House of Flying Daggers

[El Duderino]

Release Date:
TBA

Director
Zhang Yimou (Hero, Shanghai Triad, Raise the Red Lantern)

Screenwriters
Zhang Yimou
Li Feng
Wang Bin

Actors
Takeshi Kaneshiro (Jin)
Andy Lau (Leo)
Zhang Ziyi (Mei)
Song Dandan (Yee)

Synopsis
House of Flying Daggers" (aka "Shi Mian Mai Fu" [China], aka "Lovers" [Japan]) is set in the year 859 AD as China's once flourishing Tang Dynasty is in decline.

Unrest rages throughout the land, and the corrupt government is locked in battle with rebel armies that are forming in protest. The largest and most prestigious of these is the "House of Flying Daggers," which is growing ever more powerful under a mysterious new leader.

Two local captains, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) are ordered to capture this new leader. As part of their elaborate plan, Captain Jin will pretend to be a lone warrior called Wind and will rescue the beautiful, blind revolutionary Mei (Zhang Ziyi) from prison, earning her trust, and escort her to the secret headquarters of the House of Flying Daggers. The plan works, but to their surprise, Jin and Mei fall deeply in love on their long journey to the House.

Danger lurks in the forest surrounding them, and the wind is still, as if sensing the tension in the air. What lies ahead for Jin and Mei, these star-crossed lovers? If this is true love, then why are there plots in their heads...and secrets in their hearts?



Trailer Here
in Real and Media Player formats.


i'm all for a Zhang Ziyi comeback.

[pete]

I heard from some Chinese paper that from the first press screening, them journalists weren't too impressed.  the observation was that the film moved at such a fast paced, that people didn't even know it's over until it was over, and that there was only some scattered applause in the end.
hope them's lying.  but the fight in the bamboo forest looks like it's trying a bit too hard.

[cine]

The name 'Zhang' is overrated.

[A Matter Of Chance]

I almost went to see him speak where he was accepting an award here in boston at the coolidge corner cinema, but I didin't go. I think that Raise The Red Lantern is pretty fucking good.

[pete]

new trailer

[rustinglass]

Shanghai Triad is wonderful.

[pete]

I'm actually rather mixed about Zhang Yimou.  He's made a series of films that I just thought were too Dogville, except lush and erotic and exotic or something.  However, "To Live" is probably one of the most soulful films to come out of the 20th century.  I would even argue that it's the most soulful film of all time.

[shinwa]

I saw To Live for the first time last night. Solid stuff. I love the way it ended. I have to wonder if the praise Mao stuff was laid on a little thick though.

[MacGuffin]

Zhang Readies Another Martial-Arts Saga

A few years back, Zhang Yimou was a bit miffed that fellow filmmaker Ang Lee was faster on the draw in elevating the martial-arts epic to serious cinema. But now that Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has broken the genre into the mainstream among Western audiences, Zhang is happy to follow his lead.

Zhang's Mandarin-language "Hero," a saga of ancient China starring Jet Li, topped the box-office for two straight weekends after its belated U.S. debut in late August. Close behind it will be Zhang's "House of Flying Daggers," another martial-arts historical tale playing at the Toronto International Film Festival and due in U.S. theaters late this year.

"It's difficult to shoot two together in such a short period of time. After that, I feel like I'm getting addicted to shooting martial-arts films," said Zhang, 52, one of China's most acclaimed filmmakers, whose works include "Ju Dou," "Raise the Red Lantern" and "The Road Home."

A fan of martial-arts novels while growing up, Zhang decided to give the genre a try after a string of more contemporary films. About the time the screenplays for "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" were finished, "Crouching Tiger" became a sensation, topping $100 million at the U.S. box office, the first foreign-language film to cross that mark.

Though he felt frustrated that Lee got there before him, Zhang plowed ahead with his films.

"I appreciate the success of `Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' because that film did create the market for and the commercial success for `Hero' and `Flying Daggers,'" Zhang, speaking through a translator, told The Associated Press at the Toronto festival.

"Hero," a tale of shifting narratives as different versions of an assassination plot unfold through repeated retellings, earned a foreign-language Academy Award nomination after it came out in China in 2002. "House of Flying Daggers" premiered to an enthusiastic reception at last spring's Cannes Film Festival and may be poised to grab the same mainstream American audience that flocked to "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger."

"I think Ang Lee helped us to open the door worldwide, and we have more chances to bring our movies to America," said "House of Flying Daggers" star Zhang Ziyi, who costarred in "Crouching Tiger" and "Hero" and got her start in Zhang Yimou's "The Road Home." "I think for Western audiences, they are more interested now in action movies, martial-arts movies, Chinese culture and history. Now is a chance for us, but the important thing is, you should have good movies. Otherwise, the door will close, close, close."

"House of Flying Daggers" centers on a romantic triangle involving a ninth century rebel (Zhang Ziyi) and two men whose love for her results in tragedy.

Like "Crouching Tiger," Zhang Yimou's two films lift martial-arts sequences to balletic grace. Combatants float through the air in dreamlike fashion, arrows rain down like swarming locusts, duelists' chase one another through treetops.

