Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight
Ya know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe
So there's never, never a trace of red
Now on the sidewalk, huh, huh, whoo sunny morning, un huh
Lies a body just oozin' life, eek
And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner
Could that someone be Mack the Knife?
There's a tugboat, huh, huh, down by the river don'tcha know
Where a cement bag's just a'drooppin' on down
Oh, that cement is for, just for the weight, dear
Five'll get ya ten old Macky's back in town
Now d'ja hear 'bout Louie Miller? He disappeared, babe
After drawin' out all his hard-earned cash
And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor
Could it be our boy's done somethin' rash?
Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry
Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky's back in town
My birthday present to myself arrived a day early. Currently listening to the new Parsons 5.1 mix of Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe by the Alan Parsons Project, from the 40th Anniversary Edition.
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination
You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
It's a beautiful day
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day
Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We've known each other since we were nine or ten.
Together we've climbed hills and trees.
Learned of love and ABC's,
skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.
Goodbye my friend, it's hard to die,
when all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Pretty girls are everywhere.
Think of me and I'll be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed
were just seasons out of time.
Goodbye, Papa, please pray for me,
I was the black sheep of the family.
You tried to teach me right from wrong.
Too much wine and too much song,
wonder how I got along.
Goodbye, Papa, it's hard to die
when all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
Little children everywhere.
When you see them I'll be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the wine and the song,
like the seasons, have all gone.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the wine and the song,
like the seasons, have all gone.
Goodbye, Michelle, my little one.
You gave me love and helped me find the sun.
And every time that I was down
you would always come around
and get my feet back on the ground.
Goodbye, Michelle, it's hard to die
when all the bird are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air.
With the flowers ev'rywhere.
I wish that we could both be there.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the stars we could reach
were just starfish on the beach
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the stars we could reach
were just starfish on the beach
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun,
But the wine and the song,
like the seasons, have all gone.
All our lives we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed
Were just seasons out of time....
The "wuxia pian," or film of martial chivalry, is rooted in a mythical China, but it has always reinvented itself for each age. Like the American Western, the genre has been reworked to keep in touch with audiences' changing tastes and to take advantage of new filmmaking technology. Yet at the center it retains common themes and visceral appeals.
In Japan, only members of the samurai class could carry a sword, but in ancient China both aristocrats and commoners could become professional swordsmen. Since the land was ruled by rival warlords, an unattached fighter could become a killer for hire. This sordid reality became glamorized in the wuxia tales which became popular after the ninth century AD. Like the Arthurian legends of Europe, the wuxia promoted a conception of knightly virtue. The roaming hero was not only strong and skillful; he or she also had an obligation to right wrongs, especially when the situation seemed dire. The hero fought for yi, or righteousness - not for rights in the abstract, or for society as a whole, but for fairness in a particular situation - usually, seeking retribution for a past wrong. Here political history becomes crucial. China has had an unhappy history of corrupt and tyrannical regimes, dislodged only by court intrigue and assassination. Since civil society could not guarantee the rule of law, the wuxia knight-errant became the central hero of popular imagination. He or she was an outlaw who could deliver vengeance in a society where law held no sway. The revenge motive took on moral resonance through the Confucian scale of obligations: the child owes a duty to the father, the pupil to the teacher. The wuxia plot often presents a struggle between social loyalty and personal desires, as when in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Li Mu-bai's final mission to avenge the death of his teacher prevents him from simply retiring from the Giang Hu world to live with Shu-lien.
Wuxia characters and plots entered Peking Opera in the nineteenth century, where dazzling acrobatics added to their impact. Wuxia novels, often serialized in newspapers and running to hundreds of pages, became mass literature in Shanghai shortly thereafter. As Chinese filmmaking emerged in the 1920s, screenwriters drew stories from martial arts plays and novels, building scripts around both male and female adventurers. (Most Westerners are surprised to find how central women warriors are the wuxia tradition.) The epic Shanghai film "Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery" (1928), released in eighteen parts, became a progenitor of the fantasy film. Using flying daggers and wirework, it employed over 300 martial artists. The genre grew during the interwar years, both on the mainland and among the emigré companies of Hong Kong. When Mao's 1949 revolution dictated new cinema policies, Hong Kong and Taiwan held a monopoly on wuxia filmmaking.
