Scorpio Loves Snow!

Roles in "Sai Lo Hid"

2010-10-23T06:47:00.001-07:00

Sornram Theappitak as Khun Krai Peeriya (later Luang Krai)

Sattawat Doolayawijit as Muen Thip

Usanee Rakkasikorn as Mae Yuean (younger sister of Khun Krai, wife of Muen Thip)

Sorapong Chatree as Khun Pra Suwanracha ,Father of Daorueng

Banjertsare Yamapai as Khun Ya Nim (grandmother of Daorueng )

Metta Roongrat as Chod (cook in Daorueng's family)

Left: Kluay Choenyim as Tub (servant in Daorueng's family)
Right: Bee Matika Atthakornsiripo as young Daoreuang

Left: Yuwadee Ruengchai as Yuean (nanny of Daorueng)

Right: Worached Nimsuwan as Ming (servant of Muen Thip)

Kochakorn Nimakorn as Lamduan (elder sister of Daorueng)

Ekapan Banleurit as Luang Thep (husband of Lamduan, elder brother of Khun Krai)

Left: Nisakorn Yaowarat as Im (nanny of Mae Yuean)

Right: Chaiwarong Changkoed as Ma (servant of Muen Thip)

Prompong Nopparit as Chao Khun / Praya Peeriya (father of Khun Krai & Luang Thep)

Tanyarat Lohanan as Khunying Sri (mother of Khun Krai)

Panadda Komalatat as Mae Prig (mother of Muen Thip)

Roongrat Duangkwan as Puang (a mistress of Muen Thip's)

มาฬิศร์ เชยโสภณ (Neung Marit Choeysophon) as Duean (Luang Sena) (elder brother of Daorueng & Lamduan)

The Next Harry Potter? – “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief”

2010-03-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

This is one of so-called “blockbuster” movies – Don’t expect too much in the storyline, acting or more complicated things, just enjoy the show. Most ppl will draw the wallet once they read the line of “from the creators of ‘Harry Potter’” on the poster.

Actually I have more knowledge in Greek mythology than “Harry Potter” – cuz I never read the original novels of the latter… So when I saw the three teens entered the “sculpture garden”, I knew that was the dungeon of Medusa. Here the writers are quite loyal to the myths – Percy killed Medusa by cutting off her head, just like his namesake Perseus did in “real myth”. Even the idea of “mirror” remained the same – Perseus used a shielf (given by Athena), while Percy used a more “modern” weapon. 

The “bad boy” Luke by Jake Abel looks more shining than the leading actor sometimes… He ended up in the Hudson River just because he didn’t have a “Big Three” father… Fortunately we will have him back in the sequel, “The Sea of Monsters”.

Another surprise in this movie is to see some actors/actresses of my flavor – Pierce Brosnan proved that he can be a good supporting role too; Kevin McKidd from “Grey’s Anatomy” is one of my recent favorites, and happy to see him as a powerful yet gentle Poseidon here; and Melina Kanakaredes from “CSI:NY” finally got a chance to portrait a real Greek beauty (named “Athena”) after her not-so-successful trial in the hot TV series several months ago (btw I heard that she wrote the story of that ep by herself… no wonder all of a sudden Mike was so attracted by her…), pity she didn’t get a chance to show off her language ability.

It is said that this series will be the next “Harry Potter”. Well, let’s see…

An Overwhelming “Buffet” – “2012”

2009-11-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

There are only two questions that you need to ask for any doom-day movie: When it comes, where will you be and who will you be with? Anything else, like the special effects, humanity issues, religions, etc., are either pure technical things or things that could be covered by these two billion-dollar questions.

The profile of Roland Emmerich (a.k.a the director) actually decreased my desire to watch this movie: From “Independence Day” (1996), “Godzilla” (1998) all the way down to “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) and “10,000 B.C.” (2008), it seems that the only thing increases is the ratio and tech level of those special effect shots in his movies. It was actually this poster and the name “John Cusack” (a.k.a the leading actor) that dragged me into the cinema.

The whole thing looks like a mixture of all disaster movies within the recent decade – You don’t need to be an expert to pinpoint the names like “Japan Sinks” (OK, if you haven’t watched this Japanese movie yet, go for it. I recommend the 2006 version.), “Titanic”, “War of Worlds” and Emmerich’s own “The Day After Tomorrow”. And of course, the Ark... It seems that Emmerich believed that if he could “extract” the classic scenes from all these movies and put them into one new movie, he could be able to create a more successful one. But what we see here is just an overwhelming “buffet” – we have everything, but we simply cannot digest.

Again a wrong role in a wrong movie for John Cusack. He could not even surpass Tom Cruise in “War of Worlds”. He should pick some more sophiscated roles to engrave his name onto some trophies.

And the writers of this movie simply “follow the rules”: Bad guys must be Caucasians; those supporting roles can find their peace in heaven so that the leading guy will reunite with his family and live happily ever after; and don’t forget these “popular” issues now:
1. BRIC: The fallen Christ in Brazil, Russian president and giant plane, the secret discovered by Indian scientist (and in India also), and China that makes the Arks.
2. Black U.S. president.
3. Brave U.S. firemen / firewomen
4. Tibet
etc.

Although, you should watch such a doom-day movie once every several yrs, just to think about those two billion-dollar questions, it’s good for your own sake.

P.S. Do you know the meaning of “Himalaya”?

Legend on the Stage – “This Is It”

2009-11-02T06:45:00.001-08:00

Although I knew it is just a final milking from the cash cow by the production company, after watching this “Final tribute to MJ”, I still felt sad and sorry for his departure.

He belongs to the stage: Whatever he did off it, he just shines on it. Even without actually singing those songs (to protect his voice before the real show, as he said), his confident movements proved that he is really the “King of Pop”. Those 80’s costumes and movements might look “out” on anybody else, but just so “in” on him. And he is one of the only two ppl that can make the “black-shoe-white-socks” a fashion instead of a disaster – the other one is the late Bruce Lee. Now they can finally meet in the heaven.

And the stage belongs to him: As one of the two stage directors, he requests for perfection for every detail – echo, lighting, movements of the dancers, etc. The keyboard guy complains that “MJ knows every tone of every single one of his songs”. God knows that most singers have to recite the lyrics and stage positions before every single one of their shows… And I particularly like what he said to that young guitar girl when they were rehearsing for the duo – “It’s your time to shine!”.

Editing based on limited original video clips is never an easy job. (I did some trivial editing jobs recently, and that’s why I understand that.) This documentary really deserves an Oscar nomination for that. Come on, you cannot get MJ to come back and shoot for some additional cuts when you find out that you are missing them… Yup, I heard that some of the scenes were not by the “real MJ”, but, whatever…

There are so many songs that are important to me here: The anti-war “They Don’t Care About Us”, the save-the-planet “Earth Song” and “Heal the World”, the anti-discrimination “Black or White”, and a very special one for me – “Beat It” (cuz I performed this song in an aerobics way with some classmates back to the college yrs…). And so many classic movements: moonwalk, robot dance, “Billie Jean” (you know what I mean…), etc. Just like a “compilation”… After watching all these, you will have the same feeling as I do – why we have to lose him?!

Golden Ages Once More -- "Inglourious Basterds"

2009-10-04T02:47:00.000-07:00

Again, I was attracted to cinema by Brad Pitt. Not Quentine Tarantino, cuz so many movies related to his name really disappointed me... Lucky for him, this time he made it right.

There are 5 chapters in this movie (literally), so I would take it more like a "compilation" of 5 short films which are somewhate related.

Chapter 1: The conversation between a French diary farmer and a SS officer (Col. Landa) almost single-handed consists of the whole 20 min, and even within a humble farm house setting! From now on we should pay attention to this name Christoph Waltz, who also brought us several other excellent scenes in the following chapters.

Chapter 2: This is like a brief for the team of "Basterds", in a close-to-Kill-Bill style. And I guess it's this chapter that made this movie got the "M18" classification in Singapore.

Chapter 3: The real story began here -- One leading female role Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) made her official debut. And with the handsome German Ace sniper Fredrick (Daniel Brühl, who gained worldwide fame by "Goodbye, Lenin!"), I almost thought that this gonna be a "love in war" movie... Luckily, I was wrong. Another conversation (or interrogation?) from Col. Landa, with Shosanna this time, equally breath-taking.

Chapter 4: This chapter reminds me the "Where Eagles Dare"(1968). If you don't know what I'm saying, go find that movie and watch it. I'm pretty sure that Tarantino has already done that. BTW, although I cannot distinguish Munich and Frankfurt accents, I was strangely whispering "shit" when I saw the English Lieutenant gestured his three middle fingers as "3"... And I saw John Woo in the gun-fighting again...

Chapter 5: Shosanna's make-up scene with the 80's Disco music was a little bit "over", esp. when she walked out in a red-yellow-black outfit... The ending of Shosanna and Fredrick was a bit surprising, but surprisingly good. The distorted face and horrible laugh of Shosanna in the fire brought me the feeling of "The Phantom of the Opera"... And the final scene was actually within my expectation, I even wish Pitt could do sth "further"...

Like I said, you can find many elements of those classic spy movies in this one, and Tarantino's biggest accomplishment might be to make you walk out of the cinema laughing after seen so much blood and bloody things. He should thank Brad Pitt in particular.

The Magic of Sandra Bullock

2009-09-28T03:19:00.001-07:00

She is not a “pretty girl” any more, but she still got the magic. After “Speed”, she got bad shots like “Speed 2” and “Miss Congeniality 2”, but she got more good ones like “Miss Congeniality”, “Two-week Notice” and the successful re-union with Keenu Reeves in “The Lake House”. This latest “The Proposal” could be considered as a “reversed” version of her “Two-week Notice” with Hugh Grant several yrs ago – you just need to change the boss from a guy to a gal, and of course, change the super assistant from a girl to a dude.

Sandra did quite a good job in playing “tough girls”, like the “wild cat” in “Speed”, and of course, the Tom-boy cop in “Miss Congeniality”. This time, she is once again, playing an icon for all OLs – the all-mighty editor in chief, a.k.a., “the witch”. While Ryan Reynolds is arguably the most handsome assistant ever, you could be daydreaming about having such a considerate assistant that can do everything from OT, bodyguard, party partner all the way to rush out to buy lady’s pads for you at midnight… The funniest thing is, he even drinks the same flavor of take-away coffee with his boss, cuz he’s afraid that he might spilt her share on the way to office…

The whole story is actually quite predictable – the female boss was forced to fake a marriage with her own male assistant, and they had to pretend to be a couple in love in front of the family members and friends of the dude. Jokes are everywhere, and I particularly like those ones that are quite close to our daily office work. Obviously most audience in the cinema shared the same opinion as mine.

BTW Sandra Bullock keeps fit quite well (although not quite sexy…), and when paired with the latest “Sexiest Man Alive”, the nude scene is pretty nice… Feel like that Ryan shares with Andrew (his role in this movie) in one common thing – they both married a powerful woman…

For the ending, everyone knows lah… Plus, the scenes in Alaska are gorgeous.

(This pic was used to make the cinema posters in Singapore, which I preferred. Wonder why I couldn’t find this version of poster online…)

Splendid Feast – “G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra”

2009-09-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

“G.I.Joe” was the only “boys’ cartoon” I watched during my childhood. Now I could even hardly remember the names in it, don’t mention the stories. But the theme song still rings the bell – “G.I.Joe, G.I.Joe, …”. So I headed to the cinema as soon as I found this “beginning” movie was on.

Basically there are two “winning tricks” to make a real-life movie out of a classic comic book / cartoon: You can either make a much “deeper” (and most of the time, much darker too) story to attract those ppl that never watched the original ones, or just use tens of millions of dollars to “reproduce” those classic costumes, scenes and monsters so that the loyal fans will finally pay the bill. This “G.I.Joe” movie chose the second one, by piling up incredibly advanced weapons, incredibly CG effects and incredibly hot hulks and chicks. Don’t expect anything “abstract” or “reasonable” here – what you should expect is just a splendid feast for your eyes.

Channing Tatum is not good enough for my Duke, but anyway he is not doing much “solo” here (Marlon Wayans a.k.a. Ripcord definitely stole a lot of scenes from him), so I’ll just let it be. Sienna Miller showed me nothing but her sexy curves, and the most unforgivable thing is that she even could not make any chemistry with the Korean heart-throb Lee Byung Hun! On the contrary, Lee Byung Hun did whatever he could to make the impression, including showing his six-packs without any reason in his last scene (OK, I admit, there is one reason for that, the box office…).

To me, he did his Hollywood debut much better than his fellow Daniel Henney. Other baddies are just normal, no difference from other baddies in other movies. The only one that “popped up” is Arnold Vosloo (as Zartan, whom I believe that will have some bigger shares in the next sequel), because another “un-credited” role in this movie is Brandon Fraser (as a Joe trainer). That reminds me the “Mummies” series… Another name to take note is the young Storm Shadow (the adult role by Lee Byung Hun), Brandon Soo Hoo. This little boy is only 14 yrs old, with black belt in Taekwondo, fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, and practicing Wing Tsun now. Could he become the next Bruce Lee?

Notable scenes of this movie:
1. The car racing in the streets of Paris. Although we all know that was not true, just use your imagination pls…
2. The fall of Eiffel Tower. You guys French must got some issue with Hollywood – There are quite several movies recently took this big guy down.
3. The attack of Joe’s under-water troops against the secret base of MARS. That reminds me the Pacific War era – the legendary Hornet and Yamato…

Scenes that could have been better:
1. The first confront between Baroness and Duke. Maybe they wanted to make Joe’s look more powerful, by portraying a group of useless commandos…
2. Fights between Baroness and Scarlett. Come on, two hot chicks are fighting! Can you show us sth hotter?
3. Fights between Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes. Again, we expect more skillful sword-plays. Even the laser swords in Star Wars 30 yrs ago did a better job.

And I can promise you that there is definitely gonna be a sequel. But I really got worried for the writers and director of this coming sequel – how would you make the story when you got Zartan in the office of xxx…

Era of Passion -- "Public Enemies"

2009-08-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

That was an era called "The Great Depression", and now it's the era called "The 2nd Great Depression". That was an era that ppl hated the banks that "robbed" their money so that any bank robber could be a super star, and now its the era that ppl hated the banks that "cheated" their money yet the banks still gave huge bonus to their management staff. That was an era of passion, and now it's an era of re-creating such passion, on the screen.

Nostalgia colors, old-school microphones, 30's costume and settings, all these brought us back to that era. But I don't buy it that a Thompson semi-auto can be fired like a M-16, although the gun fighting scenes are awesome, esp the one in the Little Bohemia Lodge and the woods. We've been flooded by bombs, lasers, missles and other modern weapons, so when I heard the gunshots that resemble the real-life ones, it actually touched me more. The other thing I disagree with the camera-men is that why they couldn't just hold the cameras still? I felt like car-sick after the show...

Johnny Depp doesn't look quite like John Dillinger, neither does Christian Bale look like "Little Mel". Aside from the box-office, they earned their roles, I bet, most likely because they always dared to do some "extreme" things in their previous projects, like "Edward the Scissorhands" and "Mechanics". Depp is definitely the star of the whole movie, via the skillful acting that he used to portrait Dillinger from being smart, being aggressive, and finally being desperated. There is only one scene that I felt that he was "over-acting" -- The scene that Billie got arrested. Dillinger was actually surrounded by dozens of special agents, and he acted like he just wanna shout it out. Hard to believe that no one noticed such a strange guy there and just let him drive away like that... The scene that Dillinger visited Chicago Police Department looks quite weird, but I heard that it was based on reality. I just saw Depp walking around like a ghost, weird, but I kind of like it.

Compared to Depp, Bale was not that lucky, for his role, special agent Melvin Purvis, was just not the focus. This is not "Catch Me If You Can" after all.

Our "Dillinger Girl" Marion Cotillard could be hardly categorized as "beauty" in Hollywood. The most impressive scene is when Billie was tortured by that fat-boy agent. Besides earned some points to her career, she also earned a romantic scene with Bale here. ^_^

I actually don't quite like the director to put so much love stories upon Dillinger, but I know that's for the box office...

Better in School -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-19T01:04:00.001-07:00

The first minute of this movie really lighted the fire: Flying together with the Deatheaters caused me feel like car-sick, and the collaps of the Millennium Bridge also brought some "Armageddon" feelings. But then the director seemed to recall the idea, and put the boys and girls back in the school, making the whole thing more like a high school movie. BTW I really don't like the arrangement of the love relationship among our main roles: Ron is too fat for Hermione, and Ginny is just too normal for Harry. I would rather make a H&H couple, and assign Ron back to his bitchy GF. Guess what? I also wanna add some spicy things here by making Drako and Ginny a "Romeo & Juliet" couple! Seriously, why didn't Rowling never think about that?

The later half of the movie made almost all of my friends sleepy, and no exception for me. If the whole thing is about some evil plot, it's obviously not that evil or complicated that we really need our brain cell to digest.

The new professor Jim Broadbent（as Horace）is average, but the mad woman Helena Bonham Carter (as Bellatrix) really drove me mad. There are some "formulas" to play a bad guy in a movie, but she definitely did not get it.

Finally, may the soul of Dumbledore rest in peace...

Older, and Nicer, Maybe? – “Duplicity”

2009-07-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the poster and the trailer, I thought that it was a challenge to “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, and with Julia Roberts on the board. But actually it looks more like a spin-off of “Ocean’s” series – tricks, traps and traveling.

The story-telling is quite nice though, with several pretty surprising turns. But I don’t like some points that were made so “over” – the “vulnerable” travel arrangement department, the messy “battle room” and those magic photocopy machines. In details like dialogues and body languages, these guys showed us some real stuff, and that is not only about Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, but also a full set of supporting roles. I particularly like the exaggerative speech by the CEO Dick (Paul Giamatti), which reminded me some “big bosses” I’ve seen.

Although not that necessary for the story, the scenes in Dubai, Rome, London and other multiple cities in U.S. are quite entertaining. As the big “coming back” of Julia Roberts, the movie company definitely paid a big bill. But shouldn’t the happy mummy tried harder to keep fit before bargaining about such benefits? And don’t even mention the obviously aged faces of both Roberts and Owen – ppl DO get old… Even with a slimmer figure (compared to “Children of Men” and “Shoot’em Up”), it’s quite hard to believe that these two can “seduce” anyone…

Rose In the Brambles – Sunshine Cleaning

2009-06-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

Just saw Emily Blunt as the gorgeous and noble Queen Victoria in “The Young Victoria”, it’s really a bit hard for me to see her in a Gothic outfit playing a troubled-and-not-so-teenager teenager. Plus the silly vase from “Night at the Museum 2”, Amy Adams, this “Sunshine Cleaning” truly brought us quite some surprises.

Struggling single mother, troubled family members (tough-to-handle father, troubled son, even more troubled sister and a mother killed herself) and an affair with the detective in town who has already got wife and kids, every element here could be used to tell a nice story by Hollywood writers, and here they were so generous to pile them up! Some reviews compared this movie to the awards-winner “Miss Little Sunshine”, and I can understand that now. Life is tough, and even tougher for Rose here. Obviously the budget for this movie is quite limited – there is no special effect, no splendid stage setting, no fashionable costume, even no impressive music. With a bunch of no-so-famous actors (although some of them have earned some attention in recent yrs), the director was lucky enough to get a good chemistry among the crew and make the miracle to happen.

The mood is a bit over sometimes, like the scene that the younger sister Norah crazily shouting under a bridge and the one that Rose “spoke out” to Winston (the owner of the cleaning appliance shop) all of a sudden. I would prefer that Rose to be tougher here.
And since the scripts had been finished before early 2008, there were some “out-of-date” info in the movie like a “fantastic job” in real estate… The writers were not as smart as their colleagues working for “Transformers 2” that intentionally left the name of the US president blank and used the post-production to “fill in” the winner’s.

Another “surprise” is the little boy acting as Oscar, the cute son of Rose. The young actor, Jason Spevack, made his debut in 2003, while he barely started to walk by himself…

The Real “Ever After” – The Young Victoria

2009-06-19T05:02:00.001-07:00

There is a rather unknown movie by the legendary Romy Schneider (in case you don’t know her, she is the Princess Sissi forever) about the same topic of this one. But that version is a pure prince-and-princess-style fairy tale: the prince married the princess, and they were happy ever after. And today, this movie is gonna show you some not-so-happy things behind the fairy couple and ppl surrounding them.

Basically almost everyone in the movie got a dark side somewhere: the mother that wanted to be Regent of her own daughter, the prime minister that wanted to use the young queen to defeat his political enemies, the uncles that wanted to use marriage to control the queen and even the whole empire, etc. But the only role that was doomed is Sir John Conroy, a.k.a the lover of the mother. The scenes that Conroy shouted at the young princess (later on the queen), grabbed her in the arms, and even tried to force her to sign the “Regent Order” seemed rather unbelievable to me – Can you imagine that kind of things happened in any sovereign country where the bad guy actually had no power (officially he was just the treasurer and housekeeper of the mother)? Several simple words from the queen could easily send him to jail or even the guillotine. And when you saw the scene that the queen happened to meet Conroy alone in the corridor shortly after the unsuccessful assassination, you knew what would happen next…

As the core of the whole story, the B-cast Emily Blunt showed the potential of another “Her Majesty actress” – not so good-looking, but always behaves like a noble, and just like what Victoria said about herself in the move, “stronger than looks to be”. We are so glad that we find a successor to Cate Blanchett. And standing by her is the rather C-cast Rupert Friend (although he looks quite like Orlando Bloom, this is the first mainstream leading role he ever got in a full-length movie). Actually he did a pretty good job, but for commercial reasons, we would prefer a better created face…

And as a historical topic (and even more, a royal topic), this movie showed us some interesting points of the royal life. Some of them had been well-known via other Victorian movies (like the Romy Schneider version), but others are rather novel, like the funny rule that Victoria must hold the hand of a maid whenever she stepped up or down the stairs, and when she was having a date with Albert (given it a walk in the garden or a chess play by the stove) there would always be a group of “companions”. Maybe we shall thank the consultant of this movie, the former wife of Duke of York, Sarah Ferguson.

