The Elephant Pharmacy on Shattuck Avenue is a fancy sort of place, and most of the things it sells are expensive. But the store also rents DVDs, and the DVD rentals are a dollar a night. I only discovered how cheap the rentals were this weekend, and I perhaps went overboard by spending four dollars to rent Once Upon a Time in China, Iron and Silk, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Matrix Revolutions. I have little to say about the latter two movies, which I enjoyed, but which I'm glad I didn't pay full price to see. But the Once Upon a Time in China and Iron and Silke were more interesting.
Once Upon a Time in China stars Jet Li as Wong Fei-Hong, a
legendary martial artist from some time when the Manchurians were in
power. I first heard about Wong Fei-Hong after Winnie and I watched
Around the World in 80 Days; in that movie, Wong Fei-Hong
turned up as the father of Jackie Chan's character. Winnie heard
the theme music and started dancing around: Wong Fei-Hong!
That's his theme music! I have to make you see a real Hong Kong
kung fu movie with him in it,
she said. She was right. I think
we both enjoyed the movie, and there was the additional
entertainment (for me) of picking out the few Cantonese phrases I
actually knew, and (for Winnie) of poking my shoulder during all the
action sequences and asking can you do that?
Iron and Silk is a movie adaptation of Mark Salzman's book
of the same name; in fact, Salzman plays himself, as does Teacher
Pan (as the text in the credits said, Teacher Pan played himself
because it is inconceivable that anyone else could
). I enjoyed
the movie, though I enjoyed the book more, but there was one flaw.
Whoever made the movie must have decided that the lack of a love
interest was a fatal flaw, because one was grafted on -- and the
graft didn't take. I think I would have known that there was
something off about those scenes even if I hadn't read the book.
That's a shame, because the scenes that were taken from the book
were a lot of fun, and I would have liked to see a few more of them.