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Post by sarmat on Mar 28, 2009 7:52:39 GMT 3
thanks, Sarmat I watched it and it was quite OK. not perfect but much better than Bodrov's Mongol. and the Samurai-dude was not nearly as much an annyoance as was this Christian missionary disturbing... I don't know, this movie is actually equally inaccurate and even fantastic compare to Bodrov's. Some of the flaws of this movie are so stupid, like the Christian missionary is looking through a Chinese character text in the beginning of the movie which is upside down or in one scene I could see very clearly that spears of Mongol "warriors" were made of plastic. That strange missionary was actually an adept of a new crazy religion in which Tengri was kind of God father and Temujin a kind of a prophet. Who was that missionary after all? He looked like a European and read prayers in Latin while there were no such guys between Mongolian tribes. Nestorian missionaries would look "Middle Eastern." He also made cross in the strange way holding his hand like Orthodox and Nestorians do and at the same time he made that cross in the different direction all the time. Jamuqa also was Christian Japanese guy was totally mispaced how was he supposed to get to the Mongolian steppe and become Gurbesu body guard. He was armed with katanas that first appear only in the 14th centuries. The Mongolian draw was also absent like in Bodrov's movie. Genghiz khan's son performing kongfu acrobatics and repeating passages from Confucius after his Chinese professor in the middle of the steppe looked funny. And there are also many other crazy inaccuracies which destroyed the whole idea of this potentially great movie.
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Post by Temüjin on Mar 28, 2009 21:57:59 GMT 3
yeah it's true there were many flaws, as with Mongol i didn't understood what they were actually talking about, so i judged alone by the visuals. i agree with what you said but there was no Chinese prisonership of Temujin like with Bodorov and no Merkits with weird face-masks.
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Post by sarmat on Mar 28, 2009 23:45:27 GMT 3
Yes, both of these movies are flilled with nonsense. :-(
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Post by mongolulus on Apr 3, 2009 20:31:42 GMT 3
there's one thing that irritates me a bit
all the genghis movies i have seen: bbc series, japanese, bodrov, chinese version, mongolian versions etc. lack one very important thing, and i'm sure that this sakha version also lacks it.
what is it that they lack? well, they don't show the terror that the Mongols inspired. all the battle scenes are gay. some are even bloodless. where's the hollywood blood and gore? didn't somebody write in the 13th century "a single tatar would come into a crowded place and start killing everybody and nobody would show resistance"? and somebody else "a tatar would tell somebody to sit still in one place while he went and fetched his sword, and when he returned he would kill him"? or again "the sound of the Mongols arriving outside Kiev, all their carts, soldiers, horses and other animals were so loud that the people inside the city couldn't hear each other"?
somebody also wrote "when the mongols moved around, it looked an entire City moving." i don't remember seeing a depiction of their ger-carts pulled by a hundred oxen or their moving-mobile-cities. all i see are some dudes in costumes fighting like children playing with toy-swords.
they should show the mongols in all their raw, earthshaking power.
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Post by sarmat on Apr 4, 2009 17:27:15 GMT 3
In my personal opinion it would be not good to emphasize that in Genghis khan movies. It's already a stereotype that the Mongols were just brutal murderers and nothing more. The idea behind the movies should be to show that there was a lot more than that.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Apr 4, 2009 21:51:05 GMT 3
Hi Mongolulus, welcome aboard I actually think the battle scenes in the BBC production were quite nice and accurate, unlike the ones in the other productions.
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Post by Temüjin on Apr 5, 2009 21:14:53 GMT 3
if you mean they lack "epicness", then i agree, none of the CK movies so far were epic
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Post by nomadi on Jun 17, 2009 12:04:49 GMT 3
Camuqa was christian?
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Jun 18, 2009 12:27:16 GMT 3
No don't have any evidence to proove such a thing, as far as I know.
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Post by ceonni on Jun 19, 2009 9:10:57 GMT 3
I've seen the Chinese movie Genghis Khan (1988) when it first came out. Then I saw the 1960s American cheap "fu-manchu version" circus film about the Khan. Then I saw the Chinese TV series (2004) almost in full.
Then I saw Bodrov. Then I saw the Japanese "Grey Wolf" I recently took a glimpse at historical enactments of a BBC Genghis documentary. Then I saw this Sakha one.
The Sakha one is most impressive in terms of costumes. Armors are excellent. The Japanese one looks like a cheap Japanese family drama, and Bodrov is botched by clumsiness in contrast.
However, the Sakha does lack a bit of historical imagination in depth. The Naimans wear historical Kazakh costumes, Naiman soldiers wear Khitay costumes. That I can tolerate. But then the Kereyts wear Qing Khalkha costumes, the Christian priest was a Western Christian (not an Assyrian), Qing-inspired mandarin collars. That I can't tolerate. Then they have Karate-blackbelt Chinese Taoists. That is kind of awkward. However, the Chinese Taoist master is probably the closest to a period Jurchen in terms of costume, among all the Genghis films (including the Chinese TV series which had completely Song-costumed period Jurchen-Chinese civilians, but pointy kalpak-wearing Jurchen grandees)
But the Sakha being a small arctic nation, executing such excellent battle scenes, is no small feat. It doesn't have too much lousy fantasizing of exotic cultures such as funky Arabian-nights costumes-wearing Khwarezmians in the Chinese TV series. The incorporation of Sakha style shamanist rituals, including the warriors' dance, is impressive.
