From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #367 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Monday, December 8 2003 Volume 03 : Number 367 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] Back to "Reality" (Was Re: Peekabo, I see you) [c] [chakram-refugees] [OT] Warrior Queen [KLOSSNER9@aol.com] [chakram-refugees] [OT] Singing Behind Screens [KLOSSNER9@aol.com] [chakram-refugees] [OT] Legend of Suriyothai [KLOSSNER9@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 23:20:29 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Back to "Reality" (Was Re: Peekabo, I see you) On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 21:03, IfeRae@aol.com wrote: (snip) > > > (Note: Never having seen any of the Hong Kong female action films that > > Rob > > > > based Xena upon, I can't say if those women were as valid and believable > > as Lucy's Xena. My genre buds say they are. For them.) >> > > The movie "Crouching Tiger" blew my mind. Michele Yeough (?) is > phenomenal. She seems to *live* what she's doing, more than making it > believable. And when I saw some of the films Tapert referenced, I > understood why he was so attracted to them and how much he used them for > Xena. Not simply the action sequences, but the seamless connection > between the action and themes of honor, moral ambiguity and spiritual > quest. I don't think he's being modest in crediting them for their > contribution to his vision. I rented that, though it's post-Xena. I found it interesting, but slower and somehow rather dream-like and maybe more symbolic than XWP episodes. Very well made, and Michelle Yeoh and the younger actress (forgotten her name) are very good in it. But I'm still completely puzzled by the meaning of the ending. ;) I also rented Chinese Ghost Story, which seemed to me to be rather B-movie-ish so to speak. I guess I just couldn't get 'into' it. > > Yes. But only in terms of the fact that onscreen we see the artifact and > > therefore it is the same for everyone. Unlike in a book where we each see > > our own imagined artifact. > > > See, that's why I hesitate putting emphasis on the thing itself. Yes, the > thing itself is the same, but that doesn't mean it is the same for > everyone. We see/perceive it differently. A structure we see in XWP could > be viewed as a home, a shack, a "quaint" abode, or something else that > influences our "take" on things, regardless of what the characters say or > do. Based on Cyrene's inn, some folks think Xena's family wasn't well off, > while others think the family did pretty well. Of course, such interpretations are probably rather futile since they probably depend on what the set dressers happened to find handy in the propstore that morning (snip) > > > Xena is homeless. Xena has relegated herself to a spartan life. No more > > fancy yurts nor big tents with servants for her. This also is absolutely > > true. Differing interpretations come in when we think about why it's > > true.>> > > Yes, with XWP I had confidence that every critical aspect about Xena -- > from her armor to what she traveled with -- had been given careful > consideration. I had confidence that the structures I saw, the objects in > dwellings, the clothing of villains, etc. "meant" something. See my comment above :) I honestly don't know. Certainly Renpics gave considerable care and attention to many details, but occasionally they slipped up - as with the 'dagger of Helios' (was it?) in Seeds of Faith - wrong dagger. So without some other indication that some particular feature had been carefully thought out, it would be rash to read too much into it, I think. cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 21:47:56 EST From: KLOSSNER9@aol.com Subject: [chakram-refugees] [OT] Warrior Queen Masterpiece Theatre showed Warrior Queen, about Boudicca, a few weeks ago. It starred Alex Kingston as Boudicca. She can play tough women well, and did so in a previous Masterpiece, the Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, a few years ago. This time they missed. The production attracted little attention and was sometimes ridiculous. The rape scene was prolonged to the point of being very distasteful. The Druids are shown doing real, successful magic, like making one of Boudicca's daughters invisible (!), so that she can escape from the final battle, giving Boudicca a sort of victory. These supernatural scenes do not mesh well with the rest of the film, which tries to be realistic. The film sneers at the Romans, showing a condescending Claudius and a nasty Nero. The Romans repeatedly call the Britons "terrorists" and Nero once says the Romans are fighting for "the good Celts -- there must be some of them." This appears to be a shot fired by the BBC in its very severe struggle with the Blair and Bush governments over Iraq. The BBC has effectively charged Blair and Bush with lies about Iraq. Blair has hit back strongly and threatened to take away the BBC's state subsidy, which could destroy the BBC. The stakes could hardly be higher, and the references to U.S./U.K. policy in Warrior Queen were not coincidental. Another (rather better) drama used by the BBC as a weapon against Blair and Bush is Spooks, a spy series titled MI-5 when it was shown on A&E in the U.S. Here the American spies are all arrogant and nasty, with the exception of one young woman, who is merely arrogant. Boeotian ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 22:56:40 EST From: KLOSSNER9@aol.com