To serve Hong Kong's large Asian market, films were made in both Cantonese (the local Chinese dialect) and Mandarin (the more widely spoken dialect). Cantonese wuxia pian of the 1950s and early 1960s emphasized magic and fantasy. Warriors soared endlessly, swords and daggers turned to fire, and fighters' hands could emit jagged bolts of lightning to stun their opponents ("palm power"). The plots were sketchy and the special effects were crude (sometimes scratched directly on the film negative), but the supernatural films established some permanent techniques of the genre. Reverse-motion shooting created impossible stunts, like leaping onto a roof. Hidden trampolines launched fighters into the air, and strong wires kept them aloft. On the soundtrack, thunderous whooshes underscored leaps and blows.
In reaction to the Cantonese fantasy films there emerged the "new wuxia pian," a school of more realistic swordplay films influenced by Japanese movies and a younger generation of martial arts novelists. Filmed in Mandarin and produced by big studios like Shaw Brothers, these tales didn't shy away from giving their warriors astonishing abilities, but the supernatural aura vanished. Now feats were presented as things which could be executed by a very disciplined fighter. In "The Jade Bow" (1966), the hero and heroine pursue ninja-like assassins over rooftops with a fluidity that seems only a slight exaggeration of natural human grace. Women warriors remained central to the tradition, but now they were given opportunities to contrast their styles with men's. Cheng Pei-pei became famous and known as the "Queen of wuxia pian" for her roles in "Come Drink with Me" (1966) and "Golden Swallow" (1968). In "Fourteen Amazons "(1972), when an army's generals are massacred, their widows take up arms to avenge them in spectacular combat sequences.
The Mandarin wuxia pian also intensified realism by focusing not on aristocrats but on commoners, tormented heroes and heroines driven by ambition or revenge or devotion to justice and undergoing extreme physical suffering. Zhang Che quickly built a reputation for his sadomasochistic swordplay dramas, emblematized in his "One-Armed Swordsman" (1967) and "New One-Armed Swordsman" (1971). In contrast were the delicate, lyrical masterworks of King Hu. Hu brought the energy and finesse of classical Chinese theater and painting to the new swordplay movie. His films lingered on breathtaking landscapes, treated swordfights as airborne ballets, and created a gallery of reserved, preternaturally calm warriors who fought not for prestige or vengeance but to preserve humane values. Perhaps the most famous scene in all the new wuxia pian comes midway through Hu's "A Touch of Zen" (1971), where a combat unfolds in a quiet bamboo grove. Although fighters clash in midair, hurling themselves from spindly branches high above the ground or dive-bombing one another in a flurry of fast cuts, the overall impression is of poise - the sheer serenity of perfectly judged physical movement.
Swordplay films fell out of favor in the mid-1970s as kung-fu swept the world and gave the Hong Kong film industry a cheaper genre to exploit. Still, there were efforts to revive the wuxia pian. Patrick Tam's brooding "The Sword" (1980) reflected Japanese influence. Action choreographer Ching Siu-tung turned to directing, and created a supple, modern flying swordplay style in "Duel to the Death" (1982). At a less spectacular level, the great Shaws kung-fu director Lau Kar-leung turned to wuxia swordplay in his comedy "Shaolin vs. Ninja" (1978) and especially in "Legendary Weapons of China" (1982), a virtual anthology of wuxia devices, both magical (a magician controls a fighter from a distance by manipulating a doll) and historical (the final fight scene displays over a dozen weapons and fighting techniques).
Above all, it was producer-director Tsui Hark who spearheaded the revival of all manner of wuxia. Tsui's first film, "The Butterfly Murders" (1979), enhanced swordplay with futuristic weaponry, and he went on to revive fantasy swordplay in his dazzling, flamboyant "Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain" (1983), for which he imported Hollywood special-effects experts. He went on to team with Ching siu-tung for the trailblazing "Chinese Ghost Story" (1987), which melded supernatural swordplay, horror, comedy, and romance. With its bisexual ghost and animated skeletons, "A Chinese Ghost Story" triggered a fashion for flamboyant, almost campy swordplay fantasies. Tsui knew a good thing when he saw it. His productions "The Swordsman I" (1990) and "Swordsman II: The East Is Red" (1992), "Green Snake" (1993), and other hits relied on gender-bending transformations, outrageous aerobatics, thundering music, and stunning set designs. They also showcased Brigitte Lin, Jet Li, Joey Wang, Maggie Cheung, and other popular stars of the period.
