Kung Fu Dunk Live Tweet Experience

I’m tempted to watch Jay Chou’s Kung Fu Dunk just to see if it’s as ridiculous (in a good way) as the title suggests

Also, Jay Chou and I have the same surname. You’ve just read a fact that you could not give a rat’s ass about. Thanks for reading.

I’m gonna live tweet Jay Chou’s Kung Fu Dunk. At the first 5 mins now and it already has 3 jokes that fell

Ooh slow mo already? It took Shaolin Soccer half an hour into the movie to use that gimmick. MORE IS MORE!

Stephen Chow’s character in Shaolin Soccer didn’t have to rely on some wish fulfillment scenarios, but Jay Chou has to?

I mean what the hell, every girl in Taiwan thinks Jay Chou is a stud, yet I’m supposed to be convinced that he’s a dweeb in this movie?

[the_nutbox responds: My name is J too but nobody thinks Im a stud. The world is so unfair! ]

I’m pretty sure no master in history has ever died from practicing kung fu stances in the snow.

Jay Chou’s acting is horrible. Like, there’s no heft in his enunciation, in a language that often sounds animated.

Oh so we’re supposed to think that a guy who can shoot coins straight into the mouth of a man is a basketball genius?

Btw just a disclaimer, my tweets for the next few minutes will contain major spoilers for Kung Fu Dunk

So look away if you’re someone who gets bothered by somebody spoiling a sports movie.

This is the kind of annoying strawberry generation pandering movie where the young people always have greater abilities than the elders.

Look, shooting bullseyes on dartboards doesn’t make one a better baller! Why not just call the movie “kung fu shooter”?

maybe nba teams should take cues from this movie and draft players by going to those shoddy bars with dart games in it

first fight scene kinda decent even if it looks like a gentrified suburban kid trying to flail his foot around

btw Stephen Chow’s surname is also the same as mine! Yet another fact no one cares about.

you know a movie is not doing it for you when its protagonist get beaten up, dramatic music plays, and your reaction is tweet about surnames

So Jay Chou guy gets to learn to play basketball by watching a powerpoint slideshow about its rules? THAT’S HOW JORDAN LEARNED TO PLAY TOO!

why do these movies make it so obvious who’s going to be the love interest by playing some romantic piano music when the girl first show?

Jay Chou is so stone faced, like Richard Gutierrez but Chinese. In Taiwanese I would call him “Jiu Tao Bin”. In Tagalog “Batong mukha”.

“Whoever gets the rebounds wins the game” yeah good job stealing lines from Slam Dunk, which is infinitely better than this trainwreck

Jay Chou can consistently shoot 3s from half court despite having never played before and having only practiced by shooting cans on bins.

Another plot stolen from Slam Dunk: the love interest being the younger sister of the team captain. Wow.

The dribblings from the obvious pop stars are so bad they would be called traveling, except when Lebron does it.

Why the hell does a jumpshot need a slowmo?

I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to drink wine while on bench. Hmm lemme ask ron artest to confirm this!

What the hell, the gym this team practices on look like those halls from taiwan’s famed computer expo. Maybe even its world trade center!

(looks at wikipedia and learns that it’s actually Shanghai’s Science Museum. Scrimmage in a science museum?!)

THIS IS SUBURBAN BASKETBALL, NOT THE REAL BASKETBALL WHERE PEOPLE FROM THE POOR HAVE TO TOUGH IT OUT

No joke, people in this movie can jump higher than those players from NBA Jam

A ball arching downward getting blocked was not called for goal tending and then it magically catapulted to the other hoop and went in.

The only comedic moment that managed to illicit a response from me came from a player making fun of Jay Chou’s gentrified upbringing.

First dunk Jay Chou does in game is a 3 point line dunk WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS!

the acting in this movie is so bad there are more awkward silences in it than there are dialogues

What the, there’s a team who wears american gladiators-like costume as basketbball jersey!

wow the opposing team flying kicked a baller and did not get called foul

i’m pretty sure you’re not permitted to wear metallic shoulder blades in a ball game

between the leg reverse layup ???

so the match is cancelled because the power was cut off, and will be resumed in 3 days. The score? 50 against 4. riiight.

how come everybody who’s into “illegal business” in this movie speaks cantonese? hk stereotype much?

another chinese movie trope: camera panning around the female actress when she’s crying

KFD’s idea for a pickup line: “i’ve always wanted to eat ice cream since i was a kid, but never had the chance. you’re like that ice cream”

ok i’ve stopped being entertained by how bad this movie is. it needs to end post haste.

what in the world, now some Qi bao wearing group shows up in a basketball game and plays?!

i’ve witness like 10 whole court pass alley oops already

some kung fu guy blocks a shot by sticking his body on the board!

why is no one in the movie indignant over how poorly officiated the game is?!

it makes home court games in Cleveland Cavaliers look like professional, balanced officiating!

an all out kung fu brawl in the court but no one in the audience was terrified for what happened. Malice in the Palace taught nothing

KFD is trying so hard to be Shaolin Soccer and even Kung Fu Hustle, and fails tremendously at either.

i give up. not watching this any longer.

(hours later)

So I’m gonna finish this crappy piece of crap movie “Kung Fu Dunk”. Live tweeting the remaining 10 minutes.

What an awful looking dunk. Toss the ball up while you’re at the peak of the jump, then catch it while you’re stationary airborne

WHY IS IT THAT THE MUSIC THAT PLAYS ON THAT BASKETBALL GAME HAS A GUY SINGING “TOFU TOFU TOFU”. HOW IS TOFU RELATED TO BASKETBALL?!

OH I GET IT I GUESS THAT MEANS VEGETARIANS WILL LEARN TO BALL LIKE PRO. I GUESS I STAND A CHANCE AFTER ALL!

3 pt line between the leg posterizing dunk my God this is so ridiculous

And why isn’t any one of these ballers sweating at all?!

OK so in final possession is the only time any players started working a sweat? In the last 2 sec?

Block the ball by punching it up below the hoop, and no one protests. Wow.

Step aside Christopher Reeves’ Superman, Jay Chou can reverse time by using kung fu moves, so that he can do the last possession again.

I mean sure, what Shaolin Soccer was missing was some sci fi time travel plot, right? THAT MAKES KUNG FU DUNK SO MUCH BETTER.

(Batrock responds: I didn’t much like Shaolin Soccer, myself. )

@Batrock I don’t either, but it’s “Hoop Dreams” in comparison to Kung Fu Dunk.

Time travel meant background became full of clouds & assorted objects like airplanes and evil faces. You got nothing on this 2001 Space Odd!

Next in Kung Fu Dunk 2: Jay Chou learns to use the fifth dimension and can tesser from hoops to hoops at will.

Not an ounce of this movie is genuine. It’s so crass and calculated and pandering.

Whole crowd cheered for the “villain team” when they won in d alt timeline, & did d same when d hero team won. Whose home is this anyway!

What the hell is with this abandoned son reunites with his guilt ridden rich dad scene? It’s so sappy and pointlessly sentimental

His mentor gets cast aside coz “real dad who abandoned you in bball court” loves you more than “wine expert involved in shady dealings”.

But then of course they get some teary reunion because Jay Chou eventually realizes who has been there for him all along.

You know people can’t tell if a scene is supposed to be sad or not unless you play violin in the background, of course.

Why is the theme song of this movie “please wear some qibao or else I’ll eat your tofu”? Isn’t “eat tofu” chinese slang for “eating skin”?

Charlene Choi in KFD looks uncomfortably close to one girl I dated and parted with much bitterness.

What is the point of stealing Slam Dunk’s “whoever gets the rebound wins the game” when the people in KFD don’t rebound, like, ever?

KFD is terrible and those who want to see it because it’s a Jay Chou’s product are better off diving into his mansion’s sewage.

Worst Movies of 2009

Happy New Year, readers! I hope it’s not yet too late to be writing posts about anything 2009-related. Yesterday I gave you 10 best movies of 2009, and since I believe in striking a balance, today comes my bottom 7.

So maybe that’s not a perfect balance, but I want to start this year on a more positive note. Besides, I managed to steer clear from watching more than 7 movies that I ended up hating. Unfortunately, that also means you’re not gonna hear me tear down some widely-derided movies like New Moon, 2012, Dragonball: Evolution, Ninja Assassin, Mall Cop, and Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li. Still, I hope this 7 pick will be a sufficient guide as what movies you should skip (if you and me are alike, that is), and if you did see them anyway, I hope my reading my opinions has entertained you anyhow.

7. GI Joe: Rise of Cobra

The best compliment that I could give to GI Joe Rise of Cobra is that it’s not as bad as the other movie based on Hasbro toys. Yet what killed it for me is the depressing going through the motions feel. True story: barring minor details like each character’s origins story, everything that took place in the movie I saw coming before I even saw the film. Sure, I did enjoy parts of it, but that was for all the wrong reason, unless you think that the director intends the viewers to root for the villains in a movie about “Real American Heroes” (and yeah, I’m aware that the movie doesn’t make explicit mention of it, but the Hasbro property is still based on that slogan). Also, for all the noises feminists make these days about videogames and comics being sexist, I’m shocked that this movie isn’t entering women-in-refrigerators debate given how poorly it treats its women characters.

6. Planet 51

I’ll get this out of the way: I take no pleasure in disliking Planet 51. I followed the development of the movie because I thought it had a great premise – man gets marooned in an alien planet that behaves exactly like humans. I supported it too because I wanted non-American animation studios to gain international recognition (not that I have anything against American animation studios). So, to be fair, Planet 51 has great animation, but the story is another thing entirely. I was annoyed at Monsters vs Aliens for going overboard with pop culture references, and yet it’s nothing compared to Planet 51, and at least it’s funny, which Planet 51 isn’t. Add stereotypical characters, and we get a movie that’s ultimately forgettable and often obnoxious.

5. Adventureland

I’m all for character-driven stories, and I like imaginative concepts. So I expected to like Adventureland because it promises to be both: how many movies are about life as amusement park workers anyway? What I got here instead is a pedestrian soap opera that might as well have taken place anywhere else. That wouldn’t be a huge issue if the characters were likable, but how could they be liked when all they do is shoot themselves on the foot? It’s critically acclaimed, and I have no idea why. I scoff at this notion that all it takes to make a good movie is to spice up a completely boring story by making the characters witty and self-deprecating. For the record, all the music references reek of trying too hard; I don’t believe that if one couldn’t properly develop a character, comparing tastes in music is going to make up for it.

