Hero

[picolas]

umm... no?

i was explaining my opinion, but if it reads that way i apologize.

[Pubrick]

whoa a little condescending now aren't we.

whoa a little whoa aren't whoa

[pete]

umm... no?

i was explaining my opinion, but if it reads that way i apologize.

I mean, just because it's fantasy or surreal don't mean it's gotta be fairy-tale.  plenty movies have characters interacting with dialogues that seem totally contrived right?  musicals sequences for example, that wouldn't be fairy-tale.  also, I just took the chant as some kind of official chant to the emperor whenever something like this arises--Nameless wasn't his first or last assassin, so I assumed all the people in the court knew the standard procedure...etc.  I laughed at the movie too, especially the "how swift thy sword" line they repeat over and over again, but to label the entire movie childish/ fairytale due to simple genre conventions (such as flying swordplay or trivial exotic customs) seems a bit too dismissive.

[picolas]

spoils

I mean, just because it's fantasy or surreal don't mean it's gotta be fairy-tale.

is that what you meant? oh.

plenty movies have characters interacting with dialogues that seem totally contrived right?  musicals sequences for example, that wouldn't be fairy-tale.

no. it would be musical. i'd believe a bunch of people in a musical bursting into song and dance numbers.

also, I just took the chant as some kind of official chant to the emperor whenever something like this arises--Nameless wasn't his first or last assassin, so I assumed all the people in the court knew the standard procedure...etc.

i could never believe all those guards would memorize that enormous speech and recite it perfectly in unison because they were used to the king almost getting assassinated so many times.

but to label the entire movie childish/ fairytale due to simple genre conventions (such as flying swordplay or trivial exotic customs) seems a bit too dismissive.

i didn't have a problem with the flying. and i didn't label the whole movie a fairytale. i just said some things in Hero were too fairytale-like to be taken as literally as you can't help but take them when you're watching a movie. sometimes you can't mess with certain pieces of logic.

[©brad]

okay but i should still see this anyway right? cuz the trailer is sooooo meautiful. (yeah i said meautiful.)

[pete]

okay, so now we're narrowing it down to the chanting in unison thing.  I don't think "permission to execute"/ "set an example out of him" is too long to be memorized.  and I guess this is a cultural thing, but people in the emperor's court do chant in unison, or so according to all the period pieces I've seen anyways.  in the beginning when an advisor/eunuch congratulates nameless for making the kingdom safe, did the rest of those dudes chant something as well?  I don't remember, but I thought they did.
I'm not saying that the movie is literal in any sense.  I mean the whole "kungfu is like water/calligraphy/chess/music" thing is a pretty self-referencial evidence that it isn't, and the imaginary fights and colors too tell you that it's more of a fable than any sort of historical drama, but I don't think the chant is that illogical.  it'll be memorized and recited like a song, and one chant for each occasion.  I've seen most of these types of chants in other movies as blessings (wishing the emperor to live long lives and lead a prosperous kingdom and such) and a bit shorter, but I don't think a longer variation of it is illogical.

[picolas]

okay, so now we're narrowing it down to the chanting in unison thing.

no. it's just the only example i brought up.

I don't think "permission to execute"/ "set an example out of him" is too long to be memorized.

they said way more than that. it was like a minute worth of chanting. with the exact same amount of pausing between non-responses from the emporer. nothing about customs will sell it for me. in the context of the film, it was too much.

[cine]

I don't think "permission to execute"/ "set an example out of him" is too long to be memorized.

they said way more than that. it was like a minute worth of chanting. with the exact same amount of pausing between non-responses from the emporer. nothing about customs will sell it for me. in the context of the film, it was too much.

Yeah I agree. I immediately thought, "okay how the hell did they know to say EXACTLY THAT?"

[Ghostboy]

Hey CBrad, go see it!

[bonanzataz]

I don't think "permission to execute"/ "set an example out of him" is too long to be memorized.

they said way more than that. it was like a minute worth of chanting. with the exact same amount of pausing between non-responses from the emporer. nothing about customs will sell it for me. in the context of the film, it was too much.

Yeah I agree. I immediately thought, "okay how the hell did they know to say EXACTLY THAT?"

i thought so too, but i attributed it to the fantasy element of the film, and therefore i thought that part was quite chilling and very cool. like a greek chorus. i think that's the effect the director was going for. i really enjoyed this film. i completely fell for it and didn't even notice bad cgi. i thought everything looked real.

[modage]

okay i saw this today.  it wasnt too good.  it had a great premise/setup and obviously they had some fun with the color palette, but the pacing was horrible.  the director needs to ease up on the slo-mo and violin score.  used sparingly can be effective, but anything OVERused and your just draining your audience.  the movie just never got GOING.  when even your action scenes are so slooooow, you are doing something wrong.  so, i really wanted to get into it but towards the middle i realized that could no longer happen.  

[The Perineum Falcon]

I got this from GreenCine Daily:

"Over at the New Republic site, Elbert Ventura has had enough of the nearly universal praise lavished on Hero since its long-delayed release in the US: 'After a career spent delicately sparring with censors, the critically-beloved Zhang has now made a most lavish apologia for authoritarianism.'
What's more, he argues, at least now that Miramax has trimmed it, Hero doesn't work cinematically, either: 'What we get is a succession of highlights with no air in between, a film that's a commercial for itself. It's an exquisite corpse, but a corpse nonetheless.'"

This confuses me, since I was led to believe that Tarantino helped to bring over the 120min version, which is the longest version so far.
Did I misread something somewhere or is this guy talking out of his ass?

EDIT: Alright, so I checked Moviefone, and it says it's only 96mins. So, what's the deal? Someone correct me, redirect me, whatever, just help me understand!

[©brad]

the whole different version for different country bullshit is total... bullshit. why can't we all just have one version, despite how violent, sexual, long, whathaveyou it is. gosh darnit!!

if i were a filmmaker it would really piss me off if there were four different versions of my film floating around the globe.

[hedwig]

I want to see this.

[pete]

the version that we all see today is the version released everywhere, even in China.  The director did have a longer cut, but Miramax pressured him to cut it down to 96 minutes so the whole world would see only one version.  The extended cut was just released less than a month ago, the DVD quality wasn't great, but it did have more depth (about no more than 20 minutes more depth?) and the fight scene over the water was an actual complete fight scene, not just a bunch of highlights.  So in a way, Miramax left the Hero "uncut" right now because it already forced the director to cut during post production.  Tarantino didn't have that much to do with anything in my opinion, he was just a marketing gimmick, like all those Thai epic films (well, only two) that Oliver Stone kept on putting his names on.
Hero itself was a terribly flawed movie, the pacing suffered because the director was an arthouse guy with no real understanding of how to tell a martial art story, and was trying to hard to subvert it at the same time (imaginary fights...etc.), so it ended up with a lot of moments that were carried solely by the high production values (good music, art direction, martial arts execution, cinematography...everything but the concept itself) and good acting.