From the producers of Calamari Wrestler comes this postmodern journey into the psychic life of... Executive Koala. Cute on the outside, but does he have a split personality? Is he a brutal killer, an innocent victim, an overworked salary man trying to get by, or just a man in a suit? Watch it now at crunchyroll.com.
OK, this film is totally whack, I mean beyond Machine Girl whack. But it's actually kinda spellbinding. Whereas Machine Girl was just buckets of fake blood and a pretty limp storyline, this might just be one of the lost masterpieces of indie cinema left to be discovered. The best part has got to be when the courtroom dream sequence is reduced to a musical. I think this undoes all the pain that was caused in my brain from having to witness Richard Gere in Chicago. The bit about inserting nice memories was also a nice nod to Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, and Paprika. Part Donnie Darko, but also thoroughly existential. The kungfu scene at the end kicks Keanu Reeves' butt - is it OK if a girl gets completely slammed against a wall by a koala bear? The completely absurd ending would have left Brecht in utter awe. Nice one... definitely to be watched completely wired on Coke and gummi bears.
Beyond John Edwards' and Georgia's respective meltdowns, it's been a slow month for shocking news, but here's an alarming comparison of anatomies: Hawaii Five-O Part II vs. Small Guy Trying To Look Big
Nice V-neck tan line Obama...
Also, all the hype about Dark Knight was mostly hype. Great effects, but it wasn't dark enough and what was up with the Darth Vadar/Batman voice over? But everyone in that film has been cursed: Edison Chen had all of his porn stolen from his pink Macbook and uploaded onto the internet by mysterious "Kira", Heath Ledger OD'ed (who, by the way and with respect to the dead, does not deserve an Oscar - crazy is easy to play, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon was much more impressive), and then Morgan Freeman got into a car accident. But what gives - Edison Chen is so completely STILL in Dark Knight. When Morgan Freeman gets to Hong Kong (what a fantastic waste of money for a great shot of Batman standing above Central) he is greeted as he enters the skyscraper by... yes, Edison, speaking perfect English (obviously) while everyone else is speaking Cantonese and "Lau" inexplicably speaks Mandarin (inexplicable because Lau is a Cantonese surname; Liu is the Mandarin equivalent - maybe it is a nod to Andrew Lau or Andy Lau?). Anyway, so I checked up online and some reports say he was supposed to be a cop, others insist that Chin Han replaced him as Lau, which would make him the bad guy instead of a cop. Anyway, all's well that ends well. I knew he'd be able to pull a Hugh Grant on this one. Gillian too. Fools, people in sex scandals sometimes even become president. I wonder what John Edwards will be doing next year...
Hope every one had an auspicious one. OK, no time to blog at the moment but highlights include Dark Knight and Man on Wire as far as movies about men in black hanging out on the top of buildings (more on Batman later). In the middle of Olympic-mania, Obama's Hawaiian vacation, McCain's bitch slap from Paris Hilton, and Russia and Georgia on the brink of war (no wonder Putin looked so unhappy at the Olympic opening ceremonies), the best absurdist news story of the week has got to be this one reported on BBC about an over-enthusiastic man in a Welsh town called Pontypridd who had his stereo and music seized and destroyed after he refused to stop blasting Cher and U2. Here's a little vintage Cher to redefine Patriot Act:
OK, go away for a couple of weeks and the biggest wedding since Charles and Diana happens under your radar - Tony Leung and Carina Lau (wedding announced some time a couple of weeks ago) finally wed after dating for almost 20 years. Not big for most people but FREAKING big for HK, China, and Taiwan and that's over a billion people + so important for 1/4 people in the world. Wong Kar-wai and William Cheung 'curated' the wedding (whatever that means). ON the topic of The Talent Mr Leung, began watching pirated RED CLIFF DVD in Toronto, but it was, as the Pacific Mall salesgirl told me, only 'camcorder quality' so not even '90% DVD quality'. I like old school hand held pirated DVDs because it preserves the sense of the cinema as a public space - e.g., you can hear everyone laughing their heads off when the actors say something ridiculous that will just appear very 'Oriental' in the official DVD (e.g., any glossy but lame-o Zhang Yimou martial arts film). It's good to have a clued-in public present to judge how silly things are (I think I've been reading too much Gramsci this week, but on this see also Laikwan Pang). Back to John Woo's The Battle of Red Cliff: in one scene, Tony Leung's and Takeshi Kaneshiro's characters challenge each other to sing but then have a gu-zheng-off instead (contest on flat stringed instrument... last seen in Kung Fu Hustle) and everyone in the audience got the giggles. Sadly never made it to the end so can't report on film but watched it with my teenaged cousin who kept substituting everyone with Lord of the Rings characters (hee hee). But hey, it's John Woo so we can count on trustworthy themes - brotherhood, blood, and diagonal shooting (hmm, that will be more difficult with axes and cross bows but I'm sure he'll manage).