4. Watchmen

I don’t see why I should prolong this since I have exhausted myself from talking about it last March. I’ll say this much though: Watchmen is the movie that got me exposed to how lazy comics-adaptation movie can be. I had my suspicions in the past, but this gave me the moment of clarity. Unlike movies based on novels, you do not require much imagination with the settings when the comics have already drew them out for you in details, so that’s half the hard-work gone, which is why I’m often turned off by them – I like hard work. Still, there are comics-adaptation movies that manage by telling a complete tale and not requiring viewers prior knowledge of the comics. By not giving a compelling reason for me to care about anyhting, Watchmen fails in storytelling, and since director Zack Snyder uses the comics as storyboard - the worst kind of laziness, if I may say – I dislike it even more. At this point, I am so done with movies based on comics. See you on Iron Man 2, right?

3. My Life In Ruins

Saw this in a 9-hour flight and let me tell you, without the speakers on, My Life In Ruins doesn’t look all that bad because at least I can pretend that it’s a travel guide of Greece, which is indeed a place for the gods. But then I tried to watch it for the story and yuck! It shouldn’t have turned out this way! The premise of the movie is pretty clever and is one that many of us can relate to, because we have been around tourists from hell, and what’s more amusing than seeing a tour guide trying to deal with them? Alas, it succumbed to the bad stereotypes, oversimplified solutions and Hallmarkian dialogues. At least Adventureland is about smart people being stupid; My Life In Ruins is about stupid being stupid.

2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

I hate Bad Lieutenant for the exact reason that I hate Frank Miller’s stories: it’s just not enough that they take place in a corrupt world, we also have to be lambasted with awful scene-chomping dialogues from protagonists trying to sound tough and badass. It’s hopeless with Nicolas Cage. What used to be an actor whose acting-range gave us the sublime Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas has now become a Youtube meme of “acting raged”. Here in Bad Lieutenant, Nic Cage does not disappoint the Internet by delivering golden lines like “what the f is this f iguana” and “if you ever so much see that girl again, you’re gonna wish you were born, without a dick!” Somehow this movie received an above 80% rating in Rottentomatoes. Do you even know what the hell you’re doing, movie critics? Do NOT encourage Nic Cage to yell and swear more!

1. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Just the thought of having to think about this movie again makes my head hurt. Putting aside the dumb as bricks superfluous elements like the awful comedy, it should’ve been so easy to make this movie a winner: all it needed is robots beating each other to pulps, and somehow this is too much to ask and instead we have to get a plodding “drama” about lousy humans? Where’s the fun in that? And when action kicks off (which takes forever), why can’t we see what’s going on, why can’t we tell those who’s fighting apart, and why do the fighters appear, disappear, die, and get revived for no reason at all? It’s not just bad acting and bad action, however. There’s also the racist stereotypes, the jingoism, the bombastic soundtrack, and the sexism all crammed into this massive package of suck, and don’t even get me started on the incoherent plot. Quite simply, Transformers 2 ranks among the worst movies of all time, and in a perfect world, Michael Bay should be banned from making another film. Teenage audiences will moan about it, but they’re just gonna flock to another bombastic CGI-overblown Hollywood blockbuster anyway.

Best Movies of 2009

(Disclaimer: Although I have seen more movies in 2009 than I have in other years, there are still noteworthy movies that I have yet to see mainly because they have yet to show in the Philippines and are not yet available in DVD form. So I can’t comment on Invictus, Precious, Where the Wild Things Are, or The Princess and the Frog yet. I will try to see them in 2010, and if I liked any well enough I might update this list. Oooh, number 10 is in danger! Fanboys will not be too happy!)

10. Avatar

Although Avatar claimed a spot in my top 10, it will never belong in my all-time faves, or get the same reverence that I reserve for earlier James Cameron works, such as Terminator 1 and 2. Why?

There’s no getting around the hackneyed plot, and there’s no way my coworkers will ever shut up about it being Pocahontas on a different coat of paint (blue?), which gives me goosebumps every time, because that’s what happens when I hear the name of Disney’s most cloyingly sentimental movie (no small feat for Disney). I agree, though. Predictability is Avatar’s major, vexing flaw.

A pity for that, then. Everything else about it reminds me why Cameron is my favorite director of Hollywood action movies. Yes, a movie’s story has to be good, and Avatar is predictable, but it’s still reasonably well-told and well-acted. More importantly, movie is a visual medium, which means aesthetics matter too, and to put it mildly, Avatar is a spectacle. The choreography at the last act ranks among the best war fights in movies, surpassing Lord of the Rings.

Cameron said he intends to make Avatar a trilogy. If it means I get to see more breathtaking sceneries from its fictional world, I’m all or it, as long as he also promises a better script.

9. 500 Days of Summer

People often compare 500 Days of Summer to Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind, and while there are similarities, like the way both are told out of chronological order, I think 500 Days and Annie Hall are more alike. Both start with the lead male character telling the viewers that they just split up with the women they loved, and you knew right then that he was regretful. Then both flashes back to the better times of his relationship with the girl, in hopes that from looking at the past he (and we) could find out what went wrong, in hopes of finding ways to reconcile. Where they differ is the personalities of their characters: in AH, the guy is the jaded one, while in 500DoS, it’s the girl.

I make it no secret that romantic comedy belongs to my least favorite of movie genres. My friends know this and they know not to invite me in whenever they see the latest rom-coms because they know I’d be the most indifferent person in the theater. So then, I’m quite surprised by how much I enjoyed 500 Days of Summer (and it may be because I’m also partial to Annie Hall; Eternal Sunshine, not so much).  The performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt helped and so did my unbridled crush on Zoey Deschanel, but the strongest pull is how much I related to the characters. We don’t live in a perfect world, and when we fall in love it’s not always boy-meets-girl-happily-ever-after. Anyone who has had affection for someone and hoped the feeling is mutual can relate to the trouble that befell Levitt’s character.

8. Up

Pixar knows how to get in touch with what we used to imagine back when we were kids. We all wondered what toys might live like, and we got Toy Story. Many of us had longed to venture to a faraway unknown land. Up is about that, with an ornery old man who finds his calling by taking his house up to the sky. Great premise? It sure is, but that would make a solitary tale, wouldn’t it? By accident, a visiting boy scout had stowed away, and joined the ride that could only be the envy of other kids. What, you know anyone who has been on a flying house before?

Aside from the heartbreaking first 5 minutes of the movie, it’s the interaction of the old man and the boy scout where the movie shined the brightest. I liked how their motivations contrasted – the old wants to do what he has wanted to do since he was a kid, while the boy wants to be prepared to take the responsibilities of grown-ups. On a lesser movie, the director would try to get his/her point across by forcing humor and making the characters excessively chatty. Up is above doing that, though. Sometimes it gets silent, and yet it says so much. This is why I begrudged the director for putting in those dog sidekicks in the middle of the movie.

It’s not my favorite Pixar movie but I can say that it’s the only Pixar movie that nearly made me cry.

7. The Hurt Locker

War is grim. So why doesn’t it look that way in movies about war? Instead, we see Hollywood treating it as nothing but uber-macho alpha male fantasy, failing to realistically portray what being in the battlefield is like, and serving no purposes other than giving American troops a pat in the back.

It’s disappointing to me that The Hurt Locker, the first movie about Dubya’s Iraq War, doesn’t subvert patriotism. But although it lacks in depicting the lives of Iraqis amidst the chaos, I admire it for showing they way soldiers are really like. This is not a story that pontificates about courage or valor or whatever values Uncle Sam wants to inculcate. Instead, it presents war as it is, where people involved are tense, desperate, and at a constant fear of dying. Watching its soldiers deactivate bombs will leave you breathless, and even if they survive, you know that they’re going to lose part of themselves. An emotionally-draining movie, and that’s how looking at war should make you feel.

6. Moon

Moon resembles the shorts stories that emerged from the golden age of science fiction. It also is reminiscent of 2001 Space Odyssey’s middle part, where a psychological drama happens. Like the Kubrickian film, much of Moon involves the interaction of an astronaut and an almost-sentient computer. Also, it will screw with your mind, though not quite as badly as 2001. Me? I have soft spots for serious sci fi, and that’s why I loved this film, but even those without sci fi inclinations can see that the acting is solid. By the way, the lead actor plays two characters, which look alike but are subtly different in dispositions. I will speak no more, as this movie is at its best when seen with no prior knowledge of its story.

5. District 9

I’d go so far as to say that before District 9 and Moon (no idea which came first and I’m too lazy to research), the only great sci fi movie of this decade is Wall-E, and maybe Minority Report. Before all the marketing ploys made people drunk in anticipation for Avatar, District 9 was the much-discussed movie of the year, and there were many praises about it being an allegory of apartheid. Although, it is also allegedly racist. Is it? Well, that I’m undecided on, although I can say that I’m not too thrilled about the over-the-top Nigerian gangsters.

That flaw aside, District 9 did more to me than Avatar in nearly every way I could think of, barring the fight scenes. A few of you may give action more weight than plot, but I’m the opposite, which explains why I prefer District 9. You might be baffled by the comparison, but they’re not as dissimilar as you might think. Both movies are about a guy marooned in a hostile territory. D9 does it more effectively, though, because it has more gray areas, and is more grounded on reality. For one thing, I’m quite sure most of us will despise the movie’s human characters in the end, and yet when we try to put ourselves in their shoes, we know we’d probably act the way they did. The aliens much of the humans were hostile to were also better portrayed here. Avatar made its alien race genuinely good and altruistic, which I thought was a cheap manipulative way to draw our sympathy to the “good” side. In District 9, the aliens had many undesirable traits and were not above committing atrocities. I thought that that’s a more plausible scenario if we met up with aliens, because there’s so little we know about them.

So to sum up, Avatar = good. District 9 = better.

4. Thirst

If you’re as sick as I am of how the media has been turning vampires into glamour fashion mags icons, watch Thirst by Park Chan-Wook, acclaimed director of Oldboy. Look, life as a bloodsucker is miserable. Vampires do not shimmer in the daylight; they get burnt to crisp by it. Also, being that they consume bloods to survive (and they like them fresh), they have a tough time abiding to some moral code. We should know this, and yet thanks to a certain craze, we are now populated by teenagers who beg for bite marks.

