devilshalo

How many asses in seats did Miami Vice get? $62M since its opening a month ago ($97M worldwide). I don't think that's worth mentioning, but

Snowmaker

Am I the only one that keeps thinking the thread title says "Shower"?

RichC2

Still her highest grossing US picture to date.

fryinpan1

Gong Li interview on Curse of the Golden Flower:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/indie...s.php?id=17901

Curse of the Golden Flower opens in select cities on Thursday, December 21.

rexinnih

Kind of forgot about this until I saw a preview recently. Just about a week before limited opening.

DJariya

Is anyone here living in an area where they are actually showing this? It's playing in extremely limited release. Fortunately a friend of mine has an academy awards screener of this and I will be able to watch it at home.

Rypro 525

If the movie gets a following in limited release, it might go wider (as in 1,000 theaters)

FantasticVSDoom

Well, I will be going to see it tommorrow hopefully...

marty888

Definitely planning to see this within the next few days!

clemente

I'll be catching this over the weekend. The cast, the director, the premise, and a great trailer, that's all I need to hand over my 8 bucks.

Ralph Jenkins

I would go watch it this weekend, but it's apparently only playing in NY and LA. Guess I'll have to wait until the middle of January.

TomOpus

It's playing at a couple of the Landmark theaters here, so check your local listings.

Fuggetaboutit

It's showing in the San Francisco Bay Area

big whoppa

It would be great when more American audiences can appreciate what a fantastic actress Gong Li is. Memoirs didn't do her justice. Nice to see Li and Yimou working together since they haven't since they broke up.

DJariya

Ever since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit theatres back in 2000, there hasn't been a single Chinese martial arts period drama that's even come close to getting the box office revenue it got. I know CTHD had most of it's success to positive word of mouth and Oscar buzz, but it seems like the U.S. studios releasing alot of these newer chinese dramas are showing very little if not no support for them in promotion.

Look at the U.S. numbers from box office mojo:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: $128M
Hero: $53M
Jet Li's Fearless: $24M
House of Flying Daggers: $11M

Cameron

hero was everywhere....

i think the positive word of mouth made people who would never watch a foreign language film get out and see it. Hero was helped by all the ads with the "Tarantino" brand name on it.

the thing that bugs me a bit is that they never subtitle the trailer...just quick clips of action scenese and long shots to get the look of the film...like if they let people know its not in english they won't show...

most people who wouldn't show up for a foreign flick, would walk out and ask for a refund i suppose

flixtime

Caught an afternoon showing of “Blessed by the Bouncing Bosoms”….err, I mean “Curse of the Golden Flower". I enjoyed it quite a bit and it easily earns a recommendation to catch it on the big screen (nice to actually see one of these on the big screen as opposed to bypassing things because I already owned a previously released import DVD). I still can’t believe they actually released it in theaters here before it hit DVD in other parts of the world.

Having seen this now and already having seen “The Banquet” from mainland China, I’d say this two-pack of films can be added to a list from other dueling years of similar releases such as Armageddon/Deep Impact, Wyatt Earp/Tombstone, Volcano/Dante’s Peak, etc. Given that, don’t expect a war/action/martial arts movie as you head in, like “The Banquet”, this film is primarily a Shakespearean royal court drama. In many ways it felt very similar to “The Banquet” but I did enjoy this one more primarily due to a more engrossing storyline. It is the same old court intrigue but I felt much more involved with the characters in this as compared to “The Banquet”.

“Curse of the Golden Flower” gives you a nice swordfight early on but that’s about it until the last, maybe third of the film where you get some very impressive, exciting, and even grand, epic, “Lord of the Rings”-type action. The first thing that grabs you in the film in the film are the costumes, set design, and colors….lots and lots of color…and all at once. By the time you grow accustomed to the opulence of the visuals, you (or at least I) became thoroughly involved in all the high court/familial machinations. For those who don’t find themselves grasped by the goings-on, you might then find it rather dull, but that wasn’t the case in any way with me; I was quite captivated.

