| Title: | Movie Reviews and Discussion |
| Notice: | Please do DIR/TITLE before starting a new topic on a movie! |
| Moderator: | VAXCPU::michaud o.dec.com::tamara::eppes |
| Created: | Thu Jan 28 1993 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1249 |
| Total number of notes: | 16012 |
This is about two actors in "Peking opera", covering the
years 1924 to 1977--interesting years indeed in China.
Peking/Beijing opera is stylized and sometimes acrobatic,
and the stories are well known, so subtle differences in
portrayal are important. To my western eyes and ears it's
slow and screetchy, but I can accept for the sake of the
plot that the actors are wonderful and the operas full of
moving beauty. Interestingly, the actors are trained for
certain parts and plays only, as opposed to be trained
for any part.
The story starts with two boys in a "troupe", undergoing
brutal training. China lurches from warlord to warlord
to Nationalists to Communists of various stripes, and the
the boys succeed and suffer along the way, fairly early
on expanding to a triangle when one marries. As one boy
is trained to do female parts, he suffers from a fair bit of
gender confusion, and the triangle is thus a painful one.
It's colorful and (given Chinese history) interesting if
often unhappy; it's fun to watch if you like history, and
was deeply moving for many members of the audience--indeed
almost overwhelmingly so in my wife's case.
-John Bishop
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 419.1 | *** | DECWET::JWHITE | this sucks! change it or kill me | Wed Jan 05 1994 16:56 | 6 |
this is a very *big* movie. definitely an epic.
unfortunately, i'm not particularly fond of epics, though this
is clearly well done and quite interesting.
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| 419.2 | Best of the Year! | 33414::GUARINO | Tue Feb 01 1994 15:09 | 8 | |
Although I was a little uneasy on the love story thing, this film has all the components of a CLASSIC. I just guess it needs more time... By happenstance, some of this seems to parallel the life of the actor playing M.Butterfly on screen. David | |||||
| 419.3 | Farewell my Concubine | GRANPA::FPEREZ | Fri Nov 18 1994 11:40 | 4 | |
Saw "Farewell my Concubine" on video last week. Long film, all in
subtitles (Chinese film). You really have to concentrate on all thats
happening but I thought the film in general was very educating and sad
at the end.
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| 419.4 | UHUH::MARISON | Scott Marison | Fri Nov 18 1994 11:45 | 4 | |
Yes, I saw this a while back. It was long, but very good. It was a bit depressing, however. /Scott | |||||
| 419.5 | PCBUOA::BELLOWS | Fri Aug 11 1995 14:17 | 5 | ||
Yes, but it had the magnificent Leslie Cheung in it. He's a wonderful
HK actor (but from Beijing) who was also the hottest thing on the pop
scene until his "retirement" in 1990. He's in a really good film at
the Brattle next week called Once a Thief at 3:45 and 7:50. It's
really funny. Chow Yun Fat also stars.
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| 419.6 | The LONG version | 52393::LEBIDOIS | Wed Sep 27 1995 09:39 | 10 | |
I saw this film at its opening at the Cannes Film Festival.
It was shown at 11:00 PM IN CHINESE with French sub-titles.
Though it "looked" like a good film, I think you have to be in the mood
to see it.
I certainly agree that it is an EPIC.
Gen
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