Thirst is vampire story as it should be: sensual, illicit, and immoral. While Twilight (finally mentioned that name, huh?) does the two in spades and only in the most perfunctory and gentrified way, Thirst is what urbane types will call OG. Which stands for Original Gorefest! I would not call Thirst a horror movie, though, and it’s more like a psychological drama with a horror twist. In it, a priest becomes a vampire, and he does sinful deeds against his will. It’s not a story of the weak of heart, but if you want a fresh take on the whole vampire lore, this is worth sinking your teeth in.

3. Red Cliff

You know, when John Woo exerts efforts, he makes a damn good action movie. Red Cliff, a war epic, is his interpretation of Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, with a few elements from the novelization. It’s delightful to watch for the stratagems, for how the two sides of the war try to outwit another. And when fights break, there is no one that does it better than John Woo.

2. Ip Man

Before this movie came out, it’s been a long time since I liked a kung fu movie. The last one was Hero and Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, but then all those that came after were average at best, and I blame Jet Li for losing enthusiasm (although I respect his decision to devote more time to Buddhism) and Jackie Chan for wanting to be taken as a serious actor. Kung Fu Panda doesn’t even count as my kind of kung fu movie because it’s all digitized, and don’t even get me started on House of Flying Daggers. In short, the genre was stagnating. But then there’s one overlooked martial artist who emerged from other’s shadow. He’s Donnie Yen. He played the villain of Once Upon a Time in China 2, was the star in Fist of Fury TV series, re-battled with Jet Li in Hero, and fought with Jackie Chan in Shanghai Knights. Somehow people forgot that he, too, can kick ass hard. And while I can’t guarantee that Ip Man will propel him into his long-overdue superstardom, I will guarantee that fans of action movies will love Ip Man.

There’s no other way of putting this: Donnie Yen rocks. Whatever I say about this movie will not do its fight choreography any justice, so I won’t go into details, but I love the way Donnie Yen fights. Here, he uses Wing Chun, which is a martial arts style that is more defensive than offensive. He exposes openings from opponents by punishing them with flurry of punches, and he kicks only when necessary. There are no wasted extra movements, and it looks elegant that way.

While the story has never been a priority for martial arts film, Ip Man’s was pretty good.

1. Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds finds Quentin Tarantino still being Quentin Tarantino, so make of that as you will. Like all his films, it is spaghetti-western influenced, meaning it’s low budget and has copious amount of shooting, but nothing fancy. I have just recently seen Pulp Fiction, loved it, and I can say that Inglourious Basterds ranks with Pulp Fiction as being his best movies.

You may get the impression of it being a war movie, since it takes place on WWII and Nazi is clearly the antagonist here, but it’s only a war movie in the loosest sense. It’s more like a secret agent movie that just so happen to be in WWII era. Inglourious Basterds refer to a secret group that has been killing off Nazis.

Except, you know, the movie doesn’t spend so much time on the secret group. Confused yet? Well, that’s just QT screwing with your head.

Inglourious Basterds earns my top spot because of good directing and good acting. I’ll say right now that Brad Pitt gives a solid performance, but Christopher Waltz stole the show with his act as a cunning hunter of Jews. The rest of them also suited their roles perfectly. No one sets up scenarios quite like QT: one wrong word or subtle gesture could mean death, and death happens to anyone no matter how cool he or she appears. It’s this attention to detail that makes QT a great director. And, yes, he’s still self-indulgent and likes to reference movies.

Half Blood Prince

I’m still not home, which means I’m not writing this post because I was loafing and had thought that expressing my (obnoxious) opinions is a productive way to spend my time. I’m writing because this post is two weeks overdue; I was supposed to have it posted then, but life got in the way. So keep in mind that I’m just kind of rushing out this post by neglecting all the formal stuff, like grammar or compositions, that often comes with good writing. Please bear with me.

So… yeah, I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince two weeks ago.

When it comes to Harry Potter, I would describe myself as more of a curious observer than a fanboy. I read all the books and would even claim a couple of them (book 3 and 4) as my favorite novels, but I don’t obsess over every detail of the story nor spend my time predicting every possible plot developments before the later books were released, and I didn’t line up on bookstores waiting for their launches either. In short, I’m no Potterhead.

Now why is this important? Because I need you to know where I am coming from seeing this movie. Specifically, that I am not an expert of Potter-verse. When I was reading the books I just kind of soldier on fast, without pausing too much to consider every dialogue or plot at length, and after finishing them I did not ever look back to re-read them. This became a problem to me when I was reading books 6 and 7 since I did not remember most of what happened to their prior books, and that was also what troubled me when I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It didn’t help that I missed the prior movie; I just didn’t remember much of what had happened then. After watching this movie, I still haven’t remembered anything from the previous part either.

While all that sounds like a bad thing, it isn’t completely, because the movie’s story is more self-contained and insular to the other parts compared to the other Potter movies, so I didn’t really need to watch the earlier movies to understand what went on here.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince sets up for the big finale, right before the final battle with Voldemort (spoiler? No, it’s not. You all know it’s gonna happen). It still follows the typical format of the earlier parts - there’s a mystery for Harry Potter to look into - except that this time the mystery is not artifacts or serial killers, but the means of destroying Voldemort.

That’s only half of the movie, the serious half. The other half is more lighthearted in tone, and it deals with romantic subplots of the main characters. I think both the serious and the lighthearted part of the movie are great, and the acting certainly helped, except for Bonnie Wright’s, who turned Ginny Weasley into the a dutiful wife with zero personality (her character was cheekier in the book). It hurts, however, that each halves of the movie has a jarring disconnect with the other, that they feel like they’re from different movies at times. The characters involved in the super serious scenes are not involved in the lighthearted scenes, and the reverse is true.

So when you see Dumbledore, you should not be laughing because it’s so inappropriate, but when you see Ron Weasley, laugh your hearts out. I guess.

You know what I’ve always wondered? It’s how the evil characters in Harry Potter are not allowed to fall in love. I’m serious about this. People who speak to me personally know that I disliked the very black-and-whiteness of the Harry Potter; I thought that perhaps romantically involving the villains with other characters - villains or heroes regardless - may add more layers to the villains. Where’s Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger flirtations? Or how about a steamy love affair of Voldemort and Bellatrix? Wouldn’t that be fun?

Cybertronian Vertigo

My head hurts. All day the apps that I open whenever I use my computer for productive reasons, including today, were left just opened: no new files were saved, nor old ones modified. I can’t think. Try as I might, I could not for 8 hours progress on my work projects, and then I shut them down. A specter is haunting my brain; the specter is not communism (my brain isn’t Europe).

The specter is the aftereffect of watching a Michael Bay film. It puts the cerebrum to sleep, and reverberates noxious sounds of explosions in all nerves. Those who want to replicate the sensation without watching the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) can go to an amusement park. Ask its personnel to surround an octopus ride with giant replicas of the robots. Put on a loudspeaker and have it loop the sounds of explosions at the highest volume. Gather all the casts, including the motor-mouth Shia LaBeouf, and let them shout nonstop. 

Then for 149 minutes ride the octopus that never stops except for the 2 seconds pauses whenever you’re near Megan Fox and could take a peek at her cleavage. The breasts may make it sound like the resulting dizziness is a small sacrifice for a reward so ample, but, trust me, when you’re reading Maxim you never have to swirl it.

Now showing: Lensflaremers Revenge of the Brightened

…but let’s go backward in time a bit. Before I saw ROTF, I was aware of the hordes of criticisms it garnered. Responses are not tepid; they’re near-universal disgusts. I’m not a fan of director Michael Bay and I disliked the first movie, but my skin crawls anytime I see anyone gets punished by a crowd. Almost out of pity, I approached ROTF with faint hopes that I would vindicate the director, even if only in the eyes of those who respect my opinions, with a blog post that states ROTF being not as bad as critics say. If it turned out bad, at least it would have satiated my appetite for the classic robot rock-‘em sock-‘ems.

However, my perspectives overturned half an hour into the movie. The critics weren’t the prosecutors; they were the victims, and Bay sits at a throne commanding his minions – in the form of toilet humors, infantile sensibilities, ethnic stereotypes, misogyny, frenetic camera movements, rampant militarisms, Bush League jingoisms, and explosions fetishisms – to pound his critics repeatedly and unrelentingly while he screams his authoritative power like bullies do in schoolyards. Not a single time in ROTF did I feel that Bay aimed to please anyone besides the zit-faced mouth-breathing pre-pubescent crowds. Certainly not the audiences with ardor for good plots and/or the transforming robots themselves. And you know what, he doesn’t give a hoot about it! When pressed to answer the flaws of his movies – most of all his utter incompetence with the medium - he always, always use the box-office numbers as his defense. He doesn’t understand that people see Transformers because of its association with an 80’s cartoon and a Hasbro toyline (who cares about The Island?). Guilermo del Toro could direct it and it’d also be a hit.

There are myriad flaws in the movie, flaws so fascinating it’s a wonder Bay ever gets paid to direct a film. Directors may not be the ones writing the script, but it’s their job to film the scenes, evoke the appropriate acting, cut off the superfluous bits, and arrange the sequences so that the story makes sense. According to michaelbay.com, Bay himself added the fillers, which do absolutely nothing but bloat the movie to twice its necessary length. In the intervals between the fights there are all these scenes of unfunny comedy and uninvolving drama. Nobody ever shuts up, the background music never stops playing, and I’m just stupidly watching Bay vomit one cue card after another:

Here’s a plot exposition card. Pay attention Allspark shards Signs Matrix of Migraineship okay it’s over. Here’s a drama card CRANKS UP ROUSING INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC AMERICAN SOLDIERS WALKING IN UNISON CLOSE UP SHOT OF MEGAN FOX ACTING SCARED FOR NO REASON. Now let’s take a break with a comedy card. Dogs humping Bumblebee goop John Torturro thong robot farts minstrel showbot HAHAHAH THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!! Now, fight card RUN SHOUT KABOOM!

