Another Victim to Hollywood Remakes

Why can't Hollywood just leave a brilliant movie alone? Every nice movies that is not out from Hollywood will be remake by them, often soup up with bigger budgets, bigger effects and over the top actions. And ever so often it failed to recreate the magic from the original due to the remaking. We have Ring from Japan, Infernal Affairs from Hong Kong (otherwise known as The Departed) and Funny Games from Austria. Of the three mentioned, only The Departed made it winning the Oscar for Best Picture.

Well, the latest victim of Hollywood remakes is Swedish movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is a film adaptation of the award-winning crime novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson. I have the liberty to watch the Swedish version of the film and I say it is a really compelling movie. So when I found out in the news that Mr Hollywood is going to remake it, with current Mr Bond, Daniel Criag, as Mikael Blomkivst, I was quite annoyed. Another good movie ruined by Hollywood.

Luckily, the original movie was shown in the theatres here last month. So I guess the audience can compare the two styles. I wonder who will play Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood remake as Noomi Rapace gave a powerful performance in the original.

P.S. I just found out that Rooney Mara would play the role of Lisbeth Salander. Yeah, I have the same reaction as you. Rooney who? The only Rooney I know is playing football for Manchester United. :P

P.S.2: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, like the book, is part of a trilogy. The second and third films, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, are out and I have yet to find time to watch them.

Is This All A Dream?

Send my car for servicing over the weekend and went to catch the movie Inception rather than waiting aimlessly.

Man, the movie is really incredible. It's a breath of fresh air from all the sequels, remakes and slasher movies that populate the cinemas these days.

I will not dwell into talking what is the story about, as google will do that. Christopher Nolan truly defines himself as THE great director of recent times. There was never a bored moment in the film and explanations are clear and well integrated in the storyline, exploring the realm of sub-conscious manipulation.

The whole experience will be even better if I have not went to read the spoiler for the movie earlier. It kinda reduces the gloss, as I knew what is going to happen next :( Nevertheless, I believe Inception will have the same impact like how The Matrix did minus the cheem theories and philosophies.

Movie Tempt Me To Get A Macbook

Just finish watching a Swedish movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo, based on the best selling book of the same name. Quite a nice suspense thriller. Beat the typical slash and hack plotless movies coming out of Hollywood these days.

Anyway, Apple should pay the movie producers for advertising their Macbook Pro in the movie. Every character in the movie owns a Macbook Pro and the movie has many scenes of using the notebook, from editing photos, surfing the net to writing a document and even for hacking purpose. Really makes you want to go out and get one yourself. This is not help by the fact that my sister-in-law just bought a macbook and the constant problems I have with my PC.

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Battle of Two I.Man

It's a battle of two I.Man at the cinemas this week. Ip Man vs Iron Man. Both are sequels somemore!


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Ip Man 2

Saw the poster for Ip Man 2 at the bus stop advert board so when to google about it. Found the teaser on youtube. Donnie Yen gonna spar with Sammo Hung, re-acting their fight scene in SPL. Can't wait for its release

Pixar - Burn-E

Pixar has did it again. Making a short film off one of their animation, Wall-E. This film depicts a particular day for another robot, whose job get interrupted by Wall-E. You will appreciate the scenes in this short film more if you have watch the original animation

Dual Sound For Hong Kong Serials?

We can watch French movie in French.
We can watch Korean show in Korean
We can watch Japanese serial in Japanese

So why can't we watch HK drama in Cantonese??? I don't see there are any difference between the above and Cantonese. They are all foreign language. Ok, someone points out that Cantonese is dialect. Characters in Jack Neo movies spew Hokkiens, Teochews and Singlish. Those are dialects so why can't the same rules apply for HK movies?

Many of the jokes in HK movies or dramas are better appreciated when spoken in their original language. The favor is lost when translated to Chinese. Furthermore, sometimes the dubbing is plain horrible where the Chinese dubbed voice totally mismatched the artistes looks.

If it is a must to have Chinese, can they at least make it dual sound? The serial can still be shown in Chinese but viewers can switch to the Canto language audio channel if they want to. They have been doing that for the Japanese and Koreans dramas, so why not for the HK ones as well? Is this too much to ask for?

