Wow, what a trip. House of Flying Daggers is a rather amazing spectacle. It’s full of crazy martial arts special effects similar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but without going so far as to seem totally silly. And the cinematography was just stunning. The Bamboo Forest scenes alone were worth the price of admission.

The story itself is a classic love triangle affair, with a nice dose of espionage and things not being what they seem. “House of Flying Daggers” is the name of an rebel outfit. If you’re more up on Chinese history than I am, you could probably name the government and tell me if it was really corrupt. Anyway, their ‘special talent’ is, obviously, throwing daggers. But they’re darn good swordsmen as well.

One of their agents, a blind dancer (played by the lovely Ziyi Zhang) is caught by the local police/army. One of the officers then poses as a bandit and frees her, after which he tries to get her to lead him back to Flying Daggers HQ. But as I said, all is not what it appears.

Absolutely a fantastic movie. If you have *any* taste for martial arts, get this film. Even if you feel neutral about martial arts, still get it!

One thing to note, though. If you buy it, play it right away. It would appear that there are some bad copies out in retail. My first copy started to skip about two thirds of the way through, and a Google search tells me there’ve been a lot of problems with the DVD. A second copy worked fine. Also, frankly, the print isn’t as good as it should be. I’d love to see a collector’s edition come out with a better quality print and more extras!

I watched Secretary tonight, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Short synopsis. Gyllenhaal is the secretary, fresh out of a mental institute where she was placed for self-mutilation. Spader is the lawyer in need of a new employee. His gig is that he’s a “Dom” and so drives most of his employees away. We get an inkling of this when, right under his shingle is a carefully painted “Secretary Wanted” sign with a set of lights around it, like a Vacancy sign at a motel.

Mix these two together and you get a quick exploration of the D/s lifestyle. It was pretty interesting to see such a niche fetish getting the Hollywood treatment. Lee (Gyllenhaal) thrives more and more as lawyer Grey (Spader) gets more and more demanding, until they come to a climax, so to speak, and Grey starts feeling guilty/remorseful, not believe that Lee is really into this lifestyle.

Some folks will be disgusted by the movie, others, like me, will just find it an interesting curiosity, and you D/s folks will find it a total turn-on.