Speaking of the fight scenes, I’ll be shocked if anyone could make the heads and tails of what’s happening to whom. The robots all look like Stickfas made of magnetic parts thrown in a junkyard, and what emerges is a Bionicle that transforms …kind of. They don’t have distinctive designs or colors. I’m not even sure if Soundwave or The Fallen transformed once the entire time. Isn’t the point of the movie about transforming robots? The much-ballyhooed master of explosions couldn’t even pull off a palpable choreography for the actions occurring on screen.

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It is also loaded with characters that don’t do jack and squat besides turning the movie based on the Toy property less kid-friendly. Hasbro sponsored this film, right? Great, so please tell your young customers about marijuana, swearing, cutting classes, gawking at Megan Fox’s cleavage, and Megan’s legs being humped by robots (we get it, Megan’s hot!). Nobody in the movie is likable – and this may even be the first time I was indifferent with Optimus Prime and his preachy lines whenever he speaks – not the least of which are the human characters, all of them looking so bored. The returning actors, Shia LaBeouf Sleazy LaBlip Spastic LaBarf and Megan Fox, have lost their charm, and the new ones like Ramon Rodriguez should’ve stayed in The Wire. Yet none of them comes anywhere as bewildering as the new autobots Skids and Mudflap, who might as well be called Shuck and Jive.

Look, Bay, critics rag on you because you got a huge ego such that when people take issues with your racial caricatures, you dismiss them as mere naysayers. You go to the presses and whine about your critics. Because you lack the humility to say you’re sorry, you should’ve done things differently, people tape your picture in their punching bags, heaping insults in you, sometimes getting downright ugly (see: Pajiba.com’s “Small Penis Humiliation”). Directors like James Cameron and Sam Raimi are masters of spectacles too, and they don’t get “naysaid” on because they give us humanity and story coherency without shoving fanatical patriotism and pornography down our throats. By contrast, your ROTF is shallow and devoid of acting talents, funny bits, subtleties, emotions, and nuanced characterizations. It deserves all the scorn it gets. Only you can make an escape so deprived of joy, but why does that matter if it’s grossing millions of dollars? Right, Bay?

Super Woofer

Superheroism is rapidly becoming the most overused movie theme of all time. After the massive success of Spider-man, a year hasn’t passed when there isn’t at least one movie that birthed, expanded, deconstructed superheroes’ lives. These movies make it look like people can’t be bothered to see anything involving normal characters anymore: everyone has to be a superhuman or even a super-animal. I don’t know if recent moviegoers do indeed feel that way, and that’s certainly a topic worthy of further discussion.

Bolt, fully animated in 3d, is Disney’s foray into the super-something niche. The titular dog, along with his owner Penny, stars in an action TV series that shows him doing preternatural stunts (he could run faster than any moving vehicles, knock humans unconscious with his paw, and wreak havoc by barking). The studio arranges the show in such a way that Bolt believes what happens in TV is real.  So one day, when Penny leaves him for personal reasons, he mistakes this for her being kidnapped. He goes out to find her, inadvertently stumbling into a delivery truck and getting shut inside a box, which then ships from Hollywood to Manhattan.

Being taken very far hasn’t, however, dissuaded him from searching for Penny. Believing what has happened to him as merely another adventure (that he gets on TV), he wanders around, asking for directions and coercing various other animals to take him back. This leads him to Mittens, a female back-alley cat, and Rhino, a hamster constantly inside a transparent ball. In their travels, Bolt becomes increasingly frustrated with one thing: his superpowers don’t work.

For those of you who’ve been reading my recent updates and cringing from their orneriness, the good news is that I don’t have many bad things to say about Bolt. While it will not set a new standard for CG movies and while it is not free of the problems prevalent in Disney movies (such as the propensity for loquacious sidekicks and sentimental endings), Bolt is, most of the time, a pleasant watch. Visualize the typical Sunday scene of an entire family on a sofa, grinning ear-to-ear in front of a TV. They’re probably watching Bolt, and that’s why they’re happy, but don’t expect the kids to stay happy for long when their parents start inculcating them with its moral lessons. And also when their parents tell them that Miley Cyrus (voice of Penny) is whatever TMZ.com is making her out to be.

Come and think of it, I have always wondered why there are many who find Miley irritating. I don’t know about her besides her being the daughter of the man responsible for achy-breaky destruction of the airwaves back in the 90s, and if you show me her picture (with a smile that is said to arouse feelings of repulsion) I will just forget what she looks like after a minute. I don’t have an eidetic memory for blondes. Like how I am to the color of her hair, I found her performance in Bolt forgettable, mainly due to Penny’s brief appearances.

The real stars of the show are John Travolta and Susie Essman. By any lesser casts, Bolt would be reduced to a boring and predictable movie with occasional hints to greatness, but thanks to Travolta (voice of Bolt) and Essman (voice of Mittens), it reaches. Bolt is believable as a naïve, clueless dog who honest-to-God believes in his superpowers; Mittens is convincing as a bitter, pessimistic cat. Mark Walton is also great as Rhino, even if I’m annoyed at Rhino’s sugar-overdose buoyancy. Their interplays throughout the movie are a funny and often a joy to watch – one of its best scenes is when Mittens proves an incredulous Bolt that Bolt is not the superdog that he thinks he is.

I got the impression that the movie is saying that one doesn’t need to be superpowered to do the right thing. Maybe that’s a message that should resonate with its viewers, but I wonder if it also means to remind movie studios that a compelling story does not always require super characters.

Something to think about.

Wolverine

Am I crazy, or is 2009 turning out to be the year of origin stories? We’re just in May, but already we’ve seen movies introduce more than 5 characters becoming superheroes or costumed vigilantes or street fighters or anime gods or what-have-you’s. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the most recent of the bunch and, as the title indicates, is about how James Howlett—a mutant who can recover from any wounds and can make claws come out of his fists—became the iconic X-men character: Wolverine.

The movie takes liberties to several of its characters from their comic book roots: the most notable change is having Victor Creed (a.k.a. Sabertooth) become the half-brother of Wolverine. Readers of the comic may find that idea absurd and may even start boycotting the movie (by burning the posters, or downloading the alleged leak); personally, I didn’t mind. As long as it can tell a good story, I could give a rat’s ass if it alters the alignment, religion, gender of the characters it’s adapting.

And this now begs the question: did I like it? Well, that’s complicated. I can say that every time I see an X-Men movie, I end up wanting to read the comics (and then I’d read the Wikipedia pages and abandon that plan almost as soon as I started it; seriously, there’s no way I can make sense of the story anymore without earning a Master’s Degree in Marvel-ology). If the goal of the movies were to lure in new readers, then I suppose they did a job well done. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is no different in this regard, but while I enjoyed it, I ultimately felt that movie isn’t the most ideal medium for this kind of story. If it were a pilot episode of a TV series, then it would’ve been great.

What led me to believe in this is in the amount of characters the movie tried to cram in its story. I understand that they were here to pander to the fans of their comic book counterparts—why else was Gambit here?—but should there be so many of them, when they do essentially nothing but move the plot forward? Their brief appearances would’ve been fine as teasers had there been any succeeding episodes following this one, but this isn’t a TV series. It may take years—as opposed to a week—for its Emma Frost, Gambit, Deadpool, and Sabertooth to become well-developed characters, or it may never happen.

Monsters vs. Aliens short review

(…with no plot summary, because I’m burnt out.)

There was a scene halfway through Monsters vs. Aliens when the monster protagonist was battling the alien antagonist, and the monster was clearly advantaged. It’s this moment when I was at the edge of the seat, hoping that the “bad” would be at the mercy of the “good” and that the movie would work its story from there. Alas, that didn’t happen. Just one minute after that, the alien would incapacitate the monster with a conveniently placed weapon, and the remaining time of the movie would be devoted to rescue missions. Had it chosen a different outcome, the movie would’ve been unpredictable, and maybe less forgettable.

The word forgettable just about sums up most of DreamWorks Animation (DWA) recent works. It’s like they’ve been riding in the success of Shrek for far too long that they have yet to stray from its formula. Their common threads include misfits becoming unlikely heroes, and, more irritably, having myriad pop references. Shark Tale is like that. Madagascar is like that. When Kung Fu Panda came along I thought DWA had finally ditched the pop culture name-dropping like it was an embarrassing phase in college. But Monsters vs. Aliens evidently showed that they haven’t grown up.

I forgot to mention that every DWA movie has a novelty song young viewers can torment their parents with. She’s livin’ la vida loca! Everybody gets kung fu fighting! I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it… repeated until barf. Monsters vs. Aliens also has one, I just don’t happen to remember what it is, which means I’ll be sane for the next few days. And no, I don’t have kids yet.

To its credit, the main characters from Monsters vs. Aliens were a marked improvement over those from DWA’s past offerings. I never warmed up to Shark Tale’s and I hated those sassy animals from Madagascar. At least Monsters vs. Aliens had a sympathetic group helping each other overcome their self-doubts. That is quite unlike DWA’s other movies where everyone was just smart-assing their way throughout. It’s just too bad that they’re stuck in movie with a very generic story.

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My copy of Alan Moore’s Watchmen has a concise testimonial flying aloft the cover: “One of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels”. I peruse that list often, and though I’d love to see more than just 1 comic book/graphic novel (let’s just dispose “graphic novel”; it’s nothing but a lofty way to say comics), I understand and agree with it including Watchmen.

There’s probably a word that means a genre of fiction told by altering the world history, so if someone could fish this word out for me, please do so. Watchmen has a revised history being that, with the aid of comics-like costumed heroes, America has won the Vietnam War and thus prolonging Richard Nixon’s tenure as a president. He’s still the president by 1985, and constitution has been amended to include a new law called Keene Act. Provoked by public outrage against costume heroes, it outlaws “hooded vigilantes”, forces them to reveal their identities, and retires them.

Those who complied are Nite Owl, an ornithology-enthusiast who dons a cowl reminiscent of Batman; Silk Spectre II, a daughter of Silk Spectre strained to pass on her mom’s legacy; and Ozymandias, the world’s smartest man. Rorschach, a trenchcoat-wearing gumshoe who wears a mask that follows the theme of the eponymous ink blot test, refuses to give up his ways and continues to enact his brand of justice in the underground. The Comedian, a tough-guy patriot with a chip on his shoulder, and Dr Manhattan, a godlike being capable of creation, destruction and teleportation, retain their jobs legally, as long as they work for the government.

