Word: li
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...SENTENCED. LI LAN, 47, peasant farmer, to one year in prison for "slander"; in Lanshan, Hunan province, China. Li led a drive to impeach a local police official after her pregnant daughter was killed in a battle between two village clans. She collected more than 1,000 signatures and thumbprints from people saying the police had not done enough to investigate. She was arrested in 2001 shortly after TIME wrote about her efforts...
...genre piece." The implication is: just a genre piece, a diversion, a long sword fight played by grownups. Perhaps the director is thinking of his last purely frivolous work, the 1989 Codename Cougar, a goofy skyjack thriller that outfitted his severe star and muse at the time Gong Li in a tight stewardess uniform. If so, Zhang is underestimating both the power of the movie-epic form and his ability to inhabit and revive...
...plot is a series of tales told by the warrior Nameless (Jet Li) to the Qin King (Chen Daoming). Any or none of the stories may be true; this is Rashomon with a Mandarin accent. But the moral, or rather the ethic, is as clear as it is bleak: man must make war to secure the peace...
...fights, Zhang chose Ching Siu-tung, a renowned choreographer who has also directed 21 features, including such Hong Kong classics as A Chinese Ghost Story, Swordsman II and The Heroic Trio?not to mention a 1989 quickie called A Terracotta Warrior, starring two kids from the mainland, Gong Li and Zhang Yimou. The very first set-to in Hero is a terrific one between Li and Yen. (Each man first imagines the fight, like a chess player visualizing his opponent's possible moves.) How swift their swords! How eloquent their body language...
...Hero is a reunion of sorts for the principals. The four Hong Kong stars?Li, Yen, Cheung and Leung?have combined on various projects before. Ching has put them all through swordplay and wirework. Doyle had shot six films with Leung and three with Cheung. Li and Yen go way back: in the late '70s, they trained together as teens in Beijing. So their rain-soaked battle in Hero has the savor of an ancient schoolyard grudge match...