THE STORYBOARD

Growing Up Adults

2009-10-18T14:05:00.003+08:00

Perhaps it is Western parents, in particular American parents, who take issue with the "darkness" of children's tales. Why do we feel the need to shield children from reality to the extent that the things suitable for their age are excluded as well?

I agree with the movie's writer Dave Eggers:

"There is a whitewashed, idealised version of childhood that is popular in movies. It has the kids sitting neatly in their chairs, talking with some adult, in a sarcastic, overly sophisticated but polite way – a concoction that bears no resemblance to an actual kid."

I always like to take, as an example, one of the greatest children's tales by master storyteller Miyazaki Hayao - My Neighbour Totoro. Here within the story are two instances of fear - a crumbling old house with a dark upstairs full of clandestine creatures scurrying around, and a mother who may be dying. One is the fear of the unknown, surely a trait we carry with us into adulthood. The other is the fear of loss, another universal and timeless feature. I think the more important detail is always to provide the child with a sense of hope, even when things may seem hopeless. Such as the cob of corn at the end of Totoro, the metaphorical link to an endless future.

Byte-Size Critiques

2009-10-06T12:00:00.004+08:00

This is the Age Of Lazy. We want our information quick and easy. It used to be that we go to the library if we want to look up something. But thanks to the Internet, the purveyor of laziness, everything's just a click away. No, mailing a handwritten letter takes just too much time. An email takes just seconds. An encyclopaedia is just too bulky, and we'd have to get up off our asses to get it off the shelf. No, Wikipedia is so much more convenient, no matter that the information there may not be 100% accurate.

And that's the entire history and analysis of Rotten Tomatoes (and to a certain extent, IMDB), why it's so popular especially among pop culture enthusiasts. No one wants to read long, carefully written, painstakingly thought-out critiques anymore. They just want to know, how many percent is it on the Tomatometer?

Don't give us the details; just show us the general consensus.

And you wonder why film criticism is dead.

Living Young

2009-09-17T20:43:00.003+08:00

A string of diappointments, after the excellent Toy Story 1 and 2. American animated films, in general, are overly talky, eschewing the importance and beauty of silence. When animated films in other languages - My Neighbour Totoro, for instance - are dubbed for Stateside, extra dialogue is added into scenes originally silent. Wall-E came close to finally silencing the noise, at least in its first half. The terribly overrated Ratatouille was unbearable in its sonic assault.

But Up is a different breed altogether.

This time, Pixar has displayed incredible restraint, letting crucial scenes play out in silence, allowing gestures to do the talking. A critical plot point happens with the protagonist silently flipping through the pages of a scrapbook. A revelatory page, and a familiar gesture, and we understand the implications of it all.

But the most interesting thing about Up, is its striking irony. This is a kids' movie about what it means to be a kid, yet the lead character is a 78-year-old man. Many have taken the story to be about growing old. In part, it is, but more pertinent is that it's about staying young. It's about not losing the child in us, the child who dares to dream the impossible, like flying a house using thousands of helium-filled balloons. The child who sits on the kerb enjoying an ice-cream with his friend and playing childish games like "red and blue cars." Life is one big adventure, because that's the only way we will survive it.

With its wildly imaginative collection of a flying house, talking dogs, technicolour birds and such, it's as if Pixar has made a movie about itself.

Kelvin And The Host

2009-09-12T15:51:00.004+08:00

This piece of news came earlier this week. The Host 2, the sequel to Bong Joon-ho's family drama/actioner, is now a Korea-Singapore co-production. And somewhere in there is the name Kelvin Tong; he's the joint producer.

Now, name a film that Tong has directed that is of unquestionable quality. Difficult, isn't it? Perhaps he will do better as producer this time. Who knows?

Now, if you noticed, I called The Host a "family drama." Because that's really what it is. Compared to the entire runtime of the movie, the appearance of the monster is brief. But judging from this quote:

Producer and Chungeorahm Film's chief executive, Mr Choi Yong-Bae, said he is confident that Host 2 will become "the best Asian creature movie ever."

... someone obviously thinks it's a monster movie in all conventional sense. And that's pretty troubling.

The Man From Hong Kong

2009-09-11T23:20:00.003+08:00

The greatest character actor in the world. Hands down. You can find him in almost any Hong Kong movie.

Faces And Places

2009-09-10T12:23:00.002+08:00

If we currently have the Malaysian tag team of Woo Ming Jin and Edmund Yeo competing in Venice, then it's a triple threat at the Toronto International Film Festival - Tsai Ming-liang, Chris Chong and Ho Yuhang.

Tsai is there with his Louvre-commissioned Visages, Chong with his Cannes Directors' Fortnight film Karaoke, and Ho with Locarno Netpac winner At The End Of Daybreak.

Tsai's film is perhaps the most interesting, a combination of art installation and film, a new hybrid that Chong also advocates. You can read about it here.

“I think of the film as a moving painting imprinted on celluloid,” said the director, who spent three years studying the paintings at the Louvre. “It is Tsai trying to find a new expression for the art in his head.”

Still: At The End Of Daybreak

Film Merchants Of Venice

2009-09-07T13:25:00.005+08:00

Right this minute, even as we speak, two Malaysian filmmakers are competing at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. One is an old hand and the other is a young and upcoming fella.

Woo Ming Jin's latest film, with its obviously-Hong Sang-soo-inspired title of Woman On Fire Looks For Water, is competing in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section. It will be a "surprise film" and a work-in-progress screening. The news hasn't been widely publicised because Woman got itself a place at the very last minute.

An earlier entry was Edmund Yeo's Japanese short film, Kingyo (Goldfish). Shot with the help of his university, Waseda in Tokyo, the 25-minute film, based on a Yasunari Kawabata short story, is simply one of the best short films by a Malaysian filmmaker that I've seen.

Best of luck to both of them!

Photo: Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta literally "opening" the festival with the film Baaria.

Desire This

2009-09-05T21:44:00.003+08:00

Truly, a reason to rejoice. I've had my MGM Special Edition for some years now. While that edition is fairly good but with little extras, this two-disc Criterion edition should be a great transfer, and it's chockful of extra features - including a commentary track by Colombo himself!

Out October 20.

Little Orphan Immigrant

2009-09-03T08:45:00.002+08:00

Haven't had such a disturbing experience in the cinema in a long time. Orphan's premise isn't new - family adopts child who is not quite there - but it does have a rather original take on the idea. It's always frightening to see such fatalistic downward spiral, helplessly witnessing someone heading towards inevitable doom or self-destruction. It's part of what makes this film so scary, and the pacing is remarkable.

Clearly another horror/thriller film symptomatic of the post-911 fear and paranoia, the increasing isolation of America from the rest of the world. If films of the slasher/torture sub-genre like Hostel and Transsiberian see Americans leaving the comfort of home to venture forth into foreign lands and come face to face with danger, Orphan takes it all back home. Infiltration by little-understood foreign elements, in this case, a mysterious orphan from Russia. Probably the irony here is that the movie is helmed by a Spanish director.

Unfortunately people chose to see this movie as a straightforward negative portrayal of abandoned children, thus drawing a lot of flak from orphanages and the adoption community.

Steps Of Defeat

2009-09-01T09:01:00.009+08:00

No way out. Surrounded by enemies. Relinquishing all hopes, they walk out and down the steps to defeat, ready to face whatever was out there. For one, it is madness. For the other, it is a flurry of arrows.

Watching Kurosawa's Ran again yesterday, I noticed the similarity, the finality of each sequence. After that, the colour schemes used by Zhang Yimou start to show the source of their inspiration as well. But the burning castle is hard to top.

Blue In The Face

2009-08-30T03:19:00.002+08:00

This is what happens when you make lavish claims about your upcoming film. Ridiculous comparisons now abound between James Cameron's 3D extravaganza Avatar and the animated flop Delgo. That Movie Line article holds no water at all. What they claim to be "7 Eeriest Parallels" between the two films seem to be in a hundred other films too. Need we, for a moment, revisit that YouTube comparison between the trailers of Tim Burton's Batman and The Dark Knight? That comparison - same refuse, different garbage bag.

Same goes for this frame-to-frame comparison.

Calling Avatar a potential turkey just based on these comparisons smacks of a desperate attempt at being clairvoyant. One thing Cameron always delivers on is a good story. And that itself is a promising detail.

The question is: how do you edit and do post-production and effects work on a 3D movie? How do you make sure it all looks great in 3D? Because so far, the 2D images haven't been very impressive, but feedback from those who saw the pre-released 15-minute footage say the film lives and breathes 3D wonder and awe.

Hummingbirds

2009-08-29T00:49:00.006+08:00

"Some people are born to sit by a river ... some get struck by lightning ... some have an ear for music ... some are artists ... some swim ... some know buttons ... some know Shakespeare ... some are mothers ... and some people ... dance."

My favourite movie of last year. Life is one big, curious case.

A River Runs Through It

2009-08-28T09:57:00.003+08:00

I'd forgotten how scary this movie really is. A story about the environment, the follies of man in trying to control nature, most of all, a cautionary tale about arrogance. The best, most moving scene for me is at the dinner table, where Jon Voight's character breaks down.

Here they are, the people you thought you were better than, providing you the warmth, comfort and safety you so dearly needed.

Aliens Resurrection

2009-08-27T18:52:00.008+08:00

It's a great, not-to-be-missed and very original and imaginative piece of scifi. It's got exciting action set-pieces. It's moving and emotional.

Yes, we are starved of good mainstream action movies, but do we need to go that far as to heap over-praise on Neill Blomkamp's watchable but ultimately a little disappointing movie about an alien apartheid? Really, despite being mildly entertaining and more engaging than today's (below) average scifi action movie (TF2: ROTF, anyone?), District 9 dares not venture further than its initial premise, a premise laid out more than carefully at breakneck pace and in a mockumentary style. But in trying to streamline the story and focus in on the two main characters, the movie then starts to lose the poignancy, built up in the first half, by filling up the spaces with said action set-pieces and shoot-em-up, chase-and-run moments, and stumbles towards more mediocrity by employing the oft-used shaky cam sensibilities. The only thing that keeps us interested is not the big apartheid allegory but the almost voyeuristic and fetishistic need to find out what will further happen to Wikus, or rather, what other parts of his anatomy would rot off.

While its nuts and bolts are fashioned after the likes of Independence Day (hovering spacecraft, also TV series V), Brundle Fly, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Aliens (the robot suit) and Alien Nation, the theme is just another incarnation, most notably of the rarely-mentioned Enemy Mine, starring Dennis Quaid as a human and Louis Gossett Jr as an alien.

Unlike Enemy Mine, in the end, Wikus doesn't really reconcile with the aliens through better understanding of who they are and what they do.

The Return

2009-08-27T11:22:00.001+08:00

I think it's time to revive this blog. It's been too long a break.

The posts will be shorter, more concise, more to the point.

Starting All Over

2009-05-09T12:58:00.005+08:00

First of all, Sell Out! is currently going through its opening weekend. Personally, and I think a lot of other people, filmmakers and cinemagoers alike, would agree, I feel that Sell Out! is a good, refreshing change for the industry and worth the support. Otherwise, I don't know how long we would have to wait before another film like this will come our way and give us an opportunity for change.

Secondly, as some might have noticed, I've removed my last blog entry. That was written in haste and in anger and heartbreak, but that doesn't mean I've changed my opinion too. I stand by what I said. It's just that I now feel perhaps there is a nicer way of dealing with this whole issue. Antagonism never solves anything anyway (well, OK, sometimes it does, when push needs to become a shove, but ...).

It's easy to lose sight of the Big Picture. And it's even easier within the routines of revenue-generation that occurs over the span of many years. Same thing with the filmmakers themselves, in the haste to get out there and be known. But if everyone could work together in an honest, sincere way, I believe great things could be achieved. But the first and foremost element that should exist is a real passion for film. And that is what's sorely missing, from the business side of film right to some filmmakers themselves, and even to the support side of things.

The amount of complaints I have heard from various people will make anyone throw in the towel. And most of these problems can easily be solved if the right people were put in the right positions - ie, people who are passionate about film. Unfortunately, this is "mutually exclusive" territory - people who love art won't care about money, and people who only want to make money don't give a hoot about art.

Yes, this is also an irony, because this is exactly the issue addressed by Sell Out!. Strange but true. This is also another reason why I love the film. What is in the film is immediately right in front of you in real life.

I admit, the night I visited the cinema a couple of days before the film's release, I experienced an incredible heartbreak at what I saw. There really wasn't any anger, but a very heavy feeling in my heart that things weren't going to change for the industry anytime soon. A feeling that all our efforts came to naught, wasted away.

Still, I came to realise that the most important thing is to not lose hope. Also to not give up the struggle. And so, I do still hope that someday, somehow, a miracle will happen that will change everything overnight.

Otherwise, let's just take one step at a time, and don't stop walking till we get there.

Peace and hope to all.

Excerpt from the last deleted entry:

All this while, I've been supporting and publicising good Malaysian films in the hope that our industry can change for the better. South Korea's mainstream cinema got a boost after Shiri smashed box-office records years ago, and look where they are today, internationally recognised for their mainstream films. Taiwan recently got its own boost with Cape No. 7, not a great film but a really entertaining, feel-good movie that drew audiences in droves.

So far, we've not had anything like that in Malaysian cinema. We had high hopes for Puteri Gunung Ledang some years ago, but that was not the Great Change we had hoped for both in box-office and artistic terms.

And now comes along a really good crowd-pleaser, and what happens? Some cinemas can't be arsed to promote it. It's no surprise, really, because the general consensus among cinema operators would be that Wolverine and Star Trek would make more money, and therefore should be given priority and more visibility.

But this is our own cinema, our own film. If we do not give it a chance now, when would be a good time? Personally, I think Sell Out! presents probably the best opportunity for a booster shot to the arm of our industry. If we miss out on this one, it will take some years before the next one will appear.

Return From The SIFF

2009-04-26T21:27:00.003+08:00

This blog has been deathly quiet of late. Apologies, but it's been a whirlwind of a month at the day job, while preparing for a week-long trip to the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nice to be back at the SIFF after missing it for so many years, although the festival isn't quite the same anymore. I did feel a certain lack of excitement now, and the programming in the last, maybe two, years had been less exciting too. After all, this was the festival where I saw my first Kurosawa Kiyoshi film (Kairo) and first met Tsai Ming-liang. If anything, this year's edition, the first post-Philip Cheah festival, seems a little more nationalistic, what with a plethora of Singapore films making their world premieres and sorts, and the Singapore Film Awards.

I saw two Singapore films this year - A Big Road and White Days. Both were disappointments, the former a bigger letdown. A Big Road treads the fine line between unadulterated emotional wringing and artsy pretentiousness, and falls over into the latter more often than not. Ever since Vive L'Amour, everyone's been trying to copy the minutes-long take of a woman crying or engaging in some overly emotional cinematic exercise. A Big Road has such a scene, of a woman trying on clothes in front of a mirror, which started out as having a surprisingly effective context in the film, but soon degenerates into yawn-inducing, artsy static-cam stunt show.

White Days is even more of a Tsai Ming-liang copycat, albeit married with a Kevin Smith sensibility. I mean, how many films do we need to see in which young people drift aimlessly through life, ranting and yakking their way through the runtime? Clerks has done it much better, so does anyone else really need to make another film like that? Admittedly some of the dialogues were fun and entertaining, but they ultimately lead to nothing, and probably says nothing about the reality of youth in Singapore. They felt more like American versions of Singaporean youths, or rather, Clerks and Slackers transported into the heart of the Lion City.

I missed Blind Pig Who Wants To Fly and Rainbow Troops, and a few others, because tickets to those were sold out fast. But the best film I saw at the SIFF was a Malaysian one. I'll write about that later.

Miscellaneous Miscellany

2009-03-19T23:26:00.002+08:00

I should have written about this last week, but I guess it's never too late. Gone Shopping is showing now at GSC, and it's probably the best Singapore film I've seen in a long time. It's endlessly entertaining, even touching in some parts and has quite something to say about the Lion City's urban culture. If you haven't already seen it, I urge you to.

There's a MacGyver movie in the making. Are we excited or what?

A poster of Where The Wild Things Are is available now. View it here at Twitch. It looks mighty fine.

Those who know me probably won't believe this, but rest assured April 1 is still some ways away, so trust me, this is real: I like the Transformers 2 "leaked" trailer, even though I didn't think much of the first trailer. Now I'm interested to see it.

Lastly, check out the official trailer for musical comedy Sell Out!, directed by Yeo Joon Han. The film will be screening at the Singapore International Film Festival on April 21, so get your tickets now. Otherwise, you'll have to wait till probably May to see it on these shores.

Big Hit Address

2009-03-15T21:43:00.004+08:00

What makes a local hit movie in these parts?

I finally watched the much touted Cape No. 7 (Haijiao Qi Hao) last week, having received the boxed set from YesAsia a few days earlier. It's a gorgeously packaged boxed set, made to look like a real parcel (the original soundtrack CD set looks even more authentic as a parcel sent through the mail).

Now there have been all kinds of analyses of how Cape No. 7 managed to become a box-office juggernaut in Taiwan, like this one, the 7 reflections on Cape No. 7. One of the things told to me by a filmmaker friend in Taipei was that the film became a big hit partly because of word-of-mouth through blogs, and blogs are a big thing in Taiwan. And to have good word-of-mouth that spreads like wildfire, the film must have done something right too.

Just as a piece of commercial filmmaking, Cape No. 7 succeeds on many levels to satisfy the masses (the article I linked here is pretty definitive in its arguments). As far as the art of filmmaking goes, the movie leaves quite some to be desired. While the film tries to have two stories paralleling each other - the past story about a Japanese man who has to leave behind the woman he loves to return to Japan, and the present one about a failed musician who inadvertently falls in love with a Japanese woman - the two stories don't quite resonate against each other very well. And then there are the various loose ends that are left unsatisfactorily hanging. In the end, after building up our anticipation, the mystery of the woman at Cape no. 7 is never quite resolved.

But the film is very funny and entertaining, and the characters endearing, especially the elderly folks. The first comedic scene sets things up very nicely - the hilarious moment at the traffic lights with the temperamental traffic cop. The writing, the acting, the comedic timing - almost everything is perfect. After that, you just can't help but like the film.

Then, of course, there's the anticipation of the lead character finally unveiling his song, South Of The Border. And in between and after that are various other songs that are pretty good ones for the entire mood of the film, including a Kousuke Atari song which is unfortunately not on the OST. The pacing and the build-up go so well that you don't really care about all the loose ends and incompetent resolutions, because once the feel-good factor really kicks in in the last moments of the film, during the big concert finale, you just get swept along.

The only problem is that the humour, delivered mostly in the Hokkien dialect, will largely be lost in translation for non-speakers of the language. The English subtitles certainly don't do justice to the jokes, so western audiences would definitely not get them. So, the film may have been a massive hit in Taiwan, but I don't see the potential of it travelling outside of the region.

That's probably it. To make a local blockbuster hit, you have to have everything local audiences would identify with - language, mannerisms, situations, issues, locales - but that would also mean that your film would be pretty alien to foreigners. Rare is the case where a massive local hit is also a massive international hit. But then again, it might also depend on the genre, because Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon certainly didn't have any problem with both sides of the world. Was it the action? Or was it because it was a period film? Are contemporary films that much harder to deal with?

Cinematic Misdemeanours

2009-03-09T02:20:00.005+08:00

Since there's been a recent barrage of blog posts which are mainly complaints about cinemagoers behaving badly, like so, I thought I'd join in and relate some bad experiences of my own. Here goes:

1. This guy behind me kept kicking the back of my seat. It always happens that the seat-kickers are always folks who are way shorter than me. And there I am usually with my legs not touching the seat in front of me. So it always gets me wondering how they are able to sit in such a way that their knees push, and hard, against the back of my seat. And so, I turned around and told him: "Dude, please stop kicking the back of my chair."

His reply? "But I wasn't doing it on purpose!"

"Whether it was on purpose or not, you were doing it. So, please be more careful and stop it."

2. Just the other day, a group of young people sat in the row behind me. The one right behind me, again, had her knees against the back of my seat. And she was one fidgety person; she shifted in her seat every few minutes. And when she did so, my seat would also be vibrating. I turned around and told her: "Please stop kicking my seat." Fortunately she was intelligent enough to understand what I said and did stop.

3. Two girls, in their 20s, seated next to me,were yakking non-stop throughout the movie, commenting on every single thing, verbally describing what was happening on screen, which really confounded me, because if you could see what was happening on screen, why would you need to describe (I don't know to who) what is happening? I turned to the one next to me and said "Look, do you mind?!" She looked at me like I was a retard, then duly continued yakking with her friend. With a loud, angry remark, I got up and moved two rows to the front.

4. Guy's mobile phone rings and he answers it, talking loudly. I turn to him, tell him: "If you want to talk on your phone, please do it outside!" Surprise, surprise, he actually gets up and goes out the hall.

5. During Spirited Away, again two girls were yakking away, this time a row behind me. So you can imagine how loud they were. It reached a point when I couldn't take it anymore, turned around, stretched out my arm and waved it at them, and told them: "Could you shut up?!" Guess what, they didn't. What else could I do? So the entire movie experience was ruined.

6. During CJ7, a couple next to me were talking loudly and non-stop. Big mistake for them because I'm a huge Stephen Chow fan. I kept my cool, and did my best to ignore them. But the last straw was when the guy's mobile phone went off ... and he answered it. It was all a blur after that, but I think what I basically did was hit the guy on the shoulder real hard and told him to shut up. I think he was shocked, as I was at my own behaviour. He and his girlfriend were then quiet as mice for the rest of the movie. I don't recommend this to anyone, really. On hindsight, I think I could have been killed or maimed. For a movie? Not worth it.