Like all Hong Kong cycles, the updated fantasy wuxia wound down, and a new trend surfaced. Under Tsui's auspices Yuen Wo-ping, one of the great kung-fu choreographers and directors, made "Iron Monkey" (1993), a mixture of kung-fu and swordplay that was also grounded in the reality of traditional techniques. Daniel Lee's fascinating "What Price Survival?" (1994) featured classic wuxia performers in an enigmatic tale pitting Japanese and Chinese swordsmen against one another. Tsui himself revisited the 1960s grittier wuxia pian tradition in "The Blade" (1995), a savage and tumultuous tale in which a one-armed swordsman avenges his wounding and his father's death. Most important was Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time" (1994), told in laconic dialogues over wine, splintered flashbacks, and strobe-pulsed fight scenes, all awash in a melancholic score. Ashes offers a poetic meditation on the wuxia tradition itself, as old fighters brood over their wasted lives, mourning the youth and loves they have lost.
ABOUT WUXIA PIAN A "xia" is a knight-errant, who might come from any class, and wuxia involves knightly chivalry. The Chinese concept of the knight-errant originates the fourth century BC, but chivalric stories as we know them today go back to the T'ang dynasty, around the ninth century AD. Some were literary efforts composed by men of learning, others were oral tales and ballads in colloquial prose or simple verse. By the seventeenth century, these forms had become a flourishing fictional genre concentrating on vagabond warriors who display outstanding courage, honor, and fighting skills. Magical elements had also entered the mix, so knights were often given superhuman powers - flying, hurling balls of fire, becoming invisible. Many stories played on the boundary between pure fantasy and what might be barely possible for a supremely trained and gifted warrior - not really flying but the "weightless leap"; not being invulnerable but being able, through control of breathing, to make one's body as hard as iron. To enjoy the wuxia tale we must grant that supreme skill in martial arts could give a fighter extraordinary powers.
ABOUT THE WEAPONRY The Chinese martial tradition, a bit like Chinese cuisine, presents astonishing variety. The country is so vast, and its local fighting traditions so diverse, that a well-stocked armory indicates a frightening range of ways to inflict damage on other humans.
Central to the wuxia mythology is the sword. Chinese distinguish between double-bladed ones, calling them swords proper, and single-bladed ones, which regardless of size and design are usually called knives. There are broadswords like the Green Destiny Sword in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and lighter sabre-like swords, as well as heavy cutlass-like blades (often pierced with rings to snag the opponent's weapon and to distract the opponent with their clanging). Shorter swords are often used in pairs, such as the so-called "butterfly swords," and the emei, or blades with arrow-like points at each end.
Western fans often assume that the exotic weaponry on display in wuxia films is an invention of moviemakers, but very often it comes from tradition. The simple staff, which may be as long as seven feet, can also have one or two joints (making it useful for delivering a hard, swinging blow or for enclosing an opponent's arm). Bruce Lee popularized the short jointed staff, best known by its Japanese name, nunchaku. Whips may be sectional as well. Spears come in a dazzling variety of shapes, including the jagged-edged "snakehead" spear and the hook-spear. Spears often have colorful tassels or feathers which distract the opponent from the blade's maneuvers. There are hand axes, hammers with heavy spherical heads, and heavy cudgels with bulbous, gourd-shaped heads. For throwing there are darts and arrows, razor-edged stars and boomerang-style blades, and the infamous "flying guillotine," a rattan basket with an opening lined with knives. During the 1960s and 1970s, many wuxia pian built their plots around the sheer variety of Chinese arms. Zhang Che's "New One-Armed Swordsman," for instance, gave the villain a two-jointed staff, the secondary protagonist a pair of heavy butterfly swords, and the main protagonist a single light broadsword, so the combat was not only among fighters but among weapons and techniques.
