Watched Kung Fu Cult Master (Jet Li movie)

Watched it in Cantonese, of course. But with subtitles because Kung Fu Cult Master (a.k.a. Evil Cult a.k.a Lord of Wu Tang) is one of my favorite kung fu movies of all time and I can’t bear to not understand a single line. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

SummaryTwo different schools of kung fu fight for possession of two magic swords that will let the owner know all martial-arts secrets. Young Chang Mo-kei (Jet Li) is caught between the two but is unable to do anything because he suffers from a curse that prevents him from practicing kung fu. All that changes with an invitation from an alluring young woman one sultry evening…

Don’t worry, nothing happens with the alluring young woman. And in fact the “nothing happens” sends Mo-kei into a rage that drives him off a cliff and into the lair of the only man who can cure his curse. The movie kicks into super-overdrive from that point and doesn’t let up until the rather unsatisfying ending.

Best features: I don’t think too much of Jet Li as an actor, but as a martial artist he’s always a delight to watch. His actions are crisp, fluid and logical. Everything moves smoothly from one attack to the next. Even when he’s firing off balls of light you get the sense it’s the most practical option at the time. And it’s not just him but all the other battles are well-choreographed and easy to follow, even the ones featuring what look like thousands of extras on the screen.

It may also be because I’ve watched this at least 3 times, but I found the story easy to follow despite the sheer number of players. It’s easiest to divide them into two broad groups and remember that the people you spend the most time hanging with are the Shaolin coalition and that the really bad guys are the Yuen government’s dogs.

There’s good chemistry between Chang Mo-kei and his leading ladies, especially between him and the coquettish Chao Min, played by Sharla “Yee Mong” Cheung. You really want to punch her in the face, but at the same time you can’t help admiring her chutzpah. In a world of overpowered martial artists, it’s admirable to have a character who makes her way around with  her wits and an understanding of human nature.

There are also a lot of cute moments between Mo-kei and his servant Siu Chiu as well, making you wonder what secret she’s harboring and if they’ll ever get together one day. I always did like Chingmy Yau’s characters. It’s too bad all three lead actresses in this movie have retired now.

Stuff that’s not so good: The lack of a conclusive ending. This is clearly part 1 of two or even three, but the film was such a bomb (unbelievable!!) and apparently Li had issues with the director, so the promised sequel never came out. Since the story is based on Jin Yong’s Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre, I know what drama I’m watching next!

The other negative is the juvenile sexual humor and a bit of bad language – from a bad character, but nevertheless. It’s only in a few brief scenes and not enough to detract from the rest of the movie as a whole, but I include it for the sake of completeness.

I should also say that the story might be a bit confusing if it’s your first time watching. There are so many faction names thrown about that it can be hard to follow. Especially for characters who are mentioned but don’t show up. I also expected some explanation for why Jet Li’s mother and Chao Min are played by the same actress (long lost relatives?) but got nothing.

Overall: Lots of great kung fu action. If you like wire-fu, you should definitely watch Kung Fu Cult Master. Great story once you get the hang of it. Very cheesy, but in a feel-good way. Highly recommended

Another trip, another movie – Mr & Mrs Incredible

This is like the fifth time I’ve flown on KLM this year. This time I watched some non-Cantonese movies as well, so I only got one Canto movie in. It would have been more, but the other movies on offer all seemed to be either romantic movies or heavily Mandarin-influenced, so I wasn’t interested.

What I watched this time was Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, starring Louis Koo and Sandra Ng as a pair of retired superheroes who have to go back to their roots to foil a dastardly plot to steal martial artists’ powers. It’s not as good as it sounds. Pretty much the only good thing about it was that Ng and Koo have some great chemistry as a married couple as they go things like jealousy and infertility and buying a house together, that sort of thing. I can’t say I got too much Cantonese practice out of it, but I did finally figure out that the “gu-leung” thing that annoying ATV series kept saying stands for “Miss” or something close to it. That’s new.

So basically Mr. and Mrs. Incredible was a movie with plenty of failed attempts at humor and some rather mediocre superpower action, but the romance between the two leads made up for it. It was quite sweet and touching. A bit corny sometimes, and that love scene after she gets pissed off, well, that was like borderline marital rape, wasn’t it? But they overcame everything and had a baby in the end, so all’s well that ends well… I guess? It’s best not to think too deeply about it.

Well, enough about that. Next up, I’ve found two fairly modern Canto movies that have colloquial Cantonese subtitles: Stephen Chow’s Knight of Gamblers and Ekin Cheng’s Young and Dangerous 2. Young and Dangerous 1 probably has them as well, but I deleted it long ago and can’t be bothered to get it again, so we’ll make do with that we’ve got. Both movies aren’t much to write home about (YD2 is actually b-a-d), but if I can get my hands on some audio ripping software, I can rip the voice track, chop it up through Audacity and get myself several hundred new entries for my SRS. My computer is almost out of space, so I’d better get on with it sharpish so I can delete them.

That’s it for today!