The films explode with color, passion, intrigue and doomed romance. The characters have greater depth than heroes of more traditional martial-arts flicks, where the action is the main attraction.

Those qualities could be why "Crouching Tiger" and "Hero" have broken beyond the usual martial-arts niche among U.S. moviegoers, Zhang Yimou said.

"It's maybe because both Ang and I are directors of dramas. We're not experts in this genre, so maybe we're looking at it from a different angle," said Zhang, whose next film will be a contemporary drama. "Maybe there's something special about this type of director shooting a martial-arts film. For example, we pay attention to the story lines, the relations of the characters in the film. We have beauty in the action. It's not the traditional way of shooting martial-arts films."

[pete]

man, all that critical acclaim now makes him think that he's actually good.

[pete]

okay.  so that sucked.
the first half of the movie was awesome, then came the supposedly spectacular bamboo forest fight with CGI so abundant and so hoaky it made Zatoichi's CG looked like I dunno, Eternal Sunshine of Jurassic Park.  and everything went down to shits with it.
I kinda saw it coming, all my friends told me, but I didn't believe them.  The first half of the movie was awesome, what the hell were my friends/ critics/ random strangers online talking about?  this is beautiful and the fight scenes are cool!  this is much more fun than Hero.  oh oops look at that hoaky little makeout scene.  that's okay hahaha.  oh what about that weird cgi arrow--hey blemishes make art right hahaha.  I began praying to Zhang Yimou.  Hey man, remember me?  We met in Boston in May, I was your translator for a wicked short period of time, remember me?  It's Pete.  Don't be a prick Zhang.  C'mon.  This is nice, don't get beautiful on me, please?  Zhang, hey, what the fuck is this?  digital dildo-sized green bamboos?
then the plot begins twisting itself.  this is some pretzel-yoga shit.  if you think this angry review is corny, watch the movie when it comes out in your trailer park and apologize to me in advance.

so yeah, zhang is pretty much a master (To Live in '94)-turned hack.  The world should've long suspected that he's been doing nothing but taking shit, but we were ignorant.  we held our breath and pretended it's chocolate fudge, simply because he always sprinkled his shit with big "exotic arthouse" production fucking values.  and look, he's made one dud saved by Christopher Doyle and Jet Li, and second dud saved by his reputation (that people will go see house of flying dirk digglers because of all the lame-ass foreign press critics who got assfucked by the digital bamboos and because everyone in the world thought Quentin Tarantino made Hero.  meanwhile, great martial arts gems like Ong Bak and Twilight Samurai make their symbolic arthouse circuit stops for a week in some of the bigger cities, and exist primarily in internet chatrooms (here in America that is).

man, fuck this Zhang Yimou guy.

well, 2046 tomorrow and the new hong kong Jackie Chan movie later this week.

[Ghostboy]

Yeah, this is a pretty anticlimactic movie. It's really pretty, but in the last half, I kept forgetting to read the subtitles because I sorta stopped caring about it. I thought Hero was great, but this was a pretty far cry from that.

I didn't think the CGI was on a Zatoichi level, but those flying daggers got sort of ridiculous after a while.

[Weak2ndAct]

Yeah, Pete is dead on.  The first half is the bee's knees, and the second is dog vomit.  UGH.  I was sooooo happy during the first half that the fights didn't get all zero-G with people flying everywhere (also, I got a chuckle how the first 15 minutes were like a cop movie, I wanted to see 'the chief' come in and demand results).  The 'echo game' scene was magnificent.  The first forest fight-- rad!  Halfway through, I thought this was one of the top 5 films of the year.  

And then once the bamboo appeared... crash and burn.  Why why why?  During the bamboo forest scene, I could imagine Yimou yelling at the stuntmen 'grab those trees to make it look you're jumping on them!'  DOUBLE UGH.

Twist #1... fine, I knew this was coming... I'll deal.  Twist #2... well fuck, now I'm thinking about how a previous kick-ass scene had 2 LIES in play at the same time-- IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.  Don't even get me started on Zhang Ziyi's stuff once we hit the climax.  Man, what a letdown.  It's not like it turns into one of the worst movies ever or anything... but when the snow shows up, it's just masturbation and the audience is left in the cold.

[pete]

MAAAASSIVE SPOILER, THE BIGGEST ONE IN THE WORLD

didn't that twist remind you of the Mr. Show sketch in which Bob played a guy who read novels for a blind woman and fell in love with her, then her asshole boyfriend David Cross came in and treated her like crap?  the skit's big twist was that the blind woman wasn't blind at all, she just solicited help 'cause she wanted to find true love, then David Cross put on a pair of sunglasses to reveal that HE is blind.  It was funny.

[Fernando]

MAAAASSIVE SPOILER, THE BIGGEST ONE IN THE WORLD

Haha, the biggest spoiler ever is when Homer Simpson just saw Empire Strikes Back and says something like 'Who would have thought that Darth Vader was Luke's father' and all guys in line for the movie started yelling at him, hahahaha, I'm sure some moron back then did that exact same thing.