ps. here's a follow up to previous blog courtesy of Vanity Fair featuring John and Cindy McCain (can you take someone named Cindy seriously?):
Don't know why but all I seem to be blogging about these days is the Golden Child (on second thought, Coming to America is a more apposite Eddie Murphy reference here). I definitely want Obama to become president because he wins on fun factor (remember when Jesse Jackson was prompted to say "I want to cut his nuts off"? -- that's funny politics). McCain is a little too Manchurian Candidate to be a laugh. Thing is, you couldn't find a joke funny enough to make about him like the one The New Yorker made about Obama and his wife. OK, so two funny/terrifying things: people who can't take a joke and Michelle on the View. What is up with that show? It should be re-named Desperate Housewives in the Sexless City. Ick. Glad I was never in a sorority. Gross. I guess none of those "loyal" bleeding hearts who love The New Yorker remembered the March 2008 cover from not too long ago or indeed the Radar cover from back in November 2007 when people thought that Giuliani (The Man Who Forgot To Run For President-Giuliani or was it The Man Who Got Too Lazy To Fundraise-Giuliani?) would be the man to challenge Hillary. Yeesch, lighten up people! Have these devoted readers of The New Yorker ever met New Yorkers? Ya gotta love any identity group who would carpet bomb Madonna's car with pebbles and other Central Park debris because she has disgraced their beloved Yankee so appropriatly named A-Rod (OK, this story is admittedly reported from the same Radar of the dubious magazine cover--i.e., can you really trust people who thought Giuliani was The One?).
OK, people who can laugh at what is funny about racial stereotypes should check out Russell Peters' comedy act Outsourced (funny guy living in L.A., he would be Canadian wouldn't he...):
Better than the Hollies song. IMDB reports that the director - Jieho Lee - had to go to Harvard Business School so that his Asian parents would let him become a director. Good thing he persisted. One of the best US films I've seen in a long time. The Wiki entry said that most US critics gave it negative reviews which just goes to prove the continued idiocy of film critics in that country. It is a four part story in which every character is interlinked with the others (think Babel, but much better and without the grotesque bourgeois pomposity of trying to address 'world events' and tick off every global market in the most superficial way). I guess the cinematography is far too beautiful (Brendan Fraser sequence captures the magic of Leon Lai in Fallen Angels and rolls like Clive Owen in WKW's BMW ad, which also features Forest Whitaker) and the plot requires too much thought for an American audience with ADS. Crying shame. Bad reviews make for lily-livered investors and Jieho Lee is a good thing - managed to get one of Sarah Michelle Gellar's best performances since Buffy and Forest Whitaker is heartbreaking as a chump. The Good Doctor - Mark Kermode - was supposed to review it yesterday but ran out of time, pity (however, watch Mark's review of Rambo on Youtube, while you're at it watch his hilarious rant about Tarantino).
