Teleidoscope

Fri, Jan 19, 2007

Kung Fu Fighters

Posted at 10:37 pm MST to Media

I'm having fun.

The HD channels on the new satellite dish include one called Kung Fu, which so far has been everything but -- For example, this evening I've watched a Jet Li wu xia film with sorcerors and sword fighting. And a Shinsengumi samurai film with Toshiro Mifune in a sort of elder statesman fencing instructor role: someone else played the young hotheads, but he had a star turn in a street fight against 30 guys in a snow storm.

And now they're showing another Japanese period piece, with yakuza and samurai and starving villagers. And theme music reminsicent of from cheap westerns (it's really amusing the way samurai films and Westerns influenced each other over the years).

So far, the Chinese pieces have been dubbed and the Japanese pieces have been subtitled. This generally suits me very well: I can't follow Mandarin at all, but with subtitles that I can crib, I can follow enough of the Japanese to hear the politeness levels and other things that usually get lost in translation. But some of the dubbing voices are kind of silly.

The midnight show will really be a kung fu movie, for a change: "Fists of Fury" with Bruce Lee. I assume it will be dubbed.

I wonder what the Chinese station near San Jose is showing these days... last year at this time they were showing "The Epic of Tai Zu" a wonderful long (50 episodes or so) historical drama series, subtitled in Mandarin and English, about Nuerhachi of the Aixinjueluo, the founder of what became the Qing (Manchu) dynasty. Kind of like "The Six Wives of Henry VIII", but Nuerhachi had his wives in parallel, which made the politics a lot more complicated.

In a few days, I'll find out what they are showing now.

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