Discovered a whole cluster of intriguing and inquisitive videos at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada:

http://www.asiapacific.ca/media/video/can-canada-help-green-chinas-urban-billion

Over 350 million people will migrate into China’s cities by 2025. As China scrambles to build the equivalent of two New York Cities every year, it is turning to green building technology – as much to save on energy bills as to save the planet. Leading developer Zhang Lei weighs in on green building talent in Canada and China can make a global impact on sustainability. This video is part of APF Canada’s Media Fellowship Program.

Other intriguing videos are found at the Asia Pacific Foundation website's Videos section.  Explore here: http://www.asiapacific.ca

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/arguing-about-language/

[image from NEW YORK TIMES, OPINION section, THE STONE forum]

See this discussion on language traditionalists vs. revisionists.  Which means... is it okay to exercise poor grammar and spelling by using "times have changed" and "more people use it the so-called wrong way, or my way, than they use it your way" as a defense?

Quite a good discussion that spurred from a tragedy in Harbin of a 17-year-old patient killing a doctor he didn't know at all, and severely harming 3 other doctors.

The discussion touched on hospital finance, public sentiments regarding hospitals and the medical system, and other highly relevent and insightful comparisons between American and Western medical systems and those of Mainland China.

FLASH version:

http://i7.imgs.letv.com/player/swfPlayer.swf?id=1557212&autoplay=0

Original address of video on letv: http://www.letv.com/ptv/vplay/1557212.html

I quite like the movie Red Cliff 1&2, actually.

My tendency to pick bones in an egg resulted in these two articles, on the awkward casting of Lin Chiling as Xiao Qiao (TOTALLY effective for promotional and marketing purposes!) and the omission of one of Liu Bei's most famous lines.

All in all I felt the movies were well-made, despite this particular script's emphasis on Zhou Yu (by Tony Liang) as lead character.

Back to Lin Chiling.

I don't deny Lin Chiling looking great as a model on some magazine spreads or on a modern day catwalk.  But her on the movie screen as Xiao Qiao definitly threw off a bone (maybe two or three?) in my spine.  Even Zhang Zhiyi who irritates the heck out of me might have been better suited to this role than Lin Chiling... but who am I to speak? Directors and movie producers always know best...

(download)

Click here to download:

chi-ling-lin-as-xiao-qiao-awkward-but-effective-for-promotional-purposes-uIvckbvnnhvxgqollaao.zip (184 KB)

My reason to criticize? I will give my reasons but I forewarn that they might be too subjective or spur defense from Lin Chiling supporters.

I can only say that these things are always subjective.  Movie as a form of art is often rated significantly by a gut-reaction, a subjective intuition, a reflective FEELING of "like" or "no like" that despite being irrational and unscientific, is undeniably powerful.  I can only attempt to reason my peeve with the casting as follows:  Lin Chiling is too tall for the role.

SHE'S HUGE! (too tall) Despite her overwhelming fame as a supermodel and the embodiment of modern day, Taiwanese-Chinese beauty, in this movie her super-model traits stick out like a sore thumb and are no where close to classicaly beautiful (in terms of suiting the movie's needs).  It improves in the 2nd movie, but in the first movie she appear to be too lanky, tall, modern-looking and even somewhat physically masculine.  The role has many intensive hand gestures and hand-shots, and her hands are not "classically beautiful" as I would imagine the role to require.  I understand I sound totally judgemental and opinionated... but sometimes I feel strongly that these things do matter in a historical film.

The good news is that she is hard-working.  You can tell she is acting strenuously, in the first movie, at least.  Her famous baby-voice, often considered a "trying-to-be-overtly-girly-in-attempt-to-be-seductive" tone of voice, barely saved the (shall I add traumatic or would that be too severe?) physical incompatibility.  I could think of a dozen actresses who would be physically more suited for the role than her, who are either formally trained actresses from top acting academies, or seasoned silverscreen seductresses. 