7. I was watching a Star Trek movie (forget which one). And this kid in the back started to throw a noisy tantrum. I thought it would eventually stop, but the kid just kept on going like the Energiser Bunny. Now, it's not the kid's fault, of course. Kids are kids. But the adult should know better than to bring a kid to a Star Trek movie. And it's the adult's responsibility to make sure the kid behaves. So I turned around and shouted: "Could you please shut the kid up!!!" (I'm always polite.) The father uttered a little "Sorry" and carried the kid out the back exit. I'm pretty sure most of the other patrons secretly thanked me.

8. It's never the kid's fault. And so, I was watching Spider-Man 3, and there were this guy, his wife, and his mother seated a few seats to my right. Behind them were this huge family with I forget how many kids. Halfway through the film, I noticed some commotion to my right. It seemed the kid behind the guy kicked his chair, and the guy (stupid idiot) turned around and grabbed the kid's collar, threatening him. The kid's father then went up and shouted at the guy. After some heated exchanges of words, the father apologised to everyone in the cinema for the commotion, then turned to the guy and told him: "I'll settle this with you after the show!"

Sure enough, after the movie was over and the lights came up, the father went over and continued to harangue that guy. I didn't want to get involved although I was so near, because:

a. Guy's dumb to threaten the kid. He's just a little boy. Pick someone your own size. And it's never the kid's fault.

b. The father overreacted. What, did he expect the guy, who looks like a complete geek, would hit his kid?

So I just sat back and watched the after-show. It went on and on, when clearly the two guys weren't going to hit each other. Then the verbal attacks continued outside the hall, into the corridors, and out into the foyer. It was extremely stupid. And the worst of it, the ushers took the side of the father when they should be trying to calm both parties and defuse the situation (which wasn't going to blow up anytime, anyway). Of course, nothing came out of it, both parties went home.

Adaptations I'd Like To See

2009-03-07T23:46:00.011+08:00

If adapting a graphic novel were as easy as copying every detail in every frame of the book, with characters mouthing the exact words from the speech bubbles, then anyone can be a great director. Yes, including Zack Snyder. I only have one question for Snyder, which I think he won't be able to answer convincingly: What did HE bring to the film adaptation of Watchmen?

This is an entry that I'd been itching to do, but never got down to it until now, for some reason. I'm reading more and more voraciously as now as I'm older, much like trying to make up for all that I'd missed when I was younger, playing catch-up. Time and again, I come across books that I think would make great films, if someone would only get the rights and adapt them. Here are some of them:

The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas

This year, I read two great books about vampires - John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In, and this one from 1980. The Vampire Tapestry is a book that I'd heard so much about and had been hunting down for the last couple of decades. Now that it's finally back in print, I got my hands on a copy and devoured it in record time. It's an endlessly fascinating book, extremely well written and conceived. It features a vampire who is intriguing as he is frightening, yet you care about what happens to him. No crosses, no garlic, no stakes. The vampire is portrayed much like a domesticated wild animal, whose wild instincts remain sharp even when his humanity "threatens" to overwhelm him. This is a book as much about the wild vampire as it is about humanity's propensity for overindulging and overestimating its own intelligence. It's very much a battle between man and beast, the duality within all of us. At first, this book seems unfilmable, because a lot of what's important is internalised. But perhaps a smart director might be able to pull it off.

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

This novel is one helluva wild ride, a real page-turner. It features time travel, werewolves, stilt-walking sorcerers, and a whole lot of other crazy stuff, including Coleridge himself! It's so madly imaginative that it'd leave your head spinning for days. It really leaves me wondering why no one has made this into a film. It has all the ingredients of a blockbuster adventure, and now with the availability of CGI, it could really be done. Or at the very least, this could be a great animated feature. I would think that Back To The Future 2 and 3's "stuck in the past" dilemma was inspired by this book. But The Anubis Gates does it better, and really keeps you wondering how the hell its protagonist is going to get back to his own time.

Song Of Kali by Dan Simmons

I wrote about how American slasher/torture porn movies these days feature American tourists getting themselves in trouble in "scary" foreign lands. Song Of Kali would then be perfect for this era. Much like a scarier and more intelligent version of The Ruins, and probably the anti-thesis of Slumdog Millionaire (!!) and City Of Joy, this is horror of the disturbing kind that takes place mostly in Kolkata, or Calcutta when the book first came out. It's about an American poet who travels to Calcutta with his wife and child to retrieve the latest work by a Bengali poet who seems to be back alive after his disappearance for some years. There is a passage in the book that's a real harrowing experience, and which takes place in complete darkness with something stalking the narrator that may or may not be the goddess Kali. In hindsight, it's a story that reeks of xenophobia to some extent, but in capable hands, this could become an interesting horror film.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

I saved the best for last. I love, love, love Iain Banks' psychological horror novel, The Wasp Factory. I don't believe I have ever read another novel quite like it. It's a slim book, but there's a whole lot going on within its pages. It's disturbing as disturbing can get. Essentially all of its characters are mad, and all are headed for certain destruction. The sense of fatalism is thick, and inevitability runs through the novel like a roaring stream. It concerns a boy whose genitals were bitten off by the family dog when he was a baby. He maintains "sacrificial poles" on the island where he lives with his father, as a way of warding off possible invaders. Meanwhile his older brother escapes from the mental asylum and makes his way to the island. The book was deemed a little too controversial when it first came out, but I think it's not so by today's standards, although the effect of its violence and sadism hasn't waned one bit. There's a truly horrific scene involving flies and a baby that I'd really like to see on screen. Sadistic I am!

Lazy World Of CGI

2009-03-04T11:46:00.005+08:00

In that interview in the previous entry, Alan Moore basically expressed what I've long been frustrated with, that is the extent to which CGI is being used in movies. It's true that there are movies that wouldn't have been possible without the advent of computer graphics, but I think the usage of CGI has become increasingly reckless and less thoughtful.

This kind of led me to thinking, what if several famous movies from the past - long before every household could afford a PC, or even before it was invented - were made today?

1. In Star Wars Episode IV, C3PO would be a CGI character. We'd never hear of an actor named Anthony Daniels.

2. In Jaws, Bruce would be a CGI shark. The production would have been on schedule and within budget.

3. John Carpenter's The Thing would feature CGI monsters, and the Blair Monster in the end sequence would become a reality.

4. Linda Blair's transformation in The Exorcist would probably be quicker on screen just to show off what CGI can do.

5. Ray Harryhausen would be out of a job.

Consider this. There wouldn't be any human mime artistry to C3PO. The CGI robot would just follow the exact motion-capture movements of an English butler. There is no sense of awe such as in seeing the wonder of human talent in putting together a metal-like suit that fits a slim actor, so flawless in its design that it doesn't give away any seams.

Seeing a CGI shark (Deep Blue Sea is the prime example), no matter how perfect the computer simulation, just isn't the same as wondering how they made the mechanical shark so life-like. And the fact that you know the mechanical shark is a physical presence on set and on screen, that it's really Robert Shaw caught in its munching jaws.

It's the same with The Thing and The Exorcist, that what occupies real physical space is somehow more believable and relatable to us than something you know isn't really there but was drawn in later.

The biggest draw of old-school special effects, as opposed to computer generated images, is the "How did they do it" factor. Those old enough to recall seeing Clash Of The Titans for the first time would surely remember the jaw-dropping amazement of seeing those mythical creatures come to life in stop-motion animation. Of course, it all looks hokey now compared to today's smoothly executed CGI, but the level of wonder cannot be replaced.

The first two films with CGI that I remember ever being truly awed by, were The Mask and Jurassic Park. We literally queued for miles to get tickets for those movies. They were the first time anyone's seen CGI done on a huge scale, although Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her predated both movies. But these two movies relied almost entirely on CGI.

Then, filmmakers started using CGI to do stuff just because they could. Reason and necessity went right out the window. I found the highway chase in The Matrix Reloaded utterly boring, compared to say the ones in Bullit or even Ronin. You know that in the latter two, they were real stuntmen choreographing and coordinating the real set-pieces for real close shaves. No CGI were added.

Two things I particularly hate seeing nowadays are the camera going underneath a truck or some big vehicle in a chase scene, and a piece of something flying towards the camera in an explosion. You just know that they're fake when you see it.

The only filmmaker whom I think uses CGI smartly is Zemeckis. Death Becomes Her being the only exception, his CGI is never showy (see Contact for a good example) and used out of pure necessity (like removing Gary Sinise's legs in Forrest Gump).

Not only does the rampant use of CGI destroy imagination and thought, I think it also breeds repetition. How many times have you seen the chase scene and explosion examples that I mentioned above? How many warring hordes clashing on an open plain do we need to witness?

I think the careless way filmmakers have plunged into the world of CGI has saturated the amazement we get from seeing the impossible on screen and bred laziness in terms of conception of ideas and basic creativity. It's reached a point where there has got to be something more.

But to be fair, I'm speaking as a person who grew up witnessing the advent of computer graphics and it's eventual takeover of traditional special effects. Therefore I have a certain amount of bias due to nostalgia. I can't speak for the generation who grew up seeing CGI and never knew a time when special effects were painstakingly created with clay, stop-motion animation, hydraulics, double exposure, forced perspective, matte paintings, etc. I won't purport to know how it is for them.

For me, the real wonder is still seeing something like the train sequence in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle). From a close shot of the interiors of the carriage, it pans out and away from the window until you see the whole train chugging along the tracks, and the camera continues to follow the window from a distance for some while.

That, for me, takes real effort, talent and imagination.

Watch What?

2009-03-04T00:02:00.003+08:00

In a last minute decision, I decided not to see the Watchmen movie at all. Nope, I would like to preserve the good memories of a good "graphic novel" and no sublimely stupid filmmaker is going to ruin those for me. Like I've said before, I find something very wrong with the slick and "cool" look of the characters, costumes and overall film. And the fact that Zack "Fucking" Snyder seems to think the best way to adapt a comicbook is to copy every frame and every visual detail. That, to me, is just fucking stupid.

There was a press screening this morning, which I decided not to attend. There will be no review here. However, here's a superb interview with Alan Moore in Wired magazine.

When we did meet—which was mainly just because I thought it would be really good fun to meet Terry Gilliam, and so it proved—Mr. Gilliam did ask me how I would go about translating Watchmen into a film, and I said to him, "If anybody had asked me, Terry, I would have advised them not to." I think Terry is an intelligent man and came to that conclusion himself.

Moore addresses several issues, but basically:

1. He thinks that adult comic readers are either "hopeless nostalgics" or "cases of arrested development."

2. CGI and huge film production budgets are killing imagination and creativity.

3. Watchmen was intended as a work that would open new possibilities in the comics medium but instead, kickstarted a whole trend of morose superhero comics.

He also wonders why superheroes only originate in America. As does this local reviewer in his Superman Returns review.

Darko Revisited

2009-03-02T23:57:00.004+08:00

This weekend was spent watching a lot of good films on DVD. More about that later. But one of them was a film I decided to revisit for a simple reason.

It's been at least more than two years since I last saw Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, a film which just gets better with each viewing. The straight-to-video sequel, stupidly titled S Darko, about Donnie's Sparkle Motion sister, is coming out, and the trailer, which you can see here, looks incredibly stupid.

Donnie Darko wasn't a hit when it came out, but later became a cult favourite. When there's a cult following, it simply means there's a group of people who truly understand and appreciate the film. So what is the point of making a sequel to cash in on the following, when this group of people who truly understand the film would also understand that no sequel is needed?

Stupid sequels aside, everytime I watch the film, it ends up stuck in my head for days. I can't stop thinking about it, figuring out its quirks, clues and philosophies. It's one of the most original films of recent times, and the certainly one of the most moving, partly due to its fantastic soundtrack. This time around, it's the operatic tune, For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Steve Baker and Carmen Daye, that has haunted me over and over, making me relive that frightening moment in the film that takes place in the darkened cinema.

To make things easier, I'll break down what I want to say into a list.

1. If there's one film also about time travel that shares a similar fatalism with Donnie Darko, it's Chris Marker's La Jetee. But Donnie manages to find a way to escape, not his own fate, but from becoming the cause of others' deaths.

2. Interestingly, the discussions between Donnie and his science teacher seem to suggest that all arguments for fatalism inevitably ends up in the realm of theological fatalism. Donnie, is in essence, a fatalist, but his teacher argues that if the future is predetermined, then we, knowing the outcome, would have free choice not to take the path leading to that outcome. The discussion stops when Donnie starts bringing God into the equation.

3. The film questions what the idea of "doom" really means. Frank is a recurring "character" in the story. He is the giant bunny rabbit who keeps appearing to Donnie, he is the guy Donnie's parents talk about as "the guy who was doomed," and he is the character that Jim Cunningham uses as an example in his presentation at Donnie's school. Interestingly, and this you will only notice and understand on second viewing, Frank, when he appears to Donnie in the cinema, says "I'm sorry" to Donnie, hinting at why his right eye is shot out. Donnie himself is a doomed character, but the question is, to what end?

4. A plane is essentially a time machine. So I think the use of an airplane engine as the catalyst for the unfolding events of the film is very apt. Depending on which direction you fly, if you travel by plane, you will either end up jumping to a day ahead, thus having a missing day in your life, or you could end up reliving the day you left your port of embarkation. That's really another concept of "time travel."

5. Perhaps the most memorable sequence, or the one that stands out the most, is the Head Over Heels "music video." We are introduced to the various characters in the school while the Tears For Fears song plays, and the manipulation of the film speed really underlines the idea of time and its manipulation in the film. Several things in that sequence, such as Sparkle Motion's Notorious performance, of which we get a brief glimpse, have their later significance hinted at. And of course, Head Over Heels being a love song is appropriate, especially with the closing line "Funny how time flies ...".

6. And then of course, there's the sequence with For Whom The Bell Tolls, when Frank, the giant bunny rabbit, finally reveals his true face, and what he says to Donnie, together with the haunting music and vocals, point to a certain inevitability. It's an incredibly powerful sequence.

Beautifully Curious, Curiously Beautiful

2009-02-17T22:54:00.002+08:00

This blog may seem to be falling into neglect. But worry not, it's the result of systematic laziness of the blogger. Well, not laziness alone, but that coupled with a few other matters that take up all available brain cells and leaving none for the pleasure of blogging.

Anyway, I'd planned to write something on John Carpenter's The Thing, which I recently revisited, and also because a remake is coming (which means it will be a remake of a remake, great). But as time went on, the desire to write about it fizzled out. But fear not, it will come back some time.

So what's left to talk about is that over the weekend I saw a really crap movie and a very brilliant film. The crap was the horror movie House. I knew the moment a character, approaching the house, uttered "No cars. Weird!" that the movie was in big trouble. I thought it peculiar that there's a character with awesome cleavage but who never takes it off, and a male character who hints at having the hots for her but barely even touches her. And no one says "Fuck." Not once.

Unusual for a horror/slasher movie, I thought.

Until I read that it's supposed to be a "Christian horror movie." I'm not really sure what the heck that is, but then it does make perfect sense why the movie is so anti-septic.

The brilliant was The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. I was so enthralled by the film that I spent a good part of my sleep that night dreaming and thinking about it. Why does a film about death and growing old mean so much to me? Perhaps it's because I recently looked mortality in the eye. It's beautiful, fascinating, engaging, moving, and in showing us a man who ages backwards, it forces us to examine our own mortality and what it means to be youthful.

I've been promoting this film to anyone and everyone who would listen. The funny thing is that I found most of those who dislike the film or found it boring were of the younger set. It got me thinking that perhaps it's a film that will become more relevant and meaningful to us as we grow older.

Death By Daily

2009-02-08T17:42:00.003+08:00

If you've noticed, The Storyboard Daily, that other blog of Asian film news that I started recently, has been pretty dead. (Not that many would have noticed anyway, sigh.) Well, I've decided to shut it down.

The reason is, unfortunately, not as "glamorous" as Variety Asia's. I just simply discovered, over the course of time, that maintaining a daily news aggregate just isn't a one-man job.

So, if I could put together a team, then maybe I would try and run another blog like the Daily. For now, au revoir, zai jian, sayonara, adios, goodbye.

Meanwhile, The Storyboard continues as usual.

Bigger Is Better?

2009-02-02T01:51:00.002+08:00

Transformers was Michael Bay's ultimate boys' toys fantasy movie - cars, robots, weapons, and yes, a hot chick. Everything in the movie is a collectible that begs to be bought at the merchandise store, even whatshername.

So the Superbowl spot for Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is out (even the title is a vomit of male bravado and a pseudo-mythical proclamation). As expected, it shows the sequel to be bigger, badder, louder, brasher, etc. Bay piles on the explosions, clashes, explosions, destruction, explosions, flying debris, explosions. The robots are bigger and more varied, the military has a bigger presence, there are battleships, tanks, helicopters, you name it. In short, a movie with even more collectibles.

While the first movie should have been a fun adaptation of a fun 80s cartoon series, it was, instead, a showcase for the Most Annoying One-Note Actor Of Today, and suffered from a serious lack of action and fun. When the action does come, it's the usual shaky, disorienting, incomprehensible rubbish.

It cemented Michael Bay's reputation as a pasar malam director who shamelessly panders to the demands of the lowest common denominator.

Here's the thing: why should bigger be better? Must sequels top the originals with bigger action sequences, bigger explosions, bigger everything?

The lesson should have been learnt last year. Bay should take a leaf from Christopher Nolan's book - all that The Dark Knight had was a bigger, more complex story. And the story comes first before anything else.

Troublesome Night

2009-02-01T14:11:00.003+08:00

Talking about discrimination, here's another controversy currently blowing up online, and I thought I'd better get on it too.

Everyone, from Asians to non-Asians, are up in arms against the all-white casting of M. Night Shyamalan's live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's indeed frustrating and demeaning that a series known for being completely immersed in, and inspired by, Asian and Inuit cultures will be adapted into a movie populated by a main cast of Caucasians.

I'm not an avid follower of the series, but I've seen a few episodes of it on some lazy weekend mornings. It's impressive indeed, to say the least, not only because it's a rare moment where an American animated series (and one for kids) is wholly based on ethnic minority cultures, but also because from what I've seen, it's not one of those shows built from a white obsession with Asian exotica. At no time did I feel I was being Hong Kong Phooey-ed.

And then this happens.

Of course, this kind of discriminatory, racist practice isn't new. It's been around for ages. From the old "black-and-white minstrel shows" to Sir Alec Guinness putting on tan make-up to play an Indian man in A Passage To India. There are lots more examples of this kind of thing, from racist stereotypes to discrimination against Asian actors. But this time, Paramount, whose behind the Avatar movie, is dealing with a huge existing fanbase, and that's what's getting them into hot water, I guess. Plus, of course, this is the age of the Internet. Nothing gets by without close scrutiny by the online community.

This is not just something that can be construed as a subconscious decision by the studio, because it's blatant even to the extent of interviews given by the chosen actors. As one of them said to MTV:

"I think it's one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan," he said of the transformation he'll go through to look more like Sokka. "It's one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit."

It's a real WTF moment. In this day and age. But I don't think I would want to put any part of the blame on Shyamalan. He's always had Asian actors in his movies, including himself, even though the leads are always non-Asian. But seeing as how his recent track record has been dismal, he probably doesn't have much say or choice in all this. (Although some might want to use his alleged rant against Brazilian crew members as proof of otherwise.)

I won't say more, but I'll just point you to some websites and blogs that have written about the controversies. There are online petitions and letter-writing campaigns in which you can take part. Otherwise, write about the issue and publicise it on your blog or website. Spread it far and wide.

Check out:

Derek Kirk Kim

Aang Ain't White

Glockgal

"Save Avatar" Facebook group

Cartoon Brew

SFGate report

Good Riddance

2009-02-01T00:19:00.003+08:00

I'd love to say it's been a long time coming; unfortunately the reason for the demise of Kaiju Shakedown isn't what I wish it were.

It's confirmed - Variety Asia is no more, due to the rough economic times. I will miss Variety Asia because it delivers fine news on Asian films. But what I definitely won't miss is the rubbish blog called Kaiju Shakedown.

Here and here are the reasons why.

I got so tired of the discriminatory crap and hypocritical garbage that I stopped reading that blog completely and even removed it from my sidebar.

I, for one, am glad to see it go. No tears shed here.

Fake Real Footage

2009-01-31T15:56:00.007+08:00

I'm a hardened cynic, or so I'm told. And I didn't have any interest whatsoever in seeing Spanish horror flick [REC]. Especially after the artistically famished Cloverfield. Yes, the main reason that put me off seeing [REC] is the YouTube-influenced shaky cam.

When the movie first came out, it caused quite an excitement among genre fans who raved about the unexpected shocks. But to me, the last great horror film was Ringu, and ever since, nothing else has come close. At least nothing else resonates that much.

The idea of mixing Blair Witch-type shaky video with zombies is a pretty nifty one, I must admit (though I haven't seen Diary Of The Dead). But with this kind of "video footage" comes a whole set of problems, which I believe has not been ironed out by filmmakers who seem more enamoured with just using the immediacy of the "format."

As much as we'd like to believe that this YouTube style puts us right smack in the midst of the action, we also cannot truly escape its voyeuristic nature. With this style, it takes a whole lot more suspension of disbelief than the traditional film method. Yes, the immediacy is there, but all the time we're also conscious of the artificiality of what's on-screen, to the point that sometimes the eagerness to make us believe nears desperation. People scream, camera shakes, total chaos - we're supposed to believe, within that moment, that all of it is really happening right in front of us. But no one goes into a movie not knowing that it's a movie and those are actors.

It worked for The Blair Witch Project the first time around because it benefited from a great marketing plan, and some people apparently did enter the cinema thinking they were going to see authentic found footage of documentary filmmakers who were lost in the woods and hunted by supernatural forces.

It works on YouTube because of the open, anonymous nature of the video-sharing community - that is, anything goes and we don't really always know the who, what, where, when or how about an uploaded video. Best case in point is this infamous video about a bunch of people in a car who supposedly pick up a hitchhiking phantom.