Embarrassing Hybrid – Blood: The Last Vampire

2009-06-11T15:56:00.001-07:00

Another movie adapted from popular comic books, this Blood: The Last Vampire (titled as Last Blood in Japan) combined the production team (including director) from Hollywood, beauties from Korea and Japan, and the stunt team from Hong Kong. But sometimes, a hybrid just could not be the perfect combination of advantages from all ancestors, but those shortcomings instead.
When you saw the “blood” syrup splashed everywhere in a 300 style, you knew that the director wanted to take the advantage of that classic movie. Unfortunately, he could not add any value to the once-successful style, but only acted like a copy-cat. And to make things worse, we saw those stupid Caucasians screaming and running around and doing stupid things, just like those victims you saw in every SAW or I Know What You Did Last Summer or Jason movies. Another scene that made me feel disgusted is at the beginning, when I saw a U.S. military camp with the Mt. Fuji in the background, in which there were so many “happy” marines, American chicks, etc. Come on, just think about what U.S. brought to the whole world these days, you could not feel anything “happy” here.

The stunt designed by Corey Yuen is not quite exciting either. Although he was a “classmate” of Jackie Chan, obviously he did not have the equal creativity as his junior. Fighting in the rainy streets and the forest could be more attractive. And since the two main roles, Saya (Gianna Jun) and Onigen (Koyuki Kato) were so slim, they seemed to not be able to control their own motions while being lifted up to the sky by wires. (The fact is, if you do not have enough strength in your waist muscles, you will most likely be “dancing” instead of “fighting” on those magic wires.) And there are several shots to satisfy the guys’ desire – I could see the black brief of Gianna…

Things I couldn’t understand:
1. Since the zombies could even change into the form of US marines, why didn’t they just use guns to kill Saya (she was killable by guns) or at least that silly blonde?
2. Saya kept talking to the old Kato in Japanese (although Gianna herself is Korean…), but always used English when talking to Onigen. I mean, Koyuki Kato (I hate to call her “Koyuki” only, cuz that’s also my Japanese name…) was good at English at all. The horrible Japanese pronunciation of English…

As Subtle As a Japanese Dish – Departures

2009-06-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

When you heard the rough story of this Departures (or Okuribito in Japanese), and when you knew that this is a Japanese film, you just knew what you gonna see. Subtle emotions, subtle story-telling skills, and even subtler acting, are the trademarks of this kind of movies. Actually this movie kept reminding me of a lunch I enjoyed in a traditional Japanese restaurant in Kyoto: A whole set, including dozens of small bowls and plates was spread in front of me, and each one of them only contained a small amount of food, so that I could just tasted with a bite, not be stuck up (like a Subway sandwich normally does).

The topic about how an unemployed man got a new start with a new career is nothing new to Hollywood. The job of “Noukanshi” (literally “People put the corpse into the coffin” in Japanese) probably sounds rather OK to western ppl (thanks to those cute and cool guys work in the morgue in CSI series…). But to Japanese and other East Asian cultures, it is often considered as a “humble” job that only certain class of ppl or ppl in extreme needs for money will likely to do. Bare this in your mind and you will enjoy more when you watch the struggling of the leading role Ogoku (Masahiro Motoki).

How subtle can Japanese be? Take a look at the scene that Ogoku tried to wash off the smell from the corpse he just handled before going home. Hair, hands, ear holes, nostrils, and he even drank some water and “sneeze” it out from the nose! Japanese really never mess up…

Another thing that Hollywood should definitely learn from this movie is, no matter how “friend” you are with those cameo stars in your movie, cut them out whenever they are not necessarily needed. Those ppl playing the family members in sorrow or even the “corpse” are not just nobody in Japan, esp Toru Minegishi (the last “corpse”, and the actor himself actually died of lung cancer during the showing period of this movie in Japan).

And as a plus, do enjoy the music by Joe Hisashi.

P.S. The Japanese title of the movie, Okuribito, means “people send others away”. It is somewhat related to the English title “Departures”. As a Buddhist point of view, death is just to leave this world to another (and hopefully better) one. So the funeral is also a ceremony for “departure”. But the original novel that this movie was based on is actually called “Diary of Noukanshi”, and throughout the film they used the word “Noukan” (the action that put the corpse into the coffin) to indicate this particular job, even the name of the company “NK Agency” came from the initials of Nou-Kan.

Unsuccessful Extension of the Classics – Transformer Salvation

2009-06-02T06:35:00.001-07:00

Terminator 1 & 2 are two classics: One showed us the infinite possibility of “time travel” in fictional world, while the other one introduced one of the most impressive robots in history. And of course those creative and bold stunts and explosions re-defined some “rules” of Hollywood movies. The third one in the line was a disaster: ruined the box office, and sent Schwarzenegger to the Governor’s office.

Now here comes T4, which used a different naming style, a brand new cast, and most attractively, a new actor in the leading role. But the script writers seemed to be lack of some imagination: The human-robot-hybrid looks not quite much different from RoboCop series, and the “mercury robot” just disappeared (maybe ppl nowadays know that could not possibly come true before 2018?). The non-stop bombing and stunts are quite exciting, esp. with the thundering sound effect, but we shall expect more from a T movie, right?

Some bugs in the story:
1. How John Conner suddenly became the global leader of Resistance? At the beginning he was just a member of the field team (a junior leader at most), but when the Commander gave the order to bomb Skynet, he could simply make ppl around the world to disobey it. Was he some kind of “Robinhood” here? Anyway he gained the leadership in this sequel, so we don’t need to worry about that in the next one, if there is any.
2. How could the Resistance maintain their super hi-tech communication channels when Skynet got the ability to destroy those satellites? Transmission stations above the ground are easily recognized, and mobile ones are too unstable. Don’t take your globally roaming mobile phones for granted…
3. Why Skynet did not just kill Kyle when they found him? If Kyle is dead, John Conner will not be born, so everything will be changed right? Keep Kyle and lure John Conner into the Skynet base looks just for the storytelling’s sake…

As for the actors, most look average. Christian Bale is the star, and Sam Worthington got an equal share too. But not like some reviews saying that Worthington “steals” the show, they actually contributed some pretty good scenes together. God knows how long we have been waiting for those real man-to-man scenes! (OK I know those journalists don’t like Bale, but over-praise Worthington is not good for him…) Anton Yelchin (as Kyle) is quite hot these days, like the most recent appearance in Star Trek as the genius Russian young lad. Moon Bloodgood must have mistaken the famous “sun-burn” makeup originally from Faye Wong (in case you don’t know, one of the most successful and famous pop queens in Chinese-speaking areas, who also always led the fashion trends until retired to family yrs ago). But as an ex-model for MAXIM, her performance as the wildcat-like sexy pilot was actually beyond expectation. And since she got a typical Asian face (got Korean blood), reviewers from Asia gave her a hell lot of praises, which I think is a bit over. Bryce Dallas Howard (as Mrs. John Conner) looks pale, not only because her role is pregnant. Why she took this trivial role when she actually got the talents to write and direct a full-length movie by herself?

Small vs. Big -- Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

2009-05-24T22:14:00.003-07:00

There are some movies that did a pretty good job in small details, but failed in the big picture. The long-waited sequel of the big hit in box office, Night In the Museum 2, unfortunately joined the club here.

Ben Stiller's influance in Hollywood is obvious -- just look at the whole group of ppl he summoned for this carnival-like movie! It seems that he wants to make it another Ocean's series. But my suggestion is, next time, write the scripts yourself, Ben.

Similar to the original one, this sequel movie tells the "battle" in the biggest museum of the world -- National Archives of USA, located right in the heart of Washington D.C. We know that the story is predictable, but the effort of trying to improve that by adding a whole bucket of patriosim, a classic Hollywood version of "the man saved the day and got the girl", several pieces of funny talkshows (OK, they are NOT that funny, actually) and the most IN items such like the Jonas Brothers (but they really look cute... pardon me...), is not effective here at all. 99% of the audience are here for Ben Stiller, not a freak lady pilot crazy for whatever man she saw. I'd rather to see some more scenes about the little boy playing Ben's son.

Some jokes are too abstract for foreigners and even some Americans. The last scene about Motorola mobile phones is so ironic -- I'm pretty much sure that we will see this end of this once-holy brand quite soon.

Should-Not-Delete Deleted Scenes – Angels & Demons

2009-05-18T06:22:00.001-07:00

I’m a huge fan of Dan Brown, esp Angels & Demons. So you can imagine that how excited I was when I saw its trailer in the cinema for the first time. But when I finally bought the ticket and sat back to enjoy the show, I grew disappointed only after 5 min – yes, with the scene that Tom Hanks on a “Vatican helicopter”, instead of the CERN’s super jet.

With limited length of the film (actually not quite “limited”, 2 hrs 15 min according to my watch), it is understandable that the director needs to cut off sth from the original book. But should that be those most important things such like the father-and-son relationship between Camerlengo and the Pope? If you’ve ever read the original book, you will definitely agree with me that this is the key to the whole story – why this young man killed his be-loved Holy Father and planned for the series of cold-blood murders. Without the key, you are just looking at a normal plot-of-murders movie (OK, a luxurious version maybe). Was it because of the pressure from the real-life Vatican Court? Otherwise I just couldn’t understand why the director chose to keep so many details about religion, history and arts while deleted the key. BTW sometimes I felt like that Ron Howard shared some common things with Dr. Langdon – they showed off a bit too much.

Tom Hanks finally got a decent hair-do, for God’s sake (literally here…). But Ewan McGreger still stole the show, even with so many scenes deleted – the Father’s gown is gonna be the Next Bit Thing in fashion industry for sure.
The only thing that the movie did better than the book – they really found a stature of “Angels-And-Demons”!

Pieces of Memory – “Star Trek”

2009-05-13T05:34:00.001-07:00

I’m not a real Star Trek fan. When this classic TV series was being broadcasted in China, I only caught up with several episodes, here and there. My only remaining impressions about it are the skinny uniforms and the “flash away” of the Enterprise. But when the movie hit cinemas in town, I still decided to go watch it.
By telling how the main crew of Enterprise was assembled, it appears that we are expecting sequels… Guess the main cast signed some contract (like Harry Potter and Pirates of Caribbean series) to act in sequels… They look toooo old for the roles of fresh-grads! Captain Pike (by Bruce Greenwood) looks more like the captain of Enterprise in my memory. And see if you can recognize Winona Ryder…
The story is quite predictable: tragedy, grow-up, conflicts, reconciliation, revenge, etc. But I really don’t like the way that Hollywood writers handle the topic of “Alternative Reality”. Since the time of Back to the Future and Lost in Space, they’ve been continuously talking about “go back, change, and happy ending” stories. Well, I feel like that even people did travel back to the past, they should not be able to interfere with anyone or anything that existed in that reality, but rather be a pure “watcher”. Occasionally people in that reality could see some trace of those time travelers, and most likely they would treat such things as “oracle” or “miracle” and develop a whole bunch of religious stuff.
The music is not as good as the Star Wars classic, but the visual effects are quite nice, especially the scene that a whole planet collapsed into a black whole within seconds.

Saigon to HCMC (7)

2009-05-04T03:43:00.000-07:00

Some misc stuff:

1. To send a postcard from Vietnam to any other country, you need a VND9000 stamp. Stamps are available @ the post offices (working daily) and many souvenir stores. You can either ask the hotel reception to do the post service for you or look for the post box like this:

(There is one just outside of Rex Hotel.)
But the speed of the post service is quite slow: To Singapore is 7-10 days, to North America and China took almost 20 days! Looks like they travel by sea…

2. Some other interesting souvenirs: Herbal wine made of snakes… Posters of Tin-Tin: (although I don’t think he ever visited Vietnam…)

3. Publishing is a popular industry in HCMC. Besides a lot of small book shops all around the city, you can even find many hawkers selling books just around the corner. They like to carry the books by piling them all the way up to the sky…

4. A very “elegant” reminder I found in my hotel room…

5. HCMC is said to be the “Capital of fashion” in Vietnam. You can find many big brands here instead of Hanoi, like this:

Luxiousness In Recession -- X-men Origins: Wolverine

2009-05-03T03:52:00.000-07:00

It is said that every economy recession period is also a "golden age" for film industry, for ppl tend to choose cheaper ways of entertainment (i.e., a movie ticket instead of an air ticket), and more ppl need some entertainment to just forget about the cruel reality, even just for a moment.

The story of this "Pre-" movie is rather OK, meaning it does not contain too much co-relationship with the X-men I, II & III movies, so that you can undertand the storyline even if you are not familiar with these mutant guys and girls. But since the title is "X-men Origins: Wolverine", are we expecting "X-men Origins: Storm", "X-men Origins: xxx", etc.?

The part that a team of mutants were organized as a special unit serving US government reminded me of Watchmen. But there are two guys look not that like mutants: Wade (a.k.a Deadpool, played by Mr. Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds) and Agent Zero (played by a German-Korean hearthrob Daniel Henney, a real hearthrob for Korean drama fans!). To me they are just well-trained sword player and shooter, respectively...

The reasons that I called this movie "luxiousness" are:

There are so many nice-looking guys playing small roles in this movie: Wade, Agent Zero, Gambit, etc. Every single one of them is worthy a B-class movie (actually Ryan Reynolds led his own B-class shot Definitely... Maybe already). But here they just played the "green leaves" surrounding Hugh Jackman, with very limited screen time and even more limited lines. Is it because that their paycheck is smaller now during the recession?
There are so many splendid mutants like diamond skin, laser eyes, etc., but the movie focused on a series of WWF-like dogfights between Sabretooth and Wolverine...

Talking about Sabretooth and Wolverine, are you sure they are just "back-to-back" instead of "brokeback"? *_*

Saigon to HCMC (6)

2009-05-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

Notre-Dame and Central Post Office are two "traditional" buildings you will find in major European cities that of tourists' interests. Here in HCMC, you will find them also, and again, in French style.

Notre-Dame looks just like any other Notre-Dames you can find in Germany and France. Actually it was designed by French, and even all the materials (bricks, glasses, etc.) were shipped from France. Crazy French ppl...

The Central Post Office is still a post office now, open daily till 5pm. Besides the normal post service, you can find some souvenir store inside. Stamp sets sold in these stores are much more various than those shops @ Pham Ngu Lao.

Talking about souvenirs, I found some very interesting things:These caps are made of cola tins!

The History Museum of HCMC is listed as "must-visit" in my tour guide book. Well, if you have no idea in Chinese culture and interested in some "exotic" things, it might be a "must-visit". But tell you the truth, the items exhibited in it are not of much value, most probably this is not the capital after all...

One highlight of the History Museum is a small water puppet show theatre in it. The water puppet show is unique to Vietnam, so worth to watch one with cost of around US$3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-5P_2E2X4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9PhUxEqLMk

There is another water puppet show theatre in downtown also, can check with the travel agencies.

Saigon to HCMC (5)

2009-04-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

War Remnant Museum is both a famous place of interests in HCMC, and a place for history education by Vietnam government. The curious thing I found about it is, it’s purely for propagation of the war crimes done by (mostly) US army, yet among the visitors, a lot of them are from US. When I was watching at those old guys walking around and discussing with their families, I couldn’t help wondering if some of them were actually participating that war.
The museum is not quite big: several 1-storey or 2-storey small buildings surrounding a small yard. In the yard there are some F series airplanes, tanks, cannons, bombs, etc. Most of them were left over by US army when they retreated from Vietnam in 1972-1973, and captured by the North Vietnam army when they captured this capital of South Vietnam in 1975 (right today, Apr 30…).
Inside the buildings there are a lot of photos, illustrations, maps, etc. that show the war crime to Vietnam ppl done by US army. Some of them might cause you to feel uncomfortable.
One building is a replica of the “Tiger Cage” used by the Southern Vietnam government as prison for political prisoners. And some torturing and executing equipments are shown, like this guillotine:

(Ticket for the War Remnant Museum is VND15k, or US$1.)

The Reunification Palace is another must-visit in HCMC. Originally built by French as the governor’s house (named “Norodom Palace” for the namesake of royal family in Cambodia… Obviously French could not tell the diff between these two countries.), the old building was again, a French style piece of arts: Unfortunately this building was bombed and destroyed in an unsuccessful assassination against the then president of Southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. So the president ordered it to be re-built in a modern style. Although the president was assassinated one year afterwards (hence he never saw his new office building), his successors finished the job and renamed it as “Independence Palace” (some tour guide books still called it with this name, so don’t be confused).
After the war, the building was renamed again as “Reunification Palace” and used as a reception place to honorable guests to the city and exhibition. It is said that everything inside the building including furniture, carpets, curtains, etc., are at exactly the same place as the day that the North Vietnam army marched in 34 yrs ago. (The government of the HCMC is now located at the People’s Committee Hall building.)
To be frank, the building itself looks quite boring: But inside it is decorated in a quite splendid way, a style mixed of Chinese and Western cultures. (Actually Vietnam culture is normally categorized as Eastern Asian instead of South-Eastern Asian, due to the huge impact of Chinese culture upon it.)
The basement of the building is a huge bomb shelter, and designed so that the president and the cabinet can still give orders to the military force even under heavy air attack. But ironically, Saigon was never bombed by North Vietnam air force -- in fact, they surrendered even before that.
(The ticket to the Reunification Palace is also VND15k, no tour guide inside, so better get a package tour.)

Saigon to HCMC (4)

2009-04-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Cu Chi Tunnel is a must-visit spot in HCMC. Built during the Vietnam War by Viet Cong (the communist gorillas of North Vietnam government that time), the whole tunnel system is more than 200km long and was continuously being built in around 20 yrs’ time. Now the part opened for tourism is only a small portion of the whole system, and divided into three major areas. The most famous and most frequently visited by foreigners is the Cu Chi Area. Here the original tunnel (about 100m long) was preserved so that tourists can try it by themselves, and some exhibition rooms are showing the weapons, traps, tools, etc. used by the Cong at that time. The entrance is about 1.5 to 2 hrs’ (depending on how jam is the traffic…) bus ride from District 1, and the entrance fee is VND80k per person. They don’t have an overall tour guide for the whole tunnel area, so better take a package tour from city.

This tunnel entrance is very famous – you can see photos about it in every travel agency office in HCMC: The entrance is just a 25cmX15cm hole on the ground, and if covered by leaves you could hardly recognize it. The hole is so small that only small-sized Vietnamese can get through. Actually this is the idea of the whole tunnel system: They were built such narrow by intention, so that the big US guys would be “stuck”. I tried the “walk in the tunnel”, which I quit after only 20 meters (No one in my package exceeded the 40m line…). Basically we were not “walking”, but “crouching”, for the inside is only less than 1 meter high. And such a position made my thighs stubborn for the next several days… And I guess when they built the tunnel, they never expected that so many ppl would get into it at the same time (there are more than 40 ppl in my package). The oxygen inside the tunnel almost ran out when everybody got in, and the ventilation was not quite good. So do take care of yourself when you are in.
The gorilla life is full of wisdom: Sandals made of old tires. Disguised landmines. A Trap.

And a piece of video showing how a trap works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzA7X6B6VY

A genius door trap: Nails on the lower half, so that even short guys will get hit; the end part is connected to the main frame with chains, so that even if you catch the main frame in time, the end part will still hit you. And the “nailed ball” in the hand of the tour guide got a very evil name – “Shampoo”. A tank destroyed by landmines and captured by Cong. Clustered bomb dumped by US Air Force, which should have be forbidden after WWII.

And if you are a military fan, there is a shooting area inside that you can buy some bullets and experience the M-16 guns.
The whole tunnel area is smoke-free. And do bring some mosquito-expeller with you. Dengue is still a fatal disease now.

Saigon to HCMC (3)

2009-04-28T06:58:00.001-07:00

To go to the ferry by Saigon River, I chose a less “popular” route: Still walk from Pham Ngu Lao to the Tran Nguyen Han Square, then go through Ham Nghi all the way down to the river. From there, walk northward by the river, till the Tran Hung Dao Square (again there is a statue of this guy Tran Hung Dao in the middle of the square). This routine is closer to the daily life of normal Vietnamese ppl in HCMC, so you can see how they do business in the workshops, chat with their neighbors to kill some time in the sauna-like afternoons in HCMC, etc.

Buildings by the streets of HCMC are normally very “thin”, just like Vietnamese ppl.

