I just spent the night watching a movie with my Dad. My Dad loves watching two types of movies. The first kind is Action.. it doesn’t matter if there is no plot, it doesn’t matter if the acting is horrible, it doesn’t even matter if it was unrealistic. Throw in some guns, some bombs, some hand-to-hand combat and you got a winner for my Dad.
The other kind of movie that my Dad loves watching is Chinese movies set in the old days. You know about the emperors and all. So tonight I sat down with him and watched the second half of The Curse of the Golden Flower. You guys remember that movie right? With Gong Li, Chow Yun Fatt and Jay Chou.
One thing I found amusing about that movie though was how almost all the actresses had like the most powerful push-up bras in the world to show huge cleavage. I mean most Chinese movies I’ve seen of the older days didn’t really bang on cleavage but this one… woahh…
Nevertheless I can say this, Gong Li is one hell of a great actress!
Anyway if you’ve seen the movie, you’d know the story is fairly complicated. I missed the first half of the movie so correct me if I’m wrong but here’s what I understand from it. Okay so you have the Emperor who has this first wife in which he has a daughter with. And then he decides to marry another woman to consolidate his power on the throne and in order to make sure nobody finds out about the first wife, he locks the wife up but the wife escapes. Then many years later, the second wife which became the empress started having an affair with…. his son (I think). Some incest shit going on there Can’t remember which son but it was one of them.
Then the daughter that the emperor had with the first wife met with one of his sons with the second wife and fell in love. They shagged and all not knowing that they were actually… *gasp* BROTHER AND SISTER! When they eventually found out, there was big drama. This daughter ran outside the palace and got stabbed to death. Her mother then ran after her and also got stabbed to death.
All this happened while the second son of the Emperor played by Jay Chou was trying to have a coup to overthrow the emperor.
So much more happened and I don’t know how accurate I am after this but… one thing that really came to me was…
HOLY SHIT IT SURE AIN’T EASY BEING a Chinese Emperor in those days.
I mean, you gotta worry about your empress sleeping with your son… or your son trying to overthrow you… and all this shit… how do you even find time to run a Kingdom?
I really don’t see why Simba was so excited about being King.
So who wants to be an Emperor?
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space