In the first scene, The Comedian is thrown out of a building, and Rorschach takes his death as proof that someone is conspiring to murder all of the costume heroes, causing him to find all the surviving ones. Meanwhile, there are looming threats of nuclear war as USA and Soviet Union’s animosity reaches boiling point.

Though the labyrinthine plot follows the whodunit template, what it ultimately does is question the motivation for wearing silly costumes and fighting for an individual’s brand of justice.

In my view, Moore deserves a place in the pantheon of American literature because his stories are just as intricate as anything by John Steinbeck, but unlike the works of anyone in Time’s list, his medium of choice is not written novels, but comics. Over the years, comics carry the stigma of merely being the middle ground between movies and novels, which makes for an inferior version—for movies, comics is like the still pictures, and for novels, comics is like the condensed texts. Watchmen debunks that claim by applying techniques that wasn’t widely used in comics before, and wouldn’t work (or at least achieve the same impact) on novels or movies. Newspaper clippings, autobiographies, magazine articles, and character profiles inserted between chapters expands on Watchmen’s fictional world. Comic books within one are told for juxtaposition while the actual story keeps moving forward. Scenes transition with same alignments but different places, objects, and people. Captions and dialogue boxes lay on top of indirectly related panels for effect.

Even from a technical standpoint, Watchmen is praiseworthy, but what made it unforgettable is its handling of its characters. Comic book heroes can be said to be the surrogate mythological gods and goddesses of America, so what Watchmen did was tear apart the romanticism they get and instead portray them as flawed and deranged. It defined a new generation of comic book writers decrying the silly-fantasy aspect of superheroes, bringing them back to earth, effectively making them more lifelike.

It’s nothing short of amazing.

It’s also nothing short of amazing how Zack Snyder manages to miss the mark completely in his movie adaptation, despite his efforts to stay true to the comics. If your only exposure to the source material is on Wikipedia’s plot summary—and why should you do that?—then yes, you’ll find the movie slavishly exact.

Before I go with how the film goes wrong, allow me to give the movie credit for achieving something nobody expected: make me feel stronger that Watchmen the comic book is a work of pure genius, and the devil for that, like how they say it, is in the details. The movie omits, or at best, glosses over those details, and ends up like a soulless telling of Watchmen.

Remember the autobiographies, the comic books, the newspaper clippings, and the profiles I mentioned a while back? None of them made it in the movie. The left and the right-wing publications that shape the civilians’ ambivalence for costumed heroes? Absent. If you’re going to understand the Watchmen lore purely from the movie alone, good luck understanding the civilian’s perspectives, because they have zero screen time. In the comic book, you’ll often see them congregating on one newsvendor while lamenting about the state of the world. Without the civilians, the movie takes away one vital character of the comics: New York City.

Yes, the city, the big apple itself. Some of the best stories—the comics included—are the ones where the settings assume their own characters. If you want examples, try Oceania of 1984, Macondo of 100 Years of Solitude, and that street in Brooklyn in Do the Right Thing. These places are memorable because they are multi-dimensional, you know you have certain requirements to survive in it, and you know that were you raised here you’d be a different, perhaps worse, person, yet you can’t resist imagining yourself in them anyway. I know the lifestyle of NYC is ubiquitous knowledge and in most movies NYC is chosen for convenience’s sake since you can fill in whatever you know about the city to the story. But the comics’ NYC is a different beast. This is not the real-world NYC where the populace’s brisk-walks to high-rise offices and coffee shops are common sights. Watchmen’s NYC is a far more hostile, polluted and sinister. It’s grimier, and you’re more likely to be mugged and beaten up here. It’s not a place for tourists at all.

So what part of this is apparent in the movie? The movie does not even make it clear that this is happening in New York – it might as well be anywhere else. Since there’s not a glimpse of the civilian’s life, nobody will get any chance to observe the costumed heroes the way they’d be perceived in the movie’s world, so why should those who’ve never read the source material care if the costumed heroes are banned? Why should they feel affected by the looming nuclear war? And though the city does look polluted and grimy, the movie styles it up too much. So instead of looking like slums from Harlem, this one resembles some film-noir alleyways that look alluring due to stylistic touches from past “golden” eras. I mean, what dystopia world is supposed to be this beautiful? I love noir, but this one’s just ridiculous.

Come and think of it, I’m very peevish about Zack’s stylistic choices. They’re why the defense “This movie only lasts 160 minutes, so you can’t expect Zack to cram everything in” is invalid. Yes, it’s impossible to cram everything from the comics in that time span, but he could’ve put in more stuff in his movie. Instead, he slow-mos everything to oblivion. Even turning of doorknobs takes 5 freaking seconds. The problem is that all these slow-mos, besides being cheesy and overdone, have the weird effect of polarizing two audiences of the film: the ones who never read the comics will feel that it’s too long, while the ones who have read it will feel that they’re being short-changed of plot details.

I’ve never felt that this world is in any way real, and it may have to do with the overstated Lomo effect. There’s never sunlight, there’s only muted sunlight, and the night sky looks more like a texturized layer from Photoshop. Here’s newflash to Zack: people still buy postcards. People still get out of their computers and have vacations at the beaches. People still stargaze. Wanna know why? We can perceive beauty without using grungy lenses. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. But I’m looking at the morning sky now. It’s cloudy, it’s real, and it’s spellbinding. Didn’t the comics bring the superheroes down to a human level? How come movie’s setting feels manufactured?

It’s like Zack lives in a world where nothing ugly exists, only pretty and ugly-pretty. It’s not just his aesthetics, but also the way he presents his characters. In the comics, all the costumed heroes have their origin stories and none of them are pleasant. The movie captured the origin stories well, but did not grasp the ugly consequences on their characters. Unlike in the comics, you’ll find all the costumed heroes here cool in the gritty way that seems so fashionable lately. They’re too cool for their own good. The comic book’s intent was not to present the costumed heroes in very favorable light and as misunderstood characters, but rather as characters who misunderstood the world. Dr Manhattan’s detachment from human life, and Rorschach’s uncompromising ways, and The Comedian’s being the anathema of other costumed heroes, are only given cursory glances. Ozymandias’ obsessions with Alexander the Great and Egyptian death rituals are not explored in depth. I have no sense of Nite Owl’s frustrations in subduing his childish hero fantasy in a world that forbids it, nor Silk Spectre II’s fury as someone who despises everything about being a costumed heroine. I don’t see tensions among the costumed heroes, and them to the world at large. All they do is band, disband, retire, and then regroup, and then engage in epic battles in the process. It feels like watching a reunion concert from musicians you don’t know about – you feel disconnected and you wonder what the fuss is.

It’s not just the characters here are Cliff’s Notes of their comics’ self, but that some are completely mischaracterized because Zack did not put in the details that gives them more dimension. Zack puts all his attention in styling everything up but not add the real meat and potatoes to the plot, and his fight scenes, with all the exaggerated violence and the flying bodies, take away the realism the movie needs. It’s frustrating to care about anything. He renders his characters more as superheroes than as costumed heroes, or as normal people who dress up to enact their justice in ways law doesn’t, without question to the morality of their deeds.

Which begs the question, how exactly does this movie alone deconstruct comic book heroes? Since it’s unclear why the civilians resent the costumed heroes, how will they be thought of as fascists, psychotics, and extremists? What is the fuss with the Keene Act all about, and what is its rationale?

As for the acting, Rorschach and The Comedian deserve praises. Dr Manhattan isn’t too bad. Night Owl and Silk Spectre II, however, are atrocious. They sound dumb when they talk, and are devoid of personalities. I know it’s early this year, but they’d’ve clinched a razzie award had Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li not been released this year – and, mark my words, Dragonball Evolution will also come up with serious contenders.

So, given my disapproval, some may wonder what I expected of the movie in the first place. Honestly, I have never liked the idea of making a Watchmen movie. The moment I saw the trailer, I wrote it off as a loud, bombastic film that will fail to grasp the scope of the comics. And I was more scornful after seeing it advertised as being directed by the “visionary” responsible for 300. In the history of overrated, claiming Zack a visionary ranks up there with awarding Chicago the best picture and calling Nicole Kidman a good actress. You don’t become a visionary by translating comic books to movies. I mean, is it just me, or is comic books the laziest source material to adapt to films? The director doesn’t even have to bother with storyboards anymore, now he can simply use the panels for references! Zack is known to be literal, and none of his movies are his own material, so how is he a visionary? Where’s his creativity?

Some of you may ask which director I would suggest for Watchmen’s movie, and I don’t want to answer that. I never believed in a Watchmen movie anyway. I maintained that stance before, and I still maintain it now, that nobody can translate Watchmen to film in a self-sufficient way while staying true to its source’s spirit. Inwardly, I hoped Watchmen the movie would stink. And stink it did. And I’m glad Alan Moore didn’t attach his name to it. So I hope that when this movie fails to endure in conversations 3 months from now, Hollywood will finally get a clue that they need to stop all these waves of uninspiring superhero movies. Leave the comic medium to thrive by itself, and write some original screenplays for once. That can still be done, can’t it?

海角七號 Cape No 7

When I first heard 海角七號 (Cape No 7) uttered—which is a month ago when I was in Taiwan and at a family reunion—it instantly became an unforgettable movie name to me, because everyone within earshot lit up and then lectured me about how successful it was (the movie, not the earshot, though I guess the earshot was also successful given the reaction). My parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, in the rare moment when both the young and the old agreed, dropped trivia about how it’s second to Titanic as the highest-grossing movies in Taiwan’s cinematic history, and how it will be remembered for the next 20 years, and how I could be so stupid for not having heard let alone seen it. I called foul, coz I’m not stupid! I just hadn’t been catching up to Taiwan’s pop culture, and clearly I had to do my assignment by watching Cape No 7. Thank you, condescending relatives!

So last Sunday I took my first step to the path of “getting my haughty relatives to stop calling me a banana (derogatory term for Asians who are overly ‘Westernized’)” by watching that numerical Taiwanese movie that they can’t stop gushing about. The first thing I thought about was probably irrelevant to the movie itself: why are so many movies numbered 7? There’s Magnificent 7, there’s 7 Samurai, there’s Seven, there’s 7 Years in Tibet, there’s Nana (o yay, I’m now the wannabe-nihonjin), there’s Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, and now there’s Cape No 7. Where’s all the love for 6 or 9? Why can’t it be Cape Number Sixty-Ni… nevermind.