I don't have much objections to the "Sakhaization" of the characters. It make sense for the Sakhas being a partially Christianized nation, to insert a missionary figure in order to reflect near modern Sakha history of cultural contact. However, him being a Western/Catholic christian is regretable.
The Sakha movie is among the best. It is probably as good as the 1988 Chinese movie (although the Chinese movie has excellent violent scenes with blood splashing and gushing out of horses. the best violent scene before Braveheart). Sakha wins in terms of modesty of costumes and esthetic competency. However, the Sakha movie miscalculated its release time. 2009 is 3 years after the 800th anniversary of the Great Mongol Empire, and 2-4 years after the Chinese TV, Japanese and Bodrov releases. These early release claimed the Sakhas' viewers, even Russian ones.
The Bodrov one was simply BAD. Hate its stupid fantasies. Clumsy Tangut costumes totally threw me off. It has no story line at all. Bodrov should not be allowed to film its sequals. The Japanese one never met any expectations. And I didn't really expect it to be good either. One word: Plastic. The Chinese TV series has rough primitive costumes. Sometimes plastic costumes. Stupid presumptions about exotic cultures. The BBC documentary reenactments are excellent. I wonder whether they were actually taken from a movie. Perhaps one with excellent costumes but boring story line, like the Sakha one. Don't even mention the 1960s Hollywood one. Genghis "Charlie Chan and Fu Man-Chu" Khan, nuff said.
Strangely Steven Seagall planned on making a Hollywood film before 2004. However the director of the Chinese TV series, Jiang Wen, flew to LA and dissuaded Seagall from doing so. Perhaps Jiang Wen was right about Seagall's misjudgment. Maybe Seagall was especially bad in terms of taste. But a Hollywood one before 2004 wouldn't be a bad idea at all! I am kind of angry at Jiang Wen.
One movie I haven't seen: It was filming around 2004-2006, by the Mongolian Republic. Its actors wear Ming-period luxurious historical armors. It would look more like a grandiose ceremony than a movie about the Khan rising from hardship. But it would probably be very esthetically pleasing.
There is a common flaw among most of these movies: their story lines are the exact same out of the Secret History. Can't they talk about some other aspects or periods in the Khan's life? Only the Chinese TV series and the coming Bodrov sequals bother to talk about later conquests. But even these two talk about the same stories about Yesugey, Bekter, Jamukha... yawn! That's another reason why one should not make a movie on the same stories after all these mediocre productions claimed all the audience!
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Post by ceonni on Jun 19, 2009 9:13:59 GMT 3
One one funny thing: I actually saw a Hong Kong 1970-80 TV series somewhere around 1994. Really funny to see Cantonese Mongols. Those barbarians seemed to be fully literate in written Chinese even back when they were fighting in the woods. They would write notes written on white silk deliverable by arrows.
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Post by ceonni on Jun 19, 2009 9:19:55 GMT 3
I am wondering why I haven't yet seen a Kazakh production on the Khan.
The Kazakhs should, so should Tatarstan and Turkey!
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Post by sarmat on Jun 19, 2009 18:14:13 GMT 3
I am wondering why I haven't yet seen a Kazakh production on the Khan. The Kazakhs should, so should Tatarstan and Turkey! Bodrov's movie was sponsored by Kazakhstan and presented as a "Kazakhstan production." As about Tatars, depending on a particular group of Tatars, Volga, Crimea etc. they have mixed feeling about the Khan, and many of them would doubt the need of that movie. Many Kazan Tatars for example, believe that Ganghiz was just a cruel barbarian that facilitated the fall of their advanced Bulgar civilization.
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Post by ltafrank on Jun 20, 2009 2:49:30 GMT 3
there's one thing that irritates me a bit all the genghis movies i have seen: bbc series, japanese, bodrov, chinese version, mongolian versions etc. lack one very important thing, and i'm sure that this sakha version also lacks it. what is it that they lack? well, they don't show the terror that the Mongols inspired. all the battle scenes are gay. some are even bloodless. where's the hollywood blood and gore? didn't somebody write in the 13th century "a single tatar would come into a crowded place and start killing everybody and nobody would show resistance"? and somebody else "a tatar would tell somebody to sit still in one place while he went and fetched his sword, and when he returned he would kill him"? or again "the sound of the Mongols arriving outside Kiev, all their carts, soldiers, horses and other animals were so loud that the people inside the city couldn't hear each other"? somebody also wrote "when the mongols moved around, it looked an entire City moving." i don't remember seeing a depiction of their ger-carts pulled by a hundred oxen or their moving-mobile-cities. all i see are some dudes in costumes fighting like children playing with toy-swords. they should show the mongols in all their raw, earthshaking power. That would be cool if they did that. Maybe they don't know how. I read too that the arrows made loud sounds when they unleashed them. I read that the Mongolians were so vicious that they were the most fearsome site.
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Post by ceonni on Jun 20, 2009 9:22:41 GMT 3
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