There was no post on Wednesday. You can blame the above film. It is so mindblowingly awesome that all I could type was, quote:
"hrgch, gaaarkch, qwhoooooo...glarble!"
...and I decide that would be worse than no post at all. This gives you a sense of how amazing this movie is. It's like this movie was tailor-made for me personally. I expect a certain amount of crap in kung-fu/wuxia films: stupid visual gags, corny dialogue, and stunts that are obviously filmed and then reversed (like throwing a silk shirt carelessly and having it land--perfectly folded and ironed--on a throne). Iron Monkey is perfect in its corniness. It has precisely the right amount of corn. Then, of course, there are the fight scenes. They're extremely well-choreographed and take place in unique situations. One of them has a government official throwing heavy metal rings (sewn into his 50-foot-long robe sleeves, so he can retract them--like a fishing lure) at people for really no good reason. The very last fight scene takes place on a whole bunch of bamboo poles, about ten feet above a raging inferno on the verge of consuming the very supports on which they are fighting. Unlike other "action" films, which spend far too much time on some obscure device called "plot development," Iron Monkey throws that scramble to the wind. On the rare occasion that an explanation is needed, Yuen Woo-ping (The director or choreographer of a metric buttload of excellent films) manages to work it into a fight scene, so as not to dilute the awesome with boring standing-and-talking. And als--oh my God, they made a sequel.
I'll be back later. I need to go find Iron Monkey 2.