Shane Acker's 9

Came across the movie trailer for 9 while surfing through Apple Quicktime Movie Trailers site. This movie is based on the short animation film by Shane Acker, who got an Oscar nomination for it (How the hell did he not won is a mystery to me). The short animation though lack of any dialogue has a better storyline than most of the movies showing at the theaters today. Gosh... Shane Acker is pure genius and only another genius like Tim Burton is daring to make the short film into a full length feature one. This is a must watch for me. A pure masterclass in story telling

9 Movie Trailer

Shane Acker's original short animation

Terminator Salvation

I watch Terminator Salvation last night and contrary to my colleague's comment that it is not nice, I find the latest installment of the Terminator series quite entertaining. One reason maybe is that I am a big fan of the Terminator Series and for years, the fans like me have been told in the previous installments of how the bleak the future will be. Finally, we get to see the future now.

For starters, the film is littered with references of the previous 3 films, from the famous line by Arnold Schwarzenegger to things seen in the previous films. Even the soundtrack from T2 is not spared. Fans like me will have a field day spotting the various Easter eggs in the movie. As for the film itself, rather than ignoring the events in the previous 3 movies, it linked up the various elements so that everything makes sense.

Action sequence is exciting and the storyline is good enough to keep me glue without making me move my finger to the skip button. Only complain is that I failed to catch it when it was showing in the theatres (all thanks to my colleague comment). Overall, it's a nice movie and i will definitely be watching out for the DVD release.

P.S. Saw the news that the U.S. is setting up a new command for their nuclear forces. Rise of Skynet?

吓到笑, Where Got Ghost Trailer

Jack Neo is at it again in promoting his latest project and to switch your mobile to silent mode when at the movies.

Here's the actual trailer. ROFL when I saw the "Ah Hui ah, Li Jia Bao Buay" scene.

Robots and 80s Action Star

Managed to squeeze some time to watch some movies over the past two weeks, with the help from the fast forward button. One of them is Transformer 2: Rise of the Fallen and the other is Death Wish series by Charles Bronson. Ok, I heard people say Charles who? He is an 80's action star; I will explain more of that later.

Let talk about Transformers 2 first. After all the big explosion and fancy action sequence shown on its trailer, I find the movie itself quite disappointing. The plot seems like hastily written and many of the characters or robots in this case seems to be there for cameo purpose. In fact, there are so many robots fighting for screen space that the monstrous Devestator in the cartoon series is reduced to being a gigantic vacuum cleaner. And the two Autobots twins are damn irritating. Can some Decepticons just blast them and their creators off the show? In summary, I only like three scenes in the entire movie
1. Optimus Prime taking on three Decepticons, including Megatron. Cool!
2. Optimus Prime clean house after getting an upgrade from Jetfire. Awesome!
3. Megan Fox running in the desert sands. Woohoo!

Run Megan Run!

For Charles Bronson, he is a famous 80s action star. I grew up watching his movies. The Death wish movie series is one of his more famous works. More details of this late actor can be found here. As to why I pick up his movie, it is started by my father. Death Wish 2 is showing on cable TV but the timing overlapped his karaoke session. So he ask if I can record the movie for him, which I get my friend, Google, to find all the 5 movies in the series for me.

Watching the movies bring back the memories. The supposingly hardcore action sequence then looks funny compared to those found in the movies these days. It really shows how movies have evolved over the years. As movie audience starts to mature, demands for action sequence and scenes to be more realistic is getting higher and higher.

幸福万岁 - Love Matters

Jack Neo's upcoming movie for the new year. Will look forward to it. :)

V for Vendetta

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people" V in V for Vendetta 2005)

Finally found the time to watch the movie "V for Vendetta" without skipping through it. There is a sense of familiarity from the movie. The movie is about a totalitarian government in control of England. Everything that deem as a threat to the government power are either removed or ban. Everyone is expected to be absolute obedient to what the government breaches. And fear is a tool the government use to keep the citizens in line. (Hmm... sounds familiar)

Truth Be Told <<真相>>

Just watch this local production on Central. Saw the interview on TV on 早安您好 last year and wonder when and where it would be shown. I didn't even know it was shown in theaters somewhere in October last year. As usual, since it is a local production (not from a certain Jack), it lasted barely for a month in the theaters.

It was a pretty nice show fill with mystery. Another nice aspect of the show is it is film in the old Bukit Ho Swee estate, where many elderly folks stay in 1 or 2 rooms flats. It tells the social issue of how our society, like the female lead, in the pursuit of fame and wealth, have forgotten and left behind the older generations. To us, these old folks are just a bunch of smelly, dirty and unwanted part of our society that is best to be left alone. The dark corridors really reflect the elderly folks' loneliness as they walk down the final part of their life journey. A really nice show I must say.

P.S. Kudos to Louis Lim for his role of a civil servant. Really spot on in his
portrayal.

Review

Teaser


Trailer