There are some boats in Saigon River, mainly for the “dinner cruise”, which starts from 7:30pm and ends at roughly 9:30pm. The price various from US$15 to US$35, depending on what kind of meal you want.
Tran Hung Dao is a general who led Vietnamese troops against Yuan Dynasty of China (the Mongolian Empire, founded by Genghis Khan).
And if you got to the ferry during the AM or PM rush hour, you will see a quite speculate scene: Thousands of scooters are crowded at the entrance of a “passage” to the ferry, waiting to be transported across the river. The passage reminds me the one in the movie Australia where Nicole Kidman drove the kettles onboard the ship…
Walking around in HCMC requires some athlete skills and guts also. There is barely no traffic light @ the crossings. Most of the time, you have to depend on the “understanding” between you and the drivers to get across the road.

Vietnamese spring roll is another must-try. The real Vietnamese ones are “raw”, meaning just use “rice paper” to wrap the chicken meat, seafood, veg and then go with some sauce (normally the Vietnamese “fish sauce”).
And here is the traditional way to enjoy Vietnamese coffee:

Above the big coffee cup, put a steel filter board, and then put a small steel cup on top of that. Coffee power is put inside the small steel cup, and hot water is poured in slowly. The coffee liquid will then drip down to the coffee cup at the bottom. “Black” tastes a bit burn flavor, so I prefer the “milky” version, which contains a piece of condensed milk in the coffee cup.

Again, although there are many delicious adventures in Vietnam, do try them in reliable restaurants.

Saigon to HCMC (2)

2009-04-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

The international airport of HCMC is definitely larger than its current needs, and the new terminal 2 looks quite new and nice. But the management of the airport is rather lousy – only around 10 flights inbound and outbound per 6 hours, yet they need to change boarding gates and even ask the airplanes to hover in air waiting for the track!
Normally it shall take 30 min to travel between airport and District 1 by taxi, normally. Actually, you need to arrange for 1 hour for this trip, due to the heavy traffic jam. And there is no such thing like “Airport Expressway” – basically your cab will be overwhelmed by waves of scooters as soon as you turn out of the airport parking lot.

My hotel is good enough to let me check in at 9:30 am without any additional charge. But the so-called “tour desk” they put on their website is actually a “recommended tour agency”, named “Sinh Café”. Anyway this agency is quite big (they even have their own hotel and resort somewhere in Vietnam), and location is convenient (office @ Pham Ngu Lao is just one block away from my hotel), price also reasonable. They provide various tour packages from half-day HCMC city tour to 15-day Indo-China Peninsula Full Tour. You can even travel along the famous “Ho Chi Minh Path”, i.e. starting from Hanoi, entering Cambodia, and finally arriving HCMC, or vice versa. I picked a one-day tour which includes a half-day Cu Chi Tunnel tour and half-day HCMC city tour. The limo bus tour with tour guide only cost VND 170k (a.k.a. S$17 or US$11). If you got several companions, can try their private tour, which will provide you with a private tour guide and travel by vans or even cabs.

For myself, I chose two “focus areas” that would not be covered by the city tour for my own exploration: The People’s Committee Hall area and the ferry area.

From Pham Ngu Lao, walk towards north-east direction, you will see a big square with a statue in the middle. The main statue is of Tran Nguyen Han, but most travel books mistake it as “Tran Nguyen Hai”… He was recorded as the first Vietnamese that used pigeon as a communication tool in the war, so his statue is he riding on horseback with a pigeon in one hand.

North to this square is the largest and oldest market of HCMC, Ben Thanh Market, built by French in 19th century. It’s quite big inside, and also quite hot. Can savor it by buying some souvenirs. Not worthy spending too much time bargaining if you do not do wholesale.
From the square continue walking towards north-east, there are several paths leading to the People’s Committee Hall area.

The Hall itself is a logo of HCMC, built in European style. (In case you don’t understand, the “People’s Committee” is like the parliament plus mayor’s office, for there is no mayor here. Simply speaking, this is the City Hall of HCMC.)

Right opposite the Hall is a small park with the statue of Ho Chi Minh himself. (Actually his portraits and statues are everywhere in this city with his namesake.)

Beside the park is the famous Rex Hotel, which was the headquarter of foreign journalists during the Vietnam War. Although still a 5-star hotel today, it was rated as “old, out-of-date” on Internet. In case you wanna have some “historical” experience, the standard room price is starting from S$200 per night, quite OK actually.

At the other side of the park, the Opera House is only one block away. Again built by French, it is still in use today.

After a two-hour walking and photo-taking, I picked a local restaurant named “Pho 2000” (@ the Tran Nguyen Han square) for lunch. In Vietnamese “pho” means “rice noodle”, and the beef rice noodle soup is one of the most famous Vietnamese dishes. The biggest chain restaurant in HCMC is “Pho 24”, meaning selling pho 24-hourly. M & K are not popular in Vietnam, only several branches in HCMC.
In general Vietnamese food is quite healthy: less oil, less deep fry, and healthier sauce. My lunch consisting of a big bowl of beef rice noodle soup and ice coffee (local coffee is a must-try!) only cost me VND55k, quite reasonable in a hot travel spot.

Saigon to HCMC (1)

2009-04-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

This city is more famous to western ppl as “Saigon”, but to most Asian young generations, it is “Ho Chi Minh City”. And particularly to the travelers, esp. back-packers, it has a Y-Gen nickname as “HCMC”.
It just took about 2 hours to fly to HCMC from Singapore, and you could find more than 4 airlines (include budget airlines) running daily flights between these two major cities in Southeastern Asia. Without much trouble, you can experience a totally different country with distinguish history, culture and nice food. So it’s reasonable that it became a popular “getaway” destination for ppl in Singapore these yrs. The cost is also quite reasonable: With so many airlines competing in the game, even the so-called “Best of World” SQ only asks for around S$400 for a return ticket with full service and meals. Budget airlines have tickets’ price as low as around S$300, but take the flight schedule, punctuality and other quality factors into consideration, not really worthy…
There are many hotels in HCMC, including 11 5-star ones. Better stay in District 1 (“Quan 1” in Vietnamese), for its short distance and convenience to most places of interests in the city. Pham Ngu Lao Street is the latest “heaven of backpackers”, where you can find A LOT OF budget hotels, travel agencies, money changers, souvenir stores and restaurants. Recommend the Liberty Hotels (http://www.libertyhotels.com.vn/): They have three 3-star hotels in this area, high-quality rooms (with air-con, satellite TV, full set of toiletries and in-room devices), good service, and price is about S$100 per night per room. They even put a board in the lobby which lists the names of all guests checked-in every day!

Another thing they gave me really good impression: When I just got off the taxi, I was standing across the road and shocked by the soaring scooters (There were hundreds of them! In total this city has more than 6 millions!). The bell boy came to me immediately, took my luggage and literally “took” me across the deadly torrent of scooters.
Traffic in HCMC is as notorious as Bangkok. Due to the huge number of scooters and barely-not-there traffic lights, jam is eternal. If you are walking, you have to get both techniques and guts to get across. And if you are taking taxi from/to the airport, prepare 1 hour for the 20-km ride. But the taxi fare is quite cheap, compared to Singapore: Single trip between airport and Quan 1 is about 100k Dongs (about S$10), and traveling around within Quan 1 should not cost you more than 30k Dongs. Bare in mind that you should always take a taxi with meters (those got “taxi” lights above them). And if you are skillful and brave enough, can rent a scooter to enjoy normal ppl’s everyday life in HCMC. Those “scooter-taxi” and “tuk-tuk” are not even recommended by the HCMC authorities. And if you are hanging around by yourselves, take a good city map, a pair of comfort shoes and an umbrella for both heavy sunshine and possible sudden rains. Most taxi drivers don’t speak or understand English, so write down the name and address of your hotel in Vietnamese is quite useful.
Vietnamese food is quite famous, but the hygiene condition of those hawkers is definitely questionable, esp. when the temperature is always beyond 30 Celsius. Rules to keep you away from some embarrassing diseases:
1. Don’t eat salad/raw food/cut fruit/etc. outside reliable hotels and restaurants.
2. Don’t drink tap water (actually I doubt if you can drink it given the heavy chemical smell…). 3. Use water kettle in hotel room to make some boiled water and take it with you is a both economic and healthy choice.
3. Don’t let them put ice cubes in your drink, asking for original can/bottles from the fridge instead. Those ice cubes are most likely made from tap water directly…

Graduation of Zac? -- 17 Again

2009-04-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

I’m not a fan of HSM. The reasons that I went for this 17 Again are: first, I just got time and mood for a movie; second, someone said this was a “boy-to-man” move for Zac Efron. It was said that the young generation of male actors like Zac and Robert Pattinson are ready to take over the vacancies left behind by those “good fathers” like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Is it?

There’s a rule for actors (and actresses actually) in Hollywood: If you rose as a teenager star, you would be somehow “lousy” for several yrs before you could get ppl to accept your acting as an adult. Many of them (actually most of them) would not make it, and just “disappeared”, or, at least, got their super-star charm faded. Some examples, Michael J. Fox from Back to the Future (OK, he got a proper reason for his disease, but even before that, he did not show any potential to be a leading figure in Hollywood’s serious movies), Mark Hamill from Star Wars IV, V & VI, etc. If you can break this curse and accomplish the task of “boy-to-man”, congrats, you will be big in this world for at least another 10 yrs.

It’s a bit early to judge if Zac has made it. After all, in this 17 Again, he appeared as a teenager. But we did see some quite promising points in him, esp. when Mike (the role of Zac) was talking as a 40-year-old father in the body of a 17-year-old boy. Sometimes, if you just close your eyes, you would confuse him with Matthew Perry (as the older Mike).

The beginning of the movie is quite bad: a routine high school basketball team and cheer leaders’ dancing in the court is nothing new to Zac, neither to the audience; the part that Mike literally “gave up” basketball when he got the news that his GF was pregnant, is too dramatic. But when the story goes on to the mid-life crisis of Mike, Matthew Perry showed some nice scenes which reminded me the happy hours we spend with Friends. The chemistry between Zac and Leslie Mann (as Mike’s GF and later wife Scarlet, the adult version) was praised by many critics, but to me that was just another proof of what a heartthrob Zac is.

And there is another teenager boy in this movie that is worth watching for, Sterling Knight, as the teenager son of Mike, Alex. Pity he got a face too similar to Alexander Ludwig (The Seeker: The Dark is Rising & Race to Witch Mountain) and Evan Ellingson (CSI: Miami). And he definitely needs some sports activities to get the “six pack” as Zac’s.

Face the Reality – Shinjuku Incident

2009-04-08T04:37:00.001-07:00

This is not a typical “Jackie Chan Movie”, but a typical “Derek Yee Movie”. If you have paid attention to Hong Kong movies in the “drama” category before, you should definitely know this name. Yee’s products vary from romantic, gangster to political stuff, but the focus is always the inner side of human beings, esp. from Asians’ (or actually I should say, Chinese) points of view.

The story about the struggling and tragedy of illegal immigrants in Japan is quite similar to the masterpiece of Japanese director Iwai Shunji (most famous of Love Letter in Asia), Swallowtail Butterfly (Also named Yentown). Compared to the Japanese counterpart, Yee is definitely a lucky guy – After more than one decade, China has risen to a more comparable position to Japan in the economy area, hence he can claim at the end of the movie that “all has passed”. And that also gave Yee the freedom to tell story in a much longer timeline – from early 1990’s to the late, which covered a whole era of great changes happened to those illegal immigrants.

Although Yee did it quite well in the big story and the portrait of several key roles like the leader Tie-tou (lit. “Iron Head” in Chinese, played by Jackie Chan), his little buddy Jie (played by Daniel Wu), Japan yakuza kingpin Eguchi (played by Kato Masaya) and the Japan cop Kitano (played by Takenaka Naohito), some “secondary” stories were not told in a decent way. For example, about how Tie-tou’s teenager lover, Xiuxiu, finally became the wife of Eguchi, was told by another gangster kingpin in a way of complain; and the fact that Tie-tou once killed a Chinese cop when smuggling the border was only shown in between the scenes that he was having sex with a prostitute. This is probably due to that the movie had been edited for several times in order to pass the screening standard of countries like China and Singapore (but in the end it did not get the screen permit in mainland China), but still, a good director like Yee should have done it better.

It was considered by Jackie Chan himself to be a “turn point” in his career, meaning that he will turn to non-action movies as he getting older. Well, I can see that he is a good actor from this movie, but not good enough to make ppl totally forget his kongfu fighting skills. If he really wants to be the next Clint Eastwood, he still has a long journey to go.

Daniel Wu’s role, Jie, was repeatedly compared to the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. But I feel that he is more like a younger version of Jacky Cheung in a Hong Kong gangster movie yrs ago, Brothers. And his Hong Kong accent really cannot make us believe that he is playing a young guy from Northeast China.

Almost among all my friends it was considered that the two main Japanese roles, Eguchi and Kitano, were more “shiny” than their Chinese colleagues. It’s not quite surprising to me, esp for Takenaka Naohito, who is considered as “Woody Allen of Japan”.

In a nutshell, if you think that Slumdog Millionaire was brave to describe the life in hell in Bombay, you must admire Derek Yee for much more bravely telling the even bloodier truth in Shinjuku.

Gump in India – Slumdog Millionaire

2009-03-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

To win the “Best Picture” in Oscar, you need to show the committee some “pictures” that they are interested in, like the last emperor of an ancient oriental country tortured by some communists, or a cute little boy dumped in a pond of s**t. Really, you don’t need to be Shakespeare, cuz everybody knows what he did, -- they just want to see sth “different”, different enough to give you a little golden statue.

Basically this is just a Bollywood version of Forrest Gump, both in the story itself and the way that they told the story. A piece of sari (the traditional clothes for women of Hinduism and Islam in areas like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.) waved with Indian scenes, Indian music and Indian actors and cameos didn’t change the Caucasian face under that, esp. when we saw the scene that how an American tourist couple saved Jamal from the angry driver and poured some green notes onto him to show him the “American style”. They didn’t even trust a local leading guy, but cast a BBI (Britain-Born-Indian) teenager soap drama actor instead.

Although the story as a whole was rather pale, there were some nice scenes here and there. My personal favorites are those ones between Jamal and the police inspector. Their conversation reminds me Catch Me If You Can, and some other great police-and-criminal movies. The scenes about Salim could be made better actually, for it was such a complicated role.

Since this was a Bollywood-style movie, you can surely expect some Bollywood-style songs and dances. I have to say that the last “group dance” (which is almost a “must-have” for all Bollywood movies) was just not necessary. But other songs and music throughout the movie were quite nice, and fit for the movie itself. And after the Oscar ceremony, now everybody is familiar with the prelude of the theme song, for it was played so many times that night…

A Nice Popcorn Movie – Race to Witch Mountain

2009-03-23T06:20:00.001-07:00

Although it’s just a quite predictable popcorn movie, Race to Witch Mountain is still quite good because it has tried its best to be as good as possible, with the routine story and not-so-strong cast. Compared to the disappointing Dragon Ball and Street Fighters, it just earned itself some applaud.

Such a “ppl on Earth helped E.T.s to go back home” story is really nothing new to Hollywood, and obviously “The Rock” is not a match for Keanu Reeves in the sense of exploiting some complicated roles. So it’s quite natural that this movie took the other route to the box office, -- visual effects.

The car racing is not new either, but the scene that Seth (Alexander Ludwig) “crashed” an SUV into parts and pieces with his E.T. body is quite refreshing. Now we have a clear understanding of what a “crumple zone” is. We shall also admire that yellow submarine, for it could still running at 140mph after being crunched by 3 SUVs! One thing pity is that the deadly race of one taxi, one train and one UFO in the tunnel (look at this combination!) was just too plain.

Another impressive scene is when all four main roles (Seth, Sara, Jack & Alex) were hand-in-hand standing in front of the UFO to “stop” the bullets. We did see that recently in Push, but here you can see how a bullet is slowly distorted and finally turns into just a small piece of metal. Again, the staff did whatever they could to polish this movie.

The writers also did a good job, esp when the big story had been set to such “old” topics like environment, government plot, etc. Quite some wise and funny lines appear here and there, making the whole movie not that boring.

But the two E.T. teenagers, Seth and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb), were nothing but “typical” teenagers. When you compare them to Dakota Fanning in Push, you will know the difference between “children actors” and “genius children actors”. Neither did I find anything exciting in The Rock (as Jack the taxi driver) or Jack’s girl Alex (Carla Gugino) – basically these two roles are just guardians of the under-aged.

X-men in Hong Kong – Push

2009-03-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

I just can’t understand why the publishers of Push so ignored the Asian market (esp. Chinese-speaking market) by “ignoring” the most characteristic part of this movie in any profile that they released to the Singapore media – This whole (Hollywood) movie was shot in Hong Kong! (OK, they didn’t even bother to give it a try in mainland China cinemas…)

In a nutshell, this movie is like an X-men in Hong Kong. According to the director, he selected Hong Kong because it’s like a 21st century version of Casablanca – den of criminals, just like Casablanca in that 1940’s classic, yup, Casablanca.
Well, Hong Kong government will definitely disagree with him about such a judgment, but that did not prevent them from issuing him a filming permit. Although due to the always crowded streets in Hong Kong, most scenes were shot in a “guerilla style”, i.e., using “hidden” cameras and no staff member was visible to the public and the actors did the scenes in all long takes.

And from the movie you can see the most real life to common Hong Kong ppl: old style public flat built by government, garbage on the sun-shelter, traditional market, mini soccer court on roof top, and even the water village. I really admire the courage of the Hong Kong government: they don’t mind “losing face” by allowing the film to be shot with such scenes, which is very unlikely to other Chinese-culture governments like mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore.

Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans made up an interesting pair in this movie – they seemed to be able to “trigger” each other’s potentials, both in and out of the scenes. So if there’s gonna be a sequel, pls, make them a real pair (of course, we don’t mind waiting for a couple of yrs when Dakota turns 18). Camilla Belle, a.k.a. the “girl” for Evans in the movie, looks nothing quite much more than a doll.

The story was meant to be interesting and novel, but unfortunately the writers seemed to be a bit lazy. They didn’t put enough effort in the logic parts, while simply summarized in the ending part that all those tricks and surprises were due to the “design” of Cassie (Fanning)’s mother.

The special effects were minimized to give way to traditional stunt, which they did quite a good job. I particularly like the part that Nick (Evans) and Cassie were running in a seafood market while the “shouting brothers” were using their weapon, larger than life voice, to try to kill them. The explosion of those glass tanks filmed with slow motions reminded me the classic Police Story series from Jackie Chan.

Dragonball

2009-03-16T03:27:00.001-07:00

The judgment upon Dragonball: Evolution is greatly dependent on the audience’ background. To a western viewer with no idea about the original comic, or the “Wuxia” culture in China, Japan & Korea (the so-called “CJK area”), or the RPG game culture in this area, would find this movie quite interesting. But on the contrary, if you grew up with such culture like me, you would find this movie just another lousy try of “translating” the Eastern world to Western.

The story is really nothing new to any CJK ppl born after 1980’s (actually we have a special name for them, “post 80’s”), even he or she never read any single page of the original comic (which is, actually quite unlikely). There are a whole bunch of other comics, games and even novels following the same pattern: a “normal” kid, some day found out that he (yup, most likely to be a “he”) was actually very “not normal”, and got a big task to accomplish (like, save the world); so he set off for the adventure, and got some team members gradually on the way; they practiced their kongfu or chi or magic or all of them, and beat some bad guys or monsters of ghosts or all of them, bought or found or even robbed some brilliant weapons or armors or tools or all of them, and finally there would be a dual with the biggest bad guy (we have a nickname for those guys, “boss”, quite funny, huh?). OK, even if you are not a CJK kid, as long as you are a kid, or once to be a kid, that got some experience in the game world, you will know what I’m talking about.

The task of making a Dragonball movie with human actors is not like that of making a Harry Potter or LOTR movie. In the later ones, there were only books of pure words available, so using “live” landscapes and moving ppl and animals was good enough to milk the cash cow of the fans. But for Dragonball, there had been the popular comic books, TV and all other related commercials, and if you had nothing new or very impressive, you were doomed. Take the Batman series as an example: The original comic book and TV were there, so the first movie version got some new weapons for the dark knight, and the following sequels got either some new stories, or new roles, or upgraded vehicles and weapons, even the mask was designed to follow the latest fashion trend! Unfortunately, I couldn’t see such effort in this Dragonball movie. It’s more like a “recession version”: The total length of the movie is even less than 90 min!

Another big problem with this movie is very common to any Hollywood movie that trying to use some “Eastern elements”: Those “Eastern elements” are just not “Eastern” to real eastern ppl, but to Hollywood only. Like Lucy Liu is the China Doll forever to Hollywood, Jamie Chung (As Chi-Chi, a.k.a., girlfriend of the leading role, Goku) was cast to be a representative of eastern beauty, but trust me, no CJK boy will really thinks that she is prettier than most girls in his classroom. Don’t even mention Justin Chatwin as Goku – We just cannot imagine why Hollywood producers could not accept a really Asian-blooded boy (preferably CJK blood) to play this role. Although Goku was actually the reincarnation of Ozaru (literally “big monkey” in Japanese), which means he could be any race, the minds of most fans have been already set. I mean, can you imagine that we got Jackie Chan to play Spiderman?

