After seeing "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", I've been inspired to think about the depiction of reality in film. I loved how this movie completely dispensed with any need to look realistic - people leaping so smoothly and quietly that they were basically flying about. I think it was more than appropriate somehow.

I personally think that film (to include television) is a medium that should explore the unreal as opposed to the real, as a tool to explore the real. Or, more accurately, to explore the human condition. Rules of physics, cause and effect, etc. needn't fall in line with what our world dictates. I say, why not bend or break them to better fit the story to the theme. "Aeon Flux" has done a lot in this area, and very well I think. What do you all think?

-- Matthew Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), January 25, 2001

Answers

"Orlando" is one of my favorite films, and I think one of the big reasons for this is that it realizes that it is fiction. Orlando's looks back to the audience, the lack of explanation concerning his/her immortality and sex change... Lost recently in a sea of "reality TV" and "gritty, realistic portrayals" in movies like "Traffic", films like "Crouching Tiger" and "Orlando" have become a haven for me. I've decided that the best films (or more accurately, the best works of fiction of any kind) often have a sense of their own nature. Can't filmmakers realize that reality is, more often than not, a constraint?

-- Matthew Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), March 20, 2001.

Frostbite, as far as CTHD is concerned, I thought the film gained something from looking so unreal. Sure, you could have Jackie Chan do it "for real", and sure, there's something special about that, but it just wouldn't look quite as delicate or beautiful in the way that this film did.

-- Matthew Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), March 23, 2001.

It's a problem with the configuration that I've been trying to resolve... hopefully it'll be corrected soon.

-- Matthew Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), March 23, 2001.

I like it when the surreal is depicted,as it has such potential. Sometimes I think the general sci-fi doesn't really indulge itself in anything but 'pop' writing. My brother, who prefers biographies or histories once said of Star Wars; "I mean come on! the ship is manned by a gorilla!" Star Wars was great but he's got a point there...(he also once remarked about Star Trek the next generation; "You would think that waaaaay in the future they would have found a CURE for baldness" so you can see what genius type thinking I am regularly exposed to.

-- Barb e. (Suesuesbeo@aol.com), March 19, 2001.

In older forms of entertainment, like opera, a complete departure from reality is expected. Everybody sings their lines and acts out the story on a tiny stage that's only minimally re-decorated during scene changes, which only happen three or four times in the average Italian opera. I've played boy parts on several occasions. We stage types refer to it as "Suspension of Disbelief." You're just supposed to GO with it. In the end, you're just exploiting an imitation of reality in order to employ the true beauty of the art form.

-- Frostbite a.k.a. Frosty the Snow Chick (mbkrooks@bellsouth.net), March 22, 2001.

Hoooooold on! Frostbite...opera...???Whoa,! (so, do you have a good voice? this is reallly interesting), ha cool frostbite, very cool.

-- Barb e. (Suesuesbeo@aol.com), March 22, 2001.

I also want to say that Crouching Tiger wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. The fight scenes look too matrix-y for one thing. I've seen a lot of Kung Fu flicks and the best ones always feature martial arts champions doing what they do best without the aid of wires and computers and wiggling cameras and such. If you hooked me up to a wire and downloaded me into an Apple, I could bounce around in tree-tops, too. I liked the "ambiguous" ending, which seemed to be metaphorical of the Buddhist concept of letting go all desires as is touched on earlier in the film, but everything that preceded it was kind of bleh. Actually, my favorite parts were the settings and costumes, which are soooo beautiful. I'll no doubt end up renting it one day just to see all that again. I am a shameless eye-candy whore.

-- Frostbite a.k.a. Frosty the Snow Chick (mbkrooks@bellsouth.net), March 22, 2001.

I'm not a professional or anything (I'm only a senior in high school) but I've been in student performances. My biggest part was Cherubino in "The Marriage of Figaro" by Mozart. That was my favorite role yet because I got to be a girl playing a boy playing a girl. Here's a site where you can learn more about that: http://www.artswire.org/~mrd/nozze/index.html

-- Frostbite a.k.a. Frosty the Snow Chick (mbkrooks@bellsouth.net), March 22, 2001.

Frostbite, i do agree the settings were wonderful and the costumes splendid. The movie just generated some sort of peace, i personally loved the futuristic fighting moves, and the way they flew through the trees, it was great i thought about it long after it ended. Aeon Flux tends to do this as matt has said. The fighting etc are so delicate almost as if they are dancing i think it's fantastic, something new as in Matrix. Didn't you just love the ending though how she flew off into the mts. --ok on my computer it reads matt on the 23rd but he's second from the top, how in the world did that happen?

-- Lady Morgan (AeonFluxFan1@aol.com), March 23, 2001.

Matthew: Just change one letter in your email address. If you use your real address in the first post, there shouldn't be any confusion.

-- Inukko (nadisrec@worldnet.att.net), March 27, 2001.

Thanks, Inukko!

-- Mat Rebholz (matrebholz@earthlink.net), March 27, 2001.