Over the weekend, the director of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', Ang Lee, won the Best Director award from the Director's Guild of America. This award has been an excellent predictor of who will win on Oscar night - the correlation is about 85% of the time. Of course, this makes me happy, because I picked CTHD and Ang Lee to win. :) I was thinking about CTHD again today, and I wonder what was going through the minds of the Wachowski brothers (creators of 'The Matrix') when they saw this film. I mean, you have to think the benchmark has been significantly raised now, because the fight scenes in CTHD kick the crap outta The Matrix's battles.
Also, how different are these two movies? In both CTHD and The Matrix, there is a student and a master; in the student, there is potential beyond anything anyone's ever seen; in the master, there is confidence in his abilities and trust in his choice of the student. The student has to try and save the master's life, although in CTHD (spoiler!!!), the student is not in time. Perhaps that's the difference - there is tragedy in CTHD, while The Matrix has a more conventional happy ending. I was thinking about this because The Matrix was never even considered as a Best Picture nominee the year it came out, even though it has had a greater impact on Hollywood and filmmaking than any other picture released that year. It makes you wonder what kind of standards are being used by the Academy. I'll bet that if Morpheus or Trinity had died, The Matrix would have gotten a lot more respect from critics. They're suckers for that kind of weepy crap. :)