There are also other problems with the details, such as the “Kame-Ha” looks more like Tai-Chi for old ppl, and the dragon in the final scene seems to be pregnant. Don’t wanna list them all here. The point is, is it really that hard to ask every staff of this movie to read just one volume of the original comic?

BTW there are some “hidden scenes” after the list of the cast and staff, which are the “triggers” of the sequel. I missed it, cuz the movie was so not exciting, that I just wanted to leave as soon as the first name came out on the screen.

Those Weird Guys (2) – The Good, The Bad, The Weird

2009-03-12T03:26:00.001-07:00

Kim Ji-woon was previously considered as a horror movie director. So when he did A Bittersweet Life in a gangster style story-telling, ppl got a fresh eye on him. Then here comes this The Good, The Bad, The Weird, a tribute to those 50’s cowboy masterpieces.

The story was set to be happened in 1930’s Manchuria (the north-eastern part of China), a land of gangsters, thieves, Japanese, Independent Korean Movement, and, of course, local Chinese. When a mystic treasure map was leaked to the “market”, everyone wanna grab a piece of it. The fighting started from gun shooting in the street, all the way to heavy machine guns and canons shouting after horses and motorcycles on the Manchurian Plains. Really cowboy, right? But the movie also got some Asian style of humors, like how a whole group of Japanese cavalry men were shot down by a dead man behind a heavy machine gun. Some of the tricks can be even traced back to my long-time favorite French movie La Grande Vadrouille.

“The Weird” was actually a train robber, who happened to take the map in a “routine job”. Instantly he became the target of various gangster and military groups. On the run he appeared to be a funny guy yet with excellent shooting skills, which, at the very end, you would find out why. Song Kang-ho is a regular to international movie awards and has impressed the world with films like Joint Security Area (a.k.a. JSA), The President’s Barber, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Host and Secret Sunshine. He is specialized in those grass-root roles that playing big in certain circumstances. This time definitely he did a good job in his regular shoes.

“The Bad” was a cold-blood killer, who killed his own boss and grabbed the leadership of the whole gang. During the hunting for the map, he showed no mercy to anybody or anything. Lee Byung-hun is one of the “heavenly kings” in Korean TV dramas, who tried to find a bigger fame on the bigger screens. Although he got a Captain-Jack-Sparrow-like eye makeup, he didn’t seem to have the same ability as Johnny Depp to take such a complicated role.

“The Good” was a bounty hunter, who was paid by the Independent Korean Movement to find the map, and on the way he also wanna arrest The Bad and The Weird for the bounty. Pity for Jung Woo-sung is that he got only one scene to show some acting skills. In most of the time he could be replaced by any stuntman. Not a successful try for this romantic topic regular to step out of the comfort zone.

The gun shooting scenes are essential for cowboy movies, as well as this one. But some scenes just seem too incredible, like Jung blasted a guy’s head with a shot gun in one hand while doing some Tarzan swift with the other hand. But the final “triangle dual” scene was quite classic.
As a Chinese, I really dislike the dialogues in Chinese in this movie (and in most Hollywood movies and U.S. TV): I could not even understand them! On the contrary, they did quite a good job in those lines in Japanese. So can I say that the 50 yrs’ occupation by Japanese did teach them sth.?

The Fatal Smile – Watchmen

2009-03-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I never read the original comic, or even heard about it before the ad of this movie began to appear everywhere. The first promotion poster appeared in Singapore media (the movie magazine First) shows only a huge “smile” badge, with a drop of blood on it. Back then I know nothing about the Comedian, so the first thing came to my mind is “Murder in Carrefour”… (Employees in Carrefour here sometimes will wear that badge to show their commitment to “smiley service”.)

It was said that this comic was too complicated to be filmed. Although it was finally filmed after more than 20 yrs, the movie itself IS very complicated. From 1940’s to 1985, including so many big event in the world like WWII, Vietnam War, Nixon all the way to the Afghan crisis, plus the love affairs, mid-life crisis, friendship, etc. of the Minutemen, -- this is not an easy job for any director.

The beginning is actually pretty good: the 300 style of slow motion and hardcore fighting for the death of the Comedian, and the “flash back” of those important incidents happened from 1940 to 1985. My personal favorite is the “remake” of the “V Day Kiss”. But when the storyline spreads out, it seems that the director doesn’t want to (or dare to?) discard any detail from the comic. Too many names and stories keep popping up from ppl’s memory, so sometimes it even looks a bit messy. And the total length of the movie is, naturally, very long, -- 2 hrs 45 min according to my watch.

To prevent ppl from leaving the cinema in the middle of the movie, the director shows you some bloody or sexy or both bloody and sexy scenes almost every 15 min. Whether these scenes are really necessary, or really necessary to make them like that, is arguable to me. Anyway finally the movie got a M18 rate in Singapore.

Compare to those bloody and sexy scenes, the fighting scenes are not that cheering up. Although the previous 300 is a whole hardcore stuff, this Watchmen looks like a 1980’s Hollywood style of stunt most of the time. Come on, where are those Hong Kong guys?!

Due to the long-term lawsuit around the copyright issue, the cast had almost “traveled around” all stars of Hollywood. Finally the selection was a surprisingly B-class group. Maybe the production company wanted to save more money for the special effects? Fortunately the special effects did a pretty good job, especially the Dr. Manhattan’s “blue ray” body. The fact that the actors didn’t have the burden of fame might actually do sth good for the movie: So they could act as actors, not stars. The almost only leading actress, Silk Spectre II, was not quite exciting on the contrary, except for her sexy body.

The ending is the best part of the whole movie. A trillion-dollar question was raised: Is it correct to sacrifice millions of ppl’s lives to save billions’? If the number is just 15, 150, or even 1500, I believe that most ppl will answer “YES!” without hesitation (remember United 93?). But when this number turns to 15 millions, I don’t think that anyone can give an answer that easily. And the worst thing is, you even need to protect the “bad guy” behind the scheme, cuz if he is exposed, the whole world will be back to war again. It’s really cruel that a “good guy” has to die to keep this secret. That reminds me the old “hara-kiri” tradition in Japan: Sometimes you need to kill yourself (or let someone help you with that) to protect certain things like justice, dignity, etc. Although it seems to be a “happy ending” in the end, I don’t think anyone really feels happy when stepping out of the cinema.

Valkyrie

2009-03-10T05:13:00.001-07:00

The “July 20 Plot” has actually been filmed several times. My favorite is the 1990 version of The Plan to Kill Hitler, in which the late handsome Brad Davis was playing the leading role, Count Stauffenberg. Even I only watched this movie once some 15 yrs ago, I could still recall the scene that Count Stauffenberg was practicing how to clinch the “pencil” with his three remaining fingers. I expected to see sth similar or sth even better in the latest Valkyrie. Unfortunately, Tom Cruise totally turned me down.

Maybe it was because that the leading role was played by Tom Cruise, all other actors and actress, roles, everything, just became “less important”. But the director tended to use a whole European cast to portrait the German officers and official. So you just found out that the mega-watt smile was surrounded by a group of ppl holding Emmy’s and other “theatrical” awards in both hands. Of course Tom Cruise got several awards and nominations in Oscar and Golden Globe also, but the thing is, compared to the highly competing theatre culture in Europe, Hollywood looks more like a kids’ playground.

Actually it’s quite arguable whether Count Stauffenberg was really the core of the whole plot. A wise director should try to dig sth from other roles as well. Obviously the director of Valkyrie is not wise enough, so that he put everything on Tom Cruise and expected that he could save the movie. And in the movie sth looks similar: Everyone put everything on Count Stauffenberg, expecting that he could save Germany. And since he is the ONLY hero, you could expect those exciting speech, cool movements, wise quotes, etc., all around him, only around him. Pity for all other actors and their roles – they are simply ignored.

Compared to the big picture, the director seems to put more effort in details like the German officers’ uniforms, the famous Nazi buildings, and the “broken” arm and fingers of Tom Cruise. Yet he definitely forgot the music, which should be quite essential for such a historic topic.

BTW Tom Cruise claimed that he resembles Count Stauffenberg quite much. Well, see it with your own eyes:

Those Weird Guys (1) – Match Point

2009-03-09T06:10:00.000-07:00

I used to mistake Match Point with another movie about tennis and love, Wimbledon, and so I never really paid attention to it. What a HUGE mistake!

Woody Allen is a guy that would most likely impress you with the word “weird”. Here we saw a portrait of the English high-end life in a Pride & Prejudice style at first, followed by a piece of love and lust scenes that you would see in almost every Hollywood movie nowadays, and guess what, we were lead to the CSI lines! Everything is 99% predictable, but just that fatal 1% uncertainty caused the literally fatal result.

The ending is good for both Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Woody. For Chris, this looks like a final compensation after he lost so many unlucky match points in the tennis court; For Woody, it successfully gives the audience a second thought about the movie after stepping out of the cinema: An obvious murder was dismissed by English police, for what? The old school English way of thinking that those high-end families are “untouchable”? The reality that right and justice are not always maintained? Or just ppl are soooo lazy? Whatever, you think about it, and one point for Woody.

I particularly like the England, or I should say, London accent of English in this movie. Compared to American, Aussie, Indian (don’t even mention Singlish), it’s elegant, it’s soft, it’s nice. And sometimes it even reminds me my nightmare in college with those “Step by Step” tapes. (For those who never need to worry about learning English as a foreign language, this is a series of listening course, and the narrators are almost all bearing heavy accent from those remote parts of England. I’m the only one among my friends who got enough patience to finish all those tapes…) And Meyers finally felt free to use his Ireland accent.

Scarlett Johansson (just found out that she got the same birthday as mine!) showed a somewhat different face here as a woman tortured to half-insane by an affair with a married man. Among a whole group of well theatre-trained English actors and actress (including Meyers), she seemed to be trying very hard to “act”. But I always think that a good actor or actress actually does not “act”, they “live” in their roles instead. Looks like Scarlett just could not fit into them, just like Nola (her role in the movie) could never fit into the English “noble” way of living.

Using operas and old songs from those old black discs is really a brilliant idea. You could never expect such things in a “normal” Hollywood blockbuster.

Dreams Come True? – The Wedding Game

2009-03-02T04:25:00.001-08:00

Some celebrities get married. Some celebrities play getting married on the screen. Some celebrities play pretending to get married on the screen. But not every pair of celebrities play pretending married on the screen right before they get married in real life.

Fann Wong (You might remember her in Shanghai Knights, as the younger sister to Jackie Chan) and her long-time lover Christopher Lee (not that famous white guy, of course…) are the “Princess & Prince” celebrities in Singapore, hence their wedding looks like a “dreams come true” to the popular audience. So, some guys are naturally thinking about, “Why not we make some money out of this?” Then, here comes the movie, which hit local box office during the “double celebration” of Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. BTW, according to Chinese tradition, the 15th day of January in lunar calendar, i.e., “Yuan Xiao Festival” (literally “the festival for rice dumplings”, cuz rice dumplings are traditional food for this day), is also a day for love and dating…

You may have seen such movies in an “American Sweetheart” style, so nothing is really new here. They just added in some oriental sauces like the “kampong dancing” in a Malaysia village and the South-Eastern Asian accent English. And to make the movie “politically correct”, the leading roles got very “honorable” reasons to fake the marriage -- just hope they don’t do that in real life…

In order to raise enough money for the production in a short time (the movie was set up after they announced their engagement in mid 2008, and finished production no later than Christmas of the same year), there are a hell lot of advertisements in it, and almost all of them are local brands: from snacks, beverages, restaurants, all the way to a condominium! So you can also classify this movie to a big ad project actually.

You will find most of the fun during watching the first half, esp the part that how the celebrity couple “pretended” those sweet scenes. My personal favorites include one scene that they turned a wrestling fight into a chilly spicy hot kiss as soon as they found paparazzi outside the window. And the following lines literally made the whole cinema bursting into laughters: (roughly translated)
Gigi (a.k.a. the girl): From now on, in this house, you must keep 12 inches away from me!
Jack (a.k.a. the guy): Don’t worry, mine is only 10.5!
(OK, if you don’t get it, then so be it…)

Vampires, Lycans, Romeo & Juliet

2009-02-18T03:25:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been an Underworld fan ever since the first movie was released. It’s not just another Vampire movie, but a masterpiece of Gothic movies, thanks to the gorgeous Kate Beckinsale. The most recent one, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, was set to be the prequel of the first one, and even replaced Kate with Rhona Mitra (of course, Kate’s role Selene was not even born in the prequel story…). That made me quite hesitated before finally went to the cinema.

The story is simple, just like the title of this article – The Vampire-Lycan version of Romeo & Juliet. But obviously the writers did not pay much attention in the details, so that there are many “leaks” and mismatches here and there:

Vampires can breed and “grow up”! This must be the biggest breakthrough in vampire history – with their immortality, power and now the new ability, vampires will rule the world!
Curious how the vampire castle got its food supply. Since it charged “protection tax” from the human nobles nearby, it was not quite possible for them to hunt in the neighborhood. There was one scene that Viktor sip some red liquid from a glass, don’t tell me that was tomato juice!
Vampires kept lycans as slaves by forcing them to wear cuffs around the neck, so that once they tried to turn into werewolves, the sharp tips on the cuffs would cut their veins. This, I should say, is a simple-and-silly way, which will be the favorite of any system engineer, but not normal audience. We want to see some magic dose, magic stone, etc.
According to the first two movies, the “bloody” relationships between vampires and lycans are very complicated: They originated from one single ancestor Alexander (who, is also immortal, and this might be the reason that both his sons are immortal), but turned into two different species, which made the hybrid of them almost impossible (in Underworld: Evolution, the hybrid could only be implemented on Michael, a human with “pure” Corvinus blood, while Selene only “evolved” to not afraid of sunshine by drinking Alexander’s blood). But now we almost got a hybrid baby by Sonja and Lucian!
To kill a vampire, you need sunlight; to kill a lycan, you need silver bullet. Now we know that actually a good bite can also do the job…

This is also the “Rise of the Supporting Roles”. Bill Naughy (as Viktor) and Michael Sheen (as Lucian) finally got their names printed in the first line of the cast. But why Lucian looks even older than in the first movie? Hey Michael, you should get some facial treatment! And Bill Naughy’s pronunciation was a bit strange. Seems he has not fully recovered from the Davy Jones’ mood…

Rhona Mitra has a killing shape, but not the killing charm like Kate Beckinsale. And obviously she got not much talent in martial arts. Probably that’s why most of her scenes were indoors. The scene of the couple having sex in the cave is really hot…

The stunts and special effects were simple copies of the first two movies and similar stuff like Van Helsing and LOTR. Do they really think that some bloody syrup and broken limbs are enough for audience nowadays?

BTW they even copied the poster of Van Helsing…

Before & After of QEII

2009-02-14T21:00:00.001-08:00

Saw this huge ad board in a shopping centre in Singapore today. Don't know if Her Majesty would mind...

The Heroic Father Forever -- Inkheart

2009-02-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

It seems that Brendan Fraser has earned him a nickname "Father Hero" during these years: The Mummy (Or I should say, The Mummies?), Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and now, Inkheart. But I saw the class is downgrading: From the A-class for The Mummy series, to the B-class cast of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and finally to the C-class of this Inkheart.

The story tells a man found out that he got a talent to "read out" the characters of the books. Because of that, he lost his beloved wife, and had to travel around with his little girl. Still, he was traced down by the bad guys he read out, and the final fight came... Not quite exciting once you have already watched Bedtime Stories. But lucky for Brendan, Adam Sandler did really a bad job in that movie, so Brandon still got the chance to fight back, with quite a strong cast and beautiful country sightviews. And guess what, that means the movie company did not pay a penny on special effects!

Andy Serkis (most memorable by the Gullum in LOTR) acted as the Big Bad Boss, Helen Mirren Her Majesty is the sticky Granny, both are just following the formulas, but still, both are OK. Paul Bettany (the "white" guy in Da Vinci Code) tried to portrait a quite complicated role, but not quite successful in the first half of the movie. The newcomer Rafi Gavron (as Farid) looks quite like a young Orlando Bloom, cute...

Basically the tone of the whole movie is quite 1960's: those old vans and trucks, ancient castles, mountains of autumn, all are favorites of that era. Not quite easy to do that in nowadays.

Based on a True Story – “Defiance"

2009-01-19T04:12:00.000-08:00

It was Daniel Craig that brought me to this movie, and the same applies to you, I believe.
But actually it’s quite a touching story, for it is true. It truly happened during WWII, in a forest in Poland (or you can say, in nowadays Belorussia, whatever…).

A group of Jews, leading by one heroic Tuvia Bielski, were hiding from the Nazi and fighting against all kinds of enemies (Nazi of course, plus winter, hunger, wolves, etc.) for survival. Such a story could be found in almost all countries, nations, races, just everywhere in the world. What makes this “Defiance” a nice piece is that it did not try to make the hero “too heroic”. He had desires, he had darkness inside, and he was weak, scared and even out of control sometimes. You will definitely not see such things in the portrait of a hero in any Chinese or Soviet movies. Although it is quite normal to Hollywood movies in recent years, it’s still good to see a well-balanced job here.

OK this movie is not 100% “fair” anyway: it surely left no mercy to Nazi, even the Soviet. And it simply “ignored” the fact that the youngest (and the only one currently alive) Bielski brothers, Aron, was charged for fraud in Florida, yr 2007.

BTW the story actually reminds me of Ghengis Khan: Both leaders here were hiding from the enemies in the forest, together with their fellows; both were good fighters with genius in strategy; both had the charisma of a born leader; both killed their own fellows for the sake of the whole group of ppl (Ghengis Khan killed his own half-brother, for the latter grabbed the food that was supposed to be distributed to the women and children in the family. In that sense, what Tuvia did in the movie looks just like a mirror to the great Mongol Emperor.) The difference is, no one dares to show any “dark side” of Ghengis Khan in any movie or drama, for he is basically the God to most Mongolians…

P.S. The actual Bielski brothers were all famous of their handsome, while in the movie they did not look so… Neither did I see much military training scenes in it, hence those women just “suddenly” knew how to use weapons like heavy machine guns (trust me, it’s not that easy…). Another miracle by Moses?

A Bedtime Story – “Bedtime Stories”

2009-01-08T04:58:00.000-08:00

When you see “Adam Sandler” in the leading role’s position, you can predict what kind of movie you will see – Nonsense, funny, harmless, happy ending, just like junk food. And that’s exactly what you should expect for a “Christmas movie”. To add sth more, even the narrator (a.k.a., Adam’s father Marty, in this movie) sounds so much like Santa Clause!

But the writer seems just satisfied with fulfilling all the “Golden Rules” for a Christmas movie (such like no disaster, no death, no RA content, good guy gets the girl finally, etc.), and forgot the basic things for a movie – the story. We understand that they have to make a “mission impossible” to happen, but can’t they just make it happen in a more reasonable way? Even “Home Alone” series did it better than this one. Especially the last 20 min, the story goes wild like a wild horse, making the whole movie a real “bedtime story”, where you can change anything as your wish.

I cannot see any progress in acting from Adam Sandler here. Actually we haven’t seen that for the recent several years already. How far can he go in this way? Even Ben Stiller made some step further in “Night at the Museum”! (No wonder he got a sequel…)

Nothing quite impressive from the supporting roles, just the pubbing daughter of the big boss seems like a clone of Paris Hilton. Rob Schneider guest shows as two small roles, so we can see the two kings of comedy together again. The little nephew and niece are very cute, hope they got some more chances in the future.

From the movie posters and trailers I knew that they will have some “imagined” scenes where Adam is in the shoes of cowboys, Ben-Hur, Star Wars, etc. But in the movie all these scenes appear to be just B-class productions. (They even mistook the amphitheatre to be in Greece! Or maybe it’s just another feature of a bedtime story?) Quite disappointing.

Now I have more reason to expect the coming “Inkheart”. At least, Brandon Fraser is much more professional in such kind of topics.

Unbelievable Vista

2008-12-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

It's really unbelievable that Vista comes with a "complimentary" .Net Framework 1.1 plus SP1 which will cause an "endless" installation of a mysterious patch KB929729, given that actually Vista gives you another .Net Framework 3.5 at the same time!

The problem appears when I got my new laptop, with a pre-installed WindowsVista Business version, which is with this notorious .Net Framework 1.1. This version of .Net Framework was known for its stability on Windows XP before, but when it appeared that it was not compatible with the later .Net Framework 2.0 (or I should say it the other way round?), it turned into a nightmare of many developers and even some casual users. One example is the Paint.Net tool (btw I really love this free and handly tool, as a alternative for the expensive and complicated PhotoShop), which swang between these two versions of .Net Framework for quite a long time, and even gave some releases with a .Net Framework 1.1 embedded. Finally those Paint.Net guys chose to follow the latest one, just as most rational developers will do.

After several unsuccessful tries (I got a lot of help from Peter, but sorry I still could not make it...), I had to remove the whole .Net Framework 1.1, so that the "genius" Windows Update will not prompt me for this patch update any more. And guess what, none of my application SW complained about that! Obviously those latest versions of the tools I use have already tuned themselves to the latest version of .Net Framework, which I assume to be 3.5 on my Vista. So, why bother stick to the troublesome 1.1?

