Home for the night

As I do not have to pick up A until 7 am. I went over to a YKWIA's and watched Hero, a Chinese film with Jet Li. It has absolutely beautiful cinematography, interesting martial arts scenes, and a haunting, moving story. (Romantic tragedy always gets me; I cried at the end.) It felt like the audience doesn't merely watch but goes into another time and another culture. YKWIA pointed out that the colour changes that happen with each flashback sequence correspond to the colours of the Chinese elements. According to Wikipedia, there is some controversy over the translation into English:

There has been some criticism of the film for its American-release translation of one of the central ideas in the film: (tiān xià). It literally means 'under heaven' or 'under the firmament', and is a Chinese phrase to mean 'The World'. The translation 'Our land' seems to denote just the nation of China rather than the whole world....Another problem with translation is the title of the film itself. In Chinese there are no singular or plural tenses, so the original title does not imply as to which it refers — 'Hero' or 'Heroes' — thereby giving the western title an unnecessary distinction that does not correspond to the original mystery.

If you haven't seen it, you might give it a try. It has a slower pace than Western films, even though it's only 98 minutes long. Time seems to stretch out, but the film is never boring.