Extras: Four Theatrical Trailers, The Making Of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,
A Conversation with Michelle Yeoh, Photo Montage, Talent Files,
Audio Commentary by Ang Lee and James Schamus
Director:
Ang Lee
(Chosen, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Ice Storm, Pushing Hands, Ride with the Devil, Sense and Sensibility, The Wedding Banquet)
Producer:
Li-Kong Hsu, William Kong and Ang Lee
Screenplay:
Hui-Ling Wang, James Schamus and Kuo Jung Tsai
Music:
Tan Dun
Cast:
Li Mu Bai: Chow Yun-Fat
Shu Lien: Michelle Yeoh
Lo: Chen Chang
Jen: Ziyi Zhang
Sir Te: Sihung Lung
Jade Fox: Pei-pei Cheng
Govenor Yu: Fazeng Li
Bo: Xian Gao
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is the Chinese equivalent of
Gladiator - both were hyped beyond mention, scooped a few Oscars, but are
the combination of a handful of impressive fight sequences linked together
by some of the dullest talkie moments ever created.
The plot itself is pretty straight-forward. Warrior Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh,
who had her turn as a Bond girl in
Tomorrow Never Dies)
is to deliver the sword to end all swords - the Green Destiny. It's a piece of
work that should be marketed on QVC given that it can cut through anything
without question, but it belongs to Sir Te (Sihung Lung) and Shu Lien
will make sure he gets it.
Oh, but horror upon horrors when it gets stolen by a mystery thief, who might
not be so much of a mystery because veteran baddie Jade Fox (Pei-pei Cheng,
who looks like TV cook Nancy Lam having an extremely bad hair day) is in
the frame, but isn't she a bit old for all this? Only the most clueless of viewers
wouldn't have twigged that it had something to do with Jen (Ziyi Zhang),
a young girl who is also a guest of Sir Te and complains that she has nothing
to do all day but marvel at the feats of her new warrior "sister" Shu Lien.
Also throwing himself into the mix, literally, is Chow Yun-Fat as Shu
Lien's master Li Mu Bai and a man with whom she is besotted, which could lead
to a possible romantic interest, but you can rest assured that there aren't
any shagging shenanigans in this 12-certificate film. Chen Chang also
appears as Lo, Jen's other half, convincing her to return home back to the place
where she belongs.
"I challenge you to 'Rock, Scissors, Paper'..."
As befitting any Carl Douglas revival, everyone's kung-fu fighting but with a
difference, given that all the major fight scenes involve dancing and
pirouetting over rooves, as Shu Lien chases after the initially-anonymouse and
elusive thief, although we know the walking on walls and floors almost-simultaneously
was done years ago with Lionel Richie's Dancing on the Ceiling video; through trees and across lakes for Lu Mu Bai and Jen, with
invisible wires a must because you'd have to otherwise be superhuman to
perform the same moves; and a showdown between the two leading ladies in the
dojo. However, while these are unbelievably well-choreographed and scripted,
for me I just couldn't stop laughing because they were so over-the-top that
I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough.
Another of the film's downfalls is that it didn't have a story you could
easily care about and, with the occasional cheesy dialogue and behaviour
that wouldn't seem out of place in the FMV sequences of a computer game,
it actually put me to sleep. The 20-minute sequence, which gets a whole
chapter to itself, about how Jen and Lo got it together didn't help matters
either.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won two Golden Globes, four BAFTAs and
four Academy Awards.
Despite Jen's efforts to look sultry,
you can't hide a fart.
I had no problems with the picture quality whatsoever, despite the many
dark scenes on view. Presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio,
the anamorphic print is free of artifacts.
The average bitrate is 5.14Mb/s, briefly peaking above 8Mb/s.
Congrats to Columbia as Dolby Digital 5.1 comes in both the original Mandarin and a dubbed English,
although we know the two leads can speak English so I would put money on those
being their own accents doing in the talking, even if they don't synchronise
with the picture, not that I found this a major problem with this movie.
Split-surrounds aren't always used, but the sound FX do their job when required.
"If I squint a bit, I can just make out some semblance of a plot."
First up are four Theatrical Trailers, a 2-minute US theatrical trailer
and a 90-second International trailer both in non-anamorphic 16:9, followed
by trailers for other films: Vertical Limit (2 mins, anamorphic 16:9)
and Not One Less (90 secs, 4:3 fullscreen).
Unleashing Dragons: The Making Of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon runs for
21 minutes and contains chat from the cast and crew interspered with 2.35:1
non-anamorphic and subtitled clips from the film, while you can also spend
14 minutes in the company of A Conversation with Michelle Yeoh, for
which she brushes her hair and puts a bit of lippy on to become quite
attractive for a recent change. 4:3-cropped clips are also included along
with on-set footage.
The Photo Montage runs for 7 minutes with scores of film stills are
zoomed in and out to the movie's score and there are Talent Files
for director Ang Lee, its stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh,
screenwriter James Schamus who has written most of Ang Lee's output
and fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping who also worked on
The Matrix.
Finally, there is a feature-length audio commentary from Ang Lee and
James Schamus.
As this is a Columbia DVD we have the usual 28 chapters and subtitles in
11 languages :
English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Hindi,
Bulgarian, Greek and Arabic.
The main menu is nicely animated and scored with clips from the film and
inbetween each menu comes further clips intersliced.
Day one of filming and Michelle Yeoh's
pelvis locked at the wrong moment.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
