The Fatal Smile – Watchmen

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

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

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

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

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:

1. 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!
2. 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!
3. 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.
4. 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

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

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.