DISCLAIMER: may or may not contain spoilers - I dunno, can't figure it out. yes, yes this post contains spoilers for the movie House of Flying Daggers - there, you were warned. Not that there are very *big* spoilers just.. you know, I don't want to spoil it for you in case you go to the movie and think she's going to live happily ever after or anything.

I hate to tell you this *whispers David as the lights dim* but I've seen House of Flying Daggers already
oh, I thought you might have.. did you enjoy it?
meh, I dunno, I kinda skipped through it and it had subtitles
yeh.. thats cos it's Chinese
no.. it had *Japanese* subtitles
so you watched a Chinese film with Japanese subtitles
yeh - I hate subtitles.

so, now you've watched the whole movie with English subtitles, what did you think?
I thought that was truly *lame*
really? you didn't like it?
meh, no, it was lame.
I want specifics, why do you think it was lame?
mum, she died _three times_
well technically she only died *once*
she should've died of *hypothermia* if nothing else
maybe the snow kept her alive, slowed her heart rate kind of thing
_mum_
she is very beautiful.
meh.
not your cup of tea?
nah, not really.

There is a lot of breathing in this film. No seriously, you can hear them *breathing*. I thought House of Flying Daggers was beautiful, theatrical, the fight scenes were at times wonderous - my favourite being the *rescue* of Mei by Jai in the forest while she fended off her four attackers. It was overly long, and although I *get* the whole repetitive thing, the movie managed to make that tedious even though it only repeated once. As with Hero, I think we lose a lot in translation - the movie looks like it's script should be more intricate/delicate and maybe it is but we just don't have enough words in the translator's repertoire to express the nuances - or maybe it's just a corny plot and that's what sells in Beijing. Or maybe it doesn't matter.

Nice camera-work and computer enhancement. Lovely cinematography and fight choreography. The screen is saturated with colour - it's just damn beautiful to look at. As is Ziyi Zhang and Takeshi Kaneshiro who incidently, has the best_nose_EVA!

House of Flying Daggers - view the trailer