But for movies like [REC], we go into it knowing we're seeing a movie, and that glass wall between us and the screen isn't really removed at any moment. The "traditional" way of shooting a horror movie utilises lighting and camera angles to create atmosphere and engage the viewer, to "coerce" us, the audience, into a momentary suspension of disbelief. It's pretty much like a thrill ride on a rollercoaster - we know it's not going to harm us because it's just a movie, but we become active participants anyway for the fun of it.

It's when film tries to approximate reality that some parts of the machinery breaks down, simply because no matter how much we try, we'll never be able to simulate reality to the point where our brain would accept it as so. And a film like [REC] requires us to be so. The format, the style, seriously tells us: "This is real. What you're watching is real. Look, it's video footage captured by the people who were there when it happened."

And also, a lot of what happens in real life, be it a video from an embedded war journalist, a YouTube upload, eyewitness footage of a disaster or other such events, only last for a few minutes, at most. Sitting through one-and-a-half to two hours of such stuff isn't a good idea to begin with. Not only will people be throwing up and getting motion sickness, the shaky cam will also start to annoy, as will the screaming, the shouting, the running, the chaos.

While there are a few good moments in [REC], the best and most effective moments are when the camera "calms down." What this simply proves is that shaking the camera is just a cheat, a way to do away with the "troublesome" traditional way of setting up and blocking scenes. Disorientation doesn't always mean excitement and suspense.

I don't see this as a natural progression for film, nor do I think it's a fad that would catch on like wildfire. It's more like a signpost of the times, which will remain within these times. Perhaps what would be next is the splicing of real footage with made-up ones, the ultimate way of confusing the audience into believing what they see.

Comedy In The Dusk

2009-01-18T15:05:00.006+08:00

Unfortunately for "f," who'd left an "interesting" comment in the last entry, I'm back. And I mean to stay around for quite awhile. So sorry to cause you so much pain!

During the four-and-a-half-hour flight to and from the East, I caught Kurosawa Kiyoshi's much-acclaimed Tokyo Sonata on the tiny screen on the back of the seat in front of me. Not the most ideal condition for movie-watching, but one has to make do when one is stuck in a tiny seat in Cattle Class, with nothing much to do and sleep being an almost impossible endeavour with the constant buzz of the airplane engines and little space to manoeuvre the restless body.

Well, I actually didn't catch the entire film, so to speak. I had missed a substantial amount of the beginning when I was flipping through the channels and duly discovered that it was showing on the flight. When I reached the part where the wife meets the burglar, I suddenly fell asleep. When I awoke, the film had ended. When the film replayed, I missed a bit of the beginning again, but managed to catch much of what I had missed the first time. Then, we got into serious turbulence. Being thrown around right after you've had your lunch isn't exactly a fun thing. And watching something on a tiny screen while that happens doesn't help matters at all.

So, I closed my eyes and drifted listlessly in the subconscious before I gave myself the chance to go for the barf bag.

But whatever I managed to see was great. It wouldn't be fair to do a full review since I didn't see the whole film, but suffice it to say that I didn't expect so much humour in it. But as with all of Kurosawa's films, there's a very dark undercurrent that slowly emerges and overtakes everything else. Snatches of his thriller-horror instincts can be glimpsed in one dream sequence and some shadowy interior scenes. But this is a family dramedy, and one that was way ahead of the economic crisis that's hitting us right now. So the film's become extra-relevant and scary all of a sudden.

CUT TO:

Right before my trip, I caught another Japanese comedy, but one that is a straight-out crowd-pleaser. I've long been a fan of Mitani Koki, ever since I saw Welcome Back, Mr McDonald (Rajio no Jikan). That film was the longest running at GSC's International Screens in Mid Valley, and I think it still holds the record till today. I don't remember how many months it ran, but I do remember going to see it a total EIGHT times.

Welcome Back is also another crowd-pleaser (does Mitani make any other kinds of movies, eh?) and a completely feel-good movie that doesn't make a bad word out of "feel-good." It's a movie full of characters that one would have encountered in the course of one's life, a note on life and all its quirks. It's all about how life requires us to constantly adapt to new circumstances.

That seems to be the one continuing thread in all of Mitani's films, but far from being a one-trick pony, he makes it fresh in every movie, with new nuances and dynamics. It's no different with his latest, The Magic Hour.

It's a film about filmmaking, and also a look at the fine line between ambition and delusion. While film requires us to suspend disbelief most of the time, The Magic Hour reminds us of that constantly because almost the entire movie is built upon an impossible premise.

A guy caught in bed with his mobster boss's girl is given an ultimatum - get the boss to meet a mysterious assassin or else. Because time is quickly running out, he has no choice but to get a two-bit actor to play the part of the assassin, fooling the actor into believing that they're making a movie where everything has to be so natural that actors stay in character even off-camera and the camera is hidden most times.

Impossible? Yet amazingly everyone buys into the scam, mobster boss, actor and all. The story even takes place in a fictional town that it seems hasn't developed very much and remains looking like a 1940s movie set!

As impossible as everything is, Mitani has us in the palm of his hand from the get-go, never letting up the pace. I was initially skeptical of the two-and-a-half-hour running time, having been told by some that the movie's a bit too long. But the movie felt like a breeze to sit through, with nary a draggy moment. This really goes to Mitani's credit as a really talented writer; everytime you think he has reached the end of an overstretched idea, that he's reached a dead-end, he surprises you with even more gags and funny situations.

And like Welcome Back, it all reaches an explosive finale, with every character appearing in the last scenes. The ending is inspired, to say the least. And by the end of the long running time, you'd be feeling that buzz of Mitani's trademark feel-good-ness.

Life's OK, Mitani tells us, and no matter what the curve ball it throws us, even if we mess up, there's always tomorrow. And somehow I believe him, no suspension of disbelief required.

Temporary Downtime

2009-01-15T00:04:00.003+08:00

In the next couple days, I'm off to somewhere and won't be online.

When I return, I hope to hammer out something about Donnie Yen, Ip Man and Iron Monkey.

(Note that both of Yen's best films have the same initials, "I.M.")

The Storyboard Daily will also maintain radio silence for the next two days.

Back soon.

It's Scary Beyond Your Own Backyard

2009-01-02T12:24:00.002+08:00

I'm a Brad Anderson fan, and I think Session 9 and The Machinist are two of the most underrated Hollywood films. Naturally I'd been pretty excited about seeing his latest, Transsiberian. I finally saw it last night, and while it's not as good as those two other movies, it's still a pretty gripping thriller about an American couple travelling from China through Russia and encountering all kinds of trouble.

Midway through the film, it struck my mind that I was seeing a trend being stretched and moulded here. Morphed even. Another movie I'd seen recently, The Ruins, made it even more concrete.

The Ruins is about two American couples holidaying in Mexico who decide to visit an old Mayan ruin and run into killer plants and hostile locals.

See the connection yet?

Both Transsiberian and The Ruins are about American tourists getting into weird troubles abroad. Of course, we've had torture porn like Hostel treating us to Americans being mutilated and killed in strange European resthouses. But now, here's a classy thriller with emphasis on characters and story that also uses the same template, and Transsiberian is definitely not another run-of-the-mill torture flick to satiate cinemagoers' bloodlust. (Although the one constant through all these films are acts of torture, and Transsiberian has one, too.)

It leads one to question why such a proliferation of stories about American tourists and their harrowing holidays. It also has to be noted that there have previously been movies with ideas such as horrid Turkish prisons (Midnight Express) and horrid Thai prisons (Brokedown Palace). But in just the last few years, it seems to have been solidified into a true-blue trend. Americans want to have a good time, Americans travel abroad, Americans meet some foreigners, Americans go along with them, Americans run into trouble.

Is this a sign of America becoming even more isolated now? What's really happening? Of course, in recent times, things like the War on (/of) Terror has probably led to Americans' fear of stepping outside of their own backyards. Take for example, the Green Zone in Iraq, a fortified safe area for Americans, which, according to Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book Imperial Life In The Emerald City, is somewhat like a mini-America inside Iraq. Perhaps it's all these things that has fed the fear of what's "out there," and that a friendly foreign face doesn't always mean someone you can trust.

Perhaps this is what filmmakers have picked up on.

A Warning To Blu-ray

2008-12-30T22:25:00.004+08:00

There's a nice article at Silicon Alley Insider linking to a Content Agenda write-up about Blu-ray that tells it like it is. The first paragraph sets it up:

"Paul Sweeting at ContentAgenda argues that Blu-ray needs to stop pretending it's a revolutionary new format like DVD and start acting like what it is ... a minor quality improvement that consumers won't pay any more for."

Trawling through my archive, I found that I, myself, wrote this about Blu-ray. I basically said the same thing: that Blu-ray is a minor quality improvement that consumers won't pay any more for.

If I were to indulge in Blu-ray, then I would have to purchase a widescreen HD TV set. Sure, the prices of HD TVs are seeing a reduction now, but Blu-ray discs remain expensive at the moment, and logically will remain so for at least the next two years. There really is no incentive for a consumer like me to invest in both.

Sweeting correctly points out:

"What it is, is a fancy DVD player for those who want to get the most out of their HDTV sets."

Read the rest of his interesting write-up here.

Asian Films Everyday

2008-12-30T16:03:00.003+08:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I announce the birth of The Storyboard Daily, the sister blog to this one. I hope to maintain a steady stream of the latest news on Asian films from blogs and other sources. The operative word here is "hope." But if not daily, then at least I will update it as regularly as I can.

The Dark Night Of The Soul aka I Eat My Words

2008-12-28T19:00:00.002+08:00

In the long, dark hours of the soul, ie. between 2.30am and 3.30am, I was trawling through my archive, and to my utter surprise, found this:

Ten Questions People Should Be Asking About The Dark Knight

Strange, but I don't even remember writing it. This was back in December of last year, back when I was still very highly sceptical of The Dark Knight because of the ridiculous viral marketing that was going on. I had thought, if they need to plug it so much, then it can't be a good film. So I decided to make fun of it.

Now, I must eat my words!

Yes, I love The Dark Knight and think it's the best Hollywood film this year. I've just acquired the two-disc special edition DVD and was bowled over by it all over again two days ago. Now, looking back at those "questions," a few stand out like a sore thumb.

5. What's the big deal about The Joker anyway? Isn't Heath's just a carbon copy of Jack Nicholson's seminal performance?

Boy, could that be any further from the truth.

6. Doesn't the way The Joker stand in the middle of the street aiming a gun at Bats on wheels remind you of Tim Burton's version where The Joker stands in the middle of the street aiming a gun at Bats on wings?

OK, this one still stands. I suspect it's Christopher Nolan's homage to Tim Burton.

7. Doesn't Heath's "maniacal laugh" sound exactly the same as Nicholson's?

In some of the scenes, yes. But now, I think Heath's laugh is much more menacing.

8. Could they ever top Danny Elfman's wonderful score?

My God, they actually did. In that other entry below, I've already mentioned how the minimal and understated score of The Dark Knight is so effective, using sounds rather than an actual, full-blown score.

So, now I've come full circle. And I realised why The Dark Knight works so well and is a superb and appropriate follow-up to Batman Begins. It's because the story is bigger and more complex; the filmmakers smartly focused on getting a bigger story right, before any other considerations. Compare that to say, Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2, where the main idea was to provide bigger special effects, bigger action sequences, which ultimately becomes boring. But The Dark Knight resonates and resonates for a long time.

Too bad the extras on the DVD, especially the making-of documentary, isn't quite as spiffy as the movie. There are tonnes of stuff about the special effects, gadgets, action sequences and stunts, and a whole lot more about IMAX. But where's the stuff about the acting, the story development, etc?

I Have No Love For Hollywood But This Is Ridiculous

2008-12-27T22:55:00.003+08:00

While I do find the occasional Hollywood film to love and rave about, I generally have no love especially for contemporary Hollywood. More and more bad films are coming out of it now than ever. But this, reported in the NST, is just sublimely stupid (a term I've come to appreciate more and more).

The Malaysian Film Producers Association has submitted a proposal to FINAS on how to help local films perform better at the cinemas. And one of the proposed move is:

to increase ticket prices of Hollywood movies to RM20.

Oh, yeah, that's a superbly smart move, if ever I'd seen one. Sure, if I can't afford a RM20 ticket, I'll go watch Cicakman instead. If the ticket to The Dark Knight is way too much for me, I'll definitely go watch Congkak instead.

A letter to the editor by a far more sensible reader of The Star today raised some pertinent but obvious points. Simply, the problem is not the ticket price.

It's a proven fact that those fighting a losing battle with no quick solution in sight often resort to blaming anything but themselves. If the Malaysian Film Producers Association would just get their thick heads out of the holes in the sand, they'd not be in denial that most local films are of piss-poor quality.

Says the letter writer:

"It’s time to get creative with the film-making and not get ridiculous with problem-solving. Raising the prices will only mean cinemas going bust. Pirated VCD/DVD pedlars will be throwing parties every day, and file-sharing programmes will become the most-used service in the country."

Raising the ticket price is not a solution when other cheaper alternatives for moviegoers, like Bittorrent, are available. The layman can see this, so why can't the "Malaysian Film Producers Association"? No wonder we make piss-poor films when our producers can't even understand simple economics and logic. Instead, we get delusional statements like this one from the association's president:

"... some of today's locally-made movies are on par with foreign movies in terms of quality."

Wow, really? Has he actually sat down and compared say, Antoo Fighter with Iron Man? With special effects that are almost 30 years behind Hollywood, sure, we're on par with others. With a massive handicap, that is.

He also goes on to cite Indonesia as an example of how the disparity between ticket prices has helped the industry there. I'm sorry to have to point this out to him, but Indonesia has the capability of making a simple but very enjoyable and imaginative movie like Janji Joni, which even I paid for a ticket to see in the cinema when it opened here.

Would I pay for a ticket to see Brainscan Topi Ajaib (or whatever crap it's called)? Nope, sorry.

An industry that wallows in denial and delusions of grandeur isn't going to go anywhere fast. I just hope some sensible heads in FINAS will prevail.

It's also not fair to put the blame solely on the industry itself. Those critics who blindly praise anything local are helping to perpetuate a culture of patting each other on the back. Honest, constructive criticism is the last line of defence against bad filmmaking, as are informed critiques and opinions. Too many self-appointed "critics" quoting Robert McKee and Syd Field are lending false hope to our filmmakers, who often do not believe in tough love.

But tough love is what is needed, as are sincerity and sensible minds. Too bad they're in such short supply.

Note: I predict that we'll soon hear a storm of protests from the cinema chains.

Is What 2008 Best

2008-12-26T17:48:00.004+08:00

As you might already know, I don't do lists. Normally. And I don't believe in ratings. Everything is so grey in the arts that you can't really grade or rate anything, let alone accurately. So I do general rundowns and recaps without assigning an order or hierarchy to anything.

I was excited to see horror novelist Stephen King naming The Dark Knight as his no. 1 film of 2008. But upon second thought, it's actually a no-brainer in such a dismal year. So, a lot of folks would argue that it wasn't a bad year, but most of these folks also put WALL-E as their no. 1 film. Take, for example, Liza Schwarzbaum (of Entertainment Weekly)'s completely misfired comment about her no. 1 film, WALL-E:

"Years from now - yea, unto eternity - all who love movies will rank WALL•E among the medium's most profound, subtle, sophisticated, and gorgeously inventive specimens, ever."

Yet another sublimely stupid statement this year, ranking among the frothing praises afforded to the Watchmen trailer. "Sophisticated"? "Subtle"? "Profound"? Obviously Miss Schwarzbaum hasn't seen any Miyazaki.

I would readily admit that the first half of WALL-E is indeed a surprising new side of American animation. But beyond that, the movie is just another yakkety, run-of-the-mill chase cartoon. Whatever quiet dignity it displayed in the first half gets sucked completely into outer space. Here is a movie that's as utterly and insanely overrated as the local film, Kala Malam Bulan Mengambang.

Enough of what went wrong with other lists. The top of the line movies this year are few. I can mention all of them in one breath, in one sentence.

The Dark Knight, Sparrow, No Country For Old Men (it was released here this year).

If I had seen Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Tokyo Sonata and Miyazaki's Ponyo On A Cliff By The Sea, I'm very sure they would have easily slipped into that sentence.

Special mentions go to Speed Racer, Hancock and The Happening. I do realise that last one is going to get me flamed, but I have a lot of respect for M. Night Shyamalan's work, and I enjoyed that film more than, say, Iron Man, which is another overrated (but vastly more entertaining than WALL-E) movie.

The surprise discovery of this year, for me, was Charles Burnett's endlessly poetic Killer Of Sheep, which finally came out on DVD. And of the box sets I acquired this year, the best is probably the Casablanca Ultimate Collector's Edition, with The Last Emperor Criterion four-disc set coming a close second for its fascinating extras.

Of course, if I could afford the Happy Together 10th Anniversary Limited Edition box set, it would top everything else.

Well, that's it. I did say it was going to be short.

Note that I haven't had the chance to see Ip Man or Let The Right One In, both of which are strong contenders.

Jingle Bells

2008-12-25T00:20:00.002+08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Up next is the Best Of 2008.

And it's a very short list, for obvious reasons!

Happy holidays.

Listening To Movies

2008-12-22T12:35:00.005+08:00

I was flipping through the papers today and came across this article about movie soundtracks. I couldn't really finish reading it after the first paragraph, which really got the neuro-gears grinding overtime.

"Soundtracks in movies are a bit of a cheat, when you think about it. Like canned laughter in sitcoms, a sneaky way to tell us: right now you should be feeling scared, or happy, or sad. You would think that any story and acting that was good enough would not need that kind of help."

Well, that's not exactly accurate. If you factor in the Hollywood norm for providing scores and songs to movies, then yes, because the usual Hollywood method is very manipulative. Otherwise, the general rule is, a good score is stealthy, and you're not supposed to notice it at all. I guess it's different with songs, because those will always be in-your-face.

That's why scorers like John Williams and Howard Shore are like old relics. In contemporary times, these big, sweeping, orchestral scores by the likes of Williams and Shore are passe, more annoying than complementary to the movies to which they play, because they tend to overwhelm and drown out everything else.

An example of a good contemporary score would be The Dark Knight's, composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. The music is most times understated, leaving the job more to a rhythmic pulse than an all-out orchestral swell. It is sounds and beats interlaced with only necessary notes that become a part of the visuals, not just driving them. You see the music, not just hear it. The score literally becomes the pulse that drives the movie. Thank goodness there's none of that now-cliched choral outbreak. If there were, then it's still a good job because I certainly didn't notice it.

But having said all that, Williams' score for A.I. Artificial Intelligence is surprisingly understated, low-key and wistful. But you wish he'd do more of that.

When Films Confound Us

2008-12-22T01:31:00.005+08:00

I was reading Kong Rithdee's write-up on Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes And A Century, here at Criticine, and was reminded of something I wrote a while ago. Mostly, it's this line from Rithdee that frustrated me:

"Maybe Apichatpong’s films are not meant to be explained, but felt. They enrich and wrap us whole in their smothering hugs not because they can be understood but perceived. We receive the images through the eyes and they go directly to the heart. Like great music, his films bypass our critical faculty ..."

I've long disagreed with this kind of views on films. Great music does not bypass our critical faculty. If a piece of music or a film truly makes you feel something, then you should be able to articulate why. It's only natural. If, as a critic, you cannot, then you've failed.

Here's the piece I wrote a while back, on another blog:

I was originally going to write, or attempt to write, a review of Mirror, but Andrei Tarkovsky's film proved to be a really hard piece to crack.

There I was on a Saturday night last week, having had supper, showered, and gotten all relaxed in my favourite armchair, I decided to pop this into the DVD player, excited at the prospect of seeing my very first Tarkovsky film. After all, my introduction to Bela Tarr has been no less than awesome, and Tarr is reportedly heavily influenced by Tarkovksy.

After about 30 minutes into the film, I had to switch it off.

I was dumbfounded, frustrated and a little bit incensed, the exact same feeling I got watching Fellini's 8 1/2.

This was probably one of the most self-indulgent crap I had ever witnessed. Where was the story, or at least where was my concern for what the filmmaker was trying to present? If it's autobiographical, why should I care about his mother, his childhood, his whatever? How does it all relate to me, that is, to the universal human condition? Nothing came across.

Mirror is widely held as Tarkovsky's great masterpiece, and even after reading some critiques of the film, I remain unconvinced of its perceived merits. Here's what was written in Senses Of Cinema:

"Tarkovsky made Mirror, a non-narrative, stream of consciousness autobiographical film-poem that blends scenes of childhood memory with newsreel footage and contemporary scenes examining the narrator's relationships with his mother, his ex-wife and his son. The oneiric intensity of the childhood scenes in particular is so hypnotic that questions of the film's alleged impenetrability dissolve under the impact of moment after moment of the most visually stunning, rhythmically captivating filmmaking imaginable."

Correction: questions of the film's impenetrability should NEVER be put aside under ANY circumstances. It is absolutely rubbish to say so. I want to know what the film's about. I don't want to be told that I should just "enjoy the visuals."

Here's the Time Out blurb on the DVD sleeve that says essentially the same thing:

"See it, above all, for a series of images of such luminous beauty that they will make your heart burst."

There are just too many of these kind of cop-out "reviews" that basically avoids the real question of what a film is about, how it should connect with the audience's sensibilities, what it really offers in relation to universal truths. Mainly because, well, the reviewer or critic her or himself doesn't know!

Take, for example, another confounding film, Tropical Malady, from Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film's already infamous disparate halves will forever cause confusion and uncertainty about what it all really means. Here's Dennis Lim of the Village Voice's take:

"(Weerasethakul's) films, at once rapt and dislocated, have the flavor of hallucinated documentary. They compel the viewer to look anew at the ordinary, to modulate their passive gaze into a patient, quizzical scrutiny."