Lots since the beginning of May: so first Red Ken gets booted out of office by Conservative goofball Boris Yeltsin Becker Johnson (yes, he does look like the love child of that grotesque orgy), then a rather pathetic may Day parade goes down the streets of London - I counted very few people, lots of young white shirted men stopped in front of Starbucks (unknowingly I think) and gave the good ol' left handed salute. The photo to the left is the guy in yellow who follows at the end of the parade and rolls up the police tape. He is the personification of Post-Socialism. The answer to the question 'What comes after Socialism?' is: the police state. Then a few days later Hillary decides that she's going to go the way of Milosovic and pander to bombing someone for political popularity. The verdict is in, get ready for President McCain (hey, he will be less reactionary than Hillary). Thank god for this item from Kaiju to cheer us all up - Wong Kar-wai has had Yoyo Ma re-score Ashes of Time!!! Oh, yes, and Rain beat Colbert for Time Mag's 100 most influential people, which leads me to ask what the heck has happened to the USofA?!
This clip from Jia Zhangke's Still Life makes up for all the bad movies I've seen this month. Just to set it up: a woman has been searching across China to find her husband to ask for a divorce. She finally finds him and they are talking to each other in this dilapidated tenement block and sharing a piece of candy. What happens next is as close to the sublime as I've seen in film in a very long time.
Had loads of caffeine last night to get hyped up to see the 'super scary' The Orphanage. Super scary as in: What has happened to people's taste?!?! I checked the reviews again this morning to make sure I hadn't imagined them. Still a 4.3/5 star rating and still lots of reviewers going on about how scary and moving it is. Not super and not scary. OK, freaky social worker with bottle lens glasses and Geraldine Chaplin (offspring of legendary Charlie) as a psychic were creepy enough but that had nothing to do with horror, social workers and children of very famous people are just creepy by definition. So I am still left wondering what is the hype all about?! You can't be both a horror film (which is how this film has been pitched by Warner Bros, whose corporate finger prints can be seen all over this movie) AND be a moving fairy tale, that's a very tough combo. And for those of you who didn't see every next scene coming a mile away: you need to spend more time in the cinema!!! This isn't even Guillermo del Toro, but a GdT production (i.e., here's a bunch of consolation money for not winning the Oscar for the truly deserving Pan's Labyrinth, which IS a very moving fairy tale without being a horror film). El Orfanato is essentially a fluffed up Mexican version of Beetlejuice (which I do rate highly) featuring a mini-Donnie Darko without bunny ears or a reworking of the unbearably pretentious The Others by Alejandro Amenábar (which is the original Spanish Beetlejuice). As far as 'we are dead people trapped in an old creaky house with doorknobs that turn in the dark by themselves' scary the ropey old black and white Deborah Kerr vehicle The Innocents (1961) still haunts:
What was scary was getting off the night bus and seeing my neighbor standing there sending off a friend. That's uncanny considering there are millions of people in the city of London. Also ran into friend's parents at the bus stop the other day and they were visiting from New York. Bus stops as portals: next horror film scenario after the mutant pandas and giant penguins stories...
OK, so Easter is a big scam like all other holidays, except we get an unusual number of days off so hooray. The big JC dies so let's eat huge amounts of chocolate bunnies, eggs, marshmallow chicks, etc. and stuff ourselves silly because Christmas was a while ago now: 'whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there will be obscene gorging involved'. Hey pass that body and blood of Christ... Protestants said that Catholics were essentially cannibals because they were so hung up on the whole transubstantiation business. Vampires too in that case.
Anyway, Easter in London this year was full of freak snow storms that melt on contact. It's like fake snow or something. One minute it's a blizzard, next minute it's just another cold, dank, gray English winter day. I think I'm trapped in someone's snowdome... This Easter I went to a baptism which was followed by biblical amounts of drinking and a very nice lamb (of God?). Then read this story about a praying dog bumping up numbers at a Buddhist temple, so now the verdict is in: organised religion is full of freaks from fundamentalists to UFO worshippers (yes, this reminds me that the last time I was in the USofA I saw a 'documentary' on TV about UFOS in the Bible, no you couldn't make that kind of crap up...). We can thank the 'History' Channel for this enlightening programme (official brainwashing machine of the American Right and producers of the equally dubious History of Britain with Simon Schama)...