The movie begins with the scene of a Japanese ship leaving Taiwan. An unnamed Japanese teacher narrates his love to Kojima Tomoko (a local girl whom he met when he was in Taiwan) and his regret for leaving her because the Japanese occupation is ending. It comes complete with a soft piano background music that will get the New-Age loving crowd to pause the DVD so that they can Google-search Cape No. 7’s OST and download it illegally. Fast forward—or resume button, as would be the case of the aforementioned New-Age hippies (probably the least cool kind of hippie)—50 years later to the present, and we see Aga, a frustrated rocker, cussing, getting gonzo with his guitar, and then riding his motorcycle from Taipei back to his hometown Hengchun, which takes 6-8 hours in real life, but since we’re not watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we don’t see road trips (and drug trips). Born to be Wild doesn’t play here; instead it’s a song with clumsy English that Aga sang in his unsuccessful gigs.

I keep talking about music because music takes a big role in the movie, as you’ll read about later on.

We go to Hengchun province and here we are introduced to the movie’s quirky characters. I want to be done with the enumeration, so I’ll be quick in describing them. (Not Kojima) Tomoko is a Chinese-speaking Japanese model whose current gig is to guide obnoxious tourists. Uncle Mao is an “elite” postman who’s too old for his job, so the jobless Aga got manhandled by his stepfather, who’s also the town representative, to take over the posting duties. Rauma is a short-tempered police who beats people up but is still nice compared to the police from the country just to his south (i.e. Philippines). Frog is a mechanic who has a crush on his boss’s wife and you’ll often see her cleavage, but I’m not posting the pics here, and you can’t make me! Malasun is the prototypical ingratiating door-to-door rice wine salesman. And Dada is a 10-year-old pianist who gets kicked out of the church because priest says her playing is too hardcore! (Dada is the Chinese for Big Big. Aspiring rappers may want to steal that name because it’s hood-to-the-core, yo! Who knows, maybe you’ll even make it big in Taipei. I can just hear it, “NOTORIOUS DADA RIPRIZANT!!!”Just remember to pay me royalties: I suggested the idea in case you’re forgetting.)

Anyway, soon, Tomoko’s agent tasks her to organize a concert in Hengchun for a Japanese band, but since the town rep wants to give the Japanese band an unforgettable presentation from his own homeland, he forces her to assemble a local band to perform the opening act. She gets Aga, Uncle Mao, Rauma, Malasun and Dada together, and since they are of different backgrounds and have contrasting personalities and musical skills and tastes in music, they drive her nuts.

In the middle of everything, Aga sucks at being a postman. He doesn’t deliver the letters, but dumps them on a box in his room. There is one package that needs to be returned to the sender because it’s addressed to a place that does not exist, but he opens the package anyway and reads the contents – which are seven unsent love letters the Japanese teacher wrote to Kojima Tomoko.

The story is not what you’d call “high-concept” and it won’t appear on avant-garde sci-fi compendium. It’s also not the acid trips that are Wong Kar Wai’s (thankfully that also means no Zhang Ziyi, who’s become a one-trick horny pony). Instead, it’s a straightforward love-story-slash-musical, and anyone who has seen movies from either genre can predict its outcome. How much you’ll enjoy the movie really depends on how much you can care for the characters, and I’m rather disappointed that this movie is only strong in characters and not in plot.

The seven unsent letters I mentioned way back drives Aga—hey, guess how he’ll feel about the present Tomoko—but they do little more than be the MacGuffin. They do sporadically lead to scenes of the teacher narrating his undeclared love to the past Tomoko, but these scenes are not poignant. They’re clunky and melodramatic, and they take you away from the downer-to-earth present, of which they have little to no connection or significance. I can forgive the plot being predictable, but I can’t ignore its weak and distracting transitions from past to present.

Using that phrase “down to earth” again. I think much of the movie’s success comes from how real the characters are, although that quality may be lost to the Western viewers. Its greatest accomplish is the empathy it has for the lifestyle of the sleepy-towns in Taiwan countryside; no wonder that it resonated with millions of Taiwanese viewers. As someone who’s lived in Taiwan’s provinces, I can imagine bumping into any of its characters in real life. In short, I really liked them…

Or most of them anyway. Alas, I hated Aga. He treats Tomoko, his stepfather, and everyone in his band like crap even when they’re trying to help him. Nobody is spared from his hostility cracks. He doesn’t even bother doing the work he’s paid to do. He’s just another in the long line of jerk male protagonist that Taiwan shows are getting since the 90s. I think a longer discourse needs to be written about this subject, but the short is this: why are Taiwanese so fond of the emotionally-charged, antisocial, self-absorbed, effeminate, menial-labor-hating, Strawberry generation asshat who smears angst on everyone he meets by disrespecting his elders and hysterically spitting-and-shouting to the girl he “secretly” harbors feelings for? Wow that’s a long sentence. First there’s Dao Ming Si in Meteor Garden, and now Aga, plus a whole bunch of copy-pasted Taiwan “love” dramas and movies that are aimed for brain-dead youths (that I had to be tortured with since even Philippines’ TV stations are force-feeding me with these shows). I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hang out with this kind of clown in real life, and yet there are these shows where he’s the hero who gets all the girls? And we’re supposed to sympathize? Hello, he may become a wife-beater! Are you Taiwanese women masochists and do you seriously fall for this kind of guy? Is my not being one the bloody reason that I’m still single? I don’t think it’s my looks, because I think I’m rather good looking, you know. I don’t get it. But I digress so that I can comment just one last thing about Aga: his abrupt transformation from a jerk to an okay guy is unconvincing. I’m not buying it.

Music is really a very subjective thing, so it’s hard to suggest that my opinion of it is the gospel truth (as should be the case!). But anyway, this movie has a band in it, so music plays a central role in it. Near the movie’s end, the casts play a few songs. I find all of them disappointing. In the same way as how I’m sick of Taiwan shows’ male protagonist, I’m tired of Taiwan (mostly Mandarin ones) pop music because they always follow the same format: one upbeat rock or dance number, and then one middle-of-the-road ballad. Most of the casts here are unknown actors, so you can consider this movie indie. Yet, for something indie, the songs sure are trite.

At this point, it’s fair to say that I’m ambivalent about Cape No 7. I recognize what made it tick and why it was met with resounding success. I’m glad I watched it and its memorable characters. But, if you ask me if it’s the best movie of all time, or just simply the best Chinese movie I’ve seen, I will tell you that I never claim a movie with a protagonist I want to punch in the face my favorite. Make him someone I want to get behind, and perhaps I’ll be more favorable.

Remembering Grave of the Fireflies

Someone in Youtube posted a 2-minute summary video of Grave of the Fireflies and dubbed it with a fitting French song (I think; please correct me if I’m wrong). It’s full of spoilers, so I don’t suggest anyone who has yet to see the movie to watch the Youtube video, especially because Grave of the Fireflies is one of the few films that I would recommend everyone to watch in its entirety.

Anyway, the Youtube video is here. Remember, I’m only posting it for those who want to remember the experience of seeing the film.

Rarely have I found a film so affecting as to change who I am and what I believe in, but Grave of the Fireflies is one such film: without seeing it I probably would not be as anti-war as I am now. It affected me so much that newsreels of civilians suffering from the dire consequences of war always remind me of its protagonists - Seita, a 14-year old boy, and Setsuko, his 4-year old sister. Right at the onset, Seita is seen dying at a corner of the street that passersby pretend not to notice. Even in the first five minutes, anyone can tell that this is not a happy story.

The movie flashes back to when Seita was still living happily with Setsuko. This was during the WWII period. Their father left them to be part of the Japan navy, and they lost their mother when the city where they lived in (Kobe, Japan) was firebombed. So they started running, finding shelters, and trying to survive. They were met not only with the threat of military firepower, but also of the adverse psychological reactions people get amidst war-torn lands. Despite all those, Seita was bent to convince Setsuko that there would be brighter days ahead of them. I won’t reveal how that went, because I want you to see the movie.

Seita and Setsuko were as innocent (or, perhaps, more so) as any civilians, and they were just unlucky enough to be victims of the consequences of war. Grave of the Fireflies is a keen reminder that, regardless of choices, everyone suffers in war, and the only ones who cavort proudly about it are those in power whom are responsible for making it happen in the first place. That this movie is based on a semi-autobiographical novel only makes it more powerful.

Yucky Web

There’s something I dislike about most of my recent entries, aside from them being all reviews of books and movies. Those, on their own, do not bother me that much, but what really gets me is how tame and positive I’ve become, that I sound like this gushing fanboy heaping gallons and gallons of praises on everything as though I were a zombie blogger paid to say that a movie/book is AWESOME. I get riled up about doing those enthusiastic praising because those seem to be the only thing I’ve been doing lately. I end up looking like an easily-pleased milquetoast.

But after watching Spider-man 3 for the first time two days ago (yes, I saw it that late) I have come to realize that the curmudgeon in me is still as alive and strong as it ever was. I can razz about it for hours and hours that I’m glad I didn’t watch it while dating someone, lest she had to endure hearing me bitch until she grew sick.

This is the worst Spider-man movie I’ve ever seen. I liked Spider-man 1 and I still consider the 2^nd movie, surpassing the 1^st, as one of the best comic book movies. The 2^nd film ended on such a rousing note that the very moment its credits rolled, I wanted to coerce Raimi into doing it a sequel right there and then. The 2 movies worked for me because despite being about someone with superhuman powers, they felt down-to-earth. Their characters did not merely worry about the plight that only those wearing leather spandexes worry about; they also had to deal with problems that any person deals with every day: high school, finances, trying to have a lucrative career, etc. It didn’t hurt that the fight scenes packed punches (har-har!) with kinetic intensity.

Without going into spoil-… ah, screw that, who hasn’t seen these movies anyway? If you haven’t and if spoilers bother you, then you may stop reading now and go do something productive like picking your nose and hoping your booger will get eaten by ants.

