Trailerology: Two From Zhang Yimou
Submitted by jim on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 10:48
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Even though House of Flying Daggers broke his undefeated streak, Zhang Yimou is still my favorite director so I have to link up Twitch's linkage of his Curse of the Golden Flower trailer. Having the title be a syllabic match to the poor HoFD rather than the excellent Hero is probably not a good sign. And I gotta say, even though I'm sure the movie will be pretty to look at, the trailer does not inspire confidence. The Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles trailer, on the other hand, looks great.
I liked House of Flying Daggers...though, however, I agree, it was nowhere near as good as Hero, which I like to think of as a masterpiece and one of the most beautiful films ever made.
I can't access the Curse of the Golden Flower trailer right now--my modem at home blew out so I'm using the Internet at the library--but I've seen the trailer for Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, and I'm currently looking forward to both quite a bit, though especially the latter.
I thought HoFD was pretty good. I wouldn't say Hero was better though - Hero to me was more of the same. I might even say HoFD was better, story-wise, because it built itself more around a central storyline (of the love triangle and the battle between the houses) rather than just thematically, like Hero did (as it was just one storyline, and the confusing possible backgrounds to the end of the movie). Hero just expounded on this one particular plot structure, and wove these various ideas into it.
Curse of the Golden Flower looks more of the same. They could all three be a nice little trilogy, as they as seem so alike.
I wonder, out of stupid curiosity... what the Japanese reception to Zhang Yimou's Riding Alone movie will be... the two countries have never really liked each other. It seems weird for a Chinese director to be directing a film about traditional Japanese society in the contemporary age.