That’s a great explanation of “good puppetry” – and very kind. Regarding “The Forbidden Kingdom,” which time are you talking about that you didn’t like? The first time I watched it, the ninth? I’m not really sure what you mean.

Rita

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@Andrew: Good to hear! What I found amusing is that the Commentluv link below your comment links to a post on your blog that links to this post on my blog. Kinda circular there.

@Mary: Thanks for dropping by! I am not familiar with Yang Feng’s work, so maybe i’ll dig around for more info about that. As for this particular type of puppetry, the rod is a tradition carried over from the glove puppetry days. While each glove puppet only takes one hand to control, sometimes a rod is put into one of the hands to do more delicate actions like using a fan or a paintbrush. The rod carried over to these enlarged puppets rigged specifically for TV. They are able to have this kind of movements on stage in real time as well, but the characters sleeves must be big (as they usually are) to hide the rod. I would be interested to see what Yang Feng has done with the mechanisms. Another thing i’m curious about is the internal control mechanisms of Vietnamese water puppets…

There’s another style of Chinese handpuppet that Yang Feng invented which has all internal controls and can do this kind of martial arts arm movement in real time onstage. Tears of Joy built a set of them for the production of Monkey King that he directed. The controls are a very impressive and highly engineered set of springs and levers worn on the hand and give an astonishing range of movement.

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As a Jet Li lover, you have ruined my day! Oh, please tell me he had NOTHING to do with poor puppetry! I don’t know what I’d do!

Then again, at least you’ve left Jackie Chan alone…for now. Watch out there, buddy. He and I are VERY good friends! (Though ALL of the young women in his dubbed – blech- videos have the same high voice. Good ones, bad ones, it doesn’t matter. Is there only ONE woman who can speak the language and dubs all of his films…?) I digress.

So, who do YOU think made the video? And were they “good puppeteers” in your eye, despite the visibiity of the “rod?”

Rita

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