Curse of the Golden Flower Official Site, trailers

[Gaijin84]

Offiicial site
High quality trailers

Personally, I think the trailers look way too similar to both Hero and House of Flying Daggers, but why am I surprised?

[RLM]

These types of trailers always concern me about the quality of the movie.
I don't appreciate trailers in wihch you are shown only action sequences that give no real indication of the plot, and no dialogue to support the quality of acting and story telling....

[Gaijin84]

I don't appreciate trailers in wihch you are shown only action sequences that give no real indication of the plot, and no dialogue to support the quality of acting and story telling....

I agree, but hopefully that is simply the movie company marketing to those that see Hong Kong movies as simply kung fu action fests... unfortunately, I'm afraid that most likely is a majority in this country.

[ewaffle]

I agree, but keep a couple of things in mind while viewing trailers--

They are advertisements made to help the movie appeal to the largest possible audience. In this case the distributors may be assuming a certain number of ticket sales from fans of the stars and director, fans of martial arts spectaculars and probably a few other sub-categories. But to make any real money they have to attract those whose experience with movies from China started and ended with "Hero" and CTHD.

Also plenty of trailers are made up of scenes that never make it to the screen--in this case they will probably use a different take/shot of the close-up of CYF parrying a sword thrust because he looked slow and weak in the one in the trailer.

There are a couple of interesting notes at least. One is that pan across the huge courtyard covered with yellow flowers with people standing among them. Whatever combination of lenswork, CGI, models and matte painting was used it was quite a shot. On my computer there was some obvious camera artifacts that made it look like it was shot with a very wide angle lens then straightend up in the lab (or computer as it is now).

Gong Li, unsurprisingly, looks magnificent. Whatever the wardrobe people did to create that almost other-worldly cleavage must have felt like a medieval torture device after a day or two in costume, though.

[kiliansabre]

just saw it today. the trailers are of course misleading, it shouldn't be billed as a martial arts film - it's much more of a historical drama than anything. i'll review it if i can figure out a way to summerize the plot without giving it away.