Recently I Twittered (tweeted, whatever) about the sudden disappearance of the JamesBurkeFan collection of videos on YouTube containing the entirety of “Connections” (1, 2 and 3) as well as “The Day The Universe Changed,” my favorite educational series of all time. Turned out that YouTube pulled the videos at the request of the publisher of the upcoming new boxed set of “Universe Changed.”

Oh, by the way? My birthday is coming up…

Alan Carre, the man behind the JamesBurkeFan collection, stopped by a couple of days ago to let me know that he’s back on YouTube. Awfully nice for a guy to follow me back here from Twitter, I think! Check out his page, say something nice, and patronize the folks offering the boxed sets if you can. I particularly recommend the original “Connections” and, of course, “The Day The Universe Changed.”

We managed to miss seeing it in the theater, so Kyla picked this one up on DVD a while back. Last night we made time to take it in. And oh, there’s so much to take in!

“Curse of the Golden Flower” is an expensive and beautiful Chinese film portraying an imperial family that, to put it simply, is one hell of a mess. The Emperor, his three sons, his consort, and the family of his key physician are almost the entirety of the cast… if you set aside the small army of servants and large army of… well, soldiers. I’ll try not to spoil much of the plot, but suffice to say that nobody has truly clean hands among the royal family.

The trailers make this movie look like just another pretty, wire-fu spectacle starring Chow Yun Fat. In fact the martial arts action is quite limited, and appropriately so. What we get instead is a slow-boiling cauldron of familial frustration, plots and counterplots, and a peel-the-layers sense that these people are all quite dreadfully messed up and miserable. As all hell finally breaks loose we’re treated to a series of action set pieces slightly more grounded in reality than one would expect, and it’s all the more effective for the restraint. (“House of Flying Daggers,” by comparison, becomes so completely absurd in this regard that the dramatic, tragic ending is thoroughly weakened because the audience’s suspension of disbelief is trampled beyond repair.)

In the meantime there’s plenty of good performances and outstanding costumes and sets to gaze upon. Seriously, this is a lavishly gorgeous film that you could run with the sound and subtitles off just for the sake of feasting on the eye candy. Apparently this is the most expensive Chinese feature film to date, and there’s no doubt that every penny of the cost made it to the screen.

If you’re remotely interested in Asian cinema, “Curse” should be on your “to see” list even if you don’t end up purchasing a copy. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and even someone who enjoys these movies as much as I do probably won’t watch it often. We’re not talking about a cheerful and uplifting film, after all, but Chinese actions dramas rarely feature happy endings. Still, this is a better movie sporting more depth than I originally expected, and is definitely worth the time.

I leave you with this parting thought: When in doubt, bet on the assassins with the chain-sickles. Those guys kick ass.

It’s one of my all-time favorite movies, finally out on DVD. Rock the hell on!

So what do you do when you’re handed a DVD, you look at the cover and title, and you pop the disc into your player right away because you’re certain that this is going to be a fun show to see… and then you have to work continually throughout the viewing to keep your enthusiasm up?

That pretty much sums up my experience with Pioneer’s Armitage: Dual-Matrix release, the sequel to the vastly-superior Armitage III: Poly-Matrix, itself a conglomeration of the original Armitage OAVs. I wanted to like this movie a lot. Instead I can only like it a little bit.

What’s wrong with it, you ask? The animation quality is good, but just a little too “computery.” The plot is good, but just a little too “contrived.” The voice work is good, but just a little too “cheesy.” (How often, by the way, do we need to be told that Juliette Lewis is the voice of Armitage? Big whoop, Pioneer.)

The story feels like it takes place in a vacuum, or that it’s a stage show with pretty sets but no background characters taking up available space. One gets the impression that for all the effort the animators went to in order to show us cool fight scenes, they didn’t want to be bothered animating background characters.

I won’t bore you with a plot synopsis. Suffice to say that the robot-girl Armitage is given cause to take a trip to Earth to provide us with lots of butt-kicking action. Oh, and her daughter is used as an emotional pawn at least once. And her husband spends a lot of time standing around like a statue. Hmm, I’ve given too much away already.

There are other minor problems as well, including a fully-3D car chase that looks, well, fully-3D. One also wonders at the animation technique used, since a lot of the shadows that fall on characters’ faces have stair-step jaggies. Every time I see that particular artifact I get pulled completely out of the story, amazed that anyone could have missed that glaring error even once, let alone as often as you see it in this film.

One positive note (pun intended) is that the Special Edition release has very pretty menus, including the option to play three of the musical selections in 5.1 surround sound. However, once the novelty of this feature has worn off you realize that the music isn’t all that great to begin with. It’s not bad, it’s just… not that good either. Sort of like the rest of this feature. The “making of” featurette is better than I expected, with the exception of the terrible interview with Juliette Lewis. One wonders if she threw some sort of star-power fit to get so much of her face and name on this release.

Oh yes, and check out Ahmed Best doing his best (pun intended) Jar-Jar impersonation. But wait, he is the voice of Jar-Jar. Um.

I do plan to use this DVD to make a music video or two, as it does contain a great many nicely-animated action sequences. If you’re handed this disc as a freebie, enjoy. If you’re out shopping, skip over this one in favor of the original.