OFF: That one obscure album.. Conan

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On sön 28 mar 1999 14.05 -0600 "Laj Waldner" <erebus7 at DLCWEST.COM> wrote:
> That reminds me of a pretty good Japanese Martial Arts picture
> called "Snake in the Monkeys Shadow"(that's got to be obscure).

     Is that Japanese?  I thought it was Chinese--though perhaps
I'm becoming confused with _Snake in the Eagle's Shadow_.  Most
of the Japanese fantasy-oriented films I know are animated. HK
started turning out some really top-notch fantasy stuff as the 80s
progressed.  Everyone has become familiar with Jackie Chan and
John Woo, but a lot of the other HK stuff is only now becoming
better known outside its fan-base.  The fantasy stuff draws on
a rich tradition of folk-belief and historical legend which
really transcends anything probably _possible_ in the West.
The average Westerner simply don't have access to the
equivalent kind of tradition anymore.  We end up having to
synthesize entirely new traditions (Star Wars, etc.) because
the old ones aren't well-known enough to be productive--even
Robin Hood and Arthurian stuff, even Westerns (our closest
equivalents) don't match up.

     Right, the folklorist will shut up now, really (I keep
saying this, don't I? ;)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/