I liked the performances and Gong Li in particular did a very nice job. The performances, towards the latter portions, might certainly go a bit over the top at times (and on a few occasions it resulted in some unintended laughs from a small section of the theater audience…but to be fair, in a very small way, brief bits of the material were pleasingly and wickedly comic). However, I thought the performances from the cast, even when bent towards the melodramatic, were very well suited to the material.

Hmm…I thought I had more to say but it seems maybe I don’t. “Curse of the Golden Flower” earns my enthusiastic thumbs up. I somewhat easily preferred it over "House of Flying Daggers", but maybe it comes up a little short when compared to my fondness for "Hero" (action fans will likely lean towards "Hero"). And finally...it was nice to actually be able to support one of these films on the big screen here in the U.S. – in its complete form – and released in a timely manner.

Comment heard from elderly woman while exiting the theater: "I thought for sure that they were going to pop out of those dresses".

tinlunlau

i could've sworn this was the first time i've seen a chinese film with the exact sam theatrical release date in Asia and North America. Kudos for Sony on this. they should do that more often. this attracted even the chinese community to come see it which is a rarity since i know they tend to not see american theatrical releases of asian films (mainly because they already have a copy of it on DVD. believe me. i know how their mindset works). being chinese myself, it's great to see this happening.

however, my opinions on the movie itself...
i had a few nitpicks for this film. while i liked how Zhang Yimou cleverly devised a method of keeping mainstream viewers awake by placing massive amounts of cleavage, the movie kinda slowed down in the middle. so i kinda had a 5 minute nap but it's not because i couldn't keep up with it. but rather, i didn't have much sleep the other night. it also came to my attention that Zhang Yimou has chosen to foreshadow and even poke fun of the Tiannanmen Square Massacre on the night of June 4th, 1989. i don't want to spoil it but it become very apparent in the ending.

still, it was still somewhat enjoyable. kudos to Sony for releasing this right away. this was the right kind of step i've been waiting for American film studios to do. Let's cross our fingers and hope that they buy Stephen Chow's "Yangtze #7" and release it here on the same day as Asia.

on an added note, did anyone thought that Chow Yun-Fat resembled Sonny Chiba in this movie? it's just the hair, the goatee, and the way he acted in this movie. he looked very much like Sonny Chiba in "The Stormriders".

das Monkey

*sigh*

das

Patman

My 1-word review: Bosomy.

Okay, got that out of the way...

I thought the first half of the film took far too long to set up the situations while not really developing the characters enough to elicit sympathy or scorn, thus squandering a lot of the running time in the first half.

Things pick up in a short second act with some neat sequences of fight scenes, but by then, it's a tragi-comedy for me, with many of the revelations telegraphed far too early, with no emotional consequence for most of the cast of characters for this viewer, and it was almost like watching a Chinese version of a Jerry Springer episode set hundreds of years ago, it's that "funny" and that tragic.

The last act is visually interesting, but yet straddles a line between reality and fantasy in some spots, to its detriment.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.

whotony

why does this title still say its a sequal to flying daggers.

doesnt anyone moderate these threads

RichC2

I saw and really enjoyed this movie. Yes, it was very predictable, but so what, it was fun seeing it play out anyway. It was a big, glossy soap opera with the best moral ever . I didn't really understand why the wife didn't call the husband out on but in the end, I didn't really mind, it seemed like they had a silent understanding.

The only things, when Gong Li put on her golden hat, I expected a Chiquita Banana song and dance number, but I suppose that'd only happen in Bollywood.

Damn expectations. Solid, very enjoyable movie though, a 3 out of 4 for me.

JordanGLC

Went and saw this last night. It was just ok to me. I need to care about someone on the screen and there was a short supply of those type of characters. I suppose you could say Son #2 and one other person (who if I mentioned would be a spoiler and I haven't read how to do those spoiler things yet) were the two you could sympathize with. One the plus side, the attack and battle scenes were incredible. Wished there was more of that. And the physician's daughter was a cutie. Hope to see her in future films.

lxl

RichC2

I felt some sympathy for but that was about it. Emotion certainly wasn't the movie's strong suit.