At last! Having seen CTHD 8 years ago in a tiny, peeling cinema on the edge of Hong Kong, in Mandarin with complex character subtitles, the mystery is over. Well, as much as it will ever be.
Last night we watched it on the widescreen laptop (still feeling virtuous without TV?) and rather enjoyed ourselves. Watching it without any language aids, I had managed to get the plot's outline... sort of! But it was helpful to have a little more understanding second time round. I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was, the humour took the edge off the po faces, and we both found ourselves moved by the yearning and tragedy of the middle-aged people's plot.
The young people were a bit more annoying ;-)
Hmm... the dialogue was not always wonderful, it has to be said. Possibly because of the translation, possibly because of the conventions of the genre, possibly because of the different dramatic expectations of Chin ese dramatic culture. Anyhow, I'm sad to say that sometimes it reminded me of the dialogue in another recent film, Until Death (2007), a Van Damme attempt at 'drama-with-action', rather than 'action film'. Despite his reasonable efforts, the script was awful and the turning points of the plot entirely implausible, and even the action scenes were disastrous. I can't understand how it got a 6.1 average on IMDB! ...enough griping.
CTHD also raised some interesting themes. Western Ch ina, where the noble family of Zhang Ziyi moved when she was a young child is portrayed as beautiful, but no one lives there but noble criminals just begging to be sinified, if only they knew it. Hmm. Meanwhile, the Han-Manchurian difference, which I only properly learned about (exciteable child that I am, I'm still full of the discovery and more to be discovered) a month ago watching The Last Emperor (1987) [I get all my knowledge from films, like everyone else], reading Patricia Buckley Ebrey's Cambridge History of the place and a visit to the Lama Temples (with its 18th century four-language signs) in the capital at Easter. It pops up as Lo persistently mistakes Jen for a Han in the extended Gobi flashback, until she proudly disabuses him of that; not to mention in the slap foreheads and fake pigtails ;-)
On the DVD extras, Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat come across very well indeed - extremely likeable. And as I type this I'm listening to the director and producer's commentary on the first few minutes of the film. Very witty.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Monday, 24 December 2007
why are they all in the Guardian?
To be fair, it's not all the Guardian's fault. It is the newspaper that most resembles a newspaper (not that the competition is all that spectacular). But this story was quite foolish. Please read it...
Doctors call for free condoms in pubs and taxis to protect against sexual diseases (18 Dec)
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Something to clear up first. The headline is misleading, since the good Prof said "it might make more sense to give condoms away in pubs, clubs and taxis". This was apparently a suggestion of "doctors", though only one doctor is quoted making this suggestion.
The idea that giving a binge drinker a condom at the point at which s/he is drunk is the answer to the problem of STDs and unwanted pregnancies is, frankly, ridiculous. How many inebriated people who are prepared to sleep with near strangers are going to (a) be in a position to remember that they have this condom, (b) remember how to use it and (c) actually put that into practice?
"Oh, here's a free condom. That gives you a couple of quid extra to spend on booze now you don't have to bother to use your brain and visit that vending machine in the toilets". Nice.
Do these fools really think that lack of access to contraceptive devices (which don't protect against all STDs anyway) is the problem? At least someone was willing to suggest that excessive alcohol consumption might be the problem (Linda Tucker, co-author of the report). But what about the cultural dissociation of sex from marriage?
What a silly question.
Doctors call for free condoms in pubs and taxis to protect against sexual diseases (18 Dec)
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Something to clear up first. The headline is misleading, since the good Prof said "it might make more sense to give condoms away in pubs, clubs and taxis". This was apparently a suggestion of "doctors", though only one doctor is quoted making this suggestion.
The idea that giving a binge drinker a condom at the point at which s/he is drunk is the answer to the problem of STDs and unwanted pregnancies is, frankly, ridiculous. How many inebriated people who are prepared to sleep with near strangers are going to (a) be in a position to remember that they have this condom, (b) remember how to use it and (c) actually put that into practice?
"Oh, here's a free condom. That gives you a couple of quid extra to spend on booze now you don't have to bother to use your brain and visit that vending machine in the toilets". Nice.
Do these fools really think that lack of access to contraceptive devices (which don't protect against all STDs anyway) is the problem? At least someone was willing to suggest that excessive alcohol consumption might be the problem (Linda Tucker, co-author of the report). But what about the cultural dissociation of sex from marriage?
What a silly question.
Saturday, 20 October 2007
Miroslav Volf on feminism
At yesterday's fabulously stimulating seminar day for the superlative Northern Training Institute (about which more in later posts), I picked up several books from Tim Chester's study and brought a couple back to Cambridge with me (and with his permission, I ought to add!) One of these was Volf's After Our Likeness: the Church as the Image of the Trinity (Eerdmans, 1998).
One of the exciting things about this book is that it is not from an Anglo-American theologian. It is by a Croatian who even as a child was persecuted by his countrymen for his faith. And it is a deep, respectful interaction with the thought of Ratzinger (a leading Catholic theologian, now the pope, of course) and Zizioulas (perhaps the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian) from an intelligent, sensitive 'low church' Protestant perspective. Nice.
Unfortunately it gets off to a bad start in its embrace of certain dogmas of feminist theology. He finds no compelling arguments against women's ordination, whether propounded by Fundamentalist Protestant groups nor those proferred by the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church (p.2), as if only two groups of opponents or two types of argument existed (his dyad implies that "fundamentalist Protestant groups and RC teaching office" is a merismus). To make that true one would have to grossly distort "fundamentalist" to include most Protestants who hold the Bible in high regard, lumping Peter Leithart with Jerry Falwell (dec.)! Of course, he gives no argumentation on this point...
One of the exciting things about this book is that it is not from an Anglo-American theologian. It is by a Croatian who even as a child was persecuted by his countrymen for his faith. And it is a deep, respectful interaction with the thought of Ratzinger (a leading Catholic theologian, now the pope, of course) and Zizioulas (perhaps the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian) from an intelligent, sensitive 'low church' Protestant perspective. Nice.
Unfortunately it gets off to a bad start in its embrace of certain dogmas of feminist theology. He finds no compelling arguments against women's ordination, whether propounded by Fundamentalist Protestant groups nor those proferred by the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church (p.2), as if only two groups of opponents or two types of argument existed (his dyad implies that "fundamentalist Protestant groups and RC teaching office" is a merismus). To make that true one would have to grossly distort "fundamentalist" to include most Protestants who hold the Bible in high regard, lumping Peter Leithart with Jerry Falwell (dec.)! Of course, he gives no argumentation on this point...
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