More movies

I forgot to write up the two Hong Kong movies I watched on the last KLM flight I took a couple of months ago. They were “Double Tap” starring Leslie Cheung and Alex Fong, and “I Love Hong Kong”, with Sandra Ng and Tony Leung (Big Tony). They were both kinda bad, though Double Tap was watchable, especially in hindsight, seeing as it stars Leslie as a seriously depressed maniac. He plays Rick, a gun expert who develops a penchant for killing after shooting a crazed cop, while Alex Fong plays the policeman who has to track him down and stop him.

The movie was going well until the end, which was too simplistic. Basically the men shot each other, but Alex’s wife had taught him breathing techniques to prolong his life when shot, so he lived and Leslie died. See, that’s too simplistic right? Bit of a disappointment there.

I Love Hong Kong” was just bad. The idea was good, about a man who moves back into a housing project with his family after losing everything. The movie is supposed to show how they adjust to life in a poor area and how they transform it eventually but 1. It takes them very little time to adjust completely, so there’s no tension there. 2. All the real transformation is carried out by the man’s shady friend, played by Eric Tsang. The family might as well not have moved back. 3. All problems are quickly and easily resolved, making you wonder if they were really problems at all. 4. The ending features a spectacularly cheesy singing sequence that made me cringe in my seat and change the channel. Way to go.

Watching Cantonese movies on flights really helps the time pass quickly, while letting me learn a bit in the process. Every time I watch a movie after studying for a while, I find I understand more and more of what’s being said without relying on the subs. I’m still not entirely ready to go sub-free, but I’m getting there.

Basic Love (2009 HK move)

I watched the first 20 minutes of a Cantonese movie called Basic Love today. I was bored and had nothing to do, so I went to a streaming site and tried a few movies at random. A few betrayed me, in that they said they were Hong Kong movies, but then when I started them up, the only audio option was Mandarin. Even for movies clearly made in Hong Kong, like Chow Yun-Fat’s “A Better Tomorrow”, which I really wanted to watch. That’s the power of 1.3 billion speakers vs 7 million, I guess. Cantonese is going have to fight hard to be heard from now on.

But I digress. So, I found a movie called “Basic Love”, about a love triangle between a guy, the girl he loves and the girl he doesn’t love who happens to be the other girl’s best friend. They try to have this “We’re all friends” thing going on when they are in high school, but of course it doesn’t work. About 10 minutes into the movie, girl-he-likes, named Ling, suddenly falls ill and is taken to hospital. Hmm…I thought.

A few minutes later they visited her and she wouldn’t say what was wrong. Even later, she refused to take her medicine, saying “No matter what I take, I won’t get well again!” Uh-oh, I thought. This isn’t one of the dozens of movies about love in the face of terminal illness, is it? I hastened to look it up on Google and alas, it was. Damn, I hate that kind of movie. All weepy and sappy and sentimental. And that was it for me.

I watched it with English subtitles, because I’m still not brave enough to go it solo. I found that with the subtitles, I could understand not just the basic sentences like “what’s wrong with you” and “what do you want”, but also slightly more complex ones as well. Without the subtitles I’m not sure how far I would have gotten. For now I’m content to keep studying and keep watching movies for enjoyment. The time will come, soon enough, to do away with the subs.

KLM in-flight entertainment and more

I took a couple of flights with KLM over the holidays. Being in the air is no excuse for keeping up with your language skills, so I took a look at what they have on offer. Their in-flight entertainment options are pitiful compared to Emirates, so I wouldn’t pick them for a long-haul flight, but the price was good and they actually traveled when a lot of airlines were cancelling flights, plus I felt very safe with them so I’m not complaining.

First they had this “Learn a language” program apparently given to them by Berlitz. It’s extremely basic though, just a few words like “Good morning” and “Help me”, nothing interesting for any serious language learner. The real problem with them for Cantonese was some random, crazy romanization system they pulled from goodness knows where. I really should have written down some examples because they were horrible. Think of something like “fay gai chong” for airport “fei gei cheung”, stuff that none of the common systems would ever write. And I hear Berlitz charge a lot of money for their programs. Is this the kind of useless lesson buyers typically get for their money? Sad.

The other thing I did was to see what kind of movies they were showing. I managed to find two in Cantonese, “Adventure of the King” about an Emperor who goes gallivanting around town and loses his memory, and “City Under Siege“, supposedly featuring a circus troop that has gone crazy and can only be stopped by the clown. Only in Hong Kong films, guys. My intention was to watch both of them, but after the first 20 minutes or so of “Adventure of the King”, I was so bored and sleepy I couldn’t keep going. They weren’t even trying hard to be funny, I guess they just assumed the setting would work for them or something. And it just dragged on and on with the silliness instead of moving the story forward. Maybe I’ve just outgrown mo lei tau? Dunno, I still like Stephen Chow though.

So essentially all four flights passed without me getting any serious learning done. At least I got home safely and my other studies are going well, right? That’s what really counts.