Pet Peeves and The Forbidden Kingdom

I saw The Forbidden Kingdom today on a bit of a whim. A few points - the first being that digital projection/filming made the cinematography amazing. It's one of the things that can work both for a movie (e.g. Yifei Liu) or really against it (making what might have been slightly unrealistic backdrops into obviously fake ones or Michael Angarano's skin).

The fight scenes are generally brilliant as one might expect despite (or possibly especially because of) their ability to defy the laws of physics and a few initial awkward moments. The one thing that bugs me about movies like this, is the bad Chinese accents (whoever thought that Jet Li or Jackie Chan could handle more than a few lines in English - especially when talking to each other should be fired). It would have been far better had they used subtitles. Otherwise, while it wasn't worth $10 bucks, I was entertained - and because it was highly predictable I did go in entirely unworried that there would be a happy ending.