Spider-man 3 started with Peter Parker watching his costumed alter-ego’s popularity reach new heights. That looked promising, since a tale of someone coping with sudden fame can excel. I thought then that maybe this movie won’t be as bad as people bitch it; nevermind that there wasn’t much reason for Spider-man to suddenly be all over Manhattan (wasn’t his last heroic act – defeating Doc Ock – unseen by public?). Almost immediately came the first warning sign, and that couldn’t be more blatant when it’s with Kirsten Dunst belting out “They say that falling in love is wonderful… so wonderful, so they tell me…” like she had no respect for her audience’s hearing abilities. She would later sing in a jazz club for the elites. Who would wanna hear her sing jazz?

Scenes of the movie’s villains were occasionally done with some empathy, but they never reached the pathos seen from the fall of Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. Part of the reason for that failure was that there were too many villains - Sandman, Green Goblin Jr, and Venom - but it’s the execution that bogged them down the most. Remember the feeling the dread of waiting for Green Goblin Sr. and Doc Ock to reach their breaking point? Bad news then, two of the three villains from Spider-man 3 had already reached their breaking point when they first appeared, and the remaining one, Venom, reached his breaking point in a very contrived manner (and given that there were many foes, you don’t see him developing a lot). So there’s no satisfaction to be had in witnessing how they became anarchical. In fairness, Harry Osborn was given enough depth in the first two movies. It was in his being Green Goblin Jr that was lackluster. Actually, everyone failed to be convincing villains. How? How about we compare them again with the two foes from the previous films? When Norman Osborn was already wearing the Green Goblin suit, he still had the pressure of acting like a responsible person to Harry Osborn, to Mary Jane Watson and to Peter Parker. Doc Ock turned bad because he would do everything to right his failed experiment, which cost him everything. Their dilemmas were what made them memorable villains. In Spider-man 3, two of the three villains were villains merely because they wanted to kick Spidey’s butt. Hence, they became one-dimensional. Sandman had his jaded past, a point that should make us understand that he was not evil, but merely wronged. That part was relegated in favor of seeing how Spidey wants to kill him for being the murderer of Uncle Ben. So what we get are three revenge plots.

Did having 3 characters swearing vengeances make the theme of revenge stronger? No. Having too much demeaned it, because given the limited length of a movie, what could be one revenge story got divided into compressed 3. The anger and the bloodlust of each never became too prominent.

The villains’ schemes were hilarious. They took turns being menaces! Goblin Jr. would just so happen to bump his head and have amnesia, so that he can be shoved aside for the time being and so that we can have time to see Sandman’s superpowers. And then when Sandman was presumed to be dead, Green Goblin Jr would regain his memory and annoy an irritable Spidey. After a scene where it looked like Goblin was killed by a bomb (in a more coherent movie, he would’ve died a long time ago; so what exactly is he, the liquid terminator?), which made him inactive again, Spidey would remove the black costume, actually an alien infesting his body, and the alien would fall down and turn Eddie Brock to Venom, who also just so happened to be at the church where Spidey was agonizing. Venom would then find Sandman. I had no idea how he found out where he was and how he knew he was alive since the Spidey wearing the alien suit thought otherwise. They then partnered and challenged Spidey by kidnapping Mary Jane Watson, a kidnap-bait seeing how it happened on 3 movies. Meanwhile Green Goblin Jr felt guilty for his sins and turned a hero after his butler had told him 2 movies too late that Goblin Sr. wasn’t killed by Spidey. Raise your hand if you don’t find all these so convenient.

I’m not done yet! Did you recall how the previews made a big deal about how Gwen Stacy was in this movie? Comic nerds will tell you that Gwen Stacy should’ve been the Mary Jane Watson of the first movie, and she should’ve been killed the moment Green Goblin dropped her. But whatever about that and her appearing two movies too late and how we should blame her absence for having MJ stayed in the series too long it’s sickening. She was in this movie to… do nothing but look cute. She was supposed to be Eddie Brock’s girlfriend too, but I didn’t recall ever seeing them being sweet to each other. I guess I never would. The moment Spidey bombed Venom I was like, “Yeah, go ahead and kill Venom so you won’t have to bother developing him the next movie!” Or maybe he’ll be magically resurrected in Spider-man 4?

As annoying of a nag MJ was, Peter Parker was most irritating. He no longer was the aww-shucks down-to-earth guy we rooted for. Here he became the Spiderjerk. I’m not even talking about the time when he donned a black costume and became a kind of Mister Hyde, which was supposed to un-pent his darker sides but I don’t remember his dark sides as being a philanderer nor as someone who likes to dance like a wacko (what a riot to watch, that one). He was a jerk from the beginning of the film. He let his popularity get way over his head, comforting MJ in all the wrong ways when she looked down. He kissed Gwen Stacy in front of MJ and when MJ complained he was like “Gwen is just a classmate! You know it’s you I love!” How does that work, moron?

I should probably not even start enumerating the plot holes at the risk of writing a novel, so I will mention just one (but a major one). Halfway in the movie, regaining his memory, Green Goblin Jr. ambushed MJ in her house, and the scene transitioned as we see him threatening MJ. The next scene MJ told Peter that she’s breaking up with him because she was seeing another guy. While she was going away, Goblin, revealing that the conversation was conspired, said good job to an angry MJ. Then Spidey, who didn’t know that Goblin regained memory, had lunch with Goblin where Goblin “confessed” that he was the man MJ was seeing. What happens next? Spidey ambushed Goblin in his mansion, saying he knows his schemes and his being Green Goblin again. I must’ve missed something, but how did Spidey know? And what did Goblin blackmail MJ with again?

But you know what, I’m gonna go ahead and say you should watch this film simply because I’ve never seen one as intentionally funny as this. If the plot holes, the hammy dialogues, the superficialities (parting hair downwards a sign of angst?!), and the singing and dancing did not crack you up, the scene where Spidey leaped across a CGI American flag would! Go get ‘em American tiger!

EDIT: I forgot the part about the fight scenes. Sandman’s and Goblin’s were good, but Venom’s sucked. The only thing that ever happened whenever Spidey was battling Venom was Spidey getting stuck with goo. Venom’s tongue never appeared.

Visions

I’ll tell you why nerds like me want you to give science fiction a chance. It’s true that we are obsessed with seeing epic battles comprised of spaceships, laser guns and lightsabers. It’s true that we geek out when we see what technological marvels we may have in the future. It’s true for some of us that we drool when we see women wearing body-hugging spacesuits. Yes, we like all those very much, but they’re not enough reasons for us to endure as fans of sci-fi. We endure because of sci-fi’s visions. You see, many sci fis create worlds that, while having their own rules, maintain semblances to our real world. Within such premises, then, sci fis challenge us to think of how our world may become like their worlds. They then ask us if we can do something to either ensure or prevent such thing from happening; and should we have to live in a world like theirs, they guide us on how we can survive.

In short, sci fis compel us to examine our culture’s pros and cons.

Let me use Wall-E as an example. If you look at the trailer and you believe that it’s a tale of a lonely robot trying to find the meaning of its existence in an abandoned earth, you’re only half-right. True, those kind of stories can be moving, and they can make Wall-E a very pleasing movie. And I’ll say it now: Wall-E is a crowd-pleaser because of its special effects and its choreography – they are attributes that all Pixar movies share.

But when you sit down and think about what happens in the movie – and like I said, the titular robot’s solitary living is only half the movie’s story – you will realize just how breathtakingly intelligent it is. That is so, because Wall-E is a Cliffs Notes of the greatest sci fi stories, in that it tackles all their weighty topics. It cautions us not to become too hedonistic lest we create a negative utopia (as can be read in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World). It warns us not to watch too much tv lest we become too detached from reality (that would be from Ray Bradbudy’s Fahrenheit 451). It urges us not to become too dependent on technology lest we become a bunch of lazy and unthinking individuals (see Jack Williamson’s With Folded Hands). It reminds us not to be too reliant on robots because they can be stubborn and they may harm us when we change our minds (as made known in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 Space Odyssey). It urges us to preserve our environment, or else we may have to desert our planet. Finally, it advices us to maintain our loving and compassionate ways, because these qualities are what really bring the good in us, and that as long as we have them our world can be saved.

That Wall-E encompasses this many subject matter makes it a movie that everyone – children and adults alike – must see. We, sci fi fans, couldn’t be happier in knowing that the things we read about are coming through in a movie as respectable as this.

A Dark Victory

It’s funny, but I’ve been receiving too many instant messages about The Dark Knight. I don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s like my friends are seeing me as Batman’s fiancé and they’re telling me if they like him. See, he just made another movie, and many told me it is a heck of a good one. This guy even asked me to review it. And then a girl told me “Mamma Mia can kick Batman’s gay ass anytime”. Huh! If Mamma Mia were to do that, it had to be preceded by an elaborate musical that juxtaposes ABBA with ass-kicking. Good. Luck.

So, the review… nope, that’s not coming along well at all. I’m sure you’ve had this feeling of being so impressed by a movie that you could never write coherently about it. Well, that’s just what I had gone through after seeing The Dark Knight twice. I even told another friend (I do seem to talk about my friends a great deal today, noh?) to watch The Dark Knight thrice, and then to buy its bootlegged DVD, and then its original DVD, and then its original DVD with extended cuts. Yeah, as it is, I’m already having a frustrating time quelling this overenthusiastic voice that I’m using now.

Screw reviews! You want those? Go to Rottentomatoes and go read the reviews validating your own opinions of The Dark Knight. I’m assuming you’ve seen it. What, you haven’t?! Then what are you doing here? Go see it! Go see it if that’s the last thing you do for this year, and then go right ahead and bug me with what you think of it!

I wasn’t a fan of Batman Begins. Sure, for a Batman movie it was more mature and more elaborate than all others before it, but to me it wasn’t as complete a tale as the greatest Batman comics. I couldn’t ignore Ra’s Al Ghul’s lack of character development, or Jim Gordon’s lack of role, or Katie Holmes lack of acting skills. And though I was uncontrollably excited about seeing The Dark Knight, I had doubts. I was expecting it to be passably entertaining (like Iron Man) but not memorable like Pan’s Labyrinth, which is the most recent movie I couldn’t stop raving about (and that one’s from two years ago).

