兄弟

The song and the writing of the inverted "兄弟" first attracted me to this show.
Unfortunately, the show fails to inspire beyond that. Good acting is plagued by a poor timing of plot and editing. The characters also lacked depth.

Gandhi (1982)

Gandhi is a good feature to watch to understand the history of India and Pakistan and how they rose to independence. A wonderful performance by Ben Kingsley in his role as Gandhi. He really made me feel I was watching Gandhi in person. The professionalism is unquestioned, with Sir Ben potraying a healthily fleshed young lawyer to the aged and stick thin Gandhi. A quick search at Wikipedia revealed that there was some controversy over the depiction of events that did not occur in a certain manner, but there is general consensus that the film was fairly accurate. I look forward to watching more similar inspirational works.
If Man could be like this, the world could be saved.

A very good quote from Gandhi:

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

True Women For Sale《我不卖身，我卖子宫》

The story focuses mainly on two women:

1) Lai Chung Chung, drug-addict HK prostitute who rears chickens at her rooftop and is desperately trying to earn money to fix her blackish, stained teeth.
2) Lin Fa Wong, pregnant with twins and toddler daughter in tow Mainland Chinese mother who marries a HK ah pek who dies early in the show in a freak construction site accident.

There are moments of reality and comedy intertwined, like when Chung Chung is feigning her moans with her obese customer desperately thrusting her; she appears more conscious of her rotting teeth rather than her awkward job, and covers her mouth as she moans routinely and tries to observe the weather outside at the same time. Talk about multi-tasking. In another scene, Chung Chung is in the toilet smoking a fag while chatting with her prostitute friend in the adjacent room, who is also in the midst of faking it for her obese customer. She is later told off by the man that "could she please focus more?!", whereupon she returns her attention and groans with great gusto.

As I do not know Cantonese, I could hardly figure out what Lin is saying. However, the most poignant point in time in the feature for her would be when she meets her 同乡. Originally congratulating each other for making it out to HK and being the envy of all their town mates, Lin suddenly realises that her towns person had made it out through selling her body as a prostitute. Lin blares out at her in disgust, while the latter informs her at least she is just selling her body, while Lin is selling her womb. Hence the title of the story. At this moment the viewer reverses back to a moment in time when Lin insults Chung Chung for being a prostitute. So who's cheaper?

Many-times crowned Best Actor Anthony Wong stars as insurance agent Lau Fu Yi who does a vivid breakdown of a potential customer's networth everytime he spots one. Kudos to the director for doing the computer printout of the breakdown beside a still snapshot of the "victims".

Overall, a very good docu-drama. Now if only I understood Cantonese, I would enjoy it even more.

Wushu 武术 (2008)

A typical plot with not-so-typical martial arts or wushu as you will have it. Beautiful choreography.

游龙戏凤

If love was as easy and as perfect in real life, there wouldn't be weeping souls.

Andy Lau stars as the typical rich man and Shu Qi as the typical poor woman. They fall in love, the affluence causes distress to their relationship, they part and patch back. And then its happily ever after.

Life is not like that. Sadly. There are many realities to face. Which is why such shows sell even though the formula is as ancient as Coke. Escapism is the order of the day.

Inkheart

It would be a nightmare if books really came true on you. Especially the horror books like Stephen King or Edgar Allen Poe. The latter had me sleepless for a week or so after I read it.

Inkheart's plot functions on the premise that once a Silvertongue, human beings who are gifted with a tongue that can bring fiction into reality, reads a story, the characters are brought into your living room. However, someone who happens to be around the Silvertongue gets swapped into fantasyland for exchange. The main protagonist's wife was sucked into a book in this manner. I won't say anything about the ending because its the atypical happily-ever-after, but if you are not a fiction reader or head-in-the-clouds person, avoid this movie at all costs.

What I liked about the story most was the stuttering Silvertongue character who's stutter caused the character he read out to suffer from all sorts of funny defects, like having the print still on their face, or being voiceless, or like friendly Minotaurs etc.

A great movie to watch with the kids with an imagination.

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Definitely one of Tim Burton's darkest works.

Benjamin Baker (alias Sweeney Todd) was a barber living a happy life with his beautiful wife Lucy and newborn child at Fleet Street, London. One day, the local judge Turpin chances upon the beauty of his paramour and gets someone to bludgeon Todd on the head. Todd is later sent to the gallows presumably but manages to return after many years, albeit a changed person. Dark, brooding and vengeful, he is a shadow of his former self. Mrs Lovett, a long time admirer of Todd's, takes him in. The duo make an eerie pair, with Todd slicing his customer's necks and sending them down a trapdoor to Lovett while she makes meat pies out of them. Their logic is that it is a long awaited reversal of the rich feeding on the poor vice versa.

A young sailor Anthony whom shares the voyage with Todd chances upon the lovely but forlorn Joanna (Todd's daughter, now adopted child of the lecherous judge) and swears to steal her. A newcomer in London, he seeks the help of Todd in smuggling Joanna away. Turpin, on the other hand, plans to make the young maiden his wife. Todd lures Turpin over on the pretext of helping him rein in the elopement but swiftly gets his revenge. The horror of all horrors is when he realises that in the process of silencing witnesses, he had killed the deranged Lucy, whom had been reduced to a beggar's state and was unrecognisable to Todd. Greatly aggrieved that Mrs Lovett had deceived him and indirectly caused his wife's death, Todd serenades her and then shoves her into a furnace. Kneeling and hugging Lucy's corpse, his throat is then sliced in turn by their helping boy, who had sworn to protect Mrs Lovett.

The viewer is given slight relief as Todd nearly but fails to silence Joanna, whom he had seen but failed to recognise just prior to his death. Joanna rightly tells her admirer that the "nightmare never ends", that she does not believe that after they elope it will be happily ever after. Joanna also does not see Todd killing her mother as she had hidden herself inside a chest inside Todd's barber shop.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Tim Burton as a child for him to favour such works. Sweeney Todd is a macabre work that makes slicing throats look like a work of art. Generous amounts of blood are squirted, but luckily for me the blood looks fake on my screen, so the gruesomeness is reduced.

Based on a Broadway musical hit, the entire movie is full of snatches of singing. It may move a bit slowly for those who prefer fast action.

Jumper

A very good show, with no sex, little violence (which by today's standards is like none) and no gore. Fantastic storyline and good timing keeps you riveted to the big screen. Add a cute guy as the protagonist and we're all blown away.

I Am Legend

Watching this film in the light of the spread of the H1N1 virus into Singapore is especially poignant. The horrors of mankind is inevitably created by mankind. We have long been tinkering with Mother Nature, using bacteria as hosts to modify the genes of the food we eat, the vaccines we take. Perhaps the greatest nightmare yet is that one day, just like in I Am Legend, all these "cleverness" will overtake and destroy us in a major nightmare.

Ever since the Mad Cow Disease reared its ugly head, we had the H5N1 bird flu, the HMFD for pigs... one fine day, the karmic course will run its due and we, as sowers, will reap the bitter seeds of destruction.

I must say though, that Will Smith's excellent acting really made me turn inward and suffer with him. The sheer desperation and pain of it all, thinking and believing that you were the last person you were ever going to see again until you die (sans the crazy infected ones) was enough to drive anyone insane. This poignancy was well brought out in the scene where the protagonist dragged his injured body to the videostore and begged the mannequin to say "Hello" to him. The sadness and fear/horror was very real for me.

Digress, digress.