DAVID BORDWELL is a Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his many books include On the History of Film Style and the recently published, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment.
Ang Lee: The Wuxia is a particularly Chinese type of hero (or heroine). Wu means martial, and a rough equivalent for xia in Western culture would be knight-errant. Unlike the knight-errant, however, the Wuxia is a free spirit, not belonging to any class. In the world of the Wuxia, the most important values are honor, loyalty and individual justice.
These qualities became ideals, and the Wuxia became a mythical, larger than life hero in the Chinese imagination. By the Ching Dynasty, in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Wuxia fiction was very popular. The story of the Wuxia became a fantasy of power, romance and moral duty embodied by Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien in "Crouching Tiger."
As the genre developed, the Wuxia character became a more independent figure, often serving the basic principles of honor and justice themselves, rather than a particular master. In this respect, the Wuxia is not unlike the familiar Western hero the lone cowboy riding into town to exact justice and right wrongs. The world of the Wuxia is different from that of society. The Wuxia operates in a realm under the surface of society and the rule of law, called Giang Hu. A world made up of individuals and their relationships, rather than the collective and the government. These relationships can exist entirely outside of the law. For example, the Wuxia can be a member of an underground, Mafia-type organization, but loyalty and honor are still the main values. In serving a master, the Wuxia keeps his or her word, even to the point of death. (Today, the term Giang Hu has a broader meaning, referring to the entanglements of life and relationships in a society).
According to some friends of mine who spent time in the Australian Army, including one who was there when they changed over to the AusSteyr (modded Steyr AUG), the difference is tangible, but easy to overcome with instruction and practice. That said, the one who was in at the changeover was unimpressed, especially with the trigger, which he described as "mushy".
The costume looks good, so we will complain because it mixes the same colours as other costumes.
I'll be happy if it simply turns out that Wally is not the Season 3 "Speedster who infiltrates the team as a friend but turns out to be the Big Bad Guy for the season". Why couldn't Jay Garrick actually BE Jay Garrick?
I got it bad, you don't know how bad I got it You got it easy, you don't know when you've got it good It's getting harder just keeping life and soul together I'm sick of fighting, even though I know I should
The cold is biting through each and every nerve and fiber My broken spirit is frozen to the core I don't want to be here no more
Wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes Even if it was for just one day Wouldn't it be good if we could wish ourselves away
Wouldn't it be good to be on your side The grass is always greener over there Wouldn't it be good if we could live without a care
She said, there is no reason And the truth is plain to see. But I wandered through my playing cards And would not let her be One of sixteen vestal virgins Who were leaving for the coast And although my eyes were open They might have just as well've been closed
When I look back upon my life it's always with a sense of shame I've always been the one to blame For everything I long to do no matter when or where or who has one thing in common too
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin It's a sin Everything I've ever done Everything I ever do Every place I've ever been Everywhere I'm going to It's a sin
At school they taught me how to be so pure in thought and word and deed They didn't quite succeed For everything I long to do no matter when or where or who has one thing in common too
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin It's a sin Everything I've ever done Everything I ever do Every place I've ever been Everywhere I'm going to It's a sin
Father forgive me I tried not to do it Turned over a new leaf then tore right through it Whatever you taught me I didn't believe it Father you fought me 'cause I didn't care and I still don't understand
So I look back upon my life forever with a sense of shame I've always been the one to blame For everything I long to do no matter when or where or who has one thing in common too
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin It's a sin Everything I've ever done Everything I ever do Every place I've ever been Everywhere I'm going to I It's a sin
Nights in white satin Never reaching the end Letters I've written Never meaning to send Beauty I've always missed With these eyes before Just what the truth is I can't say any more 'Cause I love you Yes I love you Oh how I love you
Gazing at people some hand in hand Just what I'm going through they can't understand Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend Just what you want to be you will be in the end
And I love you Yes I love you Oh how I love you Oh how I love you
Nights in white satin Never reaching the end Letters I've written Never meaning to send Beauty I've always missed With these eyes before Just what the truth is I can't say any more
'Cause I love you Yes I love you Oh how I love you Oh how I love you 'Cause I love you Yes I love you Oh how I love you Oh how I love you
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