The day before, I went on a walk with Mom and we were just talking about random stuff. Suddenly, feeling adversary, I challenged my mom to the philosophical question, "Why is it so bad to be selfish?" If you know my mom, she takes morality very seriously. To her, being selfish is immoral in the eyes of God and therefore, she's probably the third most selfless person I've ever known in my life, surpassed only by her very own parents. I think my mother actually started getting mad at me, because she probably thought that I was seriously advocating being selfish, although on my part, it was mostly an intellectual discussion.
Suffice to say, I probably should have kept my mouth shut. Now my mom has the troubling notion that I'm going into the DARK SIDE.
Saw Memoirs of a Geisha last night. What a crappy piece of work, all told. Zhang Ziyi IS pretty, but her prettiness was not enough to carry the movie. It's not so much that the female actresses were all Chinese, I had less of a problem with that than the fact that they all spoke English - Asian accented English at that. It was irritating. They were all theatrically trying to portray an Asia that existed only in the eyes of the Westerner. It was so fetishized and unconvincing, it was truly hard to be engaged in the movie. Gong Li was not bad, but I had problems understanding her because of her English. Fundamentally then, acting rests on the all important principle of clear communication. She would have been better off if she didn't have to speak. Or they should have all had Japanese actresses dub their lines in Japanese. Really, the language was a fundamental and ultimately fatal flaw to this movie.
6 comments:
That's it, join the Dark Side. If you only knew the power. Join me Emily. Join me and we can rule the galaxy as father and son!
I told you Memoirs of a Geisha was going to suck. But you wouldn't believe me. Chinese actors trying to be Japanese while speaking broken English? Come on! The worst thing that would happen is me spilling coffee on this $4000 suit. Come on!
is that another movie line of yours?
Yeah I went into this movie post the Emmy's and the film won all these costume and cinematography awards that I did indeed have higher expectations.
emily, why do you keep testing your mom's limit by raising these topics?! i guess words do have power. maybe you can use that power for something, e.g. your selfishness, rather than just annoying your mom? [j/k]
about Geisha, i thought it's more like a B rated movie. I agree with you that Zhang Ziyi is not that great of an actress. You can see how hard she tries however.
if a movie can stir up so much adversion in you, there must be something interesting about it!
Zhang Ziyi is overrated. I don't even think she's that good looking.
I know. I'm a bad daughter. =(
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