That's not exactly explaining what Tropical Malady conveys.

Here's more from the same critic:

"The film's mysteries are so cosmic that any attempt to ascribe allegory can seem puny."

So, basically what he's saying here is that Tropical Malady is a failed effort, yet he wrote a glowing review of it. But Tropical Malady is not a failed film. Unlike my encounter with Mirror, I love Tropical Malady. It's one of the few films that truly enrapture me with their themes and ideas.

Tropical Malady is simply about the intensity and primal nature of love and humanity, and the blurring between man and beast. How presumptuous we are, to regard ourselves as beings of greater intelligence when nature is obviously bigger than all of us. We dress ourselves in all sorts of civilities, surround ourselves with a civilisation of our own making. But once primal feelings are unleashed, we are nothing but beasts. The film also explores a little about the nature and relevance of folklore and fantasy. The first half of the film is Man, the second half is Beast. Or is it the other way around?

That's only my take, but a take nonetheless.

For me, if a film gives you nothing to take away with you, however impressive its visuals or mood are, it is then about nothing important, and therefore is nothing in itself.

If only more critics have the courage to admit that whenever they come across films of such nature.

Big Deal

2008-12-21T18:25:00.003+08:00

Anyone else feel a little disturbed by this?

No kiss shown, 'Histeria' leads to big letdown

Since its release last week, Histeria has been causing pretty much the wrong kind of buzz (but I suspect, the right kind for the producers) - the alleged lesbian kiss between two characters. Now, this kind of girl-on-girl lip-lock action is rather too passe for any controversy, but of course, in Malaysia where even male-female kisses are snipped from film and TV, it's gotten some people hot under the collar.

What got me a little suspicious about the whole thing is, as evident in the NST report above, the very last quote by a "source." Apparently the press were shown the print that had the kiss, but the public at large got the version where that kiss has been cut.

That "source" said the scene must have been "inadvertently cut" during mass printing in a Bangkok post-production house. In my experience, I've never encountered a case like this, where ONE print is made just for the press preview, while 46 (that's FORTY-SIX) other prints were made AFTER that for circulation in the cinemas. But to be fair, I was told that it is possible that some might make one print first for a preview to gauge the response before going further.

If Histeria was shot on film, it would seem impossible that additional prints made from the master could have "1 or 2 seconds" accidentally cut from them.

If it was shot on video, then transferred onto film, there is a possibility that whoever handled the film recorder could have screwed up a frame or two, but to have the exact moment of the kiss "accidentally cut" would have to be the rottenest of the most rotten luck in the world. And to have that happen 46 (that's FORTY-SIX) times, well, you must have done something really rotten in your past life to deserve such an exact bad karma.

Anyway, what I'm most disturbed by is that last quote:

"The print which was shown at the press preview is being shown in one cinema. We just don't know which at the moment," the source said.

Well, sorry but I'm the last person to try and seek out that "kiss print" by watching the movie in different cinemas.

Flushed Away

2008-12-16T11:03:00.004+08:00

Here's an example of film criticism/journalism gone down the drain. A review of Cicakman 2 that appeared in the NST:

"Return of the lizard-man."

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Bullet Time: Who Did It First?

2008-12-14T23:27:00.002+08:00

Let me start off by saying that this post came about because I found, to my surprise, the Matrix Revisited DVD, which has been out of print for some time now, at a local store recently.

When I first saw The Matrix, I wasn't really impressed. But over time, the movie grew on me, and having overcome my initial take that the film was more style than substance, I now accept it as a very entertaining and very clever movie that uses a lot of known ideas and technology of the time and packaged them all in a very appealing way. It's great eye candy, an exciting Cinema Of Spectacle that at least doesn't dumb down its audience. And best of all, it brought the great Master Yuen Wo-ping to international recognition.

Now, in the Matrix Revisited documentary, there's a very funny segment about "bullet time," a special effect that has been largely credited to the Wachowskis. At first, they were trying to figure out how to execute the bullet time scene, and initially thought they could strap cinematographer Bill Pope to a rocket. Of course, that fell through pretty quickly (!), and later everything else they thought up somehow involved the prospect of the camera blowing up.

But what gets me wondering is why the Wachowskis had to think that hard to come up with the innovation when it was already used in a music video from 1997, two years before The Matrix.

That video is Coolio's C U When U Get There, and you can watch it here, complete with two or three bullet time sequences.

Granted at the time of the music video, the bullet time didn't look as polished or smooth as in The Matrix, but the fact remains that someone had already done it two years before. I recall watching Coolio's video and wondering how they did the effect, going around people and objects in a frozen frame.

So, who did it first?

Malaysian Blockbusters Busting No Block

2008-12-11T13:35:00.005+08:00

Watching Antoo Fighter was a painful task. It's a case of bad story, bad direction, hammy overacting, regressive CGI effects and unoriginal ideas. With this, it's easy to develop a rash when thinking of whether to fork out money for a ticket to Cicakman 2: Planet Hitam.

The first Cicakman was a terrible bore; for a superhero movie, there's little action and completely no sense of wonder. The background CGI left a lot to be desired. And most baffling was the decision to set it in an unknown futuristic city, which looked closer to New York (complete with yellow cabs! in winter!) than Cyberjaya. Why? Our cities not good enough? Our tropical weather not "cool" enough?

Taken together with Antoo Fighter, a couple of conclusions can be drawn about our local special-effects blockbusters. One, our SFX extravaganzas always involve bad CGI and hammy acting. Two, we're nowhere near competent with this type of blockbusters.

The simple rule is, if you can't do it, then don't. Trying on effects-laden films when your technology is not yet up to scratch is putting the cart before the horse. And it's so easy to forget that expensive CGI isn't all there is to making movies like these. The bottom line is, you still need a good story.

But what do we have? Cicakman bitten by a radioactive lizard? Spider-Man, anyone? A squad called Antoo Fighter battling a band of demons and monsters? Does The Monster Squad or Ghostbusters sound familiar?

CUT TO:

Another recent "blockbuster," the supposedly kungfu actioner, Kinta, was previously hyped up so much that we'd expect no less than at least a decent martial arts flick. The initial artwork looked great, as did the trailers. And now comes the actual movie itself, but what a huge disappointment it is.

Not only is it laughable, it's also incoherent and with action that is exciting as a fly hitting the windscreen of a car.

No, actually, where's the action? Whatever few fight scenes it has are repeated in flashbacks, in their entirety. What's that for? Beats me.

Apart from the completely illogical plot, there's the bad dubbing and out-of-place music track. And then there's this story that appeared more than a week ago, where the director basically blames everyone else for the final result. If what he says is true, then everyone from the executive producer to foreign buyers are to be blamed for forcing him to compromise on his original vision of a grand historical epic, including, gulp, western audiences.

Granted what he says is in a very diplomatic tone, but still, it doesn't sound quite right for a director to be seen as basically putting the blame on others. A good director, if forced to compromise (admittedly it does happen all the time), would do his best to strike a balance that everyone would be happy with it.

But having seen the incomprehensible mess that is the film, no amount of explanations can help to justify or clarify matters. It's just simply a bad film. But credit must be given to the lead actors, who are all real-life martial arts exponents, who really gave it their best. Their passion and dedication are really the only good things about the film.

And also, a good journalist, once told that the film was shown in Cannes, would have asked which section of the festival it was, and if it was in competition or otherwise.

Tim Burton's Bug Drink

2008-11-22T19:04:00.003+08:00

I just recently got my hands on the brand new 20th anniversary edition of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. Sadly, for such a seminal morbid comedy, this special edition only features three episodes of the animated series in its extras.

I can still remember like it was just yesterday, my schoolmates and I were so obsessed with the movie, we watched it on video practically every week, gathering on weekend evenings and having a good laugh together.

Our favourite part? "Nice fuckin' model!" That cracked us up every time, no matter how many times we watched it.

Why were we so obsessed with the movie? Because it's simply the most imaginative thing we'd ever seen at the time (and to a certain extent, it still is today). I mean, ghosts exorcising people? Who'd have thought of that? There's so much more no-holds-barred, crazy stuff, like that waiting room in the netherworld. Makes you wonder what's happened to Tim Burton these days.

This is morbid humour that could only have come from his mind. He once said that when he was young, he threw a pair of old clothes into the swimming pool and screamed to his neighbours that someone had fallen into the pool and disintegrated.

The new 20th anniversary DVD has a nice, crisp transfer. Some of the special effects, like the sandworms and sci-fi landscape outside the couple's home, may look a little dated, but they still are appropriate within the madhouse context of the movie. The stop-motion animation adds a certain quirky, low-budget cheesy charm to things.

My love for this movie hasn't waned even after 20 years.

The Kind Of Shorts That's Not For Wearing

2008-11-20T10:10:00.007+08:00

This past Monday, I reluctantly went to the Malaysian Shorts showcase, the regular event organised by Kelab Seni Filem Malaysia. Reluctantly, for various reasons that I shan't disclose here.

It's nothing to do with the showcase itself. No, I dig Malaysian Shorts. I've attended almost every single one in the past.

This time around, there was unfortunately, quite a morose factor still evident in some of the films. Long scenes of people smoking, people eating, and even a kid taking a shit - thrice! (Blame Flower In The Pocket for starting this trend)

I disagree with Hassan Muthalib (who took over MC duties from Amir Muhammad who shirked his responsibilities for some other unknown engagement [I'm thinking it must be those documentaries taking up his time]), who said the short films this time around show a higher production quality.

Save for maybe one of the films, they were all made by professionals or those with experience. The previous instalments of the showcase featured everything from student films to amateur attempts.

Here's what I thought of the films:

For The Love Of Drowning (I hope this is the title, because it wasn't included in the official list, something like a last minute inclusion, which is also why I forgot the director's name)

Metaphorical storytelling that I didn't get, or didn't bother to get. I shouldn't say that this kind of thing is easy to do, but it is! But this BMW Shorties winner has nice shots.

916 (David Ngui)

Despite its earnestness, this one just falls short. Nice production value, but the acting is a tad wanting while the story isn't as challenging as it should be in regards to its subject matter - communists in Sabah and Sarawak.

G16 G17 (Saw Tiong Guan)

Young man wants his mother to relive her romance with his late father at the old cinema. There's a sincerity to this story that gives it the right boost to defeat its own worst enemy - its ending. Someone in the audience said during the post-show Q&A that the ending is "cheesy." I wouldn't call it "cheesy," but it's definitely a rather safe turn into familiar territory. I wished the director Saw Tiong Guan (apparently no relation to Saw Tiong Hin, director of PGL) had explained his choice of ending instead of brushing off the remark by only saying it was his choice.

Adults Only (Yeo Joon Han)

Despite its unfortunate TV-commercial sheen, this Venice Special Mention winner manages to make a lifetime's worth of points in just 10 minutes. Very smart ending that nicely delivers an eye-opening coda. Surprisingly poignant. And you just have to love the use of Big Brother & The Holding Company and Janis Joplin's Summertime.

Eye+Finger (Margaret Bong)

Nice idea about a deaf-mute couple trying to come to terms with the death of their child and with each other. But the emotional quotient is sadly missing. There's a feeling that this should have been a longer piece.

Escape (Charlotte Lim)

An eye-catching opening scene, but I zoned out midway because it doesn't seem to be any different than the other Chinese independent dramas that we've seen. The lack of a distinctive, individual touch bothered me. The closing scene of the grandfather and the grandson walking through the rubber estate is very nice, humorous and touching, though a bit too late.

The Need Of Rites (shouldn't it be "The Need FOR Rites"? but then again ...) (Tan Chui Mui)

Not the best here, but it definitely is so damn engaging. While the scenario of a girl being hounded by a persistent street fortune-teller has endless possibilities, the execution somehow lacks a bit of suspense. Still, the dialogue is fun and ear-catching, no less. It's something we've come to expect from Tan Chui Mui, isn't it? A simple set-up but a whole array of dynamics.

Eaten By Time (Anonymous)

Experimental short that seems to have been made on a whim. At least its running time and sudden end give one that impression. Don't ask me what it's about, though.

The End Of Cinema?

2008-11-16T18:06:00.005+08:00

In my "Malaysian Cinema: Time To Move On" entry below, "Ellen" left an interesting comment and link. It leads to a website called Unspoken Cinema, and a post titled "Tarr Bela Quits Cinema."

Now, that title is sure to stop the heart of any Tarr fans. It seems in a recent interview with Cahiers du Cinema, Tarr said he was fed up of the "fucking polite equality existing in the world," and that he wants to "quit cinema, but not right away." It's all rather vague, really, but Tarr has expressly stated he would quit cinema, only there's no deadline, just that he would make one last film. He also expressed dismay at today's audiences who want "less and less a demanding cinema." I definitely share this view, but to quit filmmaking altogether just because of it?

Even so, it's easy to understand his frustrations and see how he wants to avoid being thrown out of the cinema by not-too-discerning audiences, and to exit the doors himself, which would be more dignified. And so, there's a kind of petition going on at Unspoken Cinema, calling for readers to sign and comment there and to start a kind of unofficial blogathon/petition to urge Tarr not to quit, to convince him that there are still believers in his kind of cinema.

I love Tarr's films, and I have only seen three - Werckmeister Harmonies, Damnation and the seven-and-a-half-hour Satantango. It was the hauntingly desolate Werckmeister Harmonies, in its subtle parallel of a certain music theory with humanity itself, that first completely caught my imagination. There was, of course, the now infamous controversy and uproar over whether Tarr's extravagant demands during the making of The Man From London were what drove his producer to suicide.

But it's impossible to deny that the Hungarian master is a unique voice much needed in cinema today, as a counterweight to the too-easily digestible pap out there.

So, head on over to Unspoken Cinema and sign your name, and also blog about the whole issue.

Oh Boy, Another Remake

2008-11-12T10:50:00.002+08:00

I used to have a regular column here called "Remake Watch," but I've since given it up, because it's a little silly to be keeping watch on an equally silly exercise of Hollywood's. Which kind of makes me sillier.

Quite a few shockers in the last couple of weeks. First off, I wonder if anyone else has caught that ad on TV, about Impak Maksima The Musical? I'm wondering if they'll have souped-up cars on stage doing races. Or maybe they'll have dancers and actors dressed up in rubber suits a la Pixar's Cars. What next? Jangan Pandang Belakang The Musical? Gerak Khas The Musical?

Then, there's Spielberg wanting to remake Park Chan-wook's Oldboy. With Will Smith, no less! Now, I happen to like early Spielberg stuff, like Duel and Jaws (which is a great adventure film, in my opinion). But he just started going downhill after Schindler's List, with the exception of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but that's a Spielberg/Kubrick collaboration.

But Minority Report? And Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull?

There's been talk about a Hollywood remake of Oldboy for quite some time now. But now, having those two names attached to it has to be a shocker. My friend and I started to speculate what would happen in the Hollywood version's ending.

Spoilers hereon, if you haven't seen Oldboy.

Hollywood, and surely Spielberg and Smith, definitely wouldn't have the guts to keep the incest twist. So, perhaps this is what might happen:

Smith's character unknowingly beds his own ex-wife, while both of them have amnesia. After discovering the truth, they fall in love all over again and remarry. They live happily ever after, after Smith's character offs the guy who started him on the revenge trail, of course.

How's that?

Malaysian Cinema: Time To Move On

2008-10-29T09:49:00.003+08:00

I still remember, like it was so long ago, that every little recognition the so-called Malaysian New Cinema received was welcomed with much fanfare. We'd all get so excited about someone winning some award overseas. While James Lee and Amir Muhammad had blazed the trail first, opening up new possibilities for our cinema, it was later that Ho Yuhang started the awards rolling in, starting the Nantes Festival Of The Three Continents.

Of course, before all of this, folks like U-Wei and Tsai Ming-liang had already garnered the attention of international festivals. But here, for the sake of narrowing the discussion, we're talking about the New Cinema, or New Wave, of digital filmmaking, which has now morphed into a movement that includes pretty much anything that functions outside the mainstream machine, or anything that pushes boundaries or takes off in whole new directions. We can't exclude the mainstream completely, because a film like Mukhsin, a Berlinale winner, is a commercial effort.

After almost a decade now, all is still well with New Cinema. Even now as we speak, there is a massive showcase of more than 30 Malaysian films at the Rialto Theatre in Amsterdam. Some of the filmmakers are also in attendance for various events. And our productions are truly going international, with Ho Yuhang getting funding from Korea and using Hong Kong and Taiwanese talents, while Yasmin Ahmad has just announced a Malaysia-Japan co-production of something called Forget-Me-Not. While on the quiet, our one-time Venice Special Mention winner, Yeo Joon Han, has been moving in the festival circuit with his "comedy with songs," Sell Out!, getting a lot of good press and exposure.

And in Taiwan, we have yet another Malaysian, Ho Widing, making moves into feature filmmaking after going to Cannes with his short films Respire and Summer Afternoon.

Now, at this point, we must be able to take a step back and evaluate the situation.

We've come this far and won so much. While there's a noticeable momentum still propelling Malaysian films forward, it's also time to let go of certain things. For one thing, a sense of direction is important, so that we don't become stuck in a rut. I think we can already notice that some filmmakers are falling into monotony, which almost always leads to self-parody. The independent scene, as a whole, is also in danger of becoming too attached to, and identified with, one style which a local critic recently called "morose films."

And just last week, Muallaf picked up a special mention in Tokyo and there were what felt like too many fists punching the air. My question is, do we really need to react in a manner like we did eight years ago? Back then, even if a film won, say, Best Dressed Director (I made it up, it doesn't exist), we'd all be jumping for joy, maybe even hold a party or two at the mamak stall. But I think Mukhsin's Berlinale win has up the ante, and when you've gone that far down the road, it feels a little silly and pointless to go back to the starting line and cheer that we actually made it to the race. Of course, every win is a cause for celebration, but I'm saying that it should be in an appropriate magnitude. Otherwise, we'll always be cheering at the starting line without actually moving forward.

This is my suggestion. This is my call. Malaysian cinema, let's move on to bigger things, or on to newer and unchartered waters.

Let's see where we can take it.

Game?

Return Of The A.I.

2008-10-27T21:28:00.003+08:00

If you've been following recent Hollywood releases, you'd notice a very peculiar thing. There have been no less than two tributes to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, in particular to the mutinous supercomputer HAL 9000.

Mild to major spoilers ahead for the movies WALL-E and Eagle Eye. So if you haven't seen them, stop right here. Otherwise, forward march.

If there's still anyone who hasn't seen Kubrick's masterpiece sci-fi opera, even after the recent two-disc DVD release (actually I wouldn't be surprised at all because 2001 isn't an easy film to sit through), here's the lowdown: HAL 9000 kills everyone on board the mission to Jupiter when it realises that humans will jeopardise the mission.

In both WALL-E and Eagle Eye, there is a mutinous supercomputer; in both movies, it resembles HAL 9000 with its "red eye." In both movies too, the supercomputer sees human beings as a threat.

I don't quite know how to pinpoint the reason for these tributes (and could I be wrong in suspecting that there will be more tributes to come?). The one obvious reason we can all see is that this year, it is exactly 40 years since 2001 was first released.

Also, I've read that Kubrick was somewhat influenced by Fritz Lang's Metropolis in making 2001. (Could HAL be the reincarnation of Hel, the dead lover of scientist Rotwang who wants to build a robot in her image?) Metropolis was released almost exactly 40 years before 2001. And now, at almost 80 years since Lang's film first came out, the legendary missing reels have been discovered in Argentina. Of course, all this is just coincidence, but it makes for curious statistics and baffling wonderment.

Perhaps these reappearances of HAL 9000 are just a symptom of our times in which our tools and machines sometimes become too independent of our control. Take a step into a train, and notice that the recorded voice through the PA system sounds more lively than the bored, tired human chatter around you.

Kubrick predicted it after all.

Wherefore Art Thou, Red Sorghum DVD?

2008-10-26T14:36:00.013+08:00

Having once been obsessed with the Chinese Fifth Generation films, I have most of Zhang Yimou's films on DVD. I own two editions of Raise The Red Lantern, one of my all-time favourite films. I bought the Taiwanese edition in Taipei at a time when there were no proper DVD releases of the film. I own two copies of Ju Dou, one a local VCD and the other an R1 edition DVD. Unfortunately the R1 DVD is full-screen; I can't understand why Razor, the studio that released the DVD, would do so. If you check the specs on Amazon, it says "2.35:1." That needs correcting.

The transfer, too, is rather piss-poor.

MGM's Raise The Red Lantern fares so much better, with a fair quality transfer and the correct aspect ratio.Yet the picture resolution is still a tad wanting.

And now I have two copies of Red Sorghum, the first film in Zhang's "red trilogy." I had the film on VCD for years, having to put up with the crap burnt-in subtitles and terrible picture. Then recently I discovered the China edition DVD and was surprised to find that it had English subtitles. Unfortunately, the transfer is very piss-poor, clearly from an analogue source. The subtitles are passable, with some minor mistakes. But the worst is the aspect ratio. I don't remember anymore what the correct aspect ratio is for Red Sorghum, but the DVD clearly has it wrong. The top of the picture is cut off most times. (DVD Beaver has a review of this Chinese edition here.)

I remember many, many years ago when I first saw Red Sorghum on TV (yes, very surprising that Malaysian TV actuallly showed the film). It was a Sunday afternoon, and I only caught part of it. I remember switching on the TV just as the strange little scene at the meat shop was unfolding. I still recall seeing the cattle head being dropped on the table, and actor Jiang Wen eating it. Then I remember the scenes with the Japanese soldiers. It was all very weird to me at the time. But then anything from Mo Yan is usually a little strange.

Now, seeing it again after so many years, it still has some considerable power, its celebration of peasant resilience and its overwhelming atmosphere of isolation, solitude and devastation. It's definitely not Zhang's strongest work, but it was certainly a strong start.

