And since I was at a double feature, I watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring. A korean movie which was more like a meditation on Buddhism; very beautiful and visually stunning.

Again, from The Balboa Theatre Newsletter:

The exquisitely beautiful and very human drama SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER ... AND SPRING, starring director KIM Ki-duk, is entirely set on and around a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst a breath-taking landscape. The film is divided into five segments with each season representing a stage in a man's life. Under the vigilant eyes of Old Monk (wonderful veteran theatre actor OH Young-soo), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel. In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man, experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him, as an adult, to dark deeds. With winter, strikingly set on the ice and
snow-covered lake, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew. With an extraordinary attention to visual details, such as using a different animal (dog, rooster, cat, snake) as a motif for each section, writer/director/editor KIM Ki-duk has crafted a totally original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from Innocence, through Love and Evil, to Enlightenment and finally Rebirth.

It helps if you know something about Buddhism and its concepts, but even if you don't you'll still get what this movie is about.

It's a slow moving movie but very, very worth the effort to watch it. I enjoyed this movie a ton, and was struck by how profound buddhism as a story can be told.

Then on Sunday, lest some of you think I only watch Hollywood crappy movies, I saw two asian films that were very good.

First, I saw The Twilight Samurai.

From The Balboa Theatre Newletter:

Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Ujio in Edward Zwick's Hollywood epic THE LAST SAMURAI, stars in a different kind of samurai film in Yoji Yamada's poignant drama THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI. Sanada plays the title character (Seibei Iguchi), who gets his nickname because he is a lowly worker who chooses to go home to his family every night at twilight instead of going out with his fellow employees or women. Seibei's wife has recently died, so he is raising his two daughters alone, as well as caring for his aging mother. His well-connected uncle believes he should agree to an arranged marriage so he can be more manly, but Seibei is dedicated to living the life he's chosen. But when his married childhood friend, Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), wants a divorce from her abusive husband (Ren Osugi), Seibei defends her honor and defeats the sword-wielding man with a piece of wood. When Seibei's clan learns of his victory, the leaders command him to kill Zenmon Yogo (Min Tanaka), something that goes against everything he believes in. Based on the stories of Shuuehei Fujisawa and set during the Meiji Restoration of 19th-century Japan, THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, which was nominated for a 2004 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is a special kind of movie, loaded with heart and humanity, a very different samurai film that breaks movingly from the traditions of the genre.

Note: THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI swept the 2003 Japanese Academy Awards, winning 12 categories, including best picture, director, screenplay, actor, actress, supporting actor and cinematography.

Twilight Samurai was a good movie, and it even had a couple of very good sword fighting scenes. It reminded me of the early "Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman" movies. It must be a tradition in Japan to have a story about the reluctant samurai, who is all heart, doesn't really want to kill, is scruffy and dirty but always gets the hottest young japanese babe in the village, but who will kill the best swordsman around literally with his eyes closed without much effort.

This is such a different storyline and much more of a romantic view of the samurai warrior, then say, the probably more realistic picture of the samurai in Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai.

Here's the defintion of a samurai from a googled website I found:

The samurai (or bushi) were the members of the military class, the Japanese warriors. Samurai employed a range of weapons such as bows and arrows, spears and guns; but their most famous weapon and their symbol was the sword.

Samurai were supposed to lead their lives according to the ethic code of bushido ("the way of the warrior"). Strongly Confucian in nature, Bushido stressed concepts such as loyalty to one's master, self discipline and respectful, ethical behavior.

Samurai are like hired killers, you know, assasins, mafia hit guys, someone who kills for a living.

This is a worthwhile flick if you're into the whole samurai warrior thing, and while the violence level was a little too low for my tastes, there are still two decent fight scenes and one okay sword through the body scene.

And if you're not into the samurai blood and gore fight scene thing the way I am, this is a grod movie with a great story about a man just trying to get on with life, and all the stuff that gets in the way sometimes.

This is like a jidai-geki film subject combined with a gendai-geki story line, or something like that.

And then being the movie whore that I am, after the geisha I went to see The Chronicles of Riddick.

You know, it wasn't that bad. Judi Dench was an elemental, which I thought was really cool. I'd always wondered about elementals, and what they were about. And the scifi story line was kind of interesting as well, and I wished they'd gotten more into that. Supposedly there's a prequel to this movie which now I'm dying to see called "Pitch Black".

This is one movie where getting or renting the DVD would probably be worthwhile just because the DVD might explain the scifi stuff.

And yes, there is something about that Vin Diesel guy that is rather riveting to watch. Not quite sure why, although I'm thinking I might have been brainwashed by subliminal messages that flashed during "Triple X" because all I wanted to do during that movie was dive into the screen and get my freak on with the Vin-ness himself.

This is such a spooky, spooky thought because honestly Mr. Diesel is really not that physicaly attractive, from an aesthetic point of view. He's more like totally animal magnetism attractive, but not physically beautiful attractive.

But hey, all those sublimal messages must have worked because I plunked down $8 to see that man again and found him maddeningly attractive even though he didn't have the gorgeous tats he had in "Triple X". He had the best tats!

Then on Saturday I went to the Asian Art Museum and took a look at the Geisha exhibit. There were beautiful paintings, woodblock prints, and stunning embroidered kimonos.

When I was in highschool I thought it might be fun to be a geisha, you know, doing the whole subservient, master lave thing. But who knew you had to wear that awful kabuki painted white face makeup and sing those traditional classic japanese songs. YIKES! I just liked their kimonos, their getas and all those sticks in their hairs.

And no, Madame Butterfly is so not my favourite opera. How maudlin is it to commit harakiri for some guy?