from beijing with love

Damn, every Sunday I try to catch up on freelance work or get ahead on regular work by um, doing work but I always up end stalling and getting distracted to the point that one or two assignments end up taking all day. At least I'm not getting distracted by like, video games or TV, but rather reading news on the net or just blogging, that's a bit more productive...I think.

Anyway, I was reading this NY times story on China sentencing someone to deathAnd it immediately reminded me of this scene in the Stephen Chow classic From Beijing With Love

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfRcqcY8w54

Check out this video, it's just one of many, many, many classic Stephen Chow scenes that had the HK locals laughing for years. Literally. They show this on TVB now and everyones watching and commenting on facebook statuses and LOLing.

Anyway, to recap the video for those of you who don't wanna watch or don't understand Canto, basically Stephen Chow is being framed for treason and is sentenced to death. He then tries to think of ways he can get out of his predicament, such as reasoning with logic, telling them he knows kung fu, or saying he knows someone important in the government. The joke is each time he thinks of something, the guy in front of him does it and gets killed anyways because the executioners are no-nonsense strict government officials.

The part where the martial arts master gets blown up midway through escape sums up everything that is wonderful about Stephen Chow movies--it's random, a bit over the top, and fucking hilarious.

The video actually doesn't show the revelation at the end of how Stephen Chow gets out of this predicament.

Well he gets out of it by bribing the officials with cash and cigarettes.

This part ain't no joke. That's satire.

If this film is released now, it gets banned in China.