Dong Liya 佟丽娅 http://baike.baidu.com/view/1614105.htm  

and

Li Xiaolu 李小璐 http://baike.baidu.com/view/17240.htm, 

come to mind, and many other petite, very-pretty, classical-looking actresses with no veins nor

Yang Mi (look her up, you won't regret it), Zhang Xinyi, Su Qi, Zhang Ziyi, etc.  The comparison I'm trying to communicate here is equivalent to a TOWERING 6' Jennifer Aniston or Sarah Jessica Parker (Lin Chiling) type vs. a very petite Natalie Portman/Winona Ryder type...

Liang Chaowei, Lin Chiling's on-screen husband, looked particularly uncomfortable in many of their love scenes... Xiao Qiao, the character's name, means the YOUNGER (INSINUATING SMALLER) of the Qiao sisters.  NOT a towering supermodel with a 6" frame (and boney fingers).  Her love scenes look like they were put there for purely commercial reasons ("Hey people! Check out this movie because Lin Chiling has a semi-naked love scene in it!") and were sloppy insertions into the movie ---- they either didn't flow properly, didn't really make sense, or had kinks that needed to be ironed out and better-integrated into the rest of the film to serve a more legit purpose.

I can reason that these scenes were attempts at:

1) showing off the beauty of Xiao Qiao as she was the "Helen" of their times - this they failed as I am far more impressed by the beauty of two dozen other actresses who are ready and available for the role,

2) the closeness of Zhou Yu and his wife - this was done with a B-, an okay-ish pass.  I give her my commendments for ACTING bird-like, and ACTING small, frail and delicate while being significantly bigger, physically, than her on-screen hubby.  It looks funny but the actors' straight-faces and dedication to their work is uncompromised.

The whole deal is analoguous to having Naomi Campbell in a Nazi documentary movie for a bikini spread.  It's just odd.  BUT, I do give props to Lin Chiling for her dedication to the role and pulling off a passable performance.

All in all the movies 1 & 2 were GOOD.

To pick some bones inside an egg see my random rant on Lin Chiling as Xiao Qiao and this article regarding a BLARING omission of historially significant detail from the movie.

"Red Cliff" Chibi 赤壁 2008

Directed by John Woo

When General Zhao returned Liu Bei's infant son to him after intense battles, Liu Bei's original and INCREDIBLY FAMOUS reaction was an attempt to HURL THE INFANT TO THE GROUND and crying out, "I almost lost a top general warrior for this kid!"

Though this was JUST ONE SENTENCE for the actor, the director OMITTED IT.  It is quite an important scene and thus I find it very disturbing.

This sentence is an important brushstroke in depicting Liu Bei's charisma as a leader.  It implies that Liu treasured Zhao's talent and loyalty immensely and would rather Zhao had not risked his life to significantly EXTRA danger to protect his (Liu's) own son.  Obviously, during that time the most prized treasure were talented loyal warrior generals and the support of the people (civilians); everything else came second.  Even Cao Cao, an extremely prideful man (with good reason for his own pride), coveted and pined for Liu Bei's pool of talented fighters and leaders.  In this instance, Zhao became wounded because of the extra care he had to exert in protecting the infant and Liu Bei was notoriously upset about it.

Previously, the infant had already cost the deaths of Liu Bei's two wives (one of them the infant's mother).  This was sad but expected of virtuous people under similar circumstances.  In a dire straight, those who were possibly burdensome would remove themselves without second thought.  

When one relives this scene the emotional implications intensify because it is well known that later on this same infant grew into a lame, lazy, unambitious and ill-fitted ruler who did not even try to protect the kingdom his father and his talented, loyal, and heroic subjects established before him.  In fact, Liu Bei and Zhuge Kongming's kingdom ended in the child Ah-dou's hands.

It is almost ridiculous that the director omitted this famous Liu Bei response, given the amount of time and acting invested into showing the difficulty of the double mission which includes saving the baby as well as supporting other generals on the battlefield.  When Zhao safely returned to Liu's side with the infant the movie merely showed Liu giving Zhao an emotional brotherly hug, which doesn't communicate the above described sentiment properly to an uninformed audience.

The movie successfully portrayed how difficult, dangerous and cumbersome it was for Zhao to keep the baby safe under heart-stopping circumstances; the moment he got hold of the baby he had to rush back to the battlefield to support his fellow generals in a bloodbath fighting Cao Cao's top troops from a ginormous grand army of 800K in order to defend the retreating masses of refugee civilians and war-beaten peasants.  Invasion, pillage and massacres had already destroyed villages off the main battlefields but Liu Bei and Zhuge Kongming made it priority to keep most of the population alive despite the dire military cicumstances.