Subject: [chakram-refugees] [OT] Singing Behind Screens Variety (Oct. 27, 2003) reviewed Singing Behind Screens, an Italian film directed by major Italian director Ermanno Olmi, about the early 19th century Chinese woman pirate Cheng I Sao. The film has a frame story set in 1930s China, where a young Westerner visiting a brothel views a stage presentation of a folktale about a woman pirate. The story has a pirate named Admiral Ching assassinated by his own finnacial backers. His widow takes over his fleet and seeks revenge but comes into conflict with the Chinese emperor. Variety says "Rights problems prevented screen credit being given to Jorge Luis Borges' story "The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate" from his "A Universal History of Infamy." In fact, Borges took the plot from a 19th century Chinese work, and the tale may well go back further than that." No it doesn't. The Variety review did not know that the story comes from the true history of Cheng I Sao, who was active 1807-1810. Her husband Cheng I was a very successful pirate who drowned in a typhoon in 1807. His widow was elected chief of the fleet after his death. After three years many of her captains mutinied against her and she bought a pardon from the imperial court and retired -- only to become a successful smuggler. Her story is in Jon Rogozinski's reference book Pirates. He alphabetizes her name under "Sao"; I think it should be under "Cheng." In the film credits she is credited simply as "Widow Ching." Variety was impressed by the film but said "auds expecting a swashbuckling tale or an anti-war tract will be disappointed. Skirmishes and pillaging are kept to a minimum, and the pirate figure is sympathetic, so it's hard to perceive any pacifist theme here." The reviewer also says "Thesps [actors] take a back seat to the visual compositions." The review does not mention Mary Read, but her name is among the character names given in the film's credits. She is played by an actress with a Chinese name. The real Mary Read was a woman pirate who was sentenced to hang in 1720, so her association with the "Widow Ching" is false by a hundred years. Mary Reade and Anne Bonny were arrested with the crew of Jack Rackham's pirate ship. Rackham and the other men were hanged. Witnesses said Read and Bonny were as bloodthirsty as the male pirates. They were sentenced to hang; they both "pleaded their bellies," claiming to be pregnant. We know that their sentences were delayed to save the babies they supposedly carried. What finally happened to them is not known. According to Rogozinski's short article on "Women Pirates", Read and Bonny were the only women pirates in the classic age of Carbibbean piracy, and they were unimportant. Defoe wrote up Read and Bonny and gave them an inflated fictional history. Bonny appeared in the film Anne of the Indies (1951), played by Jean Peters, and Read in the even more insignificant film La Aventure di Mary Read (Italian, 1961, aka Hell Below Decks), played by Lisa Gastoni. Both films overrate their importance. Rogozinski notes that in many of the ship's articles of pirate ships, the agreements under which pirates sailed, women and young boys were forbidden from pirate ships, since the men tended to fight over their favors. Boeotian ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 23:07:06 EST From: KLOSSNER9@aol.com Subject: [chakram-refugees] [OT] Legend of Suriyothai The Legend of Suriyothai is going around U.S. art film houses. I saw it a few weeks ago. It is a very lavish and complex account of about 20 years of Thai 16th century history, with many rival families, dozens of characters, wars, revolts, coups, assassinations, and two Burmese invasions. The heroine, Princess Suriyothai, mostly sticks to court intrigue but in the finale, she and her household personally go out on elephant-back to fight the second Burmese invasion. The scenes of elephant-to-elephant fighting are really unique and I'm sure Rob Tapert would have loved to do them if he had had the resources. i have no disagreement with the official Amazon-com review of the DVD, which is already out--- Directed by a prince and financed by a queen, The Legend of Suriyothai is a sprawling Thai epic in the tradition of Hollywood's biblical extravaganzas of the 1950s. A former film student-turned-prince of Thailand, director and co-writer Chatrichalerm Yukol recruited film-school classmate Francis Ford Coppola to shape this ambitious production (originally over three hours long) into a 142-minute "Reader's Digest" version for an international audience, and the result is a mixed blessing: There's more pomp, circumstance, and pageantry in this historical saga than you'd find in a half-dozen lesser films, with bloody battles, assassinations, beheadings, parades of elephants, and jaw-dropping sets and costumes galore, and the attention to physical detail is astonishing. It's also a narrative mess, spanning two decades in the 16th-century story of Suriyothai, princess of Ayuthaya (now Thailand), where two kingdoms are quarreling while war with Burma (to the north) is about to erupt. Palace intrigue, lavish ritual, and traitorous deception abound, unfolding at a deliberate pace that will either test your patience or command your attention. As history lessons go, it's occasionally slow but certainly never boring. --Jeff Shannon Boeotian ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #367 **************************************