn't really what I look for in movies, asian or otherwise, so I gave up and stuck it in the resale box.
Second try was a punching movie, but a bad one by my standards. It lacked characters, because they just have fight scenes where people punch each other in the face and then do it again after they spit out the blood. If they were putting any characterisation into the fights it was not in any idiom I recognised. There were sword fights but they all just seemed to be doing the same chopping motion at each other? I think whoever was boss of the fight choreography did the punching martial art. Only guessing though. I actually got half way through the movie on fast forward but it didn't develop characters, just showed a lot of blood and oozing wounds and guys refusing to fall over after all that blood and punching and stabbing. Also the framing was purely weird, I gave up on a scene that, because of the camera placement, made someone's left foot the biggest most important thing in the frame, while they had portentous discussions about whether or not their visitor/prisoner was a bad guy. I can't be clear on whether visitor or prisoner is most accurate, because stuff just happened and then more stuff and if he's a visitor there's a lot of beating him up but if prisoner then there's unusual amounts of pretty girl and little kid hanging out. And either the dialogue was the most terribly obvious rubbish or the translation was more than usually bad. I don't know how it ended but then I was half way through and didn't know what had already happened.
The only interesting bit was the main ethnic group of the movie referring to the Japanese visitor as white. He was very pale compared to them, I could see what they mean, but it was a bit surprising given construction of categories around here. ... I don't know where it was set, I didn't recognise any of the name words or the us-and-them words except Japan. Probably it says on the box. It's in the resale box now though.
Third movie, which I actually watched all the way through and quite a lot at normal speed, was Mr Vampire. I'm going to sell that too, but mostly because it's the kind of hilarious that involves making people punch themselves in the face or sit on sharp objects. It was funny, just, I don't think I will feel the need to rewatch that kind of funny. The box says it's action-adventure with black comedy elements, but it's black comedy with ropey yet proper gross effects and a lot of stupid joking around, plus a couple of pretty cool fights when the real vampires actually turn up. The messing around includes fake vampires, someone turning into a vampire and trying to hide it with makeup but it's girl makeup on the ugly guy so it's like panto dame time, hopping vampires that are scary for like three seconds and then so rubbish they're funny, and a spell to make someone do all the same movements as the caster so they make them strip in front of the pretty girl and then do something dodgy on the stair rail. I'm sure if it's late enough and beery enough a great many people would love it, but it's not quite to my taste.
The fights involved a lot of running up walls and hanging upside down off things and balancing on tall things, so that was very athletic.
They also involved one guy nearly getting bit in the balls by one vampire.
Again, hilarious if you like that sort of thing, a bit funny from here.
I'd say it's very successful at what it set out to do, it's just not something I feel the need to watch them do.
In logic world I should look up reviews and choose movies I'm actually likely to like, but in practical world I picked these up in the supermarket from the discount bin so I might as well watch them.
Still, it's a bit of an odd assortment.