Still in a headache period with my new laptop and this new OS:

I cannot see the defragmentation report before do the actual defragment, nor can I see the progress of it.
I cannot find the plain "Add/Remove SW" button anymore.
The "Windows Live Messenger Installation" always fails. (I had to manually download it and install it to bring back my MSN...)
The Windows Media Player 11 still does not include any meaningful codec. I have to download a free codec package to play a traditional DVD. (Microsoft insists that ppl should "purchase" these codec, but pls tell me, how many ppl really did that?)
...

A Bite of Green Apple – Twilight

2008-12-22T08:39:00.001-08:00

Most green apples have a flavor of mixture of sweet and sour, just like that of teenagers’ love. And the temptation of a beautiful green apple, is also like that of a healthy young girl to a … vampire, -- You just want to give it a bite.

At the first glimpse, “Twilight” looks not quite particular in a whole bunch of vampire movie recent years: It doesn’t have the all-star cast like “Interview with the Vampire”, nor does it have the terrific CG effects like “Van Helsing” and “Underworld”. Actually after I finished watching it, it somewhat reminds me the underrated “Queen of the Damned”. If the latter is like a rock song (they used a lot of rock songs in that movie indeed), the “Twilight” will be a “pure love” version.

The word “pure love” here is a word-to-word translation from a Japanese word “jun-ai” (“純愛” in Japanese and Chinese), which is used to described a type of books, movies, cartoons and music, where the theme is “true love can conquer everything”. The leading roles, normally the boy and the girl, always have some great obstacles in their way to the happy-ever-after ending, some are even taboos. The struggle of the couple, and the love shown during this struggle, is the major part, while the real world outside of them and the final endings, happy or not (actually most of the time is unhappy, with death of disease, death of accident, suicide, etc.), are relatively unimportant. This kind of theme is quite popular in East-Asian pop culture nowadays, where you can find a lot of related productions in Japan, Korea, China, etc.

Now you should see the connections between “Twilight” and “jun-ai”: High school boy and girl, teenagers’ love, great obstacles (vampire vs. human being), struggle, all these made it a typical “jun-ai” movie. In western cultures, ppl are used to sex, drugs and violence in high school, and it makes them quite “refreshed” to have a bite of green apple now.

The storyline is quite simple, and there are only a few scenes to demonstrate the mighty power of vampires (not even worthy to mention them once you’ve watched “Van Helsing” and “Underworld”). The huge success in the box office in U.S. has to come from the great acting of the two leading characters: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Rather fresh persons in the show business (the most remarkable roles for them before “Twilight”, is the dead senior of Harry Potter for Pattinson, and Jodie Foster’s daughter in “Panic Room” for Miss Stewart), both successfully portrayed the shy and lonely (sometimes even freak) teenagers. I particularly like the scenes when Edward tried to start a conversation with Bella with some awkward topics or techniques, and when Bella tried to talk to Edward with a stuttering voice. These scenes look so real, that sometimes I even thought Miss Stewart might really have a crush on Pattinson (maybe actually she does? ^_^).

The makeup of vampires, although already well defined in “Interview with the Vampire” and “Dracula”, looks more like a fake in “Twilight”. Seems they wanna use a mimic of Johnny Depp in “Edward the Scissorhands” (OK, they have the same first name at least), but ended up with a worn-out one. There have been a lot of reviews calling Pattinsom “beautiful”, and even more call him “over-aged”. To me the most remarkable thing in his outlook is his eyes: You can hardly miss them in the crowd. Luckily he got some real gift in acting to balance the outlook.

There’s nothing in “Twilight” that can get you “horror”. So what a young girl screamed in my cinema and tried to find a shelter in her boy friend’s chest, all audience turned back to watch this “show”…

Australian “Gone with the Wind”

2008-12-18T04:51:00.001-08:00

Many ppl called it “the Australian version of ‘Gone with the Wind’ ”, and it really deserves it.

From a half-Caucasian-half-aboriginal boy’s point of view, the kettle breeding, racial discrimination, and the aboriginal culture are interwoven into a big carpet, which is then put in the WWII era. This really reminds me the cotton plantations and slavery in the South, with the American Civil War as the background. And the Great Plains, ranches and deserts, are just like an Aussie version of Tara. (Actually there IS a county called “Tara” in New South Wales, Australia. Built by Irish ppl, maybe?) The air attack to Darwin, maybe not as “hot” as the burn-down of Atlanta, but it’s much more striking, just like the Pearl Harbor. The “Drover” played by Hugh Jackman, is just a cowboy Rhett Butler; But the “Mrs. Boss” (Lady Ashley) played by Nicole Kidman, looks more like Melanie, instead of Scarlet. At the beginning, when a noble lady first stepped on this semi-civilized continent, she behaved like a proud little cuttie who went to the ball for the first time; but when she needs to fight against the villain Neil Fletcher to protect her ranch, it seems that she is far from capable for that (My Lady, if I were you, when that bastard came to my house alone, just use one single shot, and offer the body to the crocodiles, and that, I believe, is what Scarlet is definitely capable of.).

The part that describes the culture of the aboriginals, esp. the soul songs, is a bit too long. The whole movie lasts for 2 hrs 45 min!

For the two made-in-Australia superstars, there’s nothing much “outstanding” here. Hugh Jackman keeps changing between Wolverine and Leopard, and Nicole Kidman definitely learns a lot from Vivian Leigh (one scene she stands under a big tree in the dusk almost makes me shout out “After all, tomorrow is another day!”…). Her best parts are almost all with the little boy Nullah, esp. the two scenes (farewell and reunion) at the wharf, which show us the true love from a mother. Nice job for David Wenham (he also cooperated with Hugh Jackman in “Van Helsing” before), for the bad guy he portrayed is really sth. that you wanna bomb his head with your own heads. But the biggest surprise of this movie is the aboriginal young actor Brandon Walters, a.k.a., Nullah. Compared to the well-trained Jaden Smith, you have to admit that this freshman for acting really got some genius in this area.

The Tourism Australia is one of the major sponsors of this movie, so you can expect a lot of beautiful views of Australia in it. The sponsorship is definitely successful, because now I have already been craving for another Australian trip, esp. Darwin.

Unbeatable True Love? -- The Day the Earth Stood Still

2008-12-15T02:33:00.000-08:00

A remake of Black-and-White classic, plus Keanu Reeves, the new “The Day the Earth Stood Still” somehow did not impress me as it should have.

From Cold War to environment protection, Aliens sent the messages, and human kind seems never listened. At the end of the day, the handsome Alien guy (or I should say, a clone) was so touched by the single mother he met, that he sacrificed himself to terminate the program that was supposed to destroy mankind. Looks like true love can beat anything, even Aliens… But just can’t image those high-tech Aliens still use palm recognition to trigger the switch!

The relationship between the mother scientist and the stepson costs a lot of effort, but was it really worthy? The little boy’s imagination about his Rambo-like father looks so unreal, even for a little boy. The mother chose to escape with the Alien guy (given that the guy looks just the same as Keanu Reeves, that’s understandable…) yet still taking a little boy with them? Why not just put the boy at the Professor’s house? That looks much wiser, more like a scientist’s choice, not a panic mother. Or, they just want to keep Mr. Smith Junior in the show. And after the mother was captured, the boy made friends with the Alien within seconds! Amazing? Or I should say, just a human nature of survival?

From Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly to Jaden Smith, the face expressions increased, in that order; and the drama we could feel decreased, in that order. Young Smith got a very emotional acting gift, but that could not save the failure of the scripts. Keanu is almost without any expressions, but God know we just like that! His acting is making you think, about every word he said, and every flash in his eyes. But pls exclude the part about two Aliens talking in McDonald, in Chinese! I can tell you that their Mandarin is very lousy, and I just don’t understand why the writers use such a scene to try to flatter Chinese-speaking audience. To be frank, I only felt insulted. For Jennifer, it seems that how she understands the word “mother” is, as long as the child is at present, you see nothing, talk about nothing, and do for nothing, except for the kid. Ideal mother, which never exists. But in the scenes she is alone or with Keanu, we can still see what a good actress should do. Pity for her Gothic-looking face, maybe she should try again if she is playing the Alien next time.
The Madam Secretary is an obvious metaphor to Rice. The U.S.-central theory is so out-of-date, especially given the news that Mr. Obama called China for help. So I just don’t know whether the scripts were really meant for this theory (I suppose the scripts had been finished before the sub-prime crisis), or this is just a joke. Either way, it makes me even more disgusted. The lines that the U.S. President gave the stupid order of using missiles against the Aliens while he himself (I assume that he is a “he”) were hiding in a “safe location”, are really typical to the current Mr. President. God blessed he is soon to leave.

There are always a lot of digital effects in such a movie nowadays. But the scene that a stadium was destroyed by the “metal locusts” looks not that gorgeous. Maybe they should try the Lady Liberty next time? As a reference, I suggest them (and you too, if you have interests) to watch the Japanese movie “Sinking of Japan”. Also a remake from a classic some 30 yrs ago, this latest one “destroyed” a lot of grand Buddha statues, castles, palaces and other famous buildings in Japan. That, is what I call “destroy human kind”, by destroying all the icons of human civilization, not just a stadium, not some mountains or rivers (that is what I call “destroy the nature”). And one bug I found about digital effects is the scene that when Klaatu and Helen were talking in the cemetery, the yellow leaves on the ground were waved up by the wind, but the trees in the background didn’t move a single twig! Keanu looks like to be “pasted” to the background actually. Even if they need to do sth to the clouds, it should not be that hard to use a more vivid way to do that.

BTW, is there anything related to “earth stood still” here? Actually I wanna call this movie “The Day the Alien Visited”.

Struggling for an ember of hope – City of Ember

2008-11-28T04:15:00.000-08:00

Adopted from a best-selling children book, the plot is not quite novel for adult audience: The Earth environment is heavily damaged, so that mankind decided to hide in an underground city for 200 yrs, waiting for the Earth to heal herself. However, after 200 yrs, ppl have forgotten the thing of returning to the surface, until two teenagers found the secret and saved the world.

If you are willing to invest enough money and time, this story could actually be the next “Lord of the Rings” series. But the movie company simply did not wanna take the risk. So the result turns to be more like a teenager version of “Chronicles of Riddick”, or we shall call it “Young Indiana Jones & His First Love”?

As the leading roles, Saoirse Ronan and Harry Treadaway appeared to be too “next-door”, i.e., I cannot see anything can be called “pretty” there. Yes pretty face is superficial, but if this is meant to be a teenager movie, it’s expected to be superficial. If it is NOT a teenager movie, then the writers need to put much more effort in polishing there script – there are so many “holes” there!

The special effect is disappointing too. The scene that the three kids are traveling in a “locker-boat” passing through the underground river, it’s an obvious copy-cat from “Indiana Jones” and “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”. Even so, the impression to me is that the figures of the characters are simply “pasted” to the background – seriously, I can see the glue!

Bill Murray is competent in playing the mayor. Sure he is, as an Oscar actor. But is it a big waste for him to act in such an “average” movie?

The season of blockbusters has come, and “City of Ember” can only see the ember of hope in box office now.

Uncle Sam is just an old man now – Body of Lies

2008-11-26T03:43:00.000-08:00

The impression I got from this movie, is that US is really an old man now, just like the impression from this global recession.

Russell Crowe’s role as the lead agent is quite annoying. Know nothing, and only do things to suck his own guys, typical manager. And his mid-age man look is just the portrait of the bureaucracy in current US government. If the director just wants us to feel annoyed whenever Russell’s face shown on the screen, then, he is very successful in that point.

Leonardo DiCaprio is one of those rare actors, who owns a face of angel, yet is willing to be trained in hell to portrait a devil. In “Blood Diamond” his South African accent was surprisingly successful, and now in this movie he even learned Arabics! With all his effort in these years, I think it’s time to give him an Oscar now.

Mark Strong is definitely a show stealer. Playing Mani, the head of Jordanian Intelligence Bureau, he brought us a smart, cold-blooded yet charming Arab Knight, reminds me Al Pacino in “Godfather”. With his existence, Russell seems even more miserable.

And old photo of Mark Wahlberg

2008-11-15T19:12:00.000-08:00

Bet you can't recognize this is the guy of "Shooter" and "Max Payne"!

This is an ad photo for the underwear of Calvin Klein back to the time Mark was still a rap singer named "Marky Mark". Time changes soooooo much!

Miserable Bond -- 007: Quantum of Solace

2008-11-14T04:14:00.000-08:00

Obviously Daniel Craig is doing a totally different Bond: Endless chasing (on the land, over the river, and even in the sky!), bombing, gunshot fighting, martial fighting, plus a sky diving, we hardly see a “Tuxedo Bond” here, but a wounded man in rags for most of the time. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that this is a 007 movie, not a Bourne, not an Indiana, not anybody else. (The guy behind Bourne series also worked for Daniel’s two 007 movies so far, no wonder…) God bless someone don’t make Sherlock Holmes to do some kungfu fighting…

It seems that the director wants to show some different aspects of Bond: miseries of the women around him, death of the true friend, etc. But he just did not give Craig enough time or scene to demonstrate the deep sorrow, or he just did not have enough time with the high tension of the speed of the movie?

Make this 007 movie as a sequel of the previous one (Casino Royale) is not quite a good idea, for most of the audience (including me) have already lost track of the casino story. And seems they even want to go on with what ends in this one and make the next one, sounds even more risky for me.

The theme song is quite attractive. Heard that in U.S. the OST even got a better sale than the movie itself…

Relax in Brunei (8) (ending)

2008-11-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

As the ending, some facts about Bruneians’ everyday life and travel tips.

Most of Brunei’s fortune comes from the oil. But it’s not true that every Bruneian is a billionaire, or even millionaire. The real “rich guys” are the royals (because of the huge amount of land they own under the monarchy) and a few successful industrialists (most of them are Chinese Bruneians). Normal Bruneians’ life is no different from their Singaporean or Malaysian cousins, except for the following areas:
Education all the way to University (yes, Brunei even got its own university!) is free for all citizens. And if you go to a government clinic, you only need to pay B$1 per visit, no matter what kind of treatment or medicine you got (given that the clinic can offer such treatment/medicine). That’s why with a much lower pay (compared to Singapore, normal ppl’s salary is only about half), Bruneians seem to have an at least roughly equal lifestyle.
Not like Singapore, where private cars are strongly discouraged by COE (a rule in Singapore, that ppl need to bid for COE to own a car, normally 10k to 15k S$, valid for 10 yrs), you only need to pay about B$50 per yr for the road tax plus around B$200 for the insurance, you can buy a Japanese economic car at the price of about B$25k. And since the patrol is so cheap, almost every family in Brunei owns a car, some even got more than one.
If you are a Brunei citizen, the government will give you a piece of land for free when you reach a certain age (normally the legal marriage age). You can use the land for building you own house, doing some small business, or even cultivation. The land can be inherited by your heir/heiress, but you cannot sell it. If you don’t like the land given to you, you can rent another piece from the government, B$5 per year (!!!) for the rental. Normal Bruneian ppl spend B$250k to B$350k to build their own dream house, but with this price, you can hardly buy an 80-sqm flat in from Singapore government (HDB).
Bruneian ppl normally quite respect the royalty, especially the Sultan. He built a lot of public facilities like museum, stadium and traditional handcraft centre for the ppl, and they are all free to the public. So don’t try to “bad-mouth” the Sultan with a Bruneian.

Some travel tips:
1. Wear decent clothes, meaning don’t try to expose your sexy breast, thigh or butt. You will not be arrested even if you do so, and you could still get inside the mosques when you put on the black robe they provide, but most likely you will be politely refused by some restaurants, shops and public buildings. The only exception is when you are doing sports in a gym or swimming, you can wear the sports attires, provided you will change back to “normal” clothes when you step out of the gym or swimming area.
2. If you wanna buy some souvenirs, you will find out that the price are the same all over the country. Difference among the souvenir shops is just the product range. The ones in the airport got some bit high-end stuff, where I bought a quite unique deco – Brunei’s oil!

3. Jerudong Park is out of the sightseeing list of every travel agency in Brunei, and even local taxi driver will tell you that it is a waste of time and money (taxi ride is B$60-70 for return trip from city hotels) to go there. Seems Lonely Planet is kind of out of date here… If you really have half day to kill, try Empire Hotel area instead.

Relax in Brunei (7)

2008-11-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

Our last night stayed in Brunei was a “Brunei by Night” tour. Actually we were the only two in the tour, so it became our private package, J.

This tour takes you to the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque and the Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque so that you can take night-view photos of these two gorgeous buildings, a water taxi drive on the Kampong Ayer (Water Village), a seafood steamboat dinner by the bay, and finally a shopping trip in the night market and the best shopping mall in Brunei – The Mall.

The Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque (nicknamed “Jame”, pronounced as “jami”) is the biggest mosque among the 103 in Brunei. Built with hundreds of millions of B$ donated by Bruneian ppl, it was sent to the Sultan as a gift, hence it was named after the Sultan (you can find the “Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah” in his long titles). Its location is not quite good – isolated from major shopping and tourism areas, standing by the roadside like a lonely old man. So the best way to visit it is to join a local tour, otherwise you will take the risk that cannot find a taxi to take you back to your hotel!
The night view of Jame is like dream palace:

Every Friday afternoon, the Sultan will pick a mosque to do the pray (as long as he is in Brunei). If he comes to Jame, ppl will open the “Sultan-only” escalator for him, otherwise it is covered by canvas:

The Water Village (Kampong Ayer) is said to be the oldest and largest in the world now. Hundreds of cottages are connected by planks, and supported by pillars so that they can stand above the water. Within the Water Village, they have their own school, mosque, police station, and even a fire station! Ppl nowadays live in the Water Village also got cars and jobs on the land, only a few of them are still practicing the fishing industry.

To be honest, the water in the bay is both dirty and smelly, because some of the urines of the Water Village are directly expelled to the sea here. Luckily our “dinner by the sea” was in a air-con restaurant, so we could enjoy the night by the bay without any unpleasant smell.

The night market was quite disappointing. Most stalls were selling local vegetables, fruits and Malay snacks. Nothing quite special compared to Singapore.

Melayu Course #3:
"Kampong" means "village", "Ayer" means "water".

Relax in Brunei (6)

2008-11-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Royal Regalia Building is actually an exhibition hall, which keeps a broad collection of items about the royal family of Brunei.

The main items include two royal chariots used on the coronation ceremony in 1967 and the jubilee ceremony in 1992, a miniature of the banquet hall in the royal palace, and many gifts for the Sultan from ppl of all around the world.

The royal chariot is man-powered by 48 royal guards, and the whole parade consists of other dozens of guards and a band playing traditional Malay instruments.

The Empire Hotel & Resort is the latest pride of Brunei. Currently a 5-star one, it is targeting 7-star rating so that Brunei can catch up with Dubai.

All hotel rooms are with sea-view balconies, and the whole “Empire” also contains some resort villa, a country club and a 18-hole golf court.

The miniature of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque in the lobby. Amazing crystal lamp!

The treasure of Empire, the crystal camel. Made of one whole piece of natural crystal, it’s valued over B$250,000.

The “swimming pool” is actually a series of pools that all with the view of South China Sea.

The main building of the hotel is located on a small bay with beautiful (I guess artificial) beach.

The interior decoration of the hotel lobby looks like a “show-off”. Dozens of huge marble pillars give you a feeling that how trivial you are.
Another highlight of the hotel is the brunch buffet they serve during weekends. The price is B$44 per person, not quite a bargain, but you can get a taste of many extraordinary French-style desserts and cakes, also other “regular” stuff like oyster, sashimi, sushi, etc.
The Empire is in the Jerudong area, so not quite convenient for sight-seeing or shopping. But inside it has the country club, a lot of sports utilities, beautiful beach, a shopping gallery (expect some nice handicrafts, but not cheap), and even a cinema and a library! So it’s ideal for a 3D2N pure relaxing trip. And the price is quite reasonable for a 5-star beach resort: normal rooms are less than B$300 per night, and even further discounts from time to time.

Relax in Brunei (5)

2008-11-05T03:29:00.000-08:00

The trip to the Brunei Museum was full of “surprises”.

This time we decided to try the bus. A free shuttle bus took us from the hotel to Yayasan. When we were looking for the bus interchange, a local guy volunteered to take us there (it was a 10-min walk in the city blocks, not easy for a foreigner), and then just left before we could even say “Thank you”!

The bus interchange is quite worn out, same as the adjacent buildings. The buses are small purple ones which could contain around dozen of ppl. While we were waiting for the bus (No. 39), a local tour guide told us that the museum was closed for the morning because of some event. But at that time we really had no “plan B”, so still boarded the bus (after about half-hour’s waiting) and headed to the museum.

Actually there was an exhibition about the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque held in the museum, in memory of the 50th anniversary of the mosque. One of the sons of the Sultan attended (not sure if it was the Crown Prince), so there were a lot of police, VIPs, guards, etc. We only took a photo of the museum from quite a distance:

(See the black Benz’s? The plate numbers are sequential, should be for the royal members and government officials.)

We actually entered the museum before it was officially re-opened. So for about one hour’s time, we were the only visitors inside. The first hall we visited was full of extraordinary south-eastern Asian style antiques, like weapons, jewelry, home appliance, etc. But there was a soldier (not guard or police, real army man!) was “accompanying” us all the time, quite uncomfortable.

The second hall was an introduction to the oil industry in Brunei. We got to know that all the gas consumed in Brunei is locally produced. Now you know why it’s so cheap!