Oh, on the topic of documentaries and in keeping with all that seasonal redemption yada yada, went to see Rene Vautier's most excellent Afrique 50 (1950) at the Tate Modern Paradise Now film series. The Tate clips were uneven ranging from the poetic sublime (Moholy-Nagy's film The Old Port at Marseilles) and the political sublime (a piece on the S.C.U.M Manifesto) to the outright stupid (both contemporary video artists should be tied up in an auditorium and forced to watch their own self-indulgent crap for 24 continuous hours). But Vautier's terrifyingly prophetic film is still amazing and well worth the watch if you can handle the clip without subtitles, puts Fritz Lang's Metropolis to shame (and that is one of my all time favourite films, I even liked Giorgio Moroder's remake too). OK, not to end Easter on a downer, here's a clip of baby pandas to cheer everyone up (even if I think they are being cloned en masse in Chinese labs, fantastic horror film scenario in the making here and yes, the first two victims of the mad GM panda will be those two giggling girls in the clip)...
It's been a very long couple of weeks and there are many things to report on and nowhere obvious to start so I combined two highlights: Slavoj Zizek's pay-per-view lecture series Ideology Embedded at Birkbeck in London and the Simpsonizer. Well, at least that's what I wanted to do, but for a man who is everywhere all the time, it is strangely hard to find any hi-res photos of him, so you will have to do with this one of me.
Zizek's lectures were nuts as usual, but two memorable quotes include: 1. 'When I'm ready to take questions, I will distribute them'. 2. 'Without 1968, there would have been no Bill Gates'. Highlights included: Analysis of the 'ideology glasses' scene in John Carpenter's They Live; identity vs. representation as demonstrated in the 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' scene in Cabaret; comparison of Joan Baez singing 'Joe Hill' and Terminator 2 and the theme of martyrs and posthumous collective organisation in the line 'what they can never kill went on to organize'; explanation of the dialectic through the birdcage trick in the Prestige; naming La Vita è Bella and Schindler's List as two of the world's all-time worse films (too ignoble to merit links); analysis of Lenin as a good matchmaker in Reds. I'm sure the book will be out soon, the guy writes them like most people eat candies.
Mwahahahahaha... see full scoop here and for info on the real Jeff Ma and Mike Aponte. Not sure who Kate Bosworth gets to play (and yeah, you can ignore Aaron Yoo in the corner on the left, it would have been impossible not to have at least one authentically Asian guy in any random selection of five MIT students). Trailer also suggests that Kevin Spacey's agent still thinks he's an actor and not just the director of dubious stage productions at the Old Vic in London.
p.s. For those of you who are not familiar with Ma & Aponte, they were the MIT nerds who scammed the casinos in Vegas and got caught but now all have stellar professional, non-nerd careers (whoohoohooo, capitalism keeps the world spinning and spinning!).
Ha ha ha, just saw this ridiculous US distribution poster for Teng Hua-tao's most fantastic would-be Wong Kar-wai'ish, would be 'horror' film The Matrimony (Chinese title literally says: 'there are ghost inside my heart' and yes first two US posters on top make the movie look way scarier than it actually is). In spite of all the 'would be's it's a really good film - excellent ending (although you have to be sharp or you'll miss the whole point), Rene Liu is great, and well, I don't know why Leon Lai keeps getting screen time... He makes the ghosts look more alive than the humans. Best Leon Lai casting: Fallen Angels where Wong Kar-wai has him play a totally expressionless hitman. Genius. perfect use of his wooden face. We'll see what the ambitious new Chen Kai-ge film will bring where LL plays an opera master (me, I'm thinking, LL's face covered in what will essentially be expressive stage makeup, kind of reminds me of Tom Cruise 'acting' with a mask on in Vanilla Why, I mean Sky).
It's not really a 'horror' film but part of that distinct Chinese genre of ghost films like Stanley Kwan's Rouge, which would have hugely disappointed any horror fanboy expecting gore. Ditto for the Bing-Bing-a-thon here. On this note also check out Johnnie To's Linger (Chinese title: 'fly away butterfly'). You can watch the un-subtitled original version on Youtube but don't read the synopsis if you don't like spoilers [correction: you could have watched it if you had been fast, it's been removed: here's the trailer link instead]. I can't vouch for Vic Zhou's acting (this is his first feature film after a successful run of Taiwanese soap operas), but he is good eye candy for the run of the movie.
