More disappointments

I'm stunned by the positive criticial reception of Chunhyang. Traditional it may be, but not charmingly so. Easily accessible? I think not. Audacious filmmaking? Nope. Let's face it: as James Berardinelli says, the traditional singing heard as a frequent voice-over is grating:

his tones are anything but mellifluous, and hearing him "sing" (it's actually more a combination of barking, yowling, and shouting) is about as pleasant as listening to a cat fight.

I truly suspect the critics of wanting to prove how able they are to appreciate other cultures. If another movie using the same technique comes along, will they be so admiring? On the other hand, although Michael Atkinson is a little hard on Butterfly (1999), I've got to agree it was a little limp.

And I'm sorry to say, Sylvia Chang's 張艾嘉 20:30:40 (2004) was watchable. A fairly predictable chick flick. It was a pleasure to watch Rene Liu 劉若英 and Sylvia Chang, but there just wasn't an awful lot going on there. (What's going on with Google? A fanti search for the two of them yields 6,650 results, while a jianti search yields 32,100.)