Now, is Criterion or anyone else ever going to give the rightful royal treatment to Zhang's early films, especially the "red trilogy"? Like the Italian neo-realists and the French New Wave, China's Fifth Generation filmmakers deserve seats in the same hallowed halls.

Watchmen And An Alan Moore Interview

2008-10-25T02:21:00.005+08:00

Anyone who knows me knows how hard I've been fighting against the Watchmen movie. There are some of us who feel a Watchmen movie should never be made, let alone a Watchmen movie by a crap director like Zack Snyder, which should be banished right away.

I discovered an Entertainment Weekly interview with Watchmen scribe Alan Moore. It's a fascinating interview where he not only talks about Snyder and Watchmen, but also Malcolm McLaren, South Park, The Wire and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The best quote appears on the first page:

"[Zack Snyder] may very well be [a nice guy], but the thing is that he's also the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid."

Indeed! What's also sublimely stupid is a story like this one, where the writer clearly has no clue what Watchmen is really about, but is lobotomised by popular opinion enough to quote a million other hive-minded, so-called comicbook fans in saying that the uniqueness of Watchmen is that it "is best-known for deconstructing the myth of superheroes, portraying them as people with flaws and weaknesses."

Really? So what have Stan Lee and gang been doing all these years? What then do you call the Fantastic Four and their family problems? What about Peter Parker as a youth thrown into the "myth of superheroes"? What about Chris Claremont's storylines for The Uncanny X-Men?

The real milestone of Watchmen is that it's the first time the power and authority of superheroes are brought into question. How much power does it take to corrupt a superhero, who is at the very core still a human being with human flaws and biases? What would you do if you possess that much power or hold the fate of the world in your hands?

Time Capsule

2008-10-23T19:46:00.006+08:00

I've had Dinah Washington's This Bitter Earth playing for some weeks now. I owe this current obsession to Charles Burnett's excellent Killer Of Sheep.

You know, the AFI's list of 100 great American films has rightly been called into suspicion by Jonathan Rosenbaum all these years. Lists of what supposedly constitutes great American films almost always get it wrong. But the Library Of Congress certainly got it right in 1990 when it declared Killer Of Sheep a national treasure, and made it one of the first 50 entered in the National Film Registry.

The National Society Of Film Critics later selected it as one of the 100 most essential films of all time. But let's not go there, because I still have a great distrust of lists in general. (And I especially hate books with titles like "1,000 Films You Must See Before You Die.")

It's unfortunate that one of the film's greatest strengths was also its own worst enemy. You can call Killer Of Sheep a "plotless film," but then, seeing what Burnett was trying to do with it, more capturing the essence of life in Watts in the 70s than telling a packaged story, you have to ask if a person's life actually has a plot. Of course not.

In trying to capture what life was like, as opposed to what life was about, in that particular area, in that particular time, about those particular residents, Burnett conveyed the inner poetry of each moment using the most emotionally stirring tool there is, which is music. And his choice of music is just impeccable.

One of the most emotionally impactful scenes in the film is when the protagonist and his wife, their relationship troubled, are dancing wistfully to This Bitter Earth, their silhouettes against a large window, the wife desperately trying to reach out to the husband. You could just feel the yearning and the heartache pouring right out of the screen.

But it was the rights to the music used that kept the film out of circulation for a long time. Back then, Burnett and his then-little seen film must have been quite the urban legend. I mean,this was his thesis film, and already it is quite something so solidly original in its vision, with such a distinct voice and an uncanny understanding of how to translate the everyday into a poetic engagement.

The film starts off with extreme close-ups. You don't quite know where you are, but from what's going on and what is being said (a father scolding his son), you know it's a domestic setting. In almost all the interior scenes, you're never quite sure of the surroundings, because Burnett uses close-ups or focuses on the characters and the characters alone. What surrounds them seems inconsequential, but Burnett seems to suggest that the interiors embody the personalities of their inhabitants, and vice-versa. Only in the larger locale, the exteriors, do we really get to see the people framed by a distinct sense of place. And it's that, I think, which is the larger frame that "controls" the whole "plotless" film.

While Burnett was certainly ahead of his time, and Senses Of Cinema rightfully called him a"one-man African-American New Wave" (actually, I think "one-man American New Wave" would be more appropriate), most (local) filmmakers today seem to think plotless films where nothing much happens amount to something if they just "show." That would actually be "pointless films." Big difference.

Even if nothing much happens on screen, something is always happening within the characters. Burnett perfectly captures the emotions going through a blender, in the faces of his characters, their gait, their speech. It is a story of faces as much as it is a story of places.

That's also why I felt inclined to reprimand my friend Mr Nutshell for his review, where he basically said the film didn't work for him because it "showed too much of the drudgery routine in the life of the poor" where "nothing much happens." He said that perhaps he didn't get the "socio-economic climate of the time" or the "many subtexts that the movie presented."

My response to him was, this is a film about life, not subtexts and not anything socio-economic in particular. And if it didn't work for you, then maybe you've been going through life in a coma. Harsh maybe, but Killer Of Sheep certainly deserves more than just a simple brush-off, and it's definitely my greatest discovery of the year. Never too late.

Killer Of Sheep official site

Criterion Gets Doyle's Stamp Of Approval

2008-10-23T17:23:00.004+08:00

The Criterion blog now has a post about the upcoming Chungking Express release. There's still no mention of which cut it will be, but there's a nice story of how the Criterion team managed against all odds to get cinematographer Christopher Doyle's approval of the transfer.

There are those who regard Doyle as an overrated DP, and I wouldn't say I agree, but I do find the quality of his work to be inconsistent, and sometimes unremarkable. Doyle did, after all, admit that he stumbled into the art of cinematography (drunkenly, I think) and never ventured into it as a conscious ambition. But if he meant that little origin story, which has been repeated often enough now, to be a humble reaction to all the praise heaped upon him, I think it's more of the opposite effect. It would make any educated cinematographer who spent years studying the craft meticulously before venturing into it, frustrated by the fact that someone like Doyle could so easily grope around in the dark to become one of the most renowned talents in the art. It's almost like Happy Gilmore stumbling into the art of golf.

Lastly, what I can gather now is that the original Hong Kong theatrical cut was much shorter, and the scenes involving the Bangladeshis and Brigitte Lin were much less. And that the one scene in which Tony Leung's Cop 663 drinks coffee is accompanied by Faye Wong's version of Dreams. In the western DVD releases, that scene has no music.

Asian Horror Vs. Western Horror

2008-10-23T15:57:00.006+08:00

It's been a long, long, long while since the last blog entry. I'd meant to follow upon that last post, but you know how things often get sidetracked or derailed. And since Halloween's round the corner and the Hungry Ghost Month was just two months ago, here's something I've been meaning to hurt your ears with.

The thing that I hear quite often about our Asian horror films is that our films are scarier, or at least it's more effective for us, because we have a rich tradition of the macabre, that we have the pontianak, the toyol, the woman in vengeful red, etc; that we have a rich culture of superstitions to draw from. (For more of what Malaysia has to offer in this respect, check out the latest tome coming soon from Amir Muhammad's Matahari Books: The Malaysian Book Of The Undead.) I hear this quite a lot even at my workplace, that being posted as the main reason why our films are much more interesting and scarier.

I feel that's a too simplistic way of looking at it. Let's face it, the western world has its own rich tradition of vampires, werewolves, banshees, incubi, etc. So why should it be any different or less scary? All the ghosts and ghouls are really just symptoms.

The real casue is simply that we, Asians, are unable to let go of life, so much so that we not only believe there is life after death, but that the afterlife is very much similar to the here and now. We believe that people can still crave for food after they're dead. We believe the dead crave the same necessities as the living, therefore the living make burnt offerings of houses, cars, servants, clothes, DVD players, mobile phones, to the dead.

Quite simply, we want to believe things will go on as they are even in death. The netherworld exists on the same plane as the living one. Spirits with unfinished business don't have to do any "crossing over." They're here right now. When the dead and the living exist in the same sphere, then often the past and the present overlap. In Ringu, things from the past never really left, and when conditions are right, both worlds blur into one another.

Something like Alejandro Amenabar's The Others subscribes to this concept, but there is a difference. In the western world, there is a distinct line drawn between life and death, whereas in Asia, that line doesn't exist. If The Others were an Asian horror film, the battle between the living and the dead wouldn't end just like that. They'd still be grappling with each other for the same space. In the end, someone has to vacate, and by that, I don't mean just leaving the house physically.

Because we believe the afterlife is the same as the living world, and that we want the same basic necessities, then something like Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Kairo (Pulse) makes perfect sense in that context. The sphere of the dead is overcrowded, so the living has to vacate the physical world to make space for the dead.

So is it any wonder that western remakes of Asian horror films often fail miserably?

Are You Waiting At The Station?

2008-10-03T17:36:00.005+08:00

It's chugging along just fine, and will be arriving soon. Me, I'm anxiously waiting at the station, hoping this time they get it right.

It's Chungking Express I'm talking about, and Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece is getting the Criterion treatment. Finally!

This isn't exactly news anymore, but through all the excitement and bits and bytes we've been getting, there's still one thing I'm not so clear on.

But first, as usual with Criterion, the cover design is exceptionally beautiful. Criterion always chooses less iconic or familiar images for its covers. Like for The Ice Storm, it's the red jacket seen through the frozen window. And for Vampyr, it's a missing scene from the movie with the shadow of a scythe over a sleeping girl. And the most lovely thing about the Chungking Express cover, if you notice, is how the "C" logo gets integrated into "Chungking."

Unfortunately, while the film is getting the Criterion treatment, it's not the royal treatment as we would expect. No box set, and only one disc. The extras sound good though (even if you're sick of Tony Rayns appearing everywhere):

- Audio commentary by noted Asian cinema critic Tony Rayns
- U.S. theatrical trailer
- Episode excerpt from the BBC Television series Moving Pictures, featuring Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Amy Taubin

And the specs:

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack supervised by director Wong Kar-wai

I really hope Christopher Doyle is drunk during that interview; that would be interesting.

But like I said, there's still one thing unclear about this release, and that mainly is: which version of the film will it be?

Over the years, there've been several versions, and the original Hong Kong cut, theatrically released in Asia when it first came out, has long disappeared. I don't remember how long the original cut was, and neither do any of my friends. But later, there was the ridiculous "Quentin Tarantino presents" version from Rolling Thunder, where, as far as I know, some alterations were done to the film, namely there's a song or two missing from the soundtrack.

There's also a R2 DVD from Ica Projects from 1995, and another from the same period from Artificial Eye. The Artificial Eye version you see on Amazon UK has Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin on the cover, while the copy I own features Faye Wong, but I should think both DVDs are essentially the same.

And now, there's a newly remastered R3 DVD out now in Hong Kong.

The funny thing is, all these versions are clocked in at 100 or 102 minutes. And I'm told the UK and US versions are one and the same cut. I can't explain all the differences or possible differences in the original cut and the later ones, because I've never seen the HK version. Very unfortunate. But friends who have tell me there definitely are differences. What's more, there's even rumour of a bootleg version that has a longer cut.

Whatever it is, I hope Criterion will let us know which version it's releasing. I would think it's the original HK cut as intended by WKW because he supervised the remaster of the soundtrack.

Anyone out there knows?

Mon Favourite Comedian

2008-09-28T17:56:00.008+08:00

Here are some facts I wasn't aware of until recently.

I didn't know that Jacques Tati started out as a stage comedian/mime in music halls before he became a filmmaker. I didn't know that Mon Oncle was filmed after M. Hulot's Holiday. I had thought Mon Oncle was in black-and-white. ANd worst of all, I didn't realise how much Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean stole from Tati's Monsieur Hulot.

Both characters elicit laughs through slapstick routines, both speak little, both drive banged-up cars. But while Hulot is a loveable, good-natured and well-meaning buffoon, Bean is an obnoxious, hard-to-like dimwit.

In fact, the similarities came to a head with the last Mr Bean big-screen movie, blatantly titled Mr Bean's Holiday. I don't know if the movie should be seen a s a sort of tribute to the French comedy great, because there's no element of an homage in the film. What it has though, it a scene directly lifted from Tati's Jour de Fete, where Bean shooting past some bicycle racers mirrors the scene where Francois the postman peddles his bicycle past a group of racing cyclists. The raod trip style of the movie can also be seen as similar to Tati's cars-and-highways epic Trafic.

The other difference is that Tati's work has more pertinent meanings rather than mere gags. His colour films spin a thematic thread observing the incongruities of modern living, but not an indictment or criticism of it, mind you. The manufactured city of Play Time is a magnificent, labyrinthine glass wonder that shimmers with a sharpness and sheen reflecting slick modernity, yet encased inside what seems like a child's dollhouse. The film is really an unforgettable experience, and holds up to repeated viewings simply because Tati packs every frame with incidences, occurances and gags. The later Trafic seems to play this up with triple the magnitude, with even more things going on in a frame and faster cuts.

I'm a late discoverer of Tati's comedy, and it's hard not to lose respect for Atkinson's creation once you've learned of its origin. Monsieur Hulot is a walking disaster of dance-like movements and bumbling trajectories, a contradictory mash-up that could probably be called "graceful stiffness." The wooden puppet-like flinging of the arms and strutting of the legs are as light as air, as demonstrated in one of the funniest moments in comedy, the tennis game in M. Hulot's Holiday. I'd rank that sequence up there with Chaplin's boxing match in City Lights.

Comedy is one of the hardest things to do. It's the worst feeling in the world when no one laughs at your gags. It makes me wonder why some people here think it's so easy to be funny. I don't have to mention names but I'm pretty sure everybody knows the culprits, those who think making funny faces and acting like a doofus immediately make them the kings of comedy. Compared to other local offerings of horror, drama, action and other genres, local comedy is probably the most painful thing to sit through. If you haven't already noticed, there's a disturbing and inexplicable trend in local comedies. Be it on TV or in the cinema, a TV show or a movie, you'll definitely find actors in wigs. Then there's always the tasteless toilet humour and scatological jokes, people shitting, vomiting, spitting, excreting all sorts of bodily fluids.

Local comedians definitely need to learn that comedy really is an art, and that it takes class to be truly funny. Perhaps they need some lessons from Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Mack Sennet, Charlie Chaplin, and of course, Jacques Tati.

The Elusive Spark

2008-09-18T14:48:00.000+08:00

This might come as a shocker to you. I love films, but I don't really love writing about them.

Take that not as a confession, but as an elaboration. It gets tiring sometimes, writing about films, reviewing them, and trying to figure out the right words to describe things. Watching films and thinking about them, during and later, is where the real excitement lies.

In that sense, I don't and can never understand how some critics and analysts and reviewers can tirelessly churn out review after review, piece after piece. Once in a while, you do get a film that gets you so excited, you just have to write about it. And that can be the most exhilarating thing.

Lucas McNelly at 100 Films recently asked the question "How do you blog?" Or more accurately, "How do you review or write about a film?"

I've known and even sat next to some reviewers who come prepared with a notebook and pen (one of those thingies with a dim lightbulb at the tip), scribbling down thoughts and impressions. Forgive me for being blunt, but I find that a little bit silly. Maybe it's a personal thing, but I believe films being 24 frames per second are like the landscape you see rushing by when you're on a train. But the advent of video and DVD has pretty much changed the way we view films. There's an article somewhere online about this, by David Bordwell or somebody else. I don't remember.

Still, despite that, I still believe that the first impression is everything for a reviewer or critic. Films are, after all, built that way, for a single-pass experience. More so for the reviewer at press previews, which are usually held days before a film is released. And in between the preview and the general release is usually the deadline for the review to be published. No second chances.

What I do is just sit and watch the film. Let it run by, see it for what it is, then take note of how it makes you feel. It's after the movie is over that I start the thinking process. This may take from just a few hours up to a few days. From the first impression, other thoughts will grow and develop about the film. If you liked it, why, and what made you feel so. If not, same thing.

There were two instances when I had to view a film twice, but there was good reason both times.

The first was for U-Wei Hajisaari's Kaki Bakar (The Arsonist). The film was shot on Beta (if I'm not mistaken) and the transfer to 35mm was far from satisfactory. Some scenes were simply devoid of visual details because of that. My initial review was not as very positive one. But later, U-Wei himself convinced me to give the film a second try. The second time indeed yielded more positive things from it, because by then I had kind of got used to the blurry images, which were what got in the way the first time. Of course, I got quite a shelling from some people on a forum for changing my opinion in just a week.

The second was for Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. I had a hard time sitting through it the first time, and I left after the big attack. Then my conscience got better of me, and I felt to be fair, I had to finish the movie. The second time around, I hung around until I knew the attack sequences were over, then I headed into the cinema. Guess what, I lasted for about 30 minutes before I had to walk out again. I did write a review, but that was the first and last time I ever wrote a review without finishing a movie. I vowed never to do that ever again. It's just not right.

(I actually did it again for In The Name Of The King, but it was a short impression, not really a review, for this blog.)

There are some who regard reviewing as something you do as if you're taking apart a piece of machinery, or like a careful scientific study that takes concentrated observation. But hey, reviewers and critics want to enjoy films too. That's why we do what we do anyway. Someone once told me how relieved she was to not have to review a movie again and that she could finally sit and watch a movie without having to think so much.

This is what I don't get. Movies are not made for people to sit and think hard about them while they play. The thinking should come naturally and as a second-nature response. It's like this morning when someone told me she only watches movies for entertainment, and not to think.

My reply was, everyone watches movies for entertainment. No one wants to have a hard time at the movies.

My parting shot: It's only a movie, not a university lecture, for God's sake!

Addendum: More interestingly, Abe Casio, a renowned Japanese critic and author of books on Kitano Takeshi, said that when he watches a film, even on VCR, he never stops the tape. He has a rather special way of analysing films. He draws a difference between "creatively incorrect memories" and careless ones. Meaning, he watches a film once, then writes about what he has just seen, even though some of his descriptions or details may not be accurate. The reason is that Abe believes film is "living and moving" and "vanishing every moment," and that "memory alone enables us to re-experience it." He writes about film as how the audience experience it.

Fine Movie, Totally Not Fine Situation

2008-09-17T21:26:00.003+08:00

Japanese films rarely get a release here except when it's some J-horror or melodramatic romance, like the overwrought Crying Out Love At The Centre Of The World. During that movie, women were sniffing away and tearing at tissues, while I was squirming in my seat, busily scrubbing the soppiness off my skin.

Once in a while, you do get some great stuff, outside of the annual Japanese Film Festival at GSC. Like last year, we had what was clearly the best film in any language, Yamada Yoji's Love And Honour. SOme years ago, when the GSC International Screens was still in its early days, there was Mitani Koki's Welcome Back, Mr McDonald (Rajio no Jikan), which was the funniest, most feel-good film I'd ever seen. That film holds a record of sorts. It was, I believe, the longest running International Screens film ever. It ran for months, during which I went to see it a total of eight times. I loved it that much. Now that I have it on DVD, I watch it at least once every year.

Recently I saw the much acclaimed Fine,Totally Fine, starring Mr Funny Face, Arakawa Yoshiyoshi. It's a rare kind of movie that keeps getting funnier as it goes along, until it reaches a point where it gets you rolling around with a bellyache. It's slapstick, but it's also not quite what you expect it to be. By the end, it is something that's moving, lovely and quite life-affirming.

You can read Todd Brown's review of it here at Twitch.

Then I realised this is one of those films no distributor would bring here, not even GSC. And I started thinking about all the other fine Japanese films that won't make it to our cinemas, that we won't have a chance of enjoying on the big screen.

Yamada Yoji's Kabei (Our Mother) hasn't seen the light of day here, so we can pretty much forget it. I've already got the three-disc limited edition box-set, and yes, it's every bit as great as they say. I thought it would have a chance to be released here since Love And Honour was shown last year, but then this film has no swordfighting nor good-looking pop idols, and is a family drama that runs for more than two hours. Its chance was as fat as a rubber suit.

And same situation too, with Kurosawa Kiyoshi. His Retribution surprisingly made it here, but was riding on the popularity of J-horror. Unfortunately, no one expected it to be so "out there" with its idea of horror. During the press preview, some annoying journalists were giggling like they were watching a comedy. At that point, I knew the movie wasn't going to go down well with the average horror fan here. So, no point in keeping our fingers crossed for Tokyo Sonata, a family drama which is also Kurosawa's first attempt at something outside of the genre that made his name.

Finally, I talked to a distributor and got word that Mitani's The Magic Hour isn't going to come here either. It's "not really that funny and is a bit too long," was what I was told.

The Vampire Tapestry

2008-09-01T12:57:00.009+08:00

Criterion, Eureka! and Masters Of Cinema are all fighting for the same business, I guess. It's not so much among the three, but more between the American Criterion and the British labels. And when they grapple with each other to get the same customers, boy do we get some really magnificent releases.

Case in point, Carl Dryer's Vampyr. I bought the Criterion two-disc edition before realising Eureka! had an almost similar release. Some extras that are on the Criterion disc are in the Eureka! book that comes with the set, and vice-versa. There's a comparison somewhere online between the two transfers and they're not that much different as well. (During the Amazon UK summer sale, I toyed with the idea of getting the Eureka! set, but thankfully rationale prevailed.)

Dryer's Vampyr is a film that I'd read about even when I was a mere schoolboy. And what I'd read intrigued me so much, it had been almost a crusade ever since, to seek out the film. I remember seeing a badly faded still of the famous Grim Reaper image of the man at the jetty, in a book about horror films (which I'd found and read at the state library only because it had nudie pics from various horror films that "intrigued" me as an adolescent!). In it is described many strange and inexplicable instances, like a man's shadow that gets up and moves away from him.

Indeed, finally sitting down and seeing it for the first time, the film is confoundingly impressionistic, in a good way. Dryer's motive is obvious. This is a film designed to unsettle its audience. Many strange sequences remain unexplained - the shadow with a life of its own, the main character's soul leaving his body, a ghostly ballroom of shadows, a ghost appearing even before the person has died - and the film buckles its own continuity. The axis is crossed many times, and the positions of the characters in a scene are often confusing. But one of the most disturbing moments of the film is where the main character gets encased in a coffin and buried alive.