But The Dark Knight? I love it so much I’m batty about it (harhar). I’m not even going to write a gushy paragraph about the brilliance of its actors, or say “this movie is so gritty and atmospheric and has such a fitting ambience and OMG the batpod! This is not just a comic book movie, but also a crime movie!” Everyone is saying these, and these are all true. And, though they can make The Dark Knight a winner, they do not make The Dark Knight a winner to me. No, what makes The Dark Knight a winner to me is with how complete it feels despite having so many plots and subplots, and how fitting the depiction of its characters are. Moreover, it wants you to think. It doesn’t romanticize, and it has a lot more going on than kung-fu and high-tech doohickey; just like in Batman comics.

For a start, you can talk about Batman, Joker, Commissioner Gordon, Alfred Pennyworth and Harvey Dent. You can talk about their personality and their psychology. You can discuss on why they believe in what they believe in, and then from their traits, ponder on what truly makes someone a hero. Is Batman a hero, or just a psycho? Will there be a Joker without a Batman? Who are the Harvey Dents of our society?

It’s like one of my friends says: you can write an academic paper from The Dark Knight’s various plots, characters, and themes. And THAT is how you make a superhero movie (or is it “movie based on comic books”, or “movie adaptation of a graphic novel”?). I’m not even going to let namby-pamby statements like “Incredible Hulk is great because it’s a fun, enjoyable, breezy-wheezy, safe, unaggressive and boom-pow-wanky ride” justify the existence of a superhero movie anymore, when we now have The Dark Knight as proof that superhero movies can have a brain and a heart.

Batman

I’m weary of the excess of movies based on comics, but I want to see The Dark Knight. I’m so stoked about The Dark Knight, I’m avoiding from watching its trailer again, because everytime I do so I cry, “can’t July come any sooner!” I’m not young, and wishing time to fast forward isn’t good for my well-being. 

Still I wish I could timewarp to July and then watch this movie and then timewarp back to June and then resume living this day (June 25, 2008) as a normal but a happier guy. Too bad no such technology exists. Fine, then, maybe Christopher Nolan would be so kind as to grant me an exclusive screening in a room for me alone, or maybe accompanied by a bunch of supermodels dressed up as Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Huntress, Oracle, Batgirl, Renee Montoya, and Harley Quinn. 

Don’t be surprised if I sound like I’m more than just acquainted with the Batman universe: of all superheroes, Batman is my favorite, and I have long been collecting his graphic novels. I like Batman not because he is always likeable — hey, he’s quite the jerk sometimes; I like him because stories about him or his city are very somber, film-noir-like, and psychological. And I dig that kind of crap. 

So what about The Dark Knight gets me excited? Look at the characters: Harvey Dent, Joker, Batman/Bruce Wayne, and Commissioner Gordon. Now imagine all the possibilities! Yes, Bruce and Gordon appear in all Batman stories anyway. But, Harvey Dent and Joker, in the same movie, but only one is the main antagonist, while the other slowly becomes one? ZOMGZ! Did you know that some of the finest stories in Batman involve these two psychos? So, yeah, I want to see how this film is gonna depict Harvey Dent’s fall from grace. And I’m raring to see Heath Ledger’s final role, as Batman’s insane arch-nemesis. 

But since I can only pine, you know what I’ll do? Reread the hell out of the finest Batman comics about Joker. You can do that too, so that when you see the movie, you can throw fits everytime the movie diverged from the source materials! And then you can kick the chair in front of you until the security locks you up in Arkham. 

And here’s where I tell you what Joker stories to read.

First, it’s Batman: The Killing Joke. It’s written by Alan Moore, the same guy who did V for Vendetta and Watchmen. You have always known Joker as that psycho clown who kills without remorse, right? Well, here, you’ll read about why Joker is like that. It shows you his past – how he ended up being Joker - and it also shows you another of his plot to terrorize Gotham, this time by trying to make Gotham’s most righteous person lose his mind. It’s a horrifying tale, and it’s not meant for kids, but it triumphs because it makes you feel sorry for Joker despite how despicable he is. 

But if you can, don’t buy The Killing Joke. What you need is to buy DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, because it compiles, uh, DC Universe stories written by Alan Moore. The Killing Joke is in there, plus you’ll get to read some of the finest Superman, Green Lantern, and Swamp Thing short stories too. So it’s worth it.

When you’re done with The Killing Joke, you can buy Ed Brubaker’s Batman: The Man Who Laughs. This is a very fitting companion to The Killing Joke. Taking place after The Killing Joke’s past and before The Killing Joke’s present, The Man Who Laughs retells Batman’s first encounter with Joker, about how Joker began to change everything in Gotham City. My copy also has a nice episode about Batman and the very first Green Lantern, and it juxtaposes Gotham’s past and present very well. 

And when you’ve finished reading the two, then keep rereading and rereading them until the only thing you have in your mind is Joker’s nasty smile. And then, start laughing like a loon.

My Cherie Armor

I wasn’t thrilled by Iron Man’s movie trailers. Although the 3d-preened armor was attractive, scenes of American soldiers being self-congratulatory while at Afghanistan, of Iron Man flying with two F15’s (?), and of Tony Stark - the guy who wears the Iron Man costume – fooling around with some chicks, weren’t. Oh, great, another American Flag-waving flick! I bet the world can’t wait for more! So, I went to see Iron Man just to mock it, much prepared to curmudgeon it at lengths. 

And what do we get here now? Almost no nitpicking, and my ass being Repulsor-blasted.

Who cares about "official posters" when it looks so much cooler inverted?

I’m not saying that Iron Man is perfect. It has two flaws (okay, so much for the "no nitpicking"). Firstly, this movie is just like the part 1 of every superhero movies. Secondly, the antagonists lacked depth, and were unimaginative, stereotypical and slightly unbelievable - take the scene when the main villain donned an armored suit similar to Tony Stark’s. I wonder how he could’ve learned to use this complex machinery in a matter of seconds, when Tony needed few days. This, when the movie had established that Tony was a better engineer than everyone else.

So, since I’ve laid down that the movie was formulaic and had shallow villains, what made it a success? In a word: details. Details like, despite the idiotic trailer, the movie was mostly neutral with regards to militarism. Details like the absence of cheap one-liners, maudlin yearbook quotes and corny romances. And - this one’s most significant - details like the steady transformation of Tony Starks, from a hedonist who only cared about the limelight, to a hedonist who, deep inside, believed he’s destined for greater things. In the film’s beginning, he was a detestable war-mongering head of an arms industry. But after being held hostage by terrorists, who were armed by the very weapon he manufactured, he changed from someone who basked in the arms industry to someone who renounced it. 

And I bought into it, all thanks to Robert Junkie Jr, who played Tony Starks. Most people only remember Robert’s tabloid drama. They forget that he’s a great actor. Everytime Robert laughs or hoots or screams or wisecracks, I’d completely believe that this is how Tony would react on certain situations. He also seemed thoroughly enjoying his role. Tony was very well-developed, especially since he wasn’t portrayed as flawless. Even as he donned the Iron Man suit, he’d still constantly showed signs of immaturity, like how he would screw up in using his technologies, and how he would do arbitrary things that bewildered everyone. 

There were loads of fan-services tossed in, and nods to what direction the sequel may take.  I hear that they intended to make this a trilogy, which may include Tony’s battle with alcoholism, and the appearance of War Machine. Personally, I’m excited about them, and that’s a good thing. But what’s more fantastic is that at no point did I expect to enjoy Iron Man. And I did enjoy it, enough, that I was actually delighted to say “more, please!”

They have to stop putting scenes after the end credits though. I swear, that gimmick is getting old and it’s just a cheap ploy to have audiences stay while names of people they’d never remember keep rolling on the screen.

Babe Watching

As much as I love my brother, I do find it annoying that he has to be so elitist and snobbish when deciding what DVD to watch. 

My brother would say, "What say you we see Natural Born Killers tonight? No? How about American Psycho? A Clockwork Orange? Raging Bull? Scarface? Goodfellas? Fight Club (yet again)? Babel? Do The Right Thing? 2001 Space Odyssey?"

I have concurred with him often, though sometimes the more apt phrase is "surrendered to him". I’d prepare myself to talk to him for hours about what we feel for the film. Most of the time, he’d just rant, about how dystopian the world is now, and about how movies today are not as good as they were in the past. And then he’d look the films up in wikipedia and peruse their reviews from rottentomatoes, while I’d nag, "Why are you so obsessed with what these high brow film critics think of these films? Are you unable to evaluate them on their own terms, and without knowing what others think?!" And then we’d have a few bouts of shouting. And then we’d be at peace. And then we’d watch another movie, and everything would repeat.

Perhaps I was in a sour mood last week when I lashed out:

"Dammit bro! Just why do we always have to see these award-winning, controversy-stirring movies all the hot-damned time? Can’t we watch cartoons for once?"

He shrugged, but that didn’t stop me from watching Babe while he was sleeping. If you don’t know what Babe is about, you can read the synopsis here as I’m too lazy to rewrite it in my own words.

I first saw Babe when I was 11 years old. Although I enjoyed it then, I only had recollections of how cute it was. So, aside from needing a respite from my brother’s obsession to heavy ass movies, I watched it to see if I’d still like it.

To my surprise, I liked it more than before. Reason is that Babe is populated with animals that actually brim with personalities. They’re not simple wisecracking fodder Dreamworks is so wont to use. They have so much character, that they even have individual ways of speech. It’s hard to believe that, with lolcat being too popular now, people used to bother making anthropomorphic animals sound smarter and less predictable. And maybe this is irony, but they’re a lot cuter when they speak like humans, and not like bulk e-mails.

Family movies of now are pretty bad. Instead of being heartfelt, they feel like soulless corporate drivels that only care for box office figures, and have forgotten what it’s like to have an imagination. Heard of Madagascar? Shark’s Tale? Meet the Robinsons? Home in the Range? Back when they were just out, everyone was all suckered to them because everyone just had to, I dunno, freaking guzzle every crap that looks trendy. Who can tell me now, with a straight face, that they remember these movies’ stories and messages? And yet, we keep seeing kid flicks that aren’t about telling a good story, but are more concerned with shiny ass CGs. Or artsy fartsy gothic stupidities. Or loquacious Zebras. Or longwinded fight scenes. Or selling Linkin’ Park soundtracks, Burger King toys, PS2 videogames, and ring tones.

I urge you to see Babe, and get some Kleenex so you can weep for the cartoons they play now.