And on the subject of things being excellent and better than other things, Stephen Chow is excellent, in particular his new movie Kung Fu Hustle. Not that it's his best movie or anything, but it's still great. Mr Chow does excellent special effects, and really doesn't need to since he's mostly doing comedy-spoof movies. There are several moments of Matrix-parody in Kung Fu Hustle, and each time the effects are done better than the Matrix series did them itself - and almost certainly on a smaller budget. I suspect the reason for this is that Chow started out making movies with no budget, so he's used to pulling off effects using string and duct tape - now that he has the technology, he combines it with the filming techniques used to make string and duct tape special effects believable, which results in ridiculous effects that, nonetheless, don't require putting any effort into suspension of disbelief at all.
This particular movie is a bit of a tribute to lots of famous Chinese cinema and writing, much of which I'm not familiar with. As is Stephen Chow's way, that doesn't matter, it's fun even if you're missing half of what's going on. It's not like it's really very coherent anyway. It has an axe gang who dance. It has kung-fu masters who cut hair and make noodles. It has Stephen Chow saying "no more soccer", presumably not only to a character in the movie but also surreptitiously to fans and distributors who want there to be a sequel to Shaolin Soccer, but the scene is funny even if you've never heard of Shaolin Soccer.
Also, for bonus points, Sony's website for the movie has, in addition to the usual trailers and such, a set of four games each of which is like a quite good game from 1984 or so. Games recognisably akin to Chuckie Egg, Commando, Tapper and Street Fighter.
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