In terms of history and not of the movie, given how picky and acrid historians and the general critics of history tend to be, if Zhao had NOT found the baby and kept it safe despite all difficulty and antagonistic circumstances, his name would certainly be mocked for an eternity for "avoiding the duty."

Though the concept is quite cliche, I was roused to become quite excited and curious about this short 13 minute film to the point of seriously considering visiting Taipei again soon just to go see it at the NPM.

There is also a collection of humorous and fun video commercials that the NPM produced back in 2007 (ish?) and they may be downloaded here at the link right below here for your entertainment.  I will post more of them on this blog if permitted.  Here is one that's quite cute, featuring a 3D BOAT THAT WAS CARVED OUT OF AN OLIVE PIT, complete with internal chambers and passengers:

(download)

Click here to download:

boat_v2_mp4.mov (854 KB)

http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/downloads.htm  In the dropdown menu select MOVIES and you will gain access to all the shorts, commercials, ANIMATIONS and other promotion videos produced by the NPM marketing department.

Currently, I am absolutly hooked on the serial documentary, "Taipei Gugong," which means "the Taipei Prior Palace."   Gugong's formal English name is the National Palace Museum.  Some more complete editions of the documentaries are named, National Treasures from the Palace Museum in Taipei (there are various editions available).

*I did a quick search on Google for "top museums in the world."  Many of the articles are thrown together by travel industry corporations and do not reflect accurate rankings nor provide detailed information on the museums.  The best link that provides the best preliminary/introductory information on the subject is found HERE: 

http://www.touropia.com/best-museums-in-the-world/  BEST MUSEUMS IN THE WORLD.

Serial documentary on the contents at Taipei's National Palace Museum. Beginning with stories set against KMT's retreat to Taiwan, the documentary gives insight to the moving, storage, and handling (as well as respective background histories) of more than 5522 chests and 650 THOUSAND pieces of national treasures of China.

These documentary videos uncover the details relating to how people handled these precious and finicky artifacts through severe poverty and lack of proper transport and storage infrastructure, through political and social unrest and ill-suited environments threatened by natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, typhoons, and over-humidity.  A significant portion of the artifacts date back 3500 years and require extremely intensive care.

These pieces are not merely valuable because of their age.  They were the most prized pieces and represent pinnacles of craftsmanship, history, literary, political and artistic achievement.  They were carefully curated not just by our most three recent generations but since millenia ago by generations of emperors and rulers regardless of them being related or enemies to each other.

For example, some of the Northern Song dynasty vases were produced at massive secret kilns under the most artistic emperor in Chinese history, Song Huizong.  The kilns, after 2500 years of mysterious disappearance, were recently discovered to have an operational area of more than 36 football fields, all kept under extreme covertness in terms of technique, operation and location and under exclusive and intimate direction of the Emperor Song Huizong.  This kilns site, Ruyao, was only in operation for 20 years before its massive manufacturing facilities were intentionally destroyed for confidentiality.

[people have been attempting to copy/replicate these things since 1500 years ago to no avail! And yes this was invented in China around the time the ancestors of the Japanese people reached the island of Japan]

And products of Ruyao are just 21 pieces out of the whole collection at the National Palace Museum.  Other valuable contents include but are not limited to: china, jewelry, carvings, political documents and originals of national treaties, calligraphy scrolls, paintings, gadgets, wares, books, doctrines, furnishings, etc..  These survived horrendous national and international wars, revolutions, famine, relocation, climatic changes, political unrest, and other such historical events, finally finding (temporary?) home at Taipei's National Palace Museum, which was constructed just for these artifacts, acting somewhat like satellite accomodation to the pieces that were exported (smuggled) from Beijing's Forbidden City (National Palace Museum of Beijing).  

I have embedded here two of the many videos.  This is a truly moving educational experience for anyone who has interest in thousands year old antiques of a high civilization.

The videos are pending translations and, I intend to post the full series here when I figure out copyright matters and permalinks.