{"id":7374,"date":"2010-01-22T19:10:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T11:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=7374"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:15:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:15:50","slug":"red-cliff-%e2%80%93-revisited-%e2%80%93-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/01\/22\/red-cliff-%e2%80%93-revisited-%e2%80%93-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Cliff \u2013 Revisited \u2013 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-redcliff-01\" Red Cliff<\/em> (2008) \u2013 on HD. I didn\u2019t enjoy John Woo\u2019s mega-budget production of the famous Chinese novel, and blogged about it then in a post here last year in April<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when the Blu-ray edition of the two films became available a couple of months ago, I picked up the set. The DVDs I saw the film on last year were packaged and distributed by a local publisher and were horrendous in picture quality, so figured I should give Woo\u2019s two films a second chance and and on HD. Unfortunately, after sitting through five hours of the two films, I\u2019m still unimpressed.<\/p>\n

The good parts first though. The two films back to back run for just over four and a half hours, and that\u2019s a lot of screen time for you to sink your teeth into. The production has a mix of both drama and big battle scenes, with the first film about on parity between the two and the second film leaning more heavily on action.<\/p>\n

The general gist of the story is also easy to follow, the more so since the major plot events are told in big scenes with characterizations in broad strokes: starting from Cao Cao\u2019s petitioning of war with the weakling Han Emperor, Zhuge Liang\u2019s diplomatic mission to Sun Quan seeking alliance, and the combined force of Sun Quan and Liu Bei\u2019s first victory against Cao Cao\u2019s armies.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also that large cast of characters, and each of the major leads and most of the supporting (with the exception of Cao Cao\u2019s henchmen) are distinct enough by way of characterization and physical appearance that you can still tell them apart even if you haven\u2019t read the Romance of the Three Kingdom<\/em> novels before, or follow the troupe of big name Asian actors in the production.<\/p>\n

Visually; the films were also shot on location in China and Taiwan, and there\u2019s a couple of sky cam shots of the vistas \u2013 e.g. in the opening title scene \u2013 that\u2019s just stunning. There\u2019s use of CG, some effective when it comes to rendering the large masses of armies on the move or in battle, but less effective in man-made structures \u2013 especially in that climatic scene of Cao Cao\u2019s navy in flames towards the end of the second film.<\/p>\n

And finally, the Blu-ray edition of Red Cliff is given an absolutely stunning HD transfer. Ladies who need to soak up Takeshi Kaneshiro perfectly chiseled chin and deep-set eyes, buy these two Blu-ray discs and do full resolution screen captures for yer desktop.<\/p>\n

Continued in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red Cliff (2008) \u2013 on HD. I didn\u2019t enjoy John Woo\u2019s mega-budget production of the famous Chinese novel, and blogged about it then in a post here last year in April. But when the Blu-ray edition of the two films<\/p>\n

Read More Red Cliff \u2013 Revisited \u2013 Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}