Question for Miles abut china

[Metacrock]

one thing that's missing from my appreciation of China is a knowledge their film industry. I know that before Mao the film capital was Shanghai. They had a film industry second only to Hollywood, with big stars and musicals and even Kung Ku movies. These were silent films.

I'm a big fan of Japanese films. I like China's culture better than Japan. I hate Bushido but find the artistic elements of Japan fascinating. This is especially true of their films.

Do you know anything about Chinese films?

Of cousre I love Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

[mdsimpson92]

Sure, there is Ip Man, which is about Bruce Lee's Master.

Jet Li's "Fearless" is a semi biographical story about Huo Yuan Jia, famed martial artist in the early 1900s.

My favorite film there at the moment is John Woo's "Red Cliff", about the famed battle there during the Three Kingdoms period during and after the fall of the Han Dynasty. Be warned, the full version is a two part movie more than two hours long each. Based on the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" one of the four classics of Chinese literature mixed with the actual history.

And of course "The Last Emperor" (won best picture at the Academy Awards) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (even though I am not a fan of wire-fu).

If you want something a little more down to earth I would recommend a movie called "To Live." about a man's life from the 1940s to the 1970s. Probably the least cheesy of them.

Chinese cinema is a bit on the cheesy side in my personal opinion, they have a love of the tragic and melodramatic (one reason why soap operas are so popular there).

[Metacrock]

well that's the main thing that survives is the romantic corny stuff that competes with Hollywood. Or did in it's day. That doesn't mean they didn't have more artistic stuff. I don't know what. A lot of Kung fu stuff is based upon the stories of real kung fu guys.