Having also received Universal's 75th anniversary two-disc edition of Tod Browning's original 1931 Dracula, and having been the proud owner of a copy of Murnau's Nosferatu for a while now, I could finally compare these early vampire films with each other.

My favourite remains Murnau's, because it's a technically marvellous film. The gorgeous use of shadows, and in one unsettling scene, the use of negatives, and Max Schreck's frightening make-up, are all beautiful in a hideous way. Strangely enough, among the three, only Nosferatu shows any fangs. For all Bela Lugosi's fine theatrics (and he's exceptionally good at them, with a very solid screen presence), he doesn't actually sport any fangs. Nor does the old vampire in Dryer's film.

Browning's Dracula is simply the birth of Hollywood horror, establishing the straightforward, clear-cut narrative that builds from conventional suspense and which goes straight for the jugular. It is not interested in horror at a subconscious level, as is the case with most Hollywood horror movies. It's more visceral in its approach, while Nosferatu and Vampyr build on atmosphere and mood, and are much more haunting and memorable, even today. Besides, Nosferatu has one unforgettable scene that's hard to top - of Count Orlock carrying his coffin across town.

What Dracula has, that the other two do not appear to be concerned with, is the sexuality and the sensual nature of the vampire. As one interviewee in the extras on the DVD described, Lugosi's count is Valentino as a vampire - seductive yet dangerous. Ironically, Vampyr is partly adapted from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's short story, Carmilla, which is one of the earliest psychosexual lesbian vampire stories. But the erotic undercurrents of the story is sadly missing from the film.

Over the years I had been collecting vampire films, on both laserdisc and DVD. They include John Landis's little-discussed Innocent Blood, which is a rather enjoyable horror comedy, and George Romero's Martin, a very disturbing psychological study of blood obsession and a metaphorical tale about the death of imagination. Of course, there's also Coppola's excellent, red-drenched take on Dracula, with Gary Oldman as an even more seductive but disgusting vampire count. Neil Jordan's somewhat wispy adaptation of Ann Rice's Interview With The Vampire is mysteriously endearing, with a very disquieting turn by Kirsten Dunst as a child vampire. Then there's Tobe Hooper's genuinely frightening TV series of Stephen King's Salem's Lot.

There are, of course, many other vampire films - From Dusk Till Dawn, Fright Night, Blade - but the ones that remain an interest to me are Kathryn Bigelow's cowboy vampire tale, Near Dark, and one of Viggo Mortensen's early films, The Reflecting Skin. The latter is available only on a very expensive remastered Japanese DVD.

Mass Consumption

2008-08-30T12:07:00.004+08:00

It would seem that both the movie WALL-E and its reviewers lack balls. That's the way I see it anyway.

As we can already see, almost all the reviews of Pixar's latest "heart-warming" feature say the same things - "charming," "endearing," "with an environmental message" - and overlooks the same things too, namely the hypocrisy of its so-called "message."

While it quite explicitly rebels against mass consumerism, showing future humans as fat and useless, and apathetic towards their environmentally-devastated home, the "environmental message" is simply null and void. Even stupid to a certain degree.

And the ending of the movie - it simply lacks balls. It doesn't have to be a downer, but there's huge potential there to do something different, to go against expectations. But at every turn, I was met with the same boring, predictable stuff.

But the movie is prophetic. With all the glowing reviews coming together into an indistinguishable mass, what's to differentiate between the fat and useless humans in the movie and the "mass-consuming" reviewers? We are indeed becoming a hive-minded blob. Even when a story like V For Vendetta, which stresses the importance of individuality, is adapted into a film, it also morphs into a mass appeal ending with the masses taking on Guy Fawkes masks.

Look at WALL-E this way:

That "charming" robot as merchandising becomes a metaphorical crusader of mass consumerism. EVE was, at first, a rebellious individual who wanted to destroy WALL-E, ie. destroy consumerism. But soon she falls in love with him, certifying that, yes, sooner or later, mass appeal gets to you, whether you like it or not.

And that's frightening.

Ada Apa Dengan Zohan?

2008-08-23T22:51:00.002+08:00

I say this with total conviction: You Don't Mess With The Zohan is probably the most fucked up movie I've ever seen in my entire life. It's so fucked up, you'll feel completely fucked up after seeing it, even more if you found yourself laughing at some of the fucked up jokes.

I hardly ever use expletives to describe a movie, but I think The Zohan calls for it. How did a fine actor like John Turturro move from being in fine films like Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski to this disaster of a comedy?

I love stupid comedies, even Dude, Where's My Car?. And I love politically incorrect stuff. But the un-PC-ness of The Zohan is pointless and only crude and rude for the sake of being so. That's fucked up.

If I have to further describe The Zohan, sans expletives, it would be this: The Zohan is Borat with a bigger budget, even less taste and absolutely no point.

Ya, so the movie makes fun of both Israelis and Palestinians, and American rednecks, but essentially it says that the US is the only one that can get the Middle East people to live together peacefully. And that the Israel-Palestine conflict is really nobody's fault.

And that is truly fucked up.

This Tumbler Is Not Batman's

2008-08-21T21:25:00.003+08:00

In looking through a certain academic article online today, something crossed my mind.

Whenever we talk about multiracial and multicultural local films, the usual suspects, such as Othman Hafsham's Mekanik, Teck Tan's Spinning Gasing and Yasmin Ahmad's Sepet, always get mentioned. Of course, P. Ramlee had made a movie with a multiracial cast long before anyone. But the point I'm trying to make is, there is one movie that's always forgotten, unsung, unmentioned, and obscured.

It's a film that I can't remember much about either. It's called Red Haired Tumbler Di Malaya (1994), and it featured a large Chinese cast, including Elaine Kang, and Shima and Ahmad Fauzee, plus some Caucasian actors. I only remember it being not very good, and there were acrobats in it. I searched high and low all over the Web looking for information on it. It's not even listed on IMDB. But Sinema Malaysia has it listed, and that really cements the website's reputation as the most definitive and comprehensive on Malaysian films.

Check out the Sinema Malaysia page on the film here. It's directed by Eddie Pak. The synopsis:

"Tom lives with his father, a priest in Malaya. His parents are killed in the Second World War and he is adopted by his Chinese grandmother. When she dies, he has to fend for himself. Chow from Taiwan has to leave behind his girlfriend, Lily to come to work in Malaya. After the war, lily leads an acrobatic troupe and tries to find Chow. Deen Mohd falls for her but she is not responsive to him. In a performance, Patrick creates havoc but Tom and Tat Meng manage to save the day. Patrick accuses Deen Mohd of embezzling his company’s money and brings the police to search his house. Lily finally meets Chow but is disappointed when discovers he is married to Manik."

Interracial romance! It might not be a very good film, but I think historically it might be important in some ways. Definitely worth a mention in any discussion about multiracial local films, methinks.

Film As A House

2008-08-20T16:45:00.005+08:00

It's been a long while since the last entry. I'm not sure how much Susuk has collected so far, but I suspect it should be a rather substantial amount. I've been trawling the Net for some reviews of the film, and funnily enough, most of them praise Susuk for its "non-linear narrative," and its many homage and references to other films and filmmakers.

Well, I love homage and tributes as much as the next guy. I even made a short film that was a tribute to Bela Tarr, although it was nowhere near the artistic intelligence of Tarr's films. I'm humiliated to admit.

The problem of homage was largely the problem with Kala Malam Bulan Mengambang, the winner of Best Film at this year's Festival Filem Malaysia. I enjoyed the first half of the film, but I hardly think it's best-film material. There's nothing wrong in paying tribute to a style and convention of the past; but to do it just for the sake of doing, just because you can? It was the same problem I encountered with Thailand's Tears Of The Black Tiger. The novelty wore off just after 15 minutes. Thankfully, KMBM had more than 15 minutes of an interesting and comedic story. Still, the novelty wore thin after a while, when the story seemed to head nowhere, or rather, it wasn't hurrying to get anywhere.

I must add that somewhere someone loves this film very much, and has championed it in every corner of available space, virtual and physical. But it's still a mystery why, because there has been no explanation forthcoming from the person who believes there is much to study within KMBM. I say this without an ounce of sarcasm: I really would like to know. Seriously, I think it would be interesting to explore another viewpoint - an alternate view - just because such a conviction exists.

Instead, it led me to a discussion of the function of film theory and the true nature of a film review. The conclusion was that film theory is essentially building blocks for the filmmaker, and a point of interest for the academic to scrutinise how a filmmaker has used various techniques to enhance, animate, construct, hold together the working parts of her/his film. But once the film is made and "released' to the audience, it becomes text and the only relevant references should strictly be philosophical, historical, psychological, cultural, and all other aspects of humanity that the film should reflect.

Unless, of course, a film was made solely for other filmmakers and academicians, which would then validate the use of film theory as reference in discussing the film. But who makes such films? Isn't cinema a "democratic" art?

I've used the "beautiful house" analogy before. But lately, I've realised that that could easily lead to further complications. A beautiful house can be constructed but with a lousy foundation. It could serve certain aesthetic purposes, but would eventually fail in its basic function as a house. An ugly house could be constructed from brilliant materials and craftsmanship. It serves its basic function but other aspects of it would be thrown into question.

So then, isn't film theory a construction manual rather than the building blocks? If you follow it well, but you cheat on the materials or building blocks, things will still fall apart. And a construction manual instructs you on how to build a house but it doesn't tell you what colour the house should be painted in. Even the choice of windows - lattice or grill or sliding glass - is entirely up to you.

In this way, film theory alone is inadequate for a discussion or a review of a film. A filmmaker who follows film theory to the letter isn't going to end up with a great masterpiece. As such, thou shalt not judge a film by how many semiotics there are, nor by the presence of such things as gestalt, millieu and whathaveyou.

OK, I shall stop now, because I'm at the edge of the freezing water, completely naked.

What I shall tell you next is that Woo Ming Jin's award-winning The Elephant And The Sea opens tomorrow in Cathay Cineleisure, at The Curve, and will be on till Sept 3.

Remember: The Elephant And The Sea at Cathay Cineleisure, The Curve, beginnig tomorrow till Sept 3.

City Folk Black Magic Show

2008-08-14T23:55:00.004+08:00

If this were Hollywood, Susuk would be looked upon with great suspicion. Over there, if a project gets stuck in limbo for two years, it would be deemed a failed endeavour and relegated to a limited theatrical release (probably in some seedy cinemas with tissue-strewn, sticky floors, in shady parts of towns) or straight-to-video hell.

But this is a different part of the world, and Susuk, despite a two-year delay, has collected RM1.2 million in its first week of release. In Hollywood, this would be nothing short of a miracle. The TV series has finished its run on TV3, and is being re-run in the late-night slot (at least I think it's a re-run), and the books of the movie (in Bahasa Malaysia and English) have sold well. What was initially a movie that inspired a TV series has sort of been spun around like the Mach 5 in a wacky race. The interest in the movie has obviously been nurtured by the successful TV series. What an interesting turn of events!

The last few days have seen some of the wackiest reviews and responses appearing on the Net. One blogger basically told Amir Muhammad to learn how to make a horror movie from Pierre Andre! Ya, I agree, 9 September was a real horror of a movie!

Well, I guess she must mean that movie, because Jangan Pandang Belakang wasn't directed by Pierre.

A major Malay newspaper headlined its review as "Can't understand the story." But really, the story isn't that hard to follow, unless you were in a coma. But here's another strange turn of events like the abovementioned.

The big twist, or temporal trick in Susuk is the exact same one that was used in a recent Hollywood movie. To find out which movie it is, highlight the paragraph below. Warning: IT'S A MAJOR SPOILER.

It was Rendition. The past and the present happen concurrently, and are kind of joined together at the end. But Rendition's temporal trick has a big reason for being - it shockingly and emotively reminds us that a tragedy like the one in the film has human faces behind it, which we don't see when we watch the news. I'm hard-pressed to find a good reason for Susuk employing the same trick.

But Susuk was made two years earlier, and that Hollywood movie only came out last year. Which, in hindsight, makes Amir and his co-director Naeim Ghalili, pioneers. Well, well.

Fireworks And Wireworks

2008-08-09T12:56:00.003+08:00

I had a blast watching the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics last night. Traffic was bad, and I thought I would miss the show, but as luck would have it, I ended up in a medium-sized shopping mall that had projection screens showing the opening ceremony telecast. It was a nice crowd too, who even stood up during the Chinese national anthem!

It was an amazing show, made more by the fact that a friend this morning told me she wasn't impressed with it because it was "not big enough." I wonder, what could be bigger than THAT?!

There were quite a few "How did they do that?"moments, and it was a big opportunity to showcase all sorts of Chinese inventions, including, of course, fireworks. Then it hit me, that the Chinese also gave the world wire-fu, without which there wouldn't have been The Matrix! And there was no shortage of wirework displays last night.

And Zhang Yimou, who directed the whole show, certainly has had experience with wire-fu.

I bet Spielberg is banging his head against the wall of his house now, thinking: "Damn it! I thought the show would fall apart without me! Damn damn damn!" Or maybe he didn't even watch the show, which was a delayed telecast in the US and angered many Olympics fans who had to wait 12 hours for it.

Naturally, the protests and other "activism" has restarted, and this guy has expectedly posted another stupid blog entry on the eve of the opening ceremony. The guy is Grady Hendrix, and the blog is "Variety's Asian film blog," but you have to wonder what entries like this latest one and previous China-bashing ones have to do with "Asian films."

All these protests are missing the one pertinent point about the whole affair - that this is an inspiring moment where a nation troubled by natural disasters and other problems bounces back unfazed and against incredible odds to put on a formidable show, not just for the world, but also as a reaffirmation to themselves.

Here's what I wrote about the other Kaiju "smackdowns" of China
And here's Spielberg trying to be a hero

Lost Landscapes

2008-08-07T15:18:00.005+08:00

The Midnight Express snack bar in Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express, where Faye Wong's character worked, is gone. Check out what it's turned into here.

There are many other sights familiar to HK film fans that have disappeared or are fast disappearing, like the breathtaking Kowloon Walled City,which was also in Wong Kar-wai's Days Of Being Wild. The famous teahouse in the gunfight scene in John Woo's Hard Boiled is gone, and so are parts of Tsim Sha Tsui that were in Peter Chan's Comrades: Almost A Love Story. Ringo Lam quickly shot part of Full Alert on Bird Street when he found out it was going to be destroyed. You can read about all of it here.

Johnnie To's Sparrow practically bleeds with nostalgia for the old, romantic side of Hong Kong. Simon Yam's character goes around town with an old camera, capturing faces and places, as if they will all be gone by tomorrow. Which is probably closer to the truth than we think.

I attended a talk with Wim Wenders are a few other filmmakers last year at the Berlinale, and it centred around cities in film. There are certainly places that are instantly recognisable by their landmarks, and the more important landmarks are often preserved for good. But there are also places that have become a part of their inhabitants souls, but do not carry such importance as to be preserved as a national heritage or landmark.

It's a painful reality. Like in Malaysia, for instance, most mainstream film and TV productions are so preoccupied with including shots of the Petronas Twin Towers, as if those are the only landmarks that would imprint an identity on the locale portrayed. But any filmmaker or photographer will tell you that the true face of beauty and the real soul of the city lies in places not commonly seen in our films and productions but have been around long enough and lived in enough to be ingrained into the local consciousness. These are the true places of character, not the concrete-and-steel modernities that sooner or later morph into a single, shiny, indistinguishable mass.

But how many of our filmmakers are actually racing to preserve such places on film? I know of a few filmmakers who look to places like Ipoh and other towns. Most recently, Azhar Ruddin's Punggok Rindukan Bulan (The Longing) was shot in the Bukit Chagar flats in Johor Baru, which was torn down after they finished production there.

We certainly can't stop the force of progress, and we'll surely see more of these kinds of places being demolished. The only way left to preserve them is on film and within our collective film memory.

It's That Time Of The Year Again

2008-08-06T20:53:00.005+08:00

Yes, indeed. It's that time when dumb decisions are made, and even dumber results come about. It's the Festival Filem Malaysia.

First of all, check out the official webpage here and weep. No, seriously, the horrendous English will make you weep. Secondly, Congkak, the side-splitting "horror" movie, garnered four nominations, including Best Director and Best Sound. Now how in the world did that happen in an industry of sane people? For one, Congkak is a terrible movie, and I rolled all around the cinema floor laughing my ass off throughout the movie. No, really I did.

Secondly, I came out of the movie with an earache. What sound design? What sound effects? They were just a bunch of very, very loud "explosions" designed to jolt the audience because the movie has no real scares.

The nominees for Best Film are going to be announced on the night of the awards ceremony. I wonder, I just wonder, if Congkak will be one of them.

And then there's the case where the FFM snubs important filmmakers. Last year, Mukhsin, one of the best local films, was snubbed in both the Best Film and Best Director categories. Head juror Yusof Haslam thought there was nothing particularly new or groundbreaking about the film, just more of the same ol', same ol' from Yasmin Ahmad. So I guess, in a sulky move, Muallaf isn't submitted to this year's FFM. Just a bit of advice though: really, if the FFM doesn't care about you or your films, then your submission or non-submission will not move them to tears. In fact, I think there would be some rejoicing for the lack of real competition. More prizes to go around, if you know what I mean.

So, it's that time of the year again. It's the season when we celebrate mediocrity. It's the moment of sucky films and sulky filmmakers.

By the way, Amir Muhammad is on this year's jury, although I don't exactly know what the implications of that are.

Nah, I won't even bother linking to the full list of nominees.

Up, Up And Away

2008-08-03T12:01:00.003+08:00

I've never been to Hong Kong. Well, I've had a stopover in Chep Lap Kok airport, but all i could do was look out the large windows at the hills outside. Couldn't step out to see the city. I had another chance to visit Hong Kong, but at the last minute, SARS broke out and all my plans had to be cancelled. Friends who have gone to the island before say it's a shopping paradise, and it's always busy, crammed with people.

But for Johnnie To, there's a romantic side to the city and the island. Sparrow captures that perfectly, alternating between the old and the new, and sometimes mixing them up. I don't believe Hong Kong has ever been this beautiful on film, or at least this endearing. The slick and the rustic exist together, so do the archaic and the modern, the past and the present. There's a sense of a temporal mash-up not just in terms of the visuals of the city, but also the movie's characters.

Simon Yam's Kei could easily be a Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly or Clark Gable. The opening sequence of him in his apartment sees him reaching towards a sparrow that had flown into his room. From his graceful, choreographed movement, I really thought he was going to break into a dance, and song perhaps. But he never does, throughout the entire film. He's always close to it though, and together with the very characteristic music, gives the film the feel of a 60s French musical. Closer to the truth is that it's as if Alain Delon is in a Hollywood musical.

Certainly, on the crime side of the story, it would seem the spirit of Jean-Pierre Melville is operating. The sense of style is strong, the capers skilfully drawn out with the coolness of a Melville heist. Four professional pickpockets, led by Kei, operate daily within the city, but their work is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious beautiful woman (Kelly Lin). It turns out that the woman is a Mainlander trying to free herself from the clutches of her wealthy, aged lover.

The four unwittingly get drawn into the mess, and this leads to a nighttime showdown in the rain, with umbrellas and sharp objects. It could all turn deadly, if this were a gritty crime thriller, but this is really To's love letter to his beloved Hong Kong, and romance even creeps into this final showdown. The victory is really the cinematographer's. Working with only dark tones, and at night and drenched in water, the beauty of every frame still leaps out. It must have been some really clever lighting at work there.

The editing of that scene and the scenes of pocket-picking is another proof of the painstaking editing that To gives a lot of attention to, like the street chase scene in Mad Detective.

But the winning point here is the stark simplicity of it all, with minimal dialogue and a story so uncomplicated, it's almost like a dream. Like Throw Down, this is pure cinematic storytelling, refined down to the point where the camera is the only one doing all the talking.

Ultimately, it's a story about home, or going home. The freedom outside can be attractive, the wide, open sky inviting, but in the end we all want a place to go back to. For the sparrow, it's not necessarily up in a tree. It could be on a rafter in the corner of an apartment's ceiling. Freedom is not a place, nor can it be drawn by boundaries. Freedom is what you do; life's what you make it.

In Sparrow, freedom is lost and regained, and home is where the heart is. And for Johnnie To, through his loving portrayal of his city, shows us that his heart is firmly in Hong Kong and proudly on his sleeve.

One For The X-Files ...

2008-07-29T23:38:00.004+08:00

So this and last week, the world was abuzz with the news of the disappearance of one Tony Jaa, international action superstar. One day he was on the set of Ong Bak 2, directing and acting, and the next, he had gone into the jungle to meditate. After that, he became something like Bigfoot and Elvis, reports of him being spotted in various places popping up like mushrooms. Even Variety picked up the story, and that's got to be important. His producer held a teary-eyed press conference begging Tony to come back, please come back. And lo and behold, today it's reported that Tony appeared on a TV show and claimed he never abandoned the movie at all.

Tony Jaa's disappearance and re-appearance is spooky enough as it is. But this piece about William Castle and Rosemary's Baby is even spookier. One coincidence is just that, a coincidence. But several coincidences? It becomes one too many for comfort.

Read on, and discover how the movie adaptation of Ira Levin's story about Satan's child being born in New York is linked to director Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate's murder by Charles Manson, Mia Farrow's divorce from Sinatra, two other deaths, and Castle's prolonged illnesses.

And the weirdest and spookiest?

