Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
31	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	1	2	3	4

Jing Ke ci Qin Wang / The Emperor and the Assassin (1998)

Posted By: Rare-1

Date: 7 Jun 2015 13:47:26

In the 3rd Century BC, Ying Zheng, heir to the Kingdom of Qin, seeks to dominate the remaining six Chinese kingdoms. Ying's strategy is to seem invincible. Ying sends his concubine Zhao to the Han Kingdom as a spy, to enlist an assassin he can conquer. Zhao persuades Jing Ke, but falls in love.

IMDB 7.3/10 from 5104 users

Director: Kaige Chen
Writer: Kaige Chen, Peigong Wang
Actors: Li Gong, Fengyi Zhang, Zhou Sun, Xiaohe Lü
Rated: R
Runtime: 161 min

Set in 221 BC, The Emperor and the Assassin tells of Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian) and his obsession to unite seven Chinese kingdoms and become the first Emperor of China. The film mixes spectacular battle scenes with court intrigue, counterpointed by the King's complex relationship with the only woman he has truly loved, the Lady Zhao (Gong Li). From protocol-ridden palaces to wide open grasslands, this is a visually striking film, both beautiful and at the same time burdened with the horrors of the period.

Though this was the most expensive film ever made in China, director Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) nevertheless retains a tight reign on character and psychology, recalling Kurosawa's Ran (1985) and Kagemusha (1980). The cast, particularly the two leads, are magnificent and both production design and score are first rate. While the unfolding story has similar appeal to Gladiator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it can be as confusing and jarringly edited as the original (pre-director's cut) version of The Last Emperor (1987), and for the same reason–despite its 154 minutes–the film was cut by approximately 30 minutes prior to release. The full version may eventually reveal a masterpiece, though in its present form it is still an exceptionally powerful and compelling drama.

Review:

As Hollywood, and increasingly Britain, specialises more and more in the utterly obvious, it is a blessed relief to enter not only a quite different world but one which is filmed quite differently as well. The grand historical epics which engage us (or not) normally include battles which, for maximum impact (the director believes), have to last an age and have blood spilling everywhere. In "The Emperor and the Assassin", battles are briefer and far less bloody, yet the severe violence of this, to us, unknown era is still captured by director Chen Kaige who also made "Farewell My Concubine". Chen achieves surprise by shifting from one scene to another in ways you just can't predict, but this originality never once threatens the coherence of the film.

The director's one mistake is his fondness for pretty pictures which are either harnessed to powerful, surging drama (often communicating the instability of China in the third century BC) or to moments of inertia which mean Chen should have moved much more quickly on to the next scene.

A tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, "The Emperor and the Assassin" centres on the antics of King Ying Zheng whose decency soon gives way to violence as he tries to subjugate the other Chinese states, even going so far as to plan - with his concubine - a phoney assassination attempt on his own life so as to give himself a raison d'être. Becoming known for the fairly trivial fact that it is the priciest picture ever made in Asia, "The Emperor and the Assassin" in fact gives us striking insights into an unfamiliar period of history, thus reminding us just how little of the world most films cover.

– Michael Thomson (BBCi - Films)

Extra Director's commentary track in English is included

More Screenshots:

Media Info:

General
Unique ID : 241153647777253359239756135426681955417 (0xB56C80CE206983B5BF96C92493336459)
Complete name : F:\The Emperor and the Assassin (1998) – Chen Kaige\The Emperor and the Assassin (1998) – Chen Kaige.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 2.35 GiB
Duration : 2h 41mn
Overall bit rate : 2 087 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2015-05-31 14:30:27
Writing application : mkvmerge v7.7.0 ('Six Voices') 32bit built on Feb 28 2015 23:23:00
Writing library : libebml v1.3.1 + libmatroska v1.4.2
DURATION : 02:37:15.167000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES : 1293
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 35791
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP : mkvmerge v7.7.0 ('Six Voices') 32bit built on Feb 28 2015 23:23:00
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC : 2015-05-31 14:30:27
_STATISTICS_TAGS : BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2h 41mn
Bit rate : 1 700 Kbps
Width : 706 pixels
Height : 548 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.85:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.183
Stream size : 1.87 GiB (80%)
Writing library : x264 core 146 r2538 121396c
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=30 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=3 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=15 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=240 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1700 / ratetol=3.0 / qcomp=0.70 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=14000 / vbv_bufsize=14000 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
DURATION : 02:41:00.417000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES : 231850
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 2052780763
_STATISTICS_WRITING_APP : mkvmerge v7.7.0 ('Six Voices') 32bit built on Feb 28 2015 23:23:00
_STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC : 2015-05-31 14:30:27
_STATISTICS_TAGS : BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES

Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 41mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 221 MiB (9%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 41mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 221 MiB (9%)
Default : No
Forced : No

Text #1
ID : 4
Format : VobSub
Muxing mode : zlib
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text #2
ID : 5
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Default : No
Forced : No

Great Ebooks Collections: