WE HAVE MOVED!

After 8 years here on Blogger, The Storyboard has decided to find a new home. We are currently hosted at Wordpress.

All published posts will still be here on this Blogger site, so you can still come by here to look for the old posts.

All new posts will now be at the Wordpress site.

Please visit:

https://storyboardfilm.wordpress.com

Thank you! It's been a nice 8 years here. See you at our new home!

Growing Up Adults

This from The Guardian today.

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

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

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

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

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

Faces And Places

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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

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?