Did I mention this is Johnnie To? I guess you wouldn't expect him to do a simple love story, one of the people would have to be dead right? And there are also motorcycle chases involved. The posters makes Li Bing Bing look dead, but young Vic Zhou actually plays the corpse. It's not bad, a little like a passive aggressive version of Ghost, which is one of my father's favourite film. Hmm, that was possibly THE worse promo for a film anyone has ever made. Ugh, in fact, I think I've convinced myself out of liking the movie with that unforgivable remark... (apologies to Johnnie To).
And I have to say, I think Li Bing Bing wins hands down on this one.
Oh and for all those F4 fans weeping from their temporary hiatus, they have a new album out, I think it's called 'Waiting for You' or waiting for you to make us some more money...
Yikes. I never really liked the beach until I lived in LA. OK, big cliche but what do you expect. The air pollution there makes for the coolest multicoloured, stain glass like sunsets that would make a Nexus 6 cry. But these photos from China that my uncle sent to me confirm why I dislike beaches in general.
OK, penguin news update. Today I can see right into the office and all the posters behind the giant penguin read HAPPY FEET so ermm, the answer to 'is there a sequel?' is 'duh, yes, animated penguins don't go on strike and animation can be outsourced'. Guess the Hollywood writers strike is hitting the studios hard. Well, Lionsgate and Marvel have just made a settlement with the WGA so it looks like we can all rest assured that the RAMBO sequel won't get shelved. Doesn't that just make you feel safer in the world? Apparently Stallone disagrees since he received death threats while making this movie in Myanmar (hmm, like 'stop polluting our eyes with your old, saggy face!'). He was surprised at how bad the standard of living in a conflict area could be: 'I witnessed survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land-mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia but the results of this conflict are more horrific. This is a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams'. Errr, duh... did he think Aung San Suu Kyi was the name of a karaoke bar?
FYI - For any March of the Penguin fanatics, the sequel must be near because there is a BIG ASS penguin in the marketing brainstorming office at Warner Bros across the street from me... creepy. Maybe Morgan Freeman will discover a secret corporate office where some psychopathic serial killer is holding the mother of all penguins... Along Came a Penguin, Danny the Penguin, Kiss the Penguins, SePENGUINen...
Uh oh, this just in: since reporting the above, the blinds have gone down. Be scared! They know we know about the big penguin. This is how every Morgan Freeman thriller begins isn't it? I'll let you know when we get to the running in the rain at night through creepy back alley and abandoned factory buildings chase scene... (hmm, this is also the building with the lame-ass paper recycling bin mentioned in the previous blog - coincidence?).
One of the best and most memorable lines in The Graduate is when Mr. McGuire tells Ben (Dustin Hoffman's character) 'there's a great future in plastics'. The film's still fantastic because of: 1) the young Dustin Hoffmam; 2) Katharine Ross; 3) Benjamin's car; 4) Mrs. Robinson's coat.
Hooray for China for banning plastic bags. Booooo for China for human rights abuse, but nobody these days can claim a clean record (even Canadians are getting unjustifiably tasered in airports...). In Italy they charge you 5 cents for every plastic bag you get from the grocery stores; at the Whole Foods in LA they used to give you something like 3 cents back for every bag you brought with you; in American Beauty the most beautiful thing the kid next door ever films is a plastic bag in the wind (loser); in the UK there is no mandatory recycling of any kind and you often can't even get proper recycling bins (uber-lame). Note to self: take photo of ridiculous paper recycling bins near home... Anyway, good for China for cutting down on plastic bags, now let's see if they can manage to do something about the poisonous air.
Happy Fat New Year! 2008 is a very lucky number so it should be a good one. For everyone in Europe make sure to schedule a 01 June 08 party, those in N. America can do Jan 06 08 party for luck and everyone can have a blast this 08 Aug 08 - 168/888, either way it sure beats 04 April 04 when we were in the early stupidity of the War in Iraq.