A series of halls show the history of Brunei, especially the chronicles of the current monarchy. Good self-study materials.

Photo-taking is not allowed inside the museum (and all other museums and mosques in Brunei). I only took a photo with the Sultan …’s picture in the lobby:

As mentioned before, we took a ride on the MPV of a lady delivering lunch to the museum to go back to the Bandar, free of charge!

Relax in Brunei (4)

2008-11-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

The best place to take photos for Omar is the Yayasan shopping centre area. This shopping centre consists of four buildings embracing one square. Many tourists will take photos of Omar right at the centre of the square. The shopping centre was one of the biggest ones in the last few years of 20th century, but now is just another shopping centre…

One thing quite interesting about the shops in Brunei is, for every signboard in the streets, you can find the names of the shops in Arabic characters.

But actually only few Bruneians can understand Arabic. Most of them can just read it out but don’t know what they are reading…

Also took a photo of the huge signboard about the Sultan:

Once a protectorate of Britain, there are still some signs of history in Brunei:

Melayu course #2:
“jalan” means both the action “walk” and the noun “road”. So “Jalan Elizabeth 2” is “Road Elizabeth II”, a very common road name in Commonwealth countries.

Actually Brunei is not all “bling-bling”. Some streets in Bandar, like the ones around the Bus Interchange, are also worn-out, just like those ones in Malacca, Penang, etc.

Relax in Brunei (3)

2008-11-03T03:46:00.000-08:00

The town centre of Bandar Seri Begawan is the “Bandar”. It’s an ancient port, with history tracing back to the Age of Discovery. “Seri Begawan” is a royal title to the sultan (BTW the titles of the sultans and queens can be as long as more than 15 words in English!), so the name of the capital can be roughly translated as “Sultan’s Port”. Nowadays Bandar is a centre of tourism interests in Brunei.

The Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque is probably the most famous building to the world in Brunei.

This mosque is dedicated to the previous Sultan (father to the current Sultan), and “Omar Ali Saifuddin” is his brief name. The architecture style is a mimic of the Taj Mahal, with the main architect and all the white marbles from Italy. It cost more than 60 million Brunei dollars and was finished in 1958. The Bruneians normally called it “Omar”. This year is the 50th anniversary of this mosque, so there are some celebrations within the country. They even re-do the golden plates on all the domes to make it more “shiny”. Unfortunately they did not refresh the water in the pond surrounding the mosque… (The water looks quite dirty now, not like those photos taken for the postcards.)

But the pond is the major characteristic of this mosque, with a stone boat inside. The mosque, the pond, the stone boat and the bridges consist of a unique landmark for Brunei.
The mosque is open to public during the daytime (except for the praying sessions). Ladies need to wear the black robes provided by the mosque, so do the gentlemen who wear shorts. So actually you don’t have to wear long sleeves and pants all the day round in Brunei (Although moderate clothing is preferred. Sexy beach babes are not welcomed here.), but during the rainy season (like now!) they ARE quite useful, esp. during nights.
The interior of a mosque is actually quite similar to a Baroque style church: Dome, colored glass windows, the seat for the Imam (priest in Islam) on the top of several steps of stairs… Just here you don’t have any seat for the prayers – everybody kneels down and sits on the carpets (those carpets are protected from touching of the visitors). Since photo-taking is not allowed inside the mosque, I just took a photo for the garden.

Also got some night views for Omar (that’s why I brought tripod this time…):

Better just music -- "Sing to the Dawn"

2008-11-01T03:15:00.001-07:00

This is Singapore local cartoon movie, quite a big thing for this tiny little island country. So I got a gift voucher for it, as part of its promotion. I should say, it brought back to me that some movie can really drive me out of the cinema. It was only because of the periodically played beautiful songs by Kit Chan that kept me in.

The story is childish (actually the whole film is based on a children story book): In an oriental poor village, father ordered the intelligent daughter to drop out and marry the sone of the landlord, so that her brother could get the scholarship to college. Little girl found out the secret of the landlord that could stop him from destroying the village and build up a casino.
The thing is, probably we could believe that there are still such dumb nice guys existed in this world, but it's just not possible that nowadays' villains could be as stupid as the film describes.

The background drawings are very characteristics to the South-Eastern Asia area. So in case someday ppl in Hollywood wanna make a cartoon about a story that happened in this area (e.g., the cartoon version of Tomb Raider?), can consider these nice pictures. But the human figures are both lousy and out of date. Looks like the designers are still in the early 80's. Recent jobs done by Chinese movie makers are much better in this area.

Relax in Brunei (2)

2008-10-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

The public transportation in Brunei is lousy, for everybody owns car here (just like US…). The government bus is cheap (normally B$1 per trip within the Bandar Seri Begawan area), but the frequency is 30-45 min (the rule is 15-20 min, but, you know, it’s just the rule…), so most of the time you could only take taxi, if you don’t have a tour package. And the taxi fee is quite high, 10 min’s drive can easily cost you B$15 to B$20, almost same price as in Europe and Japan.

Our hotel (Orchid Garden Hotel) is a 4-star one, with a small swimming pool, gym, spa (they have the biggest Jacuzzi in Brunei, but the spa is only opened to male and female customers during separated time slots), etc. My favorite point about this hotel is the big, big guestroom, haven’t seen such a big room for quite a long time… The Chinese restaurant called “Vanda” here is quite nice, from a Chinese’ point of view, and it’s really value for cash, due to the 0-GST in Brunei.
See who has been here?

The royal palace (Istana, as in Melayu) is only open to public during the 3-day celebration of Hari Raya, so we could just take several photos outside the main gate. Cannot see much from here actually…

But the taxi driver we met was really nice: she drove us from the hotel to the Istana, then to the town centre (Bandar), only charged us $20 (normally at least $30), and she even waited till we finish the photo shooting at Istana! Actually Bruneians are quite nice people, who lead a relaxed and cozy lifestyle. We were always given way by the vehicles in the road, not like in most other countries where you need to “fight” for the road. And they are very glad to help you, in one way or another. When we visited the museum the other day, we originally had to wait for 30 min or even longer for the bus back to town centre, but the staff at the museum volunteered to ask the favor from a delivery driver to allow us to take a ride in her MPV. Lots of such things, maybe because Beuneians are just too free of time?

Melayu course #1:
1.Melayu follows a “reversed” order for adjectives and nouns. E.g. “Istana Negara” means “National Palace”, where “Istana” means “Palace” while “Negara” means “Nation”.
2.“Bandar” means “Port”. “Seri Begawan” is the royal title of the sultan who established this city as the capital.

Relax in Brunei (1)

2008-10-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Once upon a year, I will have this kind of rush for a leisure trip. This time, in the atmosphere of global recession, I picked Brunei, arguably the richest country in this world. Ironic...

This is a country covering over 5,700 square kilometres, but with only less than 300k people living in it. You can imagine how jealous I was when I got to know that, given that I was living in a small island of 600+ square kilometres and more than 4 million ppl.

The country is rich because one gift from the mother nature, oil. So they can provide free education and healthcare to all citizens, cheap housing (normally 300k B$ for a two-storey landed property with 3 bedrooms and a big living hall), cheap gas (No joke, in Brunei, gasoline is cheaper that coke, only B$0.50 per litre, and diesel at B$0.30 per litre), cheap cars (B$25k for a regular one, neglectable road tax and insurance), and even cheaper water & electricity supply (I read an ad on local newspaper, one bedroom in suburb area for rent, B$150 per month including water & electricity fee...). Now YOU should be jealous also!

In case you don't know, Brunei is under sultan monarchy, which means the Sultan has the absolute power. He is also one of the richest individuals in this world now. Because of the Islamic culture, there are many social rules, such like ban of alchohol. You can only bring in one bottle of wine or 10 cans of beer, and cannot drink in public (some restaurant might even refuse to "serve" you the wine you bring in!). Perhaps this is the main reason that Lonely Planet doesn't like this country, and only gives it 10 pages in a book named "Borneo" (Borneo is the name of the big island where Brunei, Saba, Sarawak are located in). I cannot even find a street map of its capital, Bandar Seri Begawan online. (There is one in the free tourism guide I got at the airport, but not zoom-in enough for walking...)

Actually it's quite convenient to travel to Brunei from Singapore -- at least two flights a day, and the whole flight is less than 2 hours. Best of all, Singapore dollars and Brunei dollars are exchangeable, so I don't need to bother about the money changer things.

Just another Popcorn Movie -- Max Payne

2008-10-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

A typical popcorn movie, adapted from some popular video game (although I never heard of it...), a lot of shooting, bombings, fightings, etc. But the plot is so lousy that you just can't wait to "predict" the next scene.

I cannot see any real "acting" from Mark Wahlberg. He is gorgeous in Shooter, but that does not mean that he can only be a "shooter", not even for always. A career in Hollywood nowadays means much more that shooting around with some extraordinary killing machines.

Western audience may still get fascinated by the "black angles", but go check out the Japanese movie Death Note triology! I'm pretty sure that this American version is just another copy-cat.

BTW they even don't pay much effort in the movie posters:

Looks familiar? Now look at these:

Now we can name them "Bad-Luck Gunman Trio"...

What the hell is this world?! -- Burn After Reading

2008-10-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Yup, this is the first sentence I can spell out after watching this movie, Burn After Reading.

Everything that we believed to be true, to be good, to be with hope, were tortured and torn into pieces in this movie. CIA is just another bureaucy, where the "leaders" can do whatever tracking or "erasing" they want, anyway everything will be "burn after reading" at the end of the day. In personal life, you and my wife, he and your wife, and someone with his wife, who knows. You think someone is tracking you down, but actually they are tracking me down (hence you are just a "by-product"). I have a plan on him, he has a plan on you, and you have a plan on who? The husband just lost his job, and the wife went directly to the divorce lawyer. The lawyer even taught the wife how to steal money from her husband's bank account!

There's a group of weird actors and actress in this movie (don't expect George Clooney or Brad Pitt to do anything "normal"). A quite unpopular plot, so you know that they are heading to Oscar, instead of box office. But the performance of the actors and actress are so good (given you can stand the F and S words, there are more than 60 such things in this movie), that you can really enjoy the acting, in spite of this rather uncomfort story. Trust me, if such an unhappy story happens to you, you will want to shout out some F or S words too.

Read the Chinese version: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_540d06ba0100b1dp.html

My first fashion show!

2008-10-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a model, or fashion designer, or anyone that "works" for a fashion show. I was just invited to watch a fashion show, right under the T-stage, and that's all.

It's the Autumn-Winter 2008 series of Banana Republic @ Paragon shopping mall, Singapore. I'm not quite familiar to this brand. It seems that their design are mostly like "can-wear" ones, not those ones you could only see ppl wearing during a fashion show... But friend told me that this brand is quite expensive, compared to the low-profile design....

View more photos here: http://community.webshots.com/album/567693368qknjwX

Why so scared about computer? -- Eagle Eye

2008-09-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

It was the name "Shia LaBeouf" that attracted me to this film. He is hot recently, some weird thing in Hollywood, cuz he is not as handsome as Orlando Bloom, or as cute as Zac Efron, but he has been continuously appearing in some blockbusters since 2007: Transformers, and Indiana Jones IV. Is he really going to be the "Next Big Thing"?

(This version of the poster is used in Singapore also, directly shows that there will be some explosions involved)

The plot is not quite surprising: One ordinary man and one ordinary woman, got a mysterious phone call some day, respectively, and got involved in a BIG plan. They were running, being hunted, robbing some guys, and finally, saving the United States. This is not a brand new idea, so the writter gave it more "incentives" by setting the "behind-the-scene-guy" as, actually, not even a "guy" (yup, you are right, "she" is a super computer). But the thing is, Matrix had done so even longer before...

If you are still amazed by the death race and the accuracy that the super computer could remove all the "obstacles", I'm sorry to tell you that this idea has been used in a Hollywood-made Chinese movie So Close quite some years ago. And the delicated trap about bombing the US president and all other highest-rank officers, looks not quite creative after we have seen Ocean's, National Treasure, etc.

The car racing is quite exciting, but not that exciting when I just experienced the first F1 night race on the road of Singapore. And too much bombing sometimes made me feel like a bit fed up. So my favorite scenes are actually the outlook of Pantagon. Not every one got a chance to see that, you know. And the worst scene is the inner look of the super computer -- a copycat of X-Men.

(The US version poster, you can hardly tell what this movie is about after viewing this poster...)

But Shia LaBeouf is nice. The most impressive scene is when Jerry (Shia) was crying at the funeral of his twin brother, Ethan (also played by Shia). He was crying in a very touching way, quiet, by touching. Seldom young guys (he is only 22 now) in Hollywood nowadays can do that. Maybe because this is more like an oriental way. If you watched some Chinese, Japanese or Korean movies, you can see that at least half of the time, when a dude cries, he cries in such a way.

In an interview, Shia LaBeouf compared himself to Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks. He said that they all have the "defected looking", so cannot be some "idols". I think the biggest thing in common he shares with Tom Hanks is the baby face. Tom Hanks suffered quite many years before his wrinkles came out and proved that he was a mature man. Shia used mustarche to cover his baby face in this film, but still not quite convincing, especially when his "partner" was played by Michelle Monaghan. Michelle is 12 years older than him, and quite appropriate to play such a struggling single mum. (BTW, her last movie, Made of Honor http://snowscorpio.blogspot.com/2008/06/grab-bride-as-you-can-made-of-honor.html also quite nice.)

(OK, he IS a big boy now...)

As to the supporting roles, the most impressive one is the FBI agent played by Billy Bob Thornton. This role could be quite boring if he did it in a "traditional" way.

Now back to the theme of this film. People are always so scared that one day some "super computer" will take control of this world. But on the other hand, people are quite comfort with the benefits from the automatic and efficient life style brought by the modern computer techniques. Some of the terms in this film actually exist: "Eagle Eye" is a total defense system brought up by US government, to utilize the internet, GPS and all kinds of monitoring equipments to locate the suspicious targets, like Osama (but this is only a monitor-and-report system, cannot do any "auto control" stuff, nor is it controlled by some "super computer"); "Big Brother" (mentioned in a news report at the very beginning of the film) is a terminology used in Internet world, referring the "central control" of domain names, communication protocols, etc.; the "monitor every mobile phone call" technique is possible, but no one wants to do it currently, not because of any privacy problem, but the huge money needed to do that (except for the Bourne Ultimatum movie...).

As a computer and AI professional, what I can say is, the "total control" is possible, with much, much more money than that US government wants to use to save this round of the financial crisis, EVERY YEAR. And if that comes true, the possible damage to world economy by a trivial mistake in the "controal centre" will be MUCH, MUCH MORE than the money invested into it. So, not from a social, but a realistic point of view, I could not any possibility that any one is willing to invest such a huge amount to do such a highly risky thing, -- that, violates the basic rules of economics.

Now, why so scared about computer?

(Read the Chinese version: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_540d06ba0100azs1.html)

A Love Story under a Horror Skin -- "Painted Skin"

2008-09-27T01:25:00.000-07:00

This Chinese movie is based on an ancient ghost story recorded in the famous Chinese short novel collection "Liao Zhai Zhi Yi" (basically this is a collection of traditional Chinese ghost and demon stories, which was written over 200 years ago). The original story tells about a demon that maintains the outlook of a young beauty by eating human hearts every day. And the most horrible scene is when the demon "takes off" the skin and does make-up on it! (That's the origin of the name "Painted Skin")

The movie uses this plot, but don't mistake it with any other horror or ghost movies, or expect quite many bloody scenes or zombies in it. Down to the earth, this is about a love story.

Two men fell for one same girl, and she chose one, so the other one left in sorrow. Years later, the husband took back a mysterious girl, who obviously had this kind of crush in him. Wife found out that the girl was not just a girl, so she asked the other man that loved her to come back and investigate it. But they lost to the girl again and again, finally the wife had to turn herself into a "demon", to get the promise from the girl that she would not kill anybody any more, including the husband. But the husband did not give up his wife, even he believed that she was a demon. His choice was to kill her and himself. End of the day, the real demon was destroyed, and before she died, she regretted and used her power to bring back to life the couple in love.

Not quite a fascinating plot, I know. But you should watch this movie, even if you don't understand Chinese, because true love does not prefer any language.

True love, is not exclusion, but sacriface. You can enjoy this movie more if you can understand this point. Or, you will understand more about this point after you watch this movie.

Most girls, especially Eastern ones, would prefer those sensitive man, instead of those strong and tough guys. But the thing is, when a man is too sensitive, he will almost always hurt you some day, when the timing is right. A tough guy could hardly hurt you by any way, once he has chosen you as the one, but you might hardly feel his sensitive side for all the time. So you need to choose. Unfortunately, most girls will make one or several wrong choices for them during their lifetime.

The director is brilliant, for he managed to make a movie that so much like a whole. You can say that many parts of this movie, like the roles, are not the best one among the alternatives, but when you make the puzzle up, you could not find anything more appropriate than that. A great movie does not need one single brilliant component, but a brilliant combination.
Perhaps the only fallback of this movie is the voice of one leading role, Zhou Xin (as the demon Xiao Wei). She is a famous Chinese actress and has won quite some domestic and international awards. But her voice is rough and discomfortable, which she insisted to stick to it all these years long. She might have her insist, but the audience should have their choices also.

Read the Chinese version: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_540d06ba0100ayjp.html

Artificial Messiah -- Babylon A.D.

2008-09-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

When the show ended, friend asked me, "It this the end?" Not because that we did not want it to end, but we COULD NOT UNDERSTAND how it could possibly end like THIS?!

The inspiration seems to root in "Children of Men". Damaged and pollted earth, ex-USSR countries are all in a mess, and the only paradise is the two countried in North America (you know who they are). Sounds like Cold War? Come on, even James Bond has aged since then!

There's a mysterious and genius girl, mysterically pregnant like Maria, but her intelligence was from some super computer, just like a perfect (or perfectly awful?) mixture of modern science and ancient religion. I just feel like that the director is trying to find a way out, but he did not understand that there are two ways, via different directions, while he just tried to make them one, which was doomed to fail.

It's like a personal show time for Vin Diesel. After all those crazy things in "xXx", in this movie you can expect snow motorcycle, racing, shooting, fighting, you name it. But what else?
At first I was hoping to see him and Michelle Yeoh, because of that classic quote "You are not a gentleman" from "Gone with the Wind". Unfortunately, Vin Diesel might look a bit like Rhett Butler, but Michelle is not a single piece of Scarlett. Finally she left earlier than I expected.
And it's actually quite interesting to see the chemistry between Vin Diesel and Mélanie Thierry, like "Beauty & Beast". This young lady just looks like a new Mila Jovovic, and her role is just like Mila in "The Fifth Element". (And, actually Vin Diesel looks like Bruce Willis sometimes...) Although they look more like a father-daughter pair, the scenes in the bathroom did bring some sparks. Pity that Michelle Yeoh came back too early...
Besides these, we have to say that we know too little about this Diesel...

The ending is in a rush. If they were running out of budget, then why not just leave this topic to someone else?

Chinese version: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_540d06ba0100at5p.html

Re-create Jules Verne -- Journey to the Centre of the Earth

2008-08-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

I was there for Jules Verne. Previously I expected a remake of this all-time classic novel, just to find out that this is actually a "re-creation".

A geologist happened to find the clues to his brother's mysterious missing, so headed for a journey to discover the truth, along with his little nephew, and a novel named "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", yup, THAT one, by Jules Verne. On the way they met a beautiful mountain guide, and the threesome set out for an exciting adventure.

Sounds familiar? If you have read the book before, it will be even more familiar. Director Eric Brevig was smart enough to not to make it like a LOTR trilogy (if you stick to the novel, could be), but use several classic scenes to re-create a story instead. Of course he deleted quite many days of the journey (the movie shows around 72 hours' length, while in the novel the adventura lasts for weeks), like those Robinson Crusoe style of survivor games. I particularly thank him for deleting those scenes that the uncle and nephew pair quarallling about the question of "to go ahead or to go back", which is the thing I hate most in the novel. Finally the movie length is below 100 min, and was rated as "PG" in most countries, which means it became a ideal "summer vacation movie". Now you know why there are some many parents taking their school-age children to this movie.

Although there are some many deleted scenes, the re-created story still sounds reasonable, all thanks to the extremely strong logic lies in the novel itself. And the writer is smart too. With such a classic, the best thing you can do is to keep the mainframe, adding some funny conversations, a little bit details here and there, and that would be perfect. Never, ever, try to destroy a classic and build up your own on the ruin.

Brendan Fraser did not get his chocolate muscles in this movie, so don't expect those "eye icecream" scenes, like in "The Mummy 3". But he is really set for such kind of roles.

The little nephew played by Josh Hutcherson looks like a combination of Elijha Wood and Daniel Redcliffe. Cute.

The scene that the threesome taking on a trolley trip in the abandoned mine is totally recycled from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Similar settings, similar shootings, even similar roles! (Man, woman and a boy) Talking about that trolley track, I clearly remembered that I played that before in some theme park. And the worst thing is, the digital effect sucks! You can easily find out that the threesome and the trolley are "pasted" to the background, and the edges are fragmented, even an amateur CG job now could do better than this. Actually the whole scene is just to show how the threesome find the entrance to the lava tunnel. In this case, if they can now do it nicely, why not change to some other way?

