Directed By: Zhang Yimou
With: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen

I was at the movie theater last week and I saw a trailer for Hero indicating to me that the laggards at Miramax were finally getting off their asses and releasing one of their stockpiled foreign gems. So in a nutshell i am going to use this piece to both praise one of the most visually lush movies i’ve seen in a long time, and then lambaste Miramax and all of the other movie studios that buy up foreign movies only to sit on them because they are too hapless to know how to release and market these movies.

Let’s get to it, Hero is a gorgeous dazzling martial arts epic, period. however saying it is a martial arts movie is not doing it justice whatsoever. When Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out, it was an epiphany for those who had never been exposed to a martial arts epic, a relief for those who want more Hong Kong movies to cross over and be released her, and validation for the movie industry because it won awards and made a mint at the box office. That being said, Ang Lee opened the door for Zhang Yimou, whom you might remember from 1994′s amazing To Live, to step in and go to town; and that’s precisely what he did.
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Needless to say the resurrection of snoozebutton has taught me quite a bit about the blogging world both in terms of technology, protocols, and etiquette; sorry but I just can’t bring myself to use the word netiquette ;)

First there is the whole technology component: How does one set up a system that fulfills what appear to be mutally exclusive requirements: that it’s easy enough to use so that we end up using it, and that is flexible and extensible enough to do some fun things with? Thankfully after exhaustive research and trial and error installs i discovered the wonder that is WordPress.

Then there is the question of content. Since snoozebutton isn’t a content aggregator our content situation can be summed up with three words: write, write and write. Well, ok, i can expand on that a bit: read/watch/listen/eat/experience, write, write, write…

Finally, what I’ve learned much about and am continuing to learn about is the whole “being validated” phenomenon. Basically this is a two-tiered system: first we all have a relationship with Google, that is we all seek validation for our voices if not our existences by what is currently the single most important tastemaker (i’d like to meet one person out there who publishes anything and doesn’t go look at their google ranking); and second there is the interaction between people who maintain their own online voices: how can we spread our words to as many people as possible? Why else write if not to be heard right? So i had a conversation with my old friend Jonathan about this and he has written a nice piece on the interaction between those of us that choose to have an online presence called maintaining the dialogue that explains some of the mechanisms that are in place to better our interactions…

There are a variety of ways for blogs to communicate and even publish information with simple protocols in semi-automated as well as manual ways. The great thing is that they all offer ways to let the original author/poster know you thought what was said was worthwhile. As I am sure I’ve mentioned previously I am not a developer so the definitions and interpretations are purely from a user perspective. I am far from an expert on these topics, but was thinking about how it all works and truly find it intriguing. One of the more fascinating things about maintaining a blog is checking your traffic patterns and discovering how people are finding you – and then what they might be saying about you.
( atmaspheric | endeavors )

Director: Quentin Tarantino
With: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Chiaki Kuriyama, Lucy Liu, Sonny Chiba, Chia Hui Liu, Michael Parks, Samuel L. Jackson

Well, i finally did it, i went to see Kill Bill Volume 2 and taken as a whole, and i mean one close to 5 hour movie with an excruciatingly long 6 month “cooling off” interlude, i would have to say the Kill Bill could and should rank among the best ‘pop culture’ movies released in a very long time.

This all makes perfect sense because few directors, if any, can meld such disparate elements into one cohesive piece, and Tarantino is one of the best if not the best and arguably on of the progenitors of the ‘pop’ movie genre with his Pulp Fiction from several years back. Seriously though, how can one envision bringing together with an almost comic book cinematic style, kung fu, samurai sword fighting, rare and deep soul and funk music, a tragic love story, overwhelming love for one’s child, southern red neck culture (the pussy wagon anyone?), even an early pregnancy test and its ad slogans and of course some of the deepest and most sadistic violence. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to downplay violence of any kind, but there were no simple strangulations or gun shots, and as a matter of fact I think the most straight forward revenge killing ( a poisoning ) was also the movie’s most cowardly. Come to think of it, the fact that I was sitting back cheering as each one of The Bride’s marks fell and the accompanying guilty pleasure of thinking of how she would do the next one was one the movie’s triumphs for me.

As for the actors, I think they all did a bang up job (yeah that pun was intended), with old and new school actors coming together. David Carradine touches upon his caine role from kung fu but in a bizarro-caine kind of way, and it’s nice to see Darryl Hannah back in movies as the self-advancing uber-bitch (sorry but Dancing at the Blue Iguana does constitute a come back role). Vivica A Fox and Lucy Liu also more than hold their own in part 1 but I think Chiaki Kuriyama stole the show part 1′s thunder as the not so innocent school girl.

And then there’s Uma. What can I say, she rocks hard for Quentin; they have some connection going on because he really gets her to come out of her shell, shall I iterate her last few movies without Quentin? They all leave much to be desired except for Vatel, Beautiful Girls and Dangerous Liasons and that’s going back 15 years all the way to 1988.

Bottom line: see this(these) movie(s) asap.