John Lennon had spent the spring of 1968 with Mia Farrow at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in India. During their stay, Lennon had written "Dear Prudence" for Farrow's sister (who shared a name with Sharon Tate's Yorkshire terrier) and it featured on The Beatles' White Album that November. Charles Manson claimed that the LP contained coded messages about the impending race war he hoped to provoke with the Cielo Drive slayings. Lennon himself met a violent end in December 1980 when he was gunned down in New York — outside the Dakota apartments which Castle and Polanski had used for the exteriors of the Bramford block where Rosemary gave birth to her child.

Woah. Brrr!

The Tragedy Of Watchmen

2008-07-26T12:17:00.005+08:00

Admit it, you knew this post was coming.

The Watchmen trailer is out (no, I won't link it here), and the Geekdom has cheered its approval, complete with fists punching air. The San Diego Comic Con has a model of Nite Owl's ship on display for fanboys to walk through and gawk at. Everyone's playing it like the trailer has shown us a glimpse of pure genius, like we will be weeping our eyes out when the final masterpiece is unveiled.

This, unfortunately, is the reality. Let's think about it for a moment. Would the fanboy geekdom wield so much power and influence had there not been the Internet? Now is the Age Of The Geek. Now is their time. With fast and wide connection, wired throughout the world, the geeks even dare go up against the Weinsteins. Now if that's not power, I don't know what is.

Now, with this much enthusiasm and approval for Watchmen, anything short of a hit for the movie would be unthinkable. The positive reaction so far is just a symptom of the current need for slickness and style. And that's what Zack Snyder is all about. All style, no substance. That's also why 300 was a massive hit among the fanboys. We can safely blame Sin City for this. From thereon, movie adaptations of comicbooks became much more concerned with emulating the panels of the comicbook, in lieu of everything else. The oohs and aahs of the fanboys came from seeing how much 300 the movie looks like 300 the comicbook. No fanboy much cared for the racist and fascist overtones. Hell, it's an awesome movie to look at, why politicise it?

Snyder's modus operandi for Watchmen seems to be more of the same. The first information released on the Net was about how painstakingly Snyder and gang paid attention to every detail of Dave Gibbons' artwork. If only movie adaptations of comicbooks were so easy, every comicbook movie would be a hit. Why did Christopher Nolan and his brother have to crack their skulls to come up with such a brilliant script when just emulating every panel of The Killing Joke would have been enough?

The very basic, simple point missed by folks like Snyder is that: even if your Watchmen don't look like they do in the comicbooks, but you have a story of substance to tell, and you're able to retain the essence of what the original story was about, it would be a good movie anyway.

The first thing already wrong with Snyder's vision of Watchmen is that everything is slick. Everything is cool. I've said before, there's a reason why the superheroes' costumes, as rendered by Gibbons, look a little odd and ill-fitting. It's not just the superheroes are older and paunchier in the present time of the story. The idea Alan Moore grapples with in the book is that if superheroes did exist, they would be the odd ones out. They would be the outcasts. They would be weirdos. Having that much power would screw your head up in some ways.

But it looks from the trailer like there's just going to be more "carnage in slow-motion", as someone described. The way the guy explodes at Dr Manhattan's touch is cool. The way Nite Owl's ship comes out of the water is cool.

Having seen The Dark Knight, I have to wonder what Watchmen would have been like had the project gone to Nolan. Nolan would have understood, he would have dug even deeper into the story, probing the very nature of the Watchmen. Moore's book is a dark, disturbing, and terribly unsettling story, and you come away from it not being able to look at superheroes the same way ever again. At least I did.

Snyder obviously didn't. There's a reason why Watchmen was, for many years, considered unadaptable. But it seems Snyder so easily jumped into it, and churned out a movie in record time.

That has got to be cause for worry.

Crazy As A Bat Part 2

2008-07-25T10:02:00.003+08:00

So, it's kind of nice to hear that "assault" doesn't exactly mean beating up someone, in the UK, that is. It can mean shouting or even spitting. Over there, beating up someone gets you a "battery" charge. Simply, Christian Bale went to the police station (voluntarily, according to the press) to explain why he shouted at his mom.

Some members of the media are already quick to jump on the bandwagon of painting Bale as a violent guy, prone to rage-filled outbursts and threat-making. Like a recent "expose" about Bale threatening to kick a cinematographer's ass on the set of Terminator Salvation.

Thankfully, The Dark Knight has become quite a phenomenon, its box-office numbers greatly overshadowing those silly, unethical news reports. While Dave Kehr alleges that Batman could be construed as kind of a stand-in for Bush (see the link in Part One), J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader (Gotham Reader?) sees Batman as a Christ figure. ("Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”) But you know, we've long established that almost any character in movies can be paralleled with Christ (Alien 3, anyone?).

But what this proves is simply that The Dark Knight is so multi-faceted, multi-layered and complex that it warrants a myriad ways of looking at it. But not all views are valid, though. For example (and Mr Nutshell knows I'm getting here eventually), this review that keeps harping on the comicbooks and how accurately Nolan has followed the comicbooks. It's a classic example of an overlong review that says absolutely ... nothing. It gets so much that you want to slap him upside his head and say: "Dude, Nolan's moved on from the comicbooks! You're left behind!"

The Dark Knight has transcended its comicbook origins. But it hasn't exactly transcended the superhero genre, as some have claimed. What it has done is simply rethought, reshaped and remoulded the idea of what a superhero is. Quite simply, if superheroes do exist in this world, what would be the consequences? It's basically the same question asked by Alan Moore with Watchmen. While Nolan explores the external effects, Moore is more concerned with the internal issues.

Would the existence of superheroes really save us from destruction? What kind of an internal pressure would a superhero have to face? What happens when individuals have that much power? At one point, Lucius Fox, when a giant surveillance system was revealed to him, does question if a person should possess that much power.

Ultimately, I guess it's the question of "Who watches the Watchmen?" that inspired Kehr's observation of totalitarianism as the sole, effective guard against anarchy, and that Batman, as batty as it sounds, is really Bush.

Three Kingdoms, Two Movies

2008-07-23T21:55:00.003+08:00

Let's hold off the stuff about superheroes assaulting their mothers for a while. Here's something long overdue on this blog. I've simply been doing too much movie stuff in the real world that I've sort of lost momentum here in cyberspace.

It's John Woo's Red Cliff (Chi Bi) I'm talking about. There really are two main issues here regarding the timeliness (or not) and effectiveness of this film. Firstly, and foremost I think, is the fact that this is Woo's Asian comeback. He was perhaps the first Hong Kong director (I might be wrong, so kick me in the nuts if I am) of his period to head to Hollywood in search of greener pastures and bigger budgets. It was a really exciting prospect at the time, of having Woo making more of his bullet-ballet movies in the scale of Hollywood. Hard Target notwithstanding, Face/Off was the real result of that marriage.

Pretty soon, everyone else followed suit - Chow Yun-fat, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Ronny Yu, Yuen Wo-ping, even Chen Kaige. It was an exciting time, especially after Ang Lee opened the gates for Asian films with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Just when we thought, ya, this is it, then things started to look not so good. Something was going wrong. The movies, the performances, everything was becoming lacklustre. On the surface, it looked like Hollywood was swallowing up the talent and spewing out run-of-the-mill results. Of course, beneath, it was anyone's guess what was going wrong. But you know, if you take char kuey teow to America, and you put mushrooms, spaghetti sauce and meatballs in it, it's not going to taste quite the same as the char kuey teow in Asia.

In the end, one by one, they started to come home to Asia. They started to make good movies again, reclaiming their mojo. And when one of the guys who was among the earliest to take to the migration, returned as well, and was going to make an historical epic based on one of the most famous Chinese historical, cultural and literary stories, it was really cause for celebration.

Secondly, the trend of Asian big-budget epics is reaching an almost ridiculous level. We've been inundated with them, and in the last months alone, we've had Peter Chan's The Warlords, the Andy Lau-starrer Three Kingdoms: Resurrection Of The Dragon and An Empress And The Warriors. And as we all know about those things called trends, they eventually combust, implode or just simply deflate into nothingness. And we'll all look back with a little embarrassment.

Perhaps if Red Cliff had come at an earlier time, it would have been easier to digest and appreciate. Had there not been an endless supply of such big epics, Red Cliff would have been something of a wonder for Asia. But then, we are arguing against time and its unstoppable flow, and the jetsam and flotsam that inevitably get carried by its currents. And that's a void argument.

The real concern is that big epics need a focused and intimate story at its heart, and the sprawling epic images and feel need to have a central purpose. The Last Emperor's grandiosity frames its titular character, and even imprisons him, becoming an essential device in the storytelling. In Zhang Yimou's Hero, it informed the struggle of a few individuals against a larger scheme of things, and underlined that battle, making the futility of it all more pronounced.

Red Cliff's only sole purpose for its epic scale, seems to be to bend over backwards in fearful respect for its source material; a well-known, widely read, endlessly studied portion of Chinese history and culture. This fervour to honour the legendary source material with an attempt to emulate its grand scale drowns out every other reason there may be for undertaking such a huge endeavour. In the end, it becomes an epic just for the sake of making an epic, visual grandeur solely to impress the eyes.

Yet, it's certainly difficult not to want to welcome back one of Asia's most important action filmmakers, and to recognise the once-lost vigour returned in the form of wild action and characters making cool poses more than actually engaging in combat. It's these things we love and missed. At least Woo does give us that much, but whether that is enough to overcome its too-apparent need to wow us visually, it really depends on how much you've actually missed the John Woo who made Hong Kong movies and tired of the one who made Hollywood assembly-line ones.

And in Red Cliff, it's a very close race between the two. So close, it's almost a photo finish.

Crazy As A Bat

2008-07-22T23:32:00.002+08:00

It seems now that The Dark Knight is going to go down in cinematic history as both a very good film and a legend, for both the right and wrong reasons. You can be sure it will be fuelling speculations for a long time, because this just in: Christian Bale has just been arrested in Leicester for assaulting his mother.

While Mr Nutshell has been complaining that The Dark Knight tickets are sold out even on weekdays, and that he can't get into a cinema to see the film again - and IMAX tickets in the US are sold out till next week - I say too bad, because I've seen it twice already. The second time was in the IMAX cinema, but I think it's probably a regular 35mm print blown up for the giant IMAX screen here. The picture quality wasn't good at all, but I guess they meant for us to "see it on an IMAX screen" and not "see it in IMAX." And the ticket price is much lower than for normal IMAX movies. Picture quality complaints aside, the city skyline scenes and flying scenes do look very breathtaking in IMAX size. And the sheer scale of the Tumbler and Batpod chase sequences do come across stronger.

Meanwhile, here's some crazy discussion about Dave Kehr's crazy assertion that Batman = Bush! The discussion is still on-going.

More on Bat stuff later.

The Darkest Of Nights

2008-07-15T21:45:00.004+08:00

I saw The Dark Knight as early as last Thursday. But there was an embargo on reviews. And anyone who knows me knows how much I hate the idea of embargoes, unless it is on an exclusive. When a bunch of 20 or more journalists, bloggers and reviewers attend the screening, and there is an embargo, what purpose does it serve? Someone somewhere is going to post something online, and the rest of us would be screwed. Embargoes on something that's not an exclusive is just plain stupid.

And sure enough, while I obediently observed the embargo, two idiots posted their reviews online almost right away. So much for the fucking embargo.

Having waited for so long to write this, I've kind of lost steam now. But I can say that whatever I had gleaned from the trailers before this, none of it comes close to the actual final product. I had little confidence in this sequel, partly because of the trailer, and partly because early reviews had mentioned that this was more action and less introspection. And from the trailer, I had felt Heath Ledger's Joker was no different than Jack Nicholson's, right down to the manic laughter.

But having seen the actual film, I take it all back.

Christopher Nolan has done the seemingly almost impossible, given us a sequel that builds upon the first film, builds upon the characters, and gave Gotham City a tangible place in the real world by linking it to Hong Kong. This is no longer a purely fictional world, but something much closer to home, which is probably why The Dark Knight feels extra disturbing. Tim Burton's version was set in a purely fantastical place, therefore rendering the whole affair a whimsical spectacle, and we watch it, distanced and detached, as purely a spectacle. Nolan's sequel cannot be removed from us simply because being rooted now in the real world, the issues it addresses become far more immediate than we could imagine from something of a comicbook origin.

The nature of hero and villain, good and evil, is explored through a glass darkly, the mirror images of both being far more conclusive in Nolan's treatment of the subject than any graphic novel has thus far done, the closest being Arkham Asylum, but which dealt the same cards in a different order. Then, for Nolan, there's also the idea of what a hero is in a society on the brink of anarchy, and he questions the very essence of human nature.

But the most interesting thing I find is the film's version of The Joker. Not only did Heath Ledger give a monumental performance, presenting us a Joker like we've never seen before this (and with a gloriously ingenious introduction to him involving a pencil), The Joker of this film takes on a whole different purpose altogether, removed from its comicbook mentality and disregarding the idea of him as merely a villain. This Joker appears seemingly out of nowhere, with no clear purpose or motive, origin unknown. He is the very basic idea of evil, if you want to call it that, the other end of the scale, one-part of a dual concept that is meaningless without its counterpart. That this evil simply exists is enough for the film, that it's as much a symbol as Batman is, that its genesis is untraceable, is the symptom of its role as metaphor, idea, representation. He is the catalyst for the anarchy that threatens to swallow an entire city, and the fact that his origin is ever-changing in the tales that come right out of his own mouth, only makes him ever more the disembodied.

All the action is great, and Nolan has improved on the last film even in this aspect, giving us sequences that are better shot and more controlled. Exciting as they are, it is what's brewing beneath and then spilling over the top that makes this more than just a superhero movie.

They Gave Me Something To Talk About

2008-07-06T20:55:00.003+08:00

This is it. This is the motherlode. This is the Ultimate Collector's Edition of CASABLANCA. One of my all-time favourite films.

According to Digital Bits, this boxed set will include 40 minutes of extra features, 2 feature-length commentaries, travel-related premiums, a photo book, etc!

Alas, I will have to salivate until the end of the year, which is when it will probably be released.

Michael Bay Wanted To Do Batman

2008-07-06T11:42:00.002+08:00

It seems that Michael Bay wrote a script of The Dark Knight, which Warner Bros rejected. You can read it here.

Some of the comments are rather entertaining. "I'm not so sure this script is even real to be honest."

DOH.

Film School Follies

2008-07-05T18:30:00.008+08:00

I'm still reeling from an incident that happened a few days ago. Not that it was something I hadn't already expected, but nonetheless, it was still quite unnerving.

It all started when a well-known film critic and scholar said that Hancock is just an unimpressive mish-mash of other movies, and nothing more. That would not have been so bad, although it was indeed disappointing, but he went on to say that Wanted was a better film.

That got me completely flabbergasted. I think they could hear me hurling even down in Antarctica. How could someone so well-versed in film theory and all that, find a vacuous film like Wanted far more viable than a film with a more interesting conflict and emotional weight at its centre?

This is a guy who teaches film, and is respected and looked up to by some filmmakers and students. I know some filmmakers who run their films by him to get "approval." Certainly, it's impressive to hear him talk about film theory and all that, and he does know a lot.

But personally, I've always taken everything he said with a dollop of salt. This wariness came rather early - when I first met him, in fact - because he told me that Gladiator is about family. "All that Russell Crowe's character wants is to go back to his family! So, the film is really about family!" he told me rather authoritatively. And yes, he speaks with exclamation marks.

I nodded silently of course. What can one do in the face of such booming authority but to cower in humility?

There is a scene right at the beginning of Gladiator that, like many other films, signifies the beginning of the backbone that will hold the story together. Right before the big battle with the barbarians in the forest, Crowe's Maximus watches a bird on a branch. There's a little smile on his face, as the farmer in him clearly enjoys the beauty of nature and the serene respite it offers. Then in a split second, he turns and his expression changes into that of a hardened general about to lead his army into war. The important fact is not that Maximus wants to return to his family, but the duality of the tough war general and the gentle farmer. All three main characters - Maximus, Commodus and his sister Lucilla - are forced into situations that they'd rather not be in but know it's the only way to lead them where they want to go. Lucilla begins as a somewhat confident woman, but we soon discover she has a past with Maximus and later, we see a different side of her. Commodus, for all his swaggering, is still a scared little boy at heart, as we see in two scenes, with his father and with his sister.

How is it a story primarily concerned with family? I don't know. If you can find a consistency about that anywhere in the film, call me.

All talk about theories is always to mask the inability to observe human behaviour and quirks, the interconnectedness at the core of all of us. All the stories in the world are about one thing - the human condition. Even March Of The Penguins ultimately is a reflection of our very basic human needs. If we can't find the mirror within a story, then the story is worthless to us. If films are only about signifiers, semiotics, gestalt and whatever theory out there, then films are worthless to us. But they are not.

We don't have to look at the blueprint of a house to know that it is a beautiful house and that it functions well. Of course, knowing how the house was constructed adds to our appreciation of it.

Don't Mess With The Hancock

2008-07-03T12:35:00.002+08:00

So the verdict is out, and most critics have made up their minds about Hancock. Unfortunately , or expectedly, most of them hate it. You can head on over to Greencine Daily for their compilation of Hancock reviews. One of them is that dreaded Christopher Orr of The New Republic. I don't know why this guy is still allowed to write "reviews." He's way off most times, as with The Happening where there's lots more to talk about the film but he chooses to slag off M. Night in a childishly sarcastic manner. He's way off again with Hancock, calling it a "clumsy, half-hearted mish-mash."

Clumsy? Half-hearted? You'd think that only if you watched the movie while in a coma.

That's why David Poland is fast becoming one of my favourite critics. He has just written a review with spoilers, following up on his initial spoiler-free one. He is one of the very few, very few, people who could see Hancock for what it really is. Although he calls it "complex," I wouldn't though, but I do think Hancock is a very well thought-out, extremely cleverly conceived film.

It's probably the first superhero movie to deal directly with the idea of "power" in such an interesting manner. There is one scene in the movie that I thought was perplexing the first time I saw it. Three bad guys that Hancock has recently put away are sitting in the prison courtyard talking. One tells the other two that their "power" has been taken away and they have to take it back. But this is actually very consistent with the rest of the movie.

Read Poland's great review for more, but only after you've seen the movie.

The only real problem with Hancock is that Peter Berg has given us a movie we cannot discuss properly without giving anything away. Those of us who want to support the film and tell others to go see it can't do so convincingly without giving away spoilers.

Here's The Real Summer Blockbuster!

2008-07-01T23:56:00.003+08:00

An online friend boasted that he could write a review of Hancock just from watching the trailer, because he thinks the trailer gives too much away, ie. the entire story. Well, I'm sorry to say, he's dead wrong.

Yes, there's a lot in the trailer, but the most important plot point, the major one that actually makes the movie, isn't even hinted at in the trailer. After being inundated by Hollywood summer blockbusters that are entertaining but forgettable (Iron Man), plain forgettable and painfully boring (The Incredible Hulk), and vacuous (Wanted) - and also having been plain disappointed with one Hollywood blockbuster after another over the years - it's just pure delight to find one that can still genuinely surprise and move.

Hancock blows all competition right out of the water (well, the competition isn't that great to begin with anyway). It gets top points because of its unpredictability and because it's got a very big heart at its centre, something so lacking in mainstream movies today. Yes, it actually manages to be moving in more than one instance.

I really cannot reveal any more about the movie than to say that it starts off as almost a spoof of the superhero genre, but then takes a completely unexpected turn somewhere and becomes a whole different movie. Some of the jokes are painfully obvious or quite unfunny, but thankfully most times the humour works. When it doesn't, it also doesn't get in the way of the movie.

It's very obvious what's going to happen with Hancock among the summer blockbuster audiences. Those who have been programmed by Hollywood on what to expect and what to like, aren't going to take too kindly to Hancock's surprise. Those who still want something fresh out of Hollywood apart from the usual stale offering, will love what they get.

You won't see that major plot point coming. At all. And when it comes, it's going to pack such a wallop that some will go "WOW!" while others will wonder "HUH?!"

I haven't been following director Peter Berg's work. Guess it's time to get The Kingdom on DVD. Heard it's pretty good too. Well, a director for whom Michael Mann thinks is good enough to produce must have something right going for him.

And Will Smith? I think it's his best role yet. And if he keeps on going at this rate, he'll be earning some serious accolades soon.

The Dark Knight: Rolling Stone's Pathetic Non-Review

2008-06-27T15:01:00.003+08:00

It's been a while since the last update. I've been struggling with a feature script that started off with much gusto, but has since run into a brick wall. At 48 pages now, and with a major plot point event coming up, well frankly I'm stuck. So, here I am back again in the world of the living.

The Net's all abuzz with news of the very first review of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, written by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine. I, of course, also hurriedly went over to read it, excited to know if this will be the ultimate REAL superhero movie that won't dumb us down any further than The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man have.

Well, disappointingly it's a non-review, really. It's more like a fanboy's frothing ranting than anything else. Travers starts off telling us:

"There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension."

But that's about all he tells us. What is it about the gruelling battle between good and evil that's "raw and elemental"? How does Nolan cut through "to a deeper dimension"?

But all Travers tells us are praises laced with superlatives, like how Ledger as the Joker is "mad-crazy-blazing brilliant," and Bale as Batman is "electrifying as a fallibly human crusader."

Ya, sure, thanks a lot. Now I get a better picture.

And we wonder why some lament the loss of film criticism and the depletion of a good pool of critics who will not bend over backwards to fart out fanboy gas. But come to think of it, well it is Rolling Stone magazine after all, that last bastion of great film criticism.

All-In-One Movie

2008-06-21T21:33:00.004+08:00

A few years ago, a bunch of us reviewers excitedly attended the press preview of The Legend Of Zu. Previously we'd seen Tsui Hark's Time And Tide and was duly impressed with the interesting story and nice action. But after just a few minutes of Zu, our jaws dropped; we were simply flabbergasted by the complete incoherence of the story and the extremely messy, overdone action sequences. By the end of the movie we were really wondering what the heck it was that we'd just witnessed.

