Today's weather - sunny
I was looking forward to watch this movie since I knew about it recently. And disappointed I was not. In fact, this has to be one of the better chinese movies I watched this year. Whilst I do not know most of the china actors, there are a few well-known ones such as Leon Lai, Liu Yifei, Anthony Wong, Jordan Chan and Wu Ma.
I have never done well in school in the subject of history. Who can remember the era, names of the historical characters and period in BC and AD of the various countries vividly? I am sure some of them can but I certainly can't. Hence, it is not a surprise that I did not perform well for international history in secondary school when I could hardly remember the historical events that took place.
However, of late, I am more interested in history, particularly chinese history, and tries to learn more about the numerous events whenever the opportunity comes along. This movie trails the events and battle of wits leading up to and after the banquet at Yanmen, during the Qin Dynasty between the two famous leaders Liu Bang (刘邦) and Xiang Yu (项羽), with the help of their war strategists and their generals, in 206 BC to overthrow the corrupted Qin empire. It is an interesting tale of chinese history which includes the character Consort Yu (虞姬), and which spawned the chinese idiom 四面楚歌 which means besieged on all sides, and which resulted in Consort Yu killing herself for her man and Xiang Yu's death putting an end to the battle between the two.
With the grand scale, great cast, good pace, engaging storyline and fantastic CGI effects which were rather realistic, I am pleased to say I was really entertained by the movie. This is a really interesting way to learn about history when you see all the characters come to life.
Anyway, a link on the various dynasties in chinese history is attached below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasties_in_Chinese_history
And oh yes, I love Jordan Chan's hairstyle which reminded me slightly of the character Sokka in the movie "The Last Airbender".
I watched the movie by the famous director Night Shyamalan today. It was based on the animated tv series Avatar: The Last Airbender. I have never watched the cartoon before and so I do find it interesting and entertaining, despite poor reviews from movie critics.I will not give the story away but there were interesting characters supported by a wide cast, mystical creatures like the flying bison, bat flying lemur etc. The main characters Aang and Katara were played by newcomers Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz. Katara's brother Sokka was played by Jackson Rathbone. If he looked familiar, that was because he played the character of Jasper in the 'Twilight' movie series. In the recent 'Twilight: The New Moon', he had a bigger part with more airtime. I do find his hairstyle in this movie is damned cool. Prince Zuko should be familiar to most people, because he was played by Dev Patel, who was more famously known for the movie 'Slumdog Millionaire'. And then there were other important characters played by rather familiar indian actors.Briefly, the story revolves around asian characters, chinese monks and monastery, so it was not surprising to see the characters donning asian-ethnic dressing and costumes. however, it was kind of unusual to see some of the characters e.g. indians, wearing traditional chinese costumes and their girls wearing traditional chinese hair styles with hairpieces.Anyway, this is the first part of the trilogy and I do look forward to the sequels.