Here are some highlights from the end of the year and some random vids, etc. that I remembered seeing this year:
Cute in 2007:
Otters holding hands (MILLIONS of people seem to have watched this clip and one of the otters was apparently saved from the Exxon oil spill ages ago)
The evil eye baby
I know it's like America's Funniest Home Videos stupid, but it still makes me laugh everytime I see it. Reminds me of the 'Whatchoo talkin' about Willis' look. Hooray for Gary Coleman: child star turned security guard turned politician. To think this man coulda been the Governator if the votes had been skewed in California 2003 (he did come in 8th just after Larry Flynt). It renews my faith in American democracy when an Austrian body builder, a disabled porn publisher, a child star, a porn star turned cook named Mary Carey, a game show winner, a Sumo wrestler, and a Socialist all run for public office in order to run an incompetent, lame duck politician out of office. Hooray for California! Making democracy safe for the world.
Standing cat (this is an old one, but who doesn't love a standing cat?!)
Very cool in 2007:
The power of collectivity
Matrix ping-pong
Also quite old, but I was reminded of this when I saw it shamelessly ripped off in a London play earlier this year (Tom Morris and Emma Rice's rather boring A Matter of Life and Death; see, however, Katie Mitchell's excellent Women of Troy if you get a chance):
Very very in 2007:
So today I looked up CHINGLISH after having been sent various images from the site over the year by my brothers and to my shock some over 1,700 photos have been uploaded by 500+ members since I last looked at the site. The one here is my favourite of the... well, first couple of pages (I couldn't make it through page 5). There are many more classics, but this is a pretty ironic one. Thanks to brappy for the upload (see similar at Crappy DVD Covers). Compare with the actual movie poster (for those of you who haven't seen the movie, Bill Murray and not Dustin Hoffman is in the film; it's set in modern day Tokyo and not well, some green park in the past; there are no dogs in the movie, but there is a karaoke bar).
Just in case you are wondering what this movie is about, I will quote the blurb from the DVD cover above:
'the Bill is a television for over spirit star, he much uper the spout year, just connected to clap luckly recently a whisky television advertise, for taking this advertisement, he arrived at Tokyo. Summer with( card benefit with – John) is a photographer( tile – thunder ratio west ) who young wife who husband, busy with the work to always neglect her, so she arrive at the relax by taking stroll of Tokyo.'
No those are not typos, yes it is all lost in translation. When the movie came out people said it was slow, boring, self-indulgent, and racist about the Japanese. I think, however, it perfectly catches that sense of dislocated tourist ennui that overwhelms you when you have overstayed your welcome in a foreign land. As for the 'racist' interpretation - has anyone ever actually seen Asian variety shows?! I think the one in the movie is pretty tame (Sofia nailed that one on the head). It's one of my favourites (good soundtrack, good colour and lighting, great ending) although you really should be a damn good director if your dad made American Graffiti, The Conversation,Apocalypse Now, and the Godfather trilogy. Very Happy New Year:
The awesome Taipei 101 New Year 2008 fireworks display (you may ignore the excited ooh'ing and ahh'ing of the crowd in the video, but the image is still pretty fantastic):
OK, things have been pretty busy. It takes twice as long just to walk down the street these days with all the Xmas shopping nuts out all at once. Yeesch. Internet shopping people. Anyway, lots going on but I save the jewel for this posting: Will Smith, seen here emerging out of his own crotch at a press conference for I Am Legend (what the Tom Cruise fairy movie or is this a remake of The Legend of Bagger Vance?)... Speaking of remakes - here's the news, WS wants to remake The Karate Kid with Stephen Chow and set it in China? Uh, aside from the obvious problem of migrating Mr Miyagi from LA to China (from Japanese to Chinese - oh, maybe Zhang Ziyi can play Mr Miyagi if Stephen Chow doesn't want to?), well, WS was never known for his brains - this is the guy, afterall, who chose to do Wild Wild West instead of the Matrix. Read it and weep. Wow, The Karate Kid has its own long ass Wiki entry and I thought I had nothing better to do with my time...