Finally there is a hint for a possible sequel, as quite many Hollywood movies did these days. Hope that could come true.

A Firework Show -- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

2008-08-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

A firework show, this is my feeling after watching the latest episode of that all-time classic, The Mummy.

Actually it was the leading actor, Brendan Fraser himself, that described a blockbuster movie without a good story as a "firework show", during a recent interview with some movie magazine. Unfortunately, this term could be used to describe his movie here, too.

The leaving of director and writer Stephen Sommers has predicted the problem of this movie. The story line is neither convincing nor surprising. To those audience that have some basic knowledge about Chinese history, it's even worse -- the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (literally "the first emperor of Qin dynasty), was renamed as "Emperor Han" (Han is actually a dynasty that right after Qin)!
The new writer seems to have focused on the dragons and zombies only, and thrown out of the window those funny conversation and small tricks from the previous two episodes. Come on, this is summer, blockbuster season! We have had more than enough CGs, robots, explosions, etc., adding one more doesn't look that interesting. I happened to watch the first "The Mummy" last week, really miss the laughters that Rick, Eve and Jonathan can bring me.

Rachel Weisz is wise enough not to get involved with this movie. The replacement, Maria Bello, seems to have more interests in becoming the next Lara. But as far as we remembered, Eve was just a cute little girl, the brain of the threesome in the adventure, and always need some rescues from Rick (and such rescues are always the most attracting scenes). We do not like Eve because of her kick-ass techniques; we like Eve because she is Eve.

Brendan finally gets back to fit. But this movie seems to be a big waste of his muscles. Hope he could get some more luck in the next "Journey to the Center of the Earth", at least that one has a genius writer.

Luke Ford, as the son Alex, is just too normal. Without a memorable name like Shia LaBeouf (I still cannot pronounce it!), or the shining and killing smile of Freddie Boath (who plays the role Alex in "The Mummy Returns"), he just couldn't make us excited.

Oh BTW, there are some other people in this movie, namely, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong. In this movie, they could be replaced by anybody.

The Darkest Time -- Batman: The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

"The dark before the dawn is the darkest" (I'm not talking about McCaine, although he had some problems with this quote recently.) This is my feeling about the recent Batman movie.

Christopher Nolan, the director had warned us that this will be the darkest Batman movie that ever made. Actually I even think that this is the darkest movie that I've ever watched. The darkness, is not about the cruel and cold-blooded Joker, but torturing EVERY role by making them to make choices about life and morality. Jimmy has to choose from an unrightful apology or his son's life; Fox has to choose to use or destroy the powerful yet indecent overhearing system; people on the ferry boats have to choose to blow somebody else off or to wait for their own destine to come; even the old Alfred has to choose a "right time". Heath Ledger might be pushed to much by such a movie to be ended like that.

I don't quite understand why the Nolan brothers have some hostility again China in the script. The low-quality gun was "made in China", and Chinese government "will never extradite one of their own"? Come on, cold war has ended for decades! And for the record, this movie has not yet got the permission to be shown in mainland China, and you know why now.

Gary Oldman is really an "oldman" now. Let's hope that the next Batman movie could be made within these coming two to three years, otherwise he might be too old to take the role that I like very much. Maggie Gyllenhaal looks sooooo 1930's, and even if she's the elder sister to Jake Gyllenhaal, I cannot see the point to pick her as Rachel. Aaron Eckhart is shining as Harvey Dent, but not quite as Two-Face. But he should get people to remember his name now. Christian Bale fades to the background, just shows from time to time to reminds me that this IS a Batman movie.

The glory goes to Heath Ledger. His Joker is so pain-causing. It seems that he could jump out of the screen at any moment, with a knife in your mouth, and says, "Why So Serious?". I know that many people say that he should win an Oscar for this role. That's true. It's a once-for-a-life chance, and he use his life to catch it.

The music is quite striking, especially when you are sitting in a hall with the best audio equipment in town. And the shooting and editing is some masters' piece. Actually I even did not dare to look at the screen several times during the whole show.

BTW that Edison Chan, all his scenes include: one far-far-away shot from the heli, one from the back without the head, and the only one in front, -- out of focus. Is this kind of arrangement before or after his scandal?

Growing up - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

2008-06-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

Within all my friends, about half of them do not like the first piece of Narnia; even me myself, when I first watched it, I thought it was much, much below LOTR, not only the rating, but also the age of the target audience.

Now here comes the second one, which, refreshes my impression to this series with a "grown-up" feeling. For those who still think that this is a "Boy's Play", YOU ARE WRONG!

One year after the first movie, U.K. is in the centre of war. The foursome just tuned themselves back to the normal life. While in Narnia, it has been 1,300 years. A Hamlet (Prince Caspian) blew the horn that belongs to Susan, and bring them back to Narnia. Another war "for Narnia" is coming.

Actually we don't really care about who they are fighting against, what kind of spirits or animals they are fighting with, what new skills they grasped , or what strategies (smart or stupid) they are going to use. All what we know is, they are back, they are going to fight, and they will finally leave. Although there are several mistakes, both in the plot and the shooting (e.g., when the foursome were walking in the cave after they first back to Narnia, it was Edmund, who was taking the lead, that held a torchlight, but some "mysterious" light appeared behind the last one, Lucy.), but come one, who did NOT make such mistakes? Especially in Hollywood. So don't worry too much, don't calculate too much, just sit back and relax to enjoy this movie, as if it was a break in your boring life, just like Narnia is a break for the foursome in the WWII life. The only difference is, it will take you 2 and a half hours to finish this movie, while they only used 1 second to finish a war, and even a first love for someone.

Ben Barnes (as Prince Caspian) has a very promising look and an even more promising chance (he is also the lead for the next Narnia movie), hope he could be the next Orlando Bloom. So far he still needs some more practice in his acting (exactly the same case for Orlando in LOTR!).

In the foursome, my favorite is still the little Lucy, Georgie Henly. She is just so cute! Maybe she is not talented enough to handle all kinds of roles, just like Darkota Fanning did, but it seems that she could easily push Abigail Breslin into the shadow now (Hi Abigail, if you keep staying in your current status, you might be the next Kristen Dunst only).

Peter also got a quite good look in fact. The only problem might be, he does not look quite "characteristic", so you might easily mistake him with other blondes in Hollywood. Susan is obviously over-aged, and if she chose to stay in this business, we might just get another actress that you remember you saw her in some movie, just cannot recall the name, neither the movie's or hers. Edmund looks is just a loser, hope he could do better in the next sequel.

Not much to say for the supporting roles, except the fencing rat. Everybody knows you guys are just copy-catting from Shrek, why bother change it into a "copy-rat"? (Ever consider lend the voice from Antonio Benderas?)

The scene of the beach, valley and the river is awesome. But the CG lion Aslan is disappointing. Soooo fake!

Unlike the Golden Compass, I'm really looking forward to seeing Narnia 3 now!

Grab the bride as you can -- Made of Honor

2008-06-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

After ten years' play-boy life, he finally figured out that the "friend forever" is actually his "love forever". The problem is, she is getting married, and he could only become the "Maid of Honor". So, he decided to do whatever he could, to "get the groom out of the picture". (Really think that the tagline used in Singapore is much better than the one in western countries.)

We always know that what we can expect from such a script: funny scenes, cute quotes, kisses, and finally, crash of a wedding and success of another one. Now we can take a look at who is involved: Patrick Dempsey (heard of this guy, thanks to "Grey's Anatomy"), Michelle Monaghan (beauties in MI:III and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", not quite meaningful...). Does this name list attract you?

The script writer is obviously not creative, but quite funny. The joke about Clinton and Monica goes all the way from the beginning to the end, nice try for a movie released in another election year. My favorite is the basketball match between the NBA ego and the Scottish big guy, a big slap for those think only Americans know how to play this game.

Dempsey reminds me Hugh Jackman, just more bad-boy-like. But women always love bad boys, right? :-)
Ms. Monaghan should sue her plastic surgeon, for her nose looks just like MJ's, I mean the current one...

A man keeps playing around with all kinds of women for 10 years before realizing the truth; A woman keeps waiting for a man who keeps playing around with all kinds of women for 10 years before realizing the truth, who is sillier? You tell me.

End of their career? -- My Mom's New Boyfriend

2008-06-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

Names like Antonio Benderas and Meg Ryan are once to be the main factor that attracts me to a movie. But remember this, however shining you are today, there will be a day coming to end it.

A B-class movie as it is, it's somewhat creative for the producer of "My Mom's New Boyfriend" to get Meg and Antonio to make some chemistry. And the son of Meg's long-time sure-win partner (I mean Tom Hanks), Collin Hanks, playing the son of Meg in this movie, this could definitely generate some scoop. But after all, a moive could not be successful with only these tricky things.

Antonio as an artist thief (smell the Latinic romance?), Colin as a young FBI agent who wants to track Antonio down (Sounds familiar? "Catch me if you can, son!"), and Meg as a middle-aged single mother who falls in love with Antonio. Bugs, Doggies, every routine things for a movie that is related for FBI, name it. The story is really not bad, and it should be a quite profitable project actually. Yet what we got here?

Middle-aged couple tries to catch up with the young generation: fall-in-love-with-the-first-sight? Come on, you are not teenagers any more! Weird Middle-East restaurant? That place could only remind us war now. And the worst scene of all? Seeing that once sweet Meg screaming and laughing like addicted to some things, if you know what I mean. I'm sure that I would like this movie much more if they faded to be the "background" only.

When you ignore this old couple, you will "suddenly" find the effort by Colin Hanks. His tones just like his old man! And all reminds me Tom Hanks in his earlier days like "The Man with One Red Shoe". Like Tom, Colin may not become a "girl killer", but the path to awards is open to him, if he keeps improving his acting. In this movie, my favourite scene is when he and two other FBI agents bugging his mother in bed with another man... *_*

Family Day at Wild Wild Wet

2008-06-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

Really not the day for a water theme park -- it's raining! Hard!! Although I was just playing the camera-woman for the whole day, the cold water still got me fever for the next day.

But to the kids it was really a great experience. Just look at them screaming, running around, even brought me some "yesterday once more" feelings.

This theme park is rather small, compared to the ones I visited before, like the one in Gold Coast, and Sunway Lagoon in Malaysia. But nevertheless you can find some routine things like "Tsunami Lake", "Floating River", etc. And the mose exciting one will be this -- (Heard the screaming?)

The location of Wild Wild Wet is not that bad, as I imagined before. 10-15 min walk from the Pasir Ris MRT station, just next to the resort. Would be nice for a family's 2D1N package. What I like most is the latest EHub shopping centre just besides it, where you can hardly imagine that so many restaurants under one roof, especially in such a suburb area in Singapore!

Weird French People -- Je Reste!

2008-05-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

Couple of weeks ago watched this 03' French movie "Je Reste!" by Vincent Perez and Sophie Marceau, mostly cuz of their brilliant piece of work "Fanfan" back in 1993. I can only say, French people are WEIRD!

So there has been 10 years since "Fanfan", and in the movie's world of "Je Reste!", this couple got married for 10 years also. To some extent, you can just think that "Je Reste!" is the sequel to "Fanfan", which shows you what happened to the happy couple after they got "Happy Ever After".

Husband is a very successful architect, workaholic, flirt with young girls and CA's during biz trips, and wife is just a housewife with a 7-year-old boy. Their only and for-always family time is the husband practicing bicycle racing in the country roads, while the wife driving a SUV with the boy inside as the support team. Day by day, wife got tired of the never-ending routine, and at the mean time, she got to know a funny guy, so they got an affair. Wife wanted a divorce, and husband, to earn her back, made friends with her lover to learn from him. Weird enough?

Funny scenes:
1. One day husband back home late night unexpectedly (supposed to be back from a biz trip days later), got into the bed in the dark, so there were 3 in one bed. The lover said to the wife, "Honey, I think there is another people in the bed..."
2. Wife drove the husband out of the apartment (it was her property), and invited the lover for a party. Husband also came, just to practice the bicycle racing in the "Simulation Room" inside the apartment (it was bought by him)...
3. Wife and son went to the lover's lodge by the sea for a weekend, husband "dropped by" and had dinner with them, then left just like a guest did the farwell to the hosting family...

The most weird thing is, French ppl made all these weird things happen so naturally!

Guess who is she and what she is doing?

2008-05-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

Answer: She is the Minister of Defence of Spain, and she was inspecting her army with a baby to be born in one month when this photo was taking!
Salute to the great mother!

Young Jacky Cheung

2008-05-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

When Jacky Cheung, my favorite singer, was still young...

An unsuccessful trial of singing contest, EYTI (1983):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBi8RhqqSKg

The song won him the first important award, Champion of Hong Kong's 18 Districts Amateur Singing Contest (1984):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPJikkQaKo

Earthquake in China

2008-05-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

You may have seen this photo elsewhere, but I got really shocked when I first saw it. Can we do anything for those suffered?

Loser to be Babysitter -- Drillbit Taylor

2008-05-09T23:06:00.001-07:00

I would never go to the cinema for such a movie, if there is no one treats.

Owen Wilson always shows tired after the suicide thing. Don't know whether this movie was shot before or after that, but his outlooking is just like a loser wandering in the streets.

Dropped out from the army, begging, cheating, and even stealling all the time, just to make a living. For a dream of starting a new life in Canada, he was recruited as the bodyguard of three high school freshmen, to protect them from the bully of the school's "big brother". Now you can understand that this movie HAS TO be crazily funny to get people to buy the tickets. Maybe that's the reason that it goes to Owen, who never cares about his own image when he is doing a film. Ironically, the most funny part is how the three newbies fit into the new school, and the new roles. They are definitely under aged compared to "American Pie", but they can still do som star mimic shows, date (or at least try to) some lovely girl in the school, and to kick someone's a** (or, to be kicked?).

Owen has many footages, or maybe just too many, just makes me feel boring, instead of interesting. And basically you can ignore any other adult roles in this film.

It is fun to watch such a movie when you really got time and money. And the best thing is, when you walk out of the cinema, you cannot even recall any single scene of it. So you don't waste any brain cell on it. Now go ahead with what you should do in the rest of this day.

Playboy Hero -- Iron Man

2008-05-09T22:42:00.001-07:00

Every woman loves bad boy. Actually every ONE loves bad boy.

Nowadays people are so bored of super heros like Superman that has "zero defect", or the "next-door-boy" Spiderman. Now they are all after darker ones, like Batman, like Iron Man.

Actually I've never heard of this comic before the first trailer of this movies released. So I google some background materials, but basically you don't really need them if you have already made your mind to go for the movie itself.

There's one more thing in common between Iron Man and Batman, that they are "built", instead of "born". To be more specific, you can call them "DIY heros", cuz all their equipments are self-developed, and they use such equipments to complete those "mission impossible", such as, flying. So you can imagine that they must be very, very, very rich to afford the equipments. Well, the Iron Man movie is just like "Batman Begins", to tell the story of how a man starting to turn himself into a super hero.

To be exact, this man is better to be called a playboy. Dated 12 cover girls of FHM within one year, an "achievement" that makes every guy envy. And why every woman thinks that she could be the 13th and last one?

The script, unfortunately, is too supportive for Uncle Sam, but the footage of Iron Man is wise and full of humor, so we just pretend that we did not see the Afganist war.

It's really a waste of Gwyneth's talent to let her play such a role that with so little to present. But you just cannot get any blonde to do this, too risky. Dilemma.

The best supporting role is the black "buddy", while the "white bad olddy" is soooo obvious and sooooooo stupid! (Imagine you see your opponent playing around with YOUR computer, and you continue flirting with her?!)

The special effect of the Iron armour shows great power in the scene of fighter fighting, but the final dual between the two "big guys" is relatively dissappointing. You have all the missles, machine guns, etc., yet you fight like a football player?

My favorite scene is when Robert demo the super missle at the beginning, the whole moutain seems to be flattened, and don't forget the hats... If Robert fastened his hat before that, will be even more funny.

I bet that Marvel will never let go such a money-making topic, so we can expect the sequel quite soon. What I expect more is what kind of chemistry will happen between Robert and Gwyneth next time.

Just cannot understand Microsoft

2008-04-22T02:13:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just released the 2008 version of Visual Studio Express, which requires installation of .NET Framework 3.5. Since the Express series is free of charge, many ppl fancy to use it as a costless code editor (esp. in embedded area, even the expensive full version could not do the compiling or debugging job, which have to be done with some specific tools, most likely to be linked to some HW). So I tried to install it on company PC for evaluation, and guess what? It triggered a 87MB downloading from Microsoft website and was blocked by the company's firewall! Thanks to Microsoft, now I have to take the laptop back home, and use my own cable, AND MY OWN TIME, to finish the installation so that I could submit an evaluation report to my boss.

One very simple question to Microsoft: Since you have already released the whole thing FOC, why you just put the full set of installation files on website for downloading? You always assume that users will have high speed and fully "open" Internet connection when they do any SW installation. Is it because that you guys back there in the cubicles took it for granted, or you actually wanna utilize this chance to do some "back-door" things, like you always do?

I sincerely call for some masters to hack this problem and share a full-size installation file with the whole world!

When a dude ages -- Street Kings

2008-04-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I was heading to the cinema for Keanu Reeves.

After 30 sec, I realized that some dude could age in a not that elegant way, especially compared to George Clooney.

There's a pretty good story in "Street Kings", not like most recent Hollywood movies, which focus too much in the CG. A Hong Kong movie fan could easily see some plot that looks familiar -- the writers around the world are learning something from the East now.

The footage of the first half is brilliant. Those metaphors, tones, could be used in textbooks of any acting course. While in the second half, the script itself slips into the old fashion of "set-up hero single-handly save world", so the footage is getting boring too.

OK, back to the dude. Although Keanu looks quite old and tired in this movie, his acting does make some progress. I hardly see him moving his neck forward and backward when he is saying the footage in a exciting mood (he always did so before, "Speed", "Matrix", etc.). Seems he has learned how to control himself. Several scenes even reminds me Paul Newman in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Maybe now it's the time to care more about what he is acting, instead of how his pretty face looks like.

There are so many talented actors/actresses in this movie, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, etc. And poor Chris Evans, was sacrificed to fulfill a Hollywood law -- Whoever talking about his/her spouse/partner/fiance/fiancee/boyfriend/girlfriend before a big fight, will not survive it.

So basically you cannot find those "eye ice-cream" in this movie, and you cannot find those "magic effect" in this movie, and can you believe that some idiot invest money to shoot such a Hollywood movie nowadays? Isn't it a miracle by itself?

I sincerely thank Fox Searchlight for this miracle.

Missing Love -- "Definitely, Maybe"

2008-02-20T04:45:00.000-08:00

Thirty-something old man, newly divorced, and trying to explain to his daughter why she was born, and finally it turned out to be a look-back to his own relationships with three girl friends.
Not new right? But really rare, especially in nowadays, when everyone is fancy about monsters, robots, wars, and political scandals.
The script is awesome. The writer delicately put the whole story into several election years, and given this year is another election year, it makes the story much more real-life. The Clinton's sexual scandal gave a whole bunch of laughter-triggers, but that's just a small part of it. Actually the whole cinema was laughing every 5 min during this 2-hour-long show. It's so nice to have these funny but never cheap words back to the movie world again, we really miss them.
The cast is not that famous, but definitely good enough. Ryan Reynolds' shining eyes make every female audience have the mercy on him, while Abigail Breslin's "I am oooold enough" acting always makes you say the word "cute". Out of the three girl friends, Isla Fisher (I only know she acted in "Scooby-Doo" before) is the most impressive one, who brings a fresh breeze to the movie every time she shows up; Rachel Weisz is weird enough, also old enough (We miss the little princess in "Mummy" and "Mummy Returns"...); the first-love-girl is just normal enough.
Although this is the best movie I've ever seen this year, be warned that you'd better be beyond 25 to enjoy the real thing of it.

Be overwhelmmed in Paris

2008-01-28T04:57:00.000-08:00

Paris, Paris! Finally I'm here!
Although the directions in the CDG airport is messy, although the subway stations are even more messy, this is Paris! Capital of Arts!

When you talk about France, most likely you first talk about Paris; When you talk about Paris, 50% of the chance you first talk about Arc de Triomphe. But few people know that there are actually several of them in Paris. The most famous one, of course, is the one named just "Arc de Triomphe", the other one is opposite to Louvre, named "Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel". These two guys are actually on the same "historic axial line" of Paris, together with many other famous and ancient buildings. In Chinese Fengshui, this might be referred as a symbol of the royal power upon the country.

The other half of icon of Paris is no other than Eiffel. It's not that exciting when you have seen too much of it from TV, movies, photos, paintings, etc.

The Obelisk at Concorde Square is actually from Egypt, again few people know this fact. This 3000-year-old piece now stands on a foreign land, even performs as a symbol of this foreign city, ironic.

Concord Square is actually a huge piece of art by itself. You could never see such a big square with so many delicate decorations anywhere else. Fountains, statues, and the beautiful buildings surrounding it, just don't ask French what's the usage of them. "Just for arts' sake," they will answer.

The Alexandre III Bridge is not famous for itself, but for the view of Les Invalides from this bridge. Another ironic thing in Paris.

