February 9 movie: Jet Li's Fearless. Georg already wrote the movie up, so I'll just add a few details. I found some information about Huo Yuan Jia online, and it sounds like the melodramatic parts about his family dying are not historical, but the parts about him founding the famous wushu school (I wonder if that was where Jet Li studied wushu?) and fighting foreigners to regain prestige for China are true. It's also true that his death was blamed on poison, but it may actually have been due to misuse of Chinese medicine. And the main character in the classic Fist of Legend (also by Jet Li) was supposed to be a student of Huo Yuan Jia.
Also, while Li said at the time that this would be his last martial arts film, he's got another one in production right now. Maybe he meant that this would be his last wushu film.
I really enjoyed this movie. Georg mentioned that it was less arty than the Zhang Yimou movies like Crouching Tiger and that's true. Also, it's hard for me to articulate but it "read" more like a classic Chinese martial arts film, but with a bigger budget. Crouching Tiger seemed more .. more Western I guess. Jet Li's Fearless reminded me very much of Jet Li's Wong Fei Hung movies. Or like Fist of Legend now that I think about it.
And can I say that Jet Li's Fearless is a really dumb name for this movie? I can understand why they didn't want to call it Huo Yuan Jia in the US, since no one here knows who that is. (I'm kind of into Chinese movies and I had never heard of him.) But "fearless" doesn't describe any of the themes or motivations of the movie. It's not about conquering fear at all.
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