A Most Excellent Christmas [inc. Review: House of Flying Daggers]
I hope you all had a great Christmas. Mine was good - was able to spend it with my 5 year old brother which was fantastic. When you find out that Santa isn't real, Christmas suddenly ain't as much fun. But when you're 21 and have a 5 year old brother who does believe in Santa - then it's brilliant!
He thought he saw Santa flying overhead on Christmas Eve - and I swear - that kid can get ready for bed FAST! It was like a mad panic dash to get the carrots out for Rudolph and the Diet Coke for my mo... I mean, for Santa and then into bed to sleep before Santa flew past and didn't stop because my brother was still awake.
He was ready in under 2 minutes! It was amazing!
Me and my brother had a great time and he loved the huge Thunderbird 2 toy that I got him. He's also wanted a motorcycle ever since I got mine a few years ago and so his Christmas wish came true when my mom got him a childsize battery-operated one.
I got some pretty neat stuff too like a 256mb USB MP3 player (yah!) and a couple of DVDs and stuff. And of course lots of chocolate which I had gratifyingly devoured within 24 hours...
I was quite disturbed on the morning of Christmas Eve - when I went upstairs to find my mother in her nightie, stood at the window QUACKING loudly! I swear, this is no joke - she was quacking like a duck at all the other ducks on her lake for about 10 minutes!!! I asked Sam if she quacks a lot and apparently she does - and agreed that it was silly. The look on his face and tone in his voice just said that although he knows it's stupid, he now just ignores it. He's a smart kid for a 5-year-old. I daren't even guess what's wrong with my mom...
Then on Boxing Day I returned home and went next-door to spend Christmas with my American neighbours. There was a fair amount of people there - Kate, her boyfriend Simon and his kid Beth; Chris, his girlfriend Simone (hmm, for the first time just noticed the similarity there) and her kid Zack; Chris's twin brother Dave and their parents Paul and Lesley. Paul and Lesley bought me some shoes after throwing away a pair of trainers I had which had holes in the bottom, a book called The Da Vinci code and a cookery book (and yes, that was intended as a hint for me lol).
But NOTHING could have prepared me for what everyone else between them would get me.
They bought me a TV....
It's amazing too! It even comes with a remote so now I don't have to get my lazy ass outta bed to change the channel and it has a 16:9 widescreen mode aswell. It's brilliant. Absolutely fantastic!
THEY BOUGHT ME A TV!!!
I was just in utter shock when they brought it into the room for me. It was astounding. I can't even begin to express how thankful I am to them. My neighbours have been there for me through a lot of stuff and over the last few years I've even thought of them as family. They're great and I don't know what I'd do without them.
Review: House of Flying Daggers
I went to the cinema with my neighbours last night and we watched a chinese film called House of Flying Daggers. (The original title is Shi mian mai fu which literally translated means Ambush from Ten Sides). It's an odd film this one. If you like Kung Fu movies then this one is definately one to watch because the cinematography is excellent and the fight scenes are pretty damn good. It's the rest that's a bit odd...
The further on the story goes, the more bizarre it becomes. It's about a group of people called The Flying Daggers who oppose the government. The government send a man on a mission to locate this group and discover its new leader by befriending one of its members, the blind daughter of the old leader.
It grows into a love story between the two and her old lover and ends with a battle for her love. There's something enchanting about this love story and the whole three-way relationship. Whilst the plot seems a bit dodgy in places, there was something about the three of these characters that probably contributed to myself being compelled to keep watching. Two scenes from the movie that are especially impressive though are near the beginning with the Echo Game and when an army are jumping through bamboo trees.
But whilst I enjoyed it and somehow felt compelled to keep watching, there was times when it was just plain stupid. Aside from its slow moments, there are things like summer changing to autumn and then to winter in the space of five minutes in real-time. Daggers can change direction mid-flight at will. A guy gets a dagger in his back which appears not to injure him in the slightest. And then a woman tells him to leave it in so he does so. The main guy (Jin) is supposed to be closer to his enemy than the love interest (Mei) and appears to be so, but then it switches to a far shot and it looks like he's further away than he was 10 minutes ago! There are many more bizarre moments like this.
And people just won't die!!!
You have to feel sorry for Mei who unfortunately appears to die about 3 times over. She just refuses to die. And whilst the two men will no doubt be glad that she's still alive, you're left just wanting her to get it over with and either make a miraculous recovery or just... die. I also felt as though the twist in the middle was just made up on the spot - so instead of it being pre-planned, it feels more like the writer just thought half way through "oooh - this will be a good twist if I do this" because after watching the end, the beginning suddenly makes no sense.
It's not a bad movie and worth watching but only if you don't expect too much from it and just watch it for the fight scenes and amazing cinematography. And then just accept the rest as a joke. Keep an eye out for the dodgy translation in the subtitles - it's obviously translated by someone chinese who doesn't fully understand words in certain contexts - such as the use of the term Playboy.
I'd probably recommend watching it alongside another movie, but I wouldn't disagree with IMDB's rating of 7.3/10.
View the Trailer.
Read more about it on the Internet Movie DataBase: House of Flying Daggers