Like I'd said previously, Tsui Hark is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. When it's all good, you get neat little surprises. When it's bad, you get stuff like The Legend Of Zu. And Missing.

Angelica Lee Sin-jie seems to have been lifted right out of The Eye for this movie. She just simply has to do more of the same for Missing, which also emulates some of the Pang brothers' camerawork. There's also a scene with a ghost in a lift - which, to Tsui Hark's credit, actually works quite well because of the incredible restraint shown, quite the opposite of The Eye's.

But like in Zu, Tsui Hark seems to be throwing in ideas just because he can, to the extent that the movie becomes a complete mess. Instead of a steady mash-up, it's more like the mess you get when you use the blender without putting on the cover first. There's romance, horror, crime, psychological drama, ghosts, ancient underwater cities, headless bodies, archaeological tablets, madmen who see dead people, possessed fish (no, I'm not kidding!), etc. If only there was a coherent story to hold them all together. Ringo Lam attempted the same with Victim, and successfully pulled off a movie that has psychological drama, a haunted house and even a heist.

The biggest problem with Missing is that a large part of it, which is made up of a horror story, is also largely redundant. It's hard to explain without giving away too much, but suffice it to say, the twist towards the end renders everything that went on before null and void. This could have been just a nice psychological romantic thriller, and I have absolutely no idea why Tsui Hark felt the need to have ghosts.

Absolutely baffling.

The Incredibly Boring Movie

2008-06-21T00:37:00.003+08:00

I don't quite understand the way some critics and reviewers have defended The Incredible Hulk, by saying that it's a different take on the Hulk story from Ang Lee's. How is that a justification or vindication? Here are two movies about the same subject, a guy suffering from gamma poisoning who turns into an uncontrollable green giant, and Lee did a better job. End of story.

From what I'd read, the new Hulk is the fanboy version, as opposed to the previous version for grown-ups. And so, I had expected lots of exciting action and cool Hulk-smashings. What I didn't expect was to start fidgeting halfway through the movie, impatiently waiting for it to end. I wasn't expecting it to reach the same levels as Ang Lee's version. Let's face it, no one can do what Lee does. But the new Hulk didn't even give me good entertainment. The action was repetitive - hell, the entire movie was repetitive. You can summarise it all into this: Bruce Banner hides, military discovers him, Hulk smash, military bombards, Hulk escapes, Bruce hides, military discovers him, Hulk smash, military bombards, Hulk escapes ... repeat till ad nauseum.

If anything, this new version could actually be seen as a sequel to the first Hulk. At the end of the first movie, Bruce Banner ended up in the Amazon. This new movie rushes through the gamma radiation origin story in the title sequence, then opens with Banner in Brazil. The emotion in The Incredible Hulk runs for about five minutes before it all goes flat for the rest of the movie. The chemistry between Edward Norton and Liv Tyler is almost non-existent.

Ang Lee's Hulk delved into not just the psychological aspects of the Hulk story, but also the relationship between the parents and their children (the Banners and the Rosses). Simply, it's about how parents always want their children to be like them, but their children will always hope to grow up different from their parents. Ang Lee hits all the right notes and adds meat to the story, and even muscle and mood to the action sequences.

All the new Hulk's action sequences will do is to inspire ten-year-olds to go home and smash their Lego sets. A review I read pointed out how aesthetically flat the movie is, compared to Lee's version. Apart from the strong colours and comicbook-like panels, Lee's version was aimed at emulating the kind of classic horror of Universal's Frankenstein or the darkness of it. This latest version seems only interested in bringing stuff from the comicbook onto celluloid to get the fans cheering.

The nicest thing in the film, though, is the tribute to the original Banner, Bill Bixby. Blink and you'll miss it.

Nothing Nice To Say, Sir?

2008-06-19T16:16:00.004+08:00

This post has been a long time coming. I'd put it off until today, when I visited Kaiju Shakedown, and found this. The entertainment press in China, it seems, is getting desperate for news, and so runs some really dumb (as perceived by Grady Hendrix) news items.

Now, if you've been reading Kaiju Shakedown long enough, as long as I have, you'd know that the blog's a great source of film news and other quirky stuff. Grady writes in a humorous and interesting style. But you'd also notice, as I have, judging from the kind of posts about China that appears on the blog, it would seem that China is a really terrible country and many stupid things happen there.

This has been the trend at Kaiju when it comes to writing about China. Almost every post has been negative, always something sarcastic that puts the country in a very bad light. I don't claim to know what Grady and Kaiju's motive is, or if there's any, but there certainly is a negative perception there of China.

I guess the most ridiculous thing yet was when Grady kind of made excuses for Sharon Stone's idiotic, heartless, inconsiderate comment about the Sichuan earthquake. Read this post. It would seem poor Sharon was misunderstood, and we should all beg her forgiveness.

You can read more negative posts about China here, here, here and here.

I mean, what's up, man? Have you got nothing nice to say AT ALL about China? The Olympics get it, the official Olympic cheer gets it, even the kind of jokes they make in China get put down, and that sounds rather desperate on the blog's part, almost as desperate as the entertainment press in China they claim are out of precious "nuggets."

It would seem that there's something about China that gets Grady Hendrix's goat. Every time.

Well, at least we can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the Shanghai International Film Festival has kicked Sharon Stone out. I don't see Stone, Richard Gere, or Steven Spielberg making a big deal or boycotting all American events or stop working in America because of Iraq. Like Stone says: "... I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else."

A commentor on that post on Kaiju succinctly puts it, hypothetically, of course, that what if Stone said this:

"Of cause (sic) I have. You know, it’s very interesting about that since first, I’m not happy about the way USA treats the Iraqis because I think anyone should not be unkind to anyone else. And so I am being very concerned about the election of the next president of the US and A, because we had not being nice to Saddam Hussein, who is a good friend of mine."

I won't reproduce the rest of the comment here, because the rest might be offensive to some, but you can go over to that Kaiju post and read it.

Kung Fu Tony (Ong Bak 2 Promo Reel)

2008-06-17T19:15:00.003+08:00

It's pretty unanimous that Ong Bak brought martial arts movies to a whole new level of brutality and realism. The script was awfully crap, but no one seemed to care once the ass-kicking got started. It's all because of one guy - Tony Jaa. From practically a nobody, or more accurately, just another extra, Jaa achieved grand martial arts status, and the term "international action superstar" became permanently attached to his name.

At the time when a movie could have Tony Jaa playing a character chasing down the bad guys who stole his Tamagochi and I'd still go to see it, his follow-up Tom Yum Goong wasn't as spicy although it was essentially equally brutal and action-packed.

Now the guy has gone and directed an Ong Bak sequel himself. And Ong Bak 2 looks mightily impressive, judging from the promo reel exclusively available at Twitch here. It has nothing to do with the first movie's storyline, and it seems the only things both movies have in common are Tony Jaa and elephants. But it's basically about a young boy rescued by a group of martial artists of different disciplines, and who is destined as The One who will unite all the martial arts of the world. Or something like that.

It does seem to be the trend these days of mixing different forms of fighting in one movie, much like what Donnie Yen has been doing. So in Ong Bak 2, Jaa does muay thai, kung fu, samurai swordfighting, and more.

In case you missed the link above, once again here's the promo reel exclusively at Twitch.

Film As Graphic Design As Film As ...

2008-06-16T16:52:00.003+08:00

My initial shock of seeing a photo of Norman Halim of KRU at Variety Asia Online has died down. My initial excitement about The Happening has grown. My curiosity about the new Hulk has died away completely.

So, what else is new?

Well, my admiration for Speed Racer has been rekindled. Jason Morehead of Opus has an interesting review of the film, He says:

There’s a sense of hyperreality to the film—of going so far over the top that the “over the top-ness” itself becomes substantial and “real”. Again, the Wachowskis played with this a bit in the Matrix films, but they’ve really ramped it up for Speed Racer.

That's a nice and interesting way of putting it. Jason also found that the more dramatic, family moments are actually touching, the same thing I encountered, that the Wachowskis at least did not let the blue-screen fervour override their emotional consciousness.

But what the visuals in Speed Racer mean has eluded many of us. I won't be the first to claim that I know, but one night, I was in a car, stuck at a traffic light, and I looked around. The tail-lights, the street-lights, the cars - they all started to imply something. I was reminded of the lens flares, the neons, the works in Speed Racer. There was a speck of the inspiration that gave birth to the manufactured universe of Speed Racer, and I could see it. The world of racing in Speed Racer isn't just a "a super-glossy version of the future as imagined in the 1950s," but it's the sport of racing draped in Las Vegas kitsch and sensibility, minus the vulgarity of excess.

What's even more interesting is the link at the Opus review to Khoi Vinh's analysis of the film's visuals from a graphic-design point of view. Khoi Vinh finds the use of digital images "aggressively abstract." He also says:

The world created by the film’s directors, the Wachowski Brothers, is very much like a post-Photoshop equivalent of an Impressionist masterpiece; the cinematic vision at work here has nearly no truck with reality, only with reinterpeting — often, regurgitating — familiar objects as if experienced from the inside of some sci-fi Chuck E. Cheese.

It's a very interesting read, and eye-opening too. While he was incredibly impressed with the visual design, Khoi Vinh also found the story touching. Mostly, he's hit on something about Speed Racer that I felt but couldn't really express. Hop on over and have a read.

Further Thoughts On The Happening

2008-06-14T15:00:00.005+08:00

It's funny that for a film that I found to be rather insubstantial at first, The Happening sure stayed with me a long time and made me think about it a lot. And the more I thought about it, the more interesting the film became.

I've finally come to the conclusion that M. Night Shyamalan has hoodwinked us all. In a good way, that is.

I always thought the scene of people jumping off a building in the trailer was somewhat inspired by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. The apocalyptic angle and the suicides of course, is largely reminiscent o films like Cure and Kairo. But little did I realise just how much The Happening shares with Kurosawa's vision of the world.

Here, I have to warn that this post may contain (very) mild spoilers.

All of the reviews that have come out so far have focused on how little there is in the film in terms of the horror/fantasy/thriller aspect that Shyamalan has come to be known for. These reviews are, of course, early ones probably rushed out to be among the first, including my initial thoughts penned out here on this blog. But perhaps a little later, when reviewers have more time to mull over The Happening, we'd see more probing thoughts on the film.

Although there are some idiotic reviews out there, like this one that tries hard to be sarcastic and funny but trips all over itself in its haste, much of the general consensus cannot be blamed for expecting more of The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. These are such strong works that I feel because of them, Shyamalan has very much directed himself into a corner. But to go into a Shyamalan film and not see beyond its surface is to be completely misdirected. His films have always been more than just what they're seemingly about.

I've always thought that The Sixth Sense was largely about the communication breakdown between men and women. It is only when the men are able to come to terms with themselves that the walls are broken down. In fact, this has been Shyamalan's preoccupation in every one of his films. In The Happening, this is taken steps further and expanded to include an entire population. This expansion has turned it into the alienation in society, how modern life actually alienates us despite the tools of communication getting more and more efficient. This was at the heart of Kairo, where technology like the Internet that is supposed to bring us closer and make the world a smaller place, has in fact left us little space to breathe.

The modes of communication in the film gets pared down to the barest minimum, the most essential of necessities. It all begins with cellphones, the television and other modern wonders. Then as the situation worsens for the people, these tools start to fail. The trains stop. Mark Wahlberg's character asks the train operators what was wrong, and one of them says, "We've lost contact."

"With whom?" he asks. The reply is: "Everybody."

At one point, Mark Wahlberg's character and friends resort to a transistor radio to try and pick up the latest news about the toxin attacks. And here, something else arises. The static through which a semblance of a voice comes through seems to metaphorically suggest that the real message is always muddled and that it always requires us to negotiate through the noise and static of the world at large to get through to each other.

And as the film progresses, so it empties out, and become less populated by people. The static and noise somewhat clears towards the end. The old woman who lives alone in the forest, encountered by Wahlberg's character and his wife, has lived in years of self-imposed exile from the world she no longer trusts. And she's gone a little kooky. The moral here is that people always need each other, but as we already know, sometimes too many cooks can spoil the broth.

In this respect, The Happening and Kairo share a lot, both films empty themselves of people, in a world that needs to purge itself to be able to hear itself better. But the difference here is that Kurosawa is a much more cynical and pessimistic storyteller, and Shyamalan is a romantic one. The former thinks we're basically doomed, Shyamalan would rather believe that in the silence and solitude of the aftermath, from people communicating via cellphones down to people talking through just holes in a wall, two persons can finally find each other and what really matters the most.

In Shyamalan's films, love always wins in the end.

Ten For The Price Of One

2008-06-14T14:35:00.004+08:00

Panic in the streets of London ... panic in the streets of Birmingham ... chaos in the cinemas ... because Dasavatharam has sold out completely ...

Well, there's not really any panic, but it might seem like so. That's why the words to The Smiths' song came to my head. I was on my way to the cinema after failing to book tickets for the latest Kamal Hassan vehicle. I'd tried to get a contact in one of the cinema chains to help me book a ticket, but was told all shows have been fully booked or are sold out. Then the bus passed a cinema in my town and I saw crowds spilling out of the cinema and onto the street. It was amazing.

I managed to get one of those unclaimed bookings at the last minute. Trying to get into the jam-packed house was crazy. It was the first time I had ever had to queue up to GET IN to a cineplex hall. But all the trouble was really worth it.

Dasavatharam is a Kamal Hassan movie for Kamal Hassan fans. He's done some really out-there stuff in his movies, but this one is the ultimate. He takes on prosthetics, special digital composites and effects, and plays 10 different characters with nary a hitch. The astounding effects manage to make him a giant; a frail, short old lady; a paunchy police guy; and a buff, ancient hero. Well, the last one isn't really a special effect but Kamal in his real self. And I haven't mentioned him playing George W. Bush and an assassin who's somewhat of a tribute to Arnie, Stallone and all those American action guys of the 80s.

I don't even want to talk about the story (which spans centuries and continents, but is mainly about a scientist who tries to stop a virus he created from falling into the wrong hands), because there's already so much to talk about Kamal Hassan in this movie. But yes, the story is about how everything in this world is connected in some ways, and presents this in both religious and scientific perspectives.

The use of a real 2004 event in the story may be uncomfortable to some, but hey, we're here to watch Kamal Hassan in action, and he sure delivers. In spades. The movie has everything - action, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, romance, natural disaster, martial arts, car chases, motorbike chases, lorry chases, singing, dancing - and it's hilarious and exhilarating. But the best thing has to be when Kamal Hassan dukes it out with himself.

That has to be worth more than the price of admission.

The Ecology Of A Director's Mind

2008-06-10T18:34:00.005+08:00

Having seen The Happening, I can almost guarantee that M. Night Shyamalan's next film will be something totally out of character for him, something none of us would expect him to do. I'm saying this because I've noticed this trend among directors, when they display a certain stuck-in-a-rut tendency, as if they've hit a wall. The most telling symptom is when there's a ton of references to their previous films in their latest.

Most recently, it happened with Kurosawa Kiyoshi. His Retribution was like a mish-mash of ideas and elements from his other films. And then he went and made Tokyo Sonata, a family drama. In The Happening, you can spot shots similar to those in The Sixth Sense, or moments when Shyamalan plays up the suspense with sounds, like in Signs. There is also a train sequence.

I see The Happening as a comedy-thriller. You can dispute me on this, but the kind of close-ups Shyamalan uses on his actors, the quirkiness they display (especially Mark Wahlberg who's allowed to be almost hamming it up), the situations they get themselves into - they're all clearly indications of the director either bored out of his mind or having a little fun by derailing his own familiarity to audiences.

The ecological slant of the story can't do much to prop up the film that is really one simple idea stretched to fill in a feature-length running time. The likelihood that ideas were thrown in randomly grows gradually more certain as the situations in the film become increasingly incongruous.

And the ambiguity of the threat of an airborne toxin doesn't quite lend itself to anything in particular. As such, you can't help but feel as if it's lazy writing. Shyamalan prepares us for it early in the film though. As Wahlberg's character addresses his students in class, he tells them that scientists may come up with explanations for things but in the end they're all just theories, and there will always be things about nature that we won't be able to understand.

That's like saying: "In this film, don't try to figure anything out."

The Outlaw And His Minions

2008-06-09T11:06:00.007+08:00

When we were young, cowboys and injuns were easy to define. The cowboys were heroes and the injuns were the bad guys. The injuns were a weird and evil lot, or so the TV shows and movies told us. I grew up with a fondness for westerns and all other historical and mythical tales. It's now easy to draw comparisons between westerns and wuxia, or westerns and samurai films. But it's getting even harder to draw the line between good and evil.

I guess ever since the 1950s, things have changed greatly for the western. Films like John Ford's The Searchers gave a human face to the Native American, and brought into focus, and questioned, the racist motives of the cowboy. Since then, and even more lately, we've had revisionist and more politically correct westerns. Films like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven unflinchingly shattered the romantic myth of the gunfighter. No longer was it easy and pleasurable to kill someone, nor can the killer remain unaffected. The old hero myth had become ineffectual in the blurring of morals and natures.

Why am I talking about this? Because I've just seen The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. While Unforgiven basically asks what happens to the gunfighter hero when age catches up with him, TAOJJBTCRF takes a strong, sharp stab at idolisation and the idol.

I'd read Ron Hansen's novel, on which the film is based, but I never finished it on account of it becoming drier towards its second half, although that style of writing I initially found to be rather unique. Andrew Dominik's adaptation is faithful, and captures exactly the feel of the book. It's a newsy account of the last days of the James gang, but it also has a certain poignancy about it, which Dominik managed to create. Roger Deakins' beautiful photography lends much to some of the dream-like sequences, underlining the effect of reality surrounded by myth.

At its heart is the story of one young man's idolisation of his childhood hero and misplaced ambition and how they come to destroy both the mythical figure and his admirer. Meanwhile, the idol himself is the epitome and representation of every pop figure clutching helplessly and desperately to fame and respect. As everything that propped him up starts to slip away, a desperate man resorts to desperate measures in the face of paranoia. Watching his idol fall apart, the admirer gets caught in a web of what he perceives as betrayal. The end result is the tragic titular incident.

TAOJJBTCRF is a film that carries only the most necessary dialogues, preferring to let the stares and glances and the uncomfortable silences between its characters to tell the story. I'd heard much about Casey Affleck's performance as Bob Ford, and it is indeed wondrous to behold, his face conveying so much. Dominik's camera knows just how much and how long to take from and stay on Affleck, sometimes even in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. Take for example, the scene where Ford tries to get out of bed and reach for the gun but James who is next to him orders him to stay put. As Ford turns, there's just the momentary glint of a fearful tear running down his face. It's little touches like this that make the film so special.

TAOJJBTCRF is definitely one of the best films last year, and one of the best westerns there is. It's an affecting cautionary tale about the dangers of fame and those who blindly embrace its mythical offerings, clearly a reflection of contemporary pop culture.

Fight Club

2008-06-08T13:39:00.002+08:00

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but many things distracted me, one of which is Sharon Stone's idiotic comments about the China earthquake. But more on that in another post.

There are at this time two fight-film projects, one from Malaysia and one from Singapore. The Malaysian one has completed shooting and even has a trailer online now. It's called Kinta 1881, and it's touted as Malaysia's very first martial arts movie. It's directed by C.L. Hor, the guy who did The Third Generation, the gorgeously shot but ultimately senseless film with huge arthouse pretensions. We all know how that one went, but hopefully Kinta 1881 is much better. It does look very exciting in its trailer, and definitely hopes are high for our first kungfu movie.

The Singapore one is called Knife. It will start production "soon," although no dates have been announced. But this one sounds interesting on paper. It's about an ex-soldier who returns to a Southeast Asian city to rescue his daughter from the clutches of the biggest gang in the city. It promises a lot of east-meets-west martial arts styles - Muay Thai, streetfighting and Special Forces knife techniques. So far the best knife-fighting we've seen in recent times is between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing in SPL. And that was one hell of a fight.

Knife will be directed by Xie Dong, who was assistant director on many of Zhang Yimou's movies. Sunny Pang, last seen in the Singaporean film Lucky 7, plays the lead. Other confirmed cast include John Lone, Jade Leung and Yasuaki Kurata.

The film's official site is here.

Film School Reject Does Good

2008-06-05T22:59:00.003+08:00

You know how stuff of legend surrounds Paul Thomas Anderson. It's natural for someone so young and so brilliant. He burst onto the scene with Hard Eight, then really stood out with Boogie Nights. And just by his third film, he'd already made an "epic," the San Fernando valley masterpiece, Magnolia, my favourite of his films. Of course, he's now also made another epic masterpiece, There Will Be Blood.

PTA is infamous for attending New York Film School for only two days. After that he got fed up and found that he could learn much more just by watching movies. Apparently, he once said watching laserdiscs (this was back then) with directors' commentaries is better than anything film school could teach you.

Of course, this bitterness with film school naturally fuelled some interesting speculations, which have reached mythical proportions because of PTA's fame now. One story, which a friend who attended Boston film school told me, was that PTA got kicked out of film school because for his thesis film, he made a porno. But this was probably borne of the fact that he admitted to watching porno from age 10 to 17, and that he once made a mockumentary called The Dirk Diggler Story about a has-been porn star.

Well now, Singapore has its own PTA-type story to boast about. His name is Pearry Reginald Teo, and he is just 29. He was rejected by one of the polytechnics in Singapore when he tried to get into its film and media studies course. He left to study filmmaking in Arizona, and his horror flick, Liberata Me, was screened in Cannes and even won best horror film at the 2002 New York International Independent Film And Video Festival.

And now he has made a sci-fi flick, The Gene Generation, which garnered some deals in Cannes this year. The film stars Bai Ling and Faye Dunaway.

You can read his story here. Watch a trailer of The Gene Generation here.

Those guys at the polytechnic must be kicking themselves now.