Pretty Butterfly

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Yesterday, I bought an old kung fu classic from CD Rama. It's called the The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. I read from movie reviews in First magazine about this and was curious at how amazing was this movie. Initially, I was not a fan of movies of the 60's and 70's which don't look high tech nor were there any eye candy to make up for. But I was completely absorbed into the show because of the well cheorographed kung fu moves that can leave you in a trance and hungry for more action. Modern era drama serials and movies nowadays rely much of the computer graphics or shooting techniques to help an actor become a highly skilled kung fu exponent, where the director often focuses on the actor's face when he's riding a horse or sparring instead of featuring the whole body the whole duration of the fight or sequence. Since I understand the cantonese dialogue, at times I couldn't resist laughing at the jokes.

Starring Gordon Liu Chia Hui, as a Qing rebel, Liu Yu De, who wanted to learn kung fu to rid of the oppressive Qing officials went all the way to Shaolin Temple. He had to arduously master one training "chamber" after another. First, he had to master how to jump across a pool area with bundle of sticks floating in the pool without falling. Another test was to strengthen his hands through hailing two buckets of water with his arms at 90 degrees and walking up a slope. If his hands were less than 90 degrees, the knives fastened at his arms would start poking at his waist! After finishing with the arm strength training, came the eye coordination test where he had to move his eyes according to the pendullum in front of him or he will risk getting burn by giant incense placed just next to his face if he moves his head instead of eyes. Next came the training to have a iron head by banging against sand bags. Finally these basic training can he start practising basic kung fu to mastering various weapons. When the abbot wanted to confer him a master of one of the 34 chambers of Shaolin, Liu wanted to create a new 36th Chamber and helped teach ordinary people the shaolin kungfu. However, he was stopped by the abbot's disciple and that he would only agree if Liu beaten him in sparring. Liu used various weapons to combat his senior but was unsuccessful and finally founded a new weapon which looks like the Bruce Lee's nanchaku but its a 3 stick version that beaten his senior. Liu left Shaolin Temple to look for potential disciples and created the 36th Chamber after killing all the Qing oppressors.

Dreams never come true
5:30 pm