I arrived at Les Invalides at twilnight, just the best time to appreciate its beauty, but the wrong time for a Napoleon fan, for it is closed earlier in winter time, hence I could not get in to see the coffin of this great man. This is also a reason for me to visit Paris again. But nevertheless the building itself is reflecting the golden shines in the sunset, extraordinary.

On the way to Sacre-Coeur at Montmatre, I found a weird church. It's not as big as other famous ones in Paris, but the weird thing is, the church just looks like that somebody cuts a Gothic church into half, and leaves the inner dome as the front door.

Sacre-Coeur just looks like the Taj Mahah in Paris. Thiw white beauty is definitely worthy for climbing the Montmarte all the way up. Its beauty is beathtaking!

After "Da Vinci Code", Louvre suddenly became the No. 1 place of interests in Paris. People are looking for the places appeared in that novel, like the Glass Pyramid, Mona Lisa, etc.

I really don't have enough time, so only visited some "recommended" items in this ocean of master pieces, like the statue of Diana, the Venus, Mona Lisa, etc. I even gave up the whole painting collection at level 3! I decided that I should definitely visit Louvre again, for at least two days!

The Palace of Justice that just besides the Sante-Chapelle actually locates the Department of Justice of France. But most tourists treated it as the backyard of Sante-Chapelle or another place of interest, and took a lot of picture here.

Notre-Dame is a very mysterious place in Paris, thanks to the Hunchback. There is actually a 422-step stairs to the top of one tower, but again I don't have enough time to try that. Another reason for another visit...

The sculptures at the entrance of Notre-Dame are very complicated, but some are very interesting, like this one shows a man holding his own head in hands. Is that John the Baptist?

The most significant point of the inner side of Notre-Dame is the color glasses. The biggest one of them was once taken away during the war, but French finally got it back.

Finally is the Gothic side of Notre-Dame. It's very hard to imagine that the other side to this typical Gothic view is a twin-tower gate.

(Full collection of photos taken in Paris in Jan 2008:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562294599rYLGwm)

Osnabruck & Bremen in the rain

2008-01-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

Winter is definitely not a good season for west Europe, especially Germany. Cold, heavy wind, and cloudy or even rainy. Someone says you could not see the sun duirng the whole winter here! At lease I have not seen Mr. Sunshine ever since I arrived, one week ago.

But weekend is weekend, after all. For the rest of the towns within 2 hours train ride from Luneburg, I picked Osnabruck and Bremen for this time.

Osnabruck is a small city near the border between Germany and Netherlands. As most of other German towns, the biggest buildings include the Dom (main church), several churches, and the City Hall (Rathaus). I like the St. Marien's Church most, because of the beautiful outlook, especially the Flying Buttress, a very typical characteristic of Gothic Architecture.

(Photos taken in Osnabruck: http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562209799TdKnVo)

Bremen is a famous port in Germany, but the city itself is surprisingly small. Starting from the Bahnhof (Train Station), only 10 min walk will lead you to the old town centre. Another 30 min to one hour is more than enough to visit all the major places of interests and take enough photos. These places are just clustered together!

The windmill is a surprise. I did not find any last time in Amsterdam, but this one is for real, and it was actually moving in the heavy wind!

Roland is the protector of this city.

(Photos taken in Bremen: http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562209799TdKnVo)

Woman, Warrior, Queen -- Elizabeth: Golden Age

2008-01-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

It is supposed to be the sequel of the award-winning movie "Elizabeth" in 1998. But apparently they changed the scriptwriter, for the death of Queen Mary of Scottland is totally different from 1. Before I watched 2, I was quite curious about what else they wanna say about Queen Elizabeth I, after she already become the Virgin Queen. So I forgot one thing, Spanish Armade.

Actually now Armade almost becomes a delegated word for THAT Armade, the one defeated by Elizabeth. And that explains how excited I was when I reallized that this movie was about this famous battle. But later I became impatient by the tedious love story between the two Elizabeths and Walter. I could not see the "biggest fleet of the world" (forgive those people did not know Chinese fleet or Zheng He at that time) at all! Only several wooden toys floating on the water, and the cannons are even not compatible to Black Pearl, don't mention the Flying Dutchmen!

The producer of this movies seems to be very cautious not to offense the British Royal Navy, for the foundation of this navy is only slightly metaphored in this movie. But the truth is, the Royal Navy was originally built up upon some pirates fleets, with the permission from Queen Elizabeth I that all pirates that attack non-England ships would be treated as Royal Navy. Sir Walter said something actually very important to both parties of this contract -- "The more I robbed from him (Phillip, King of Spain), the better for you (Queen Elizabeth I)".

Cate is more and more Shakespear. I would rather prefer that she does not so "hard act". Other roles are just routine work, no surprise, nevertheless good or bad ones.

The costume is just like the subtitle of this movie -- shining. It will never surprise me that this movie will be nominated for this year's Best Costume Award. When Elizabeth shows off in that silver armor and riding a white horse, friend next to me could not help yelling "Joan of Arc!". Indeed, both are heroines to their native people.

The camera man has a strange fond of strange angles, through the vague reflection of a bronze mirror, from a small hole on the top, shadows of the people on the sails, etc. Why recently people like to play around with such abstract things?

For the music, again, I prefer Pirates of Carribean series.

Princess Aiko is 6!

2007-12-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

This cute little girl just turned 6!

(Photo from Imperial Household Agency Homepage)

Amsterdam in handbag

2007-11-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

This is a chilling morning, and I set off to the train station ("Bahnhof" in German, sounds "barn-hof"), for a 2D1N trip to Amsterdam, with a handbag. Yup, you are right, and I'm right, I'm not "backpacking", but "handbagging". I have a big handbag, big enough to put all my daily necessities inside, together with my wallet, camera, phone, travel book, etc. So now I'm ready for a trip!

Of course some preparation is needed. Train ticket was bought from http://www.bahn.de/, where as long as you book 3 days in advance, normally you could get at least 50% off on return ticket (i.e., you pay for single trip, and get the return ticket!). Hotel was booked via http://www.booking.com/, a recommendation from a friend who using it quite a lot, which I also found very efficient. But hotels in Amsterdam is REALLY expensive! 70 Euro per night only get this kind of room:

Recently I've taken quite a lot of excercises on stairs. Last time in Himeji Castle, the stairs should definitely be military usage only. And this time the hotel in Amsterdam is basically just a canal house (when you say "canal house" in Amsterday, the first impression you should have should be long, narrow and steer stairs). And my room was in the attic, which means I climbed roughly 50 steps up from the street!

Upon arrival, I visited the Museum of Van Loon. It seems to have nothing related to the writer Dr. Van Loon, but it's still worthy visiting, for all its brilliant collections. It might be equivalent to some royal collections!

Early the next morning, I visited the Museum of Anne Frank, which really impressed me. I have never read the book "Diary of Anne Frank", but I've heard of this story. Visit to this museum still gave me quite a big shock, especially when I saw the movie stars' photos on the little girl's wall. I mean, who ever not did such things in high school? I think the thing that impressed people most, is that Anne is a girl that loves life so much, but in the end lost her life in a tragic war. Someone says that knowing Anne's story makes people perish the life, but once people think about there are countless people dying just like Anne, we might even lose the courage the live any more. That is true. After the visit, I took a short break in the museum's cafe, just to let myself come back to real life.

And then is the Dam Square. This is the centre of the city, and almost all most important buildings are clustered here. No doubt it is the focus of all cameras. The Royal Palace, church, National Monument, and so on. Just curious that this square is so small! Cannot just compare it with its counterpart in China, the Tian'anmen Square.

The trip back to Luneburg was a tragedy. German railway system fell into a mess after 6pm on Sunday. Every train was delayed. So I was delayed, and delayed, and delayed! Finally when I arrived in Luneburg, it was 10pm, 1 and half hour later in total! I swear that I will never take German trains continuously for more than 4 hours any more. I should take a plane actually.

Here are the album of this trip:
http://community.webshots.com/album/561570905PaXcce

Birthday dinner at a more than 500 yrs old restaurant

2007-11-23T00:16:00.000-08:00

Finally could call it a day, and I decided to have dinner in the oldest restaurant in the town of Luneburg, as a small celebration.

The name of the restaurant is Krone, where I visited with some colleagues before for several time. It was built in 1485, so hope after another 500 years I could still have dinner here, hahaha.

This is a combo-poster hanged in Krone, which I like pretty much. Reason being? My name is in one of the posters! Could you find it out? (Hint: It is in a sharp color, at a sharp position.)

Looking for the answer? Well, keep read on then.

After one day's tough work, don't expect my pose was as good as these brilliant girls above.

And finally this is the dessert I had, Black Forrect Bowl. (BTW, Black Forest is actually the name of place in Germany.)

OK, now here comes the answer to the million-dollar question: What's my name? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAURA!

My Birthday!

2007-11-22T02:26:00.001-08:00

Today is my birthday, but I'm still struggling with emails, bugs, managers, etc.

This is an interesting picture when I happened to look at the clock on my laptop on an interesting moment:

Quiet morning in Lubeck

2007-11-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

Due to the jet-lag, although I went to bed 1:30 am, I got up at 6:30 am, to find out that it was all dark out there. I enjoyed my breakfast in the hotel cafe, where I was the only guest during the whole 20 min. I never felt this hotel's breakfast is so delicious, possibly since I basically not ate since for 12 hours! (SIA sucks! My lunch was bloody cold, and the rice for the dinner was even RAW!) But I had to praise their self-service waffle. The materials are so fresh, and you could smell the fragrance of 50's. Together with their homemade jam, this is definitely gonna be my must-have for breakfast during my next two weeks' stay here.

I managed to catach a train to Lubeck (thanks God the railway drivers stopped strike during the weekend), a small but famous port town north-east to Hamburg. One hour's train ride, I only observed less than 10 passengers on the train at the same time (anyway the train only has two trunks). There is a small twon called Mollen on the way, which has a lake that reflects the whole town inside it. I almost rushed off the train for this beautiful town.

Lubeck looks quite similar to Luneburg, City Hall, churches, just not that well-preserved as Luneburg, because it was half-destroyed during WWII, thanks to its military importance as a port. But it has its own symbol, the Holstentor, or the Holsten Gate, which is often observed on many German culture-related things, even the Euro coins.

The morning was so quiet that when I walked down the street, I hated my boots because of the noise. But around 10:30 am when all churches began to ring the bells to call for people, I wondered how they built those things to make such huge sounds!

And here are the full album of my photos taken in Lubeck that day:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561496730zAFkzv

3-day Kansai

2007-09-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

During the last weekend, I travelled to various places in Kansai area of Japan, like Kyoto, Nara and Himeji. Really tired in writing the blog in Chinese, so if you can read, please go to http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_540d06ba01000atd.html to read the Chinese version. Otherwise, you can check the photos I took with some simple quotes at following albums:
Kuramaji Temple http://good-times.webshots.com/album/560716321VIquYM
Nijojo Castle http://good-times.webshots.com/album/560714351ZeDBdC
Nara http://good-times.webshots.com/album/560720861ZpVgsx
Osakajo Castle http://travel.webshots.com/album/560716054ceWLPr
Himeji Castle http://travel.webshots.com/album/560740760iFJfZF

Kyoto -- Again

2007-09-12T03:26:00.000-07:00

September again, Japan again, Kyoto again.

This time I insisted in visiting Kinkyakuji, perhaps the most famous temple in Japan.

Once to be the palace of the Shogun, I first knew this golden building from the cartoon "Ikkyu", like most people in China in my age.

Although it is an icon of Japan now, the real thing is rather smaller than I expected. Bit disappointed.

One interesting thing I found out at Kinkyakuji is that I can see the Daimunjiyama from here.

Next is re-visit Kyomizuji, but I found something new -- Kodaiji, which made a pretty good ending for the one-day Kyoto trip.

More photos could be found here: http://travel.webshots.com/album/560660032GaiOrQ

Second Life -- Me ... Myself

2007-09-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

抽奖抽中的泰国片试映，拉上室友一起去看，原本只是打发一个无聊的周日夜晚，想不到却有意外的惊喜。
男主角是前两年火过一把的《Shutter》的主演，叫Anada，今天看到他的专访才知道是Australia和Laos的混血，在泰国长大。可能因为混血的关系，长得挺帅的，听说现在在泰国挺红的。
剧情不算特别出众，男主角被女主角的车撞倒失忆，被女主角"捡"回家，一起生活的过程中慢慢爱上女主角，正当两人陷入热恋的时候，男主角回忆起来原来自己本来是个同志变装艺人，追寻爱人同志而从普吉岛到了曼谷，被人抢劫打昏失忆。最后两个人要如何突破阻碍在一起，happy ending。
前半段以搞笑为主，尤其男主角在女主角家里洗完澡之后因为没有衣服换，只好天体运动，正好女主角突然回家，他情急之下拿了女主角吃饭的碗遮掩重点部位，这一段全场笑足三分钟。偶尔有一些爱情文艺片常见的桥段，比如女主角的负心前男友之类的。
后半段比较感伤，尤其是着力渲染男主角知道真相之后内心的挣扎，让观众的心情也跟着一起受尽煎熬，call it “煽情”，但至少比韩剧的动不动就上绝症来的自然。男主角表现内心戏的一段独舞，稍嫌冗长，而且重点不够突出，对舞蹈认识不深的观众肯定会打哈欠。但最后的ending还是让电影院里响起几声啜泣声。
因为是试映，前十分钟影片有不少瑕疵，有时字幕不见了，有时音效有问题，最离谱的是一场内景，居然露出了收音用的话筒！不过始终瑕不掩瑜。
看惯了生猛海鲜般的好莱坞大片，偶尔来一点这样的清粥小菜也不错。

男儿本色

2007-08-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

宣传做得不是很大的一部港产动作片，但看了之后觉得演员实在是敬业。
谢霆锋+余文乐+房祖名这样的组合，最容易让人联想到的是“绯闻”，再有就是“80后”。但你实在是带着有色眼镜看人了。
剧情是港产动作片耳熟能详的了，劫匪黑吃黑，幸存者回来秋后算账，热血干探也跟他们对上了，于是打得昏天黑地，最后连带揪出警察内部的内奸。看过无数港产警匪片的我们，已经不会再有任何的新鲜感。于是只有靠拳拳到肉的武打和玩命的动作来弥补了。从天桥三级跳地跳落到人行道，中间还被双层巴士撞飞，再跌落在私家车的车顶。这个场景是不是让你觉得是成龙的招牌？这次换谢霆锋来做了。为了养老婆儿子，不容易啊！
房祖名演的小警察，天真憨厚到不可思议，基本上是绝种动物。余文乐演得最贴近现实生活，少年得志而有点臭屁，这种人你我身边可能就有。吴京演得大反派很失败，像是贴标签，台词、表情都很程式化。安圣杰自从《新警察故事》小露锋芒之后，这次大大增加了对白，发挥得也相当不错，尤其跟房祖名的大段对手戏，应该是整部戏我感触最深刻的部分。
间或有些小小的搞笑，与成龙的戏路颇为神似，难怪导演陈木胜当年会受到大哥的青睐，执导《新警察故事》这种致敬电影。

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陈木胜

叠影重重--Bourne Ultimatum

2007-08-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

为了看这部期待已久的电影，特地带了眼镜去，因为最近视力下降，生怕看走宝。但仍然是看得我头昏眼花，不怪我，要怪就怪疯狂崇拜摇镜的导演/摄影，当然也有可能摄影同志有帕金森氏综合症。动作、追车、爆破这样的场面用摇镜来掩饰本身的不足可以理解，但几个人安安静静地坐在办公室里开会还摇来晃去的就实在是匪夷所思了。不知道的还以为自己在看枪版的。

Matt Damon的成就已经被Bourne系列奠定，正如Harrison Ford会因为Indiana Jones而永远被人们记住。这一集少了很多“演”的成分，浑然天成，他就是Bourne。开头被俄国警察追捕，冲进小药局拿针剂对着洗手间的镜子给自己注射的一段，超级像Shooter，不知谁抄谁？帮助记者躲避CIA的跟踪和追杀的一段简直酷毙了，看一群特工被耍得团团转，好玩！

CIA的头目们一个比一个坏，也一个比一个蠢。被派去杀Bourne的杀手段数越来越高，打的也越来越过瘾。最后放走Bourne的那个，不知道是不是感觉到了自己相同的命运？

总觉得Nicky跟Bourne之间有戏，可又始终不明说，胃口从第一集吊到第三集，始终也没有揭开谜底。我猜是Bourne还叫David Webb时的女友？

Motorola这次可花老钱了，CIA特工专用手机啊！

Funny Hour x 3

2007-08-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Call Hollywood an idiot, and so what?
Rush Hour 3的剧情的确有够烂，再次证明Hollywood的编剧一直被关在小黑屋里写东西，关了几十年也没出来看看世界已经变成什么样了。但这并不妨碍全片中出现的连场笑料，虽然有些笑话有点老。
成龙的打斗场面还是颇有看头，不过开头在高速公路上追真田广之那一段怎么看怎么像《三岔口》的简化版。在巴黎铁塔上那一段很好看，大哥又挑战了一个极限。
真田还是没有辜负我的期望，什么时候都很酷，从而证明《无极》的问题主要还是在陈凯歌身上。
张静初跟当年的章子怡有点像，大花瓶一个，而且戏份比章少得多，演得也让人无语。大哥提拔华裔女星的努力，实在是没说的了。
这一集的一个卖点是成龙唱英文歌，还是很有当年《明明白白我的心》的功力哦！

Harry's Grown Up

2007-07-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

终于找到时间去看Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix了。
首先觉得电影版跟The Order of the Phoenix的联系太弱了，只有开头一小段，再就是经常强调一下几位小主角的父母，师长，都是这个Order of the Phoenix的创始元老，差不多像是中国的“世交”的感觉吧。其他的就实在是跟这个所谓的秘密组织没多大关系了。
小演员们都长大了，于是又加入了新的小演员。还是合乎逻辑的，毕竟已经是五年级生了（Ron的两个哥哥已经成年，貌似应该已经毕业了吧？还留在学校里搞搞震，难道是留级了？）。Harry和You-Know-Who的关系一步一步地浮出水面，越来越引人入胜。Ron和妙丽的关系似乎已经到了“尽在不言中”的阶段，而Harry和张秋的关系却变得很奇怪，莫名其妙地就kiss了，然后莫名其妙地就冷战了，感觉张秋始终都被当作花瓶，无法真正融入Harry的小圈子，也得不到导演应有的关注。
从魔法部空降来的新老师真是不得不让人说她一个“贱”字，就像魔法部的部长一样。魔法部对学校的横加干涉让我联想到我读的中学，学校也是尽可能地排除地方上的教育局对着所有百年荣誉的学校所尝试进行的干涉，在几代校友的努力下，学校才幸免成为一些无聊官僚的牺牲品（我那所中学也像Hogwartz一样，流行校友们把自己的小孩也送进母校，所以很多学生的家长是两代甚至三代的校友）。
特效从技术上来说不错，但创意实在是欠奉。校长大战You-Know-Who的那一段，两个人一道蓝光加一道红光推来推去，好像是在演如来神掌，太老掉牙了。这一次导演终于下定决心舍弃了观众早已看腻的魁地奇，飞越夜幕下的泰晤士河那一段也没有显得太拖沓，总的来说对节奏的掌握还是不错的。希望下一部的导演还是他。
写这一篇的时候刚好看到第七本也就是大结局出街，出乎我的意料，三个小主角都没死，还结婚生子，幸福快乐。看来作者为了不伤害到大多数读者的心情，丢卒保车，以其他配角的死来充数，就有如这一集里天狼星的死一样，毫无意义，毫无逻辑，仅仅只是为了干掉一个人而已。对我来说最可惜的是扮演天狼星的Gary Oldman，难得“正常”地露脸了一集，马上就“后会无期”了。
关于配乐的部分，有人有听到任何音乐吗？

Berlin Wall -- The Embarrassing History

2007-07-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

The Berlin Wall might be one of the three most famous walls in the world (The other two are The Great Wall, and the Wall of Cry in Jerusalem) . So the most important target of my trip to Berlin is to visit the remains of this famous wall.

Almost 30 min's walk under the horrible sunshine, just to find a piece of wall less than 100 metres long, and no more than 10 cm thick. That's really disappointing. The only photo I could take is a bronze label on the ground, showing the original position of the wall

During the 38 years' history of this wall, there were so may people dying, being separated, and so many storied to be told about the wall. If the collapse of this wall labels the end of an era, then why on earth this era should ever begin?

More photos taken in Germany, June 2007

War & Peace -- Impression of Hamburg

2007-06-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hamburg is a city prosperous all the way since the Era of Navigation. As the centre of Lufthansa Alliance, it has been an important port of Europe for a long time. And that's why it was dramatically damaged by the Alliance bomb attack during WWII. The city called Hamburg nowadays was almost rebuilt all over, with only several ruined remains surviving the war. And the most impressive one is definitely the ruined church. (Right)

A friend of mine said, "Gothic church is the easiest target during the attack, for its tip is very obvious from view on the top. " How ironical! The tip is the most obvious icon for a Gothic church structure, while it is just this icon that attracts the dreadful bombs!

Bomb on a church, a temple, a hospital, all these are the most unforgivable crimes during the war. May it never comes again!

(You can find more photos taken during my recent Germany trip here: http://travel.webshots.com/album/559614241aZntLG).