Two movies, a mailbox and a bookshelf

Last night we went to see Aaltra, a French-language film about two guys who hate each other but end up spending a whole lot of time together.  It starts out with the guys as neighbours-from-hell in the country; one is a farm hand and the other is a sad-sack who's trying out telecommuting.  They end up having a big scrap, a little too close to a large and unsafely-designed farm vehicle, and both end up in wheelchairs.  To cut a long story short (and it is quite long, at almost 2 1/2 hours), both wheelchair-bound men are on their way out of town when they are mugged and left without any money.  They get by on the kindness of strangers, but they're both obnoxious, greedy and inconsiderate sods who take advantage of anyone who'll help.   Aaltra is the name of the firm which manufactured the piece farm equipment which fell on them, and it's where the men both arrive at by the end of the story.  Far from being a feel-good story about foes who unite through common adversity, it's more of a dark comedy of two foes who... unite...um... through common adversity.
 
And tonight, we went to see Hero, by Zhang Yimou (the director of Raise the Red Lantern).  It's a visually gorgeous movie about a small group of master swordsmen (and woman) whose goal is to assassinate the man who's been conquering all the Chinese states.  Like The Emperor and the Assassin, it's  basically about China's first emperor and some of the multitudes of people who wanted him dead.  The usual fighting-in-the-air, characteristic of traditional Chinese martial arts movies, is there.  The thing which really stands out though, is not the fighting nor the story - it's the cinematography.  Beautiful colours, billowing curtains, divinely lovely gardens, armies which would have required thousands of extras, this film is truly a spectacle.  I'm a bit cynical of the way the emperor is portrayed though - he's shown as a basically good man who just wants his country to be one peaceful nation - I read elsewhere that he was power-hungry and ruthless (he once ordered 450 scholars to be buried alive, just to prove a point).
 
Just in case you decide to go see Hero, I'd be interested to know whether you agree with me that Zhang Ziyi, who plays the servant Moon, really does look like a Chinese Winona Ryder.
 
The mailbox saga has ended.  Yesterday we: wrenched the sexy-but-useless new mailbox off my fence; I returned it to Placemakers and got a refund; I found an absolutely fab new mailbox at Heartlands which is just as sexy as the previous one but doesn't have the flawed key'n'lock system.  I don't normally get excited about mailboxes but this one will end all my mail woes.  Hurrah.
 
I had to buy an electric drill gun in order to get the latest mailbox mounted up on the fence, so we decided to put some shelves up while we were at it.  In the end, we settled for a kitset bookshelf.  At last we can house most of my books, plus all of the boy's DVDs and videos.  Unfortunately, we had to rip off the old too-small bookshelves which were painted onto the wall, and now we have some exposed ugly wallpaper in the shape of the old bookshelf.
 
Not the most fun weekend, but certainly the most productive.