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

“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"

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

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”

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

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

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

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…