I made a very big sacrifice yesterday. I gave up my sleep time, and traded the semi final match between France and Portugal, to watch “Superman Returns”. That’s because I’m that much of a fan and I’d go crazy if I don’t watch that movie any sooner.

Alright, I lied. I foolishly gave up that semi final match for that Superman movie because
a) It’s a movie day at the cinema. I pay only 6 bucks for a movie instead of 10 bucks.
b) I thought that Superman movie would worth my time more than ANY soccer match that involves France.

But I was wrong on (b), which in a way, makes (a) kinda null too. The new Superman movie flopped big time and it’s a waste of my money. Why? I’m gonna make this in point form.

- Lame storyline. As usual, Lex Luthor and his relentless effort to take over the world - VERY LAME. Most of the time, the caped one would just fly here and there doing odd jobs saving asses… with no real objective other than to impress Lois back into a relationship. Like, who wants to know about Superman’s affair with Lois Lane? She’s just a reporter who can’t live for another minute without a dick entering her cooter. If I want to watch a love story, I’d go watch a movie about love story. Not Superman. When I watch Superman, I anticipate a significant amount of action. Something like… a superhuman contender to go up against Superman? Yeah. Like King Kong. Maybe, a King Kong who fell into some radioactive stuff, and became a mutated green monster that’s 10 times stronger than Superman? All out to trample on the whole city for the kick of it? Yeahh!

- Preposterous plots. Yeah I know, the whole idea about Superman being able to float around in a blue spandex suit is preposterous itself, but then, we viewers would tend to find logic in everything that is happening in the movie. And seriously, a lot of things doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense in the movie. In the storyline, Superman returns from a long trip to his hometown at Sitiawan, Perak, and return 5 years later to discover way too much changes in his old place - The computers are with 16 million or more colors, LCD screens, color mobile phones with cameras, digital shits, fuel injection cars… MANNNNNN!!!! Like what the fuck happened here??? All that in 5 years? Oh come on! And there’s this Lex Luthor, who never got his parole out of jail to ruin the world, only until Superman returns from Sitiawan, so that he’ll get the chance to be subdued again by the superhero. *shakes head* I may probably find this interesting IF, my IQ is equivalent to a 7 year old kid…

- Movie’s too long. It’s over 140 minutes. And because it also lacked of diggable plots, it makes the whole experience even more tormenting. By the time the movie hits halfway, I began to get restless on the seat. In the process of doing that, my bermuda shorts sort of slid down my waist to the upper region of my ass, exposing my butt crack to the environment. I couldn’t have been more relieved that there weren’t any mosquitoes in there that took liking on my unintentionally exposed soft spot. Mosquito bites can be very nasty on ass crack. I definitely do not want that.

Don’t go to the cinema for it, not even when it’s 6 bucks. Get a pDVD, it’ll be good enough.

Oh and that kid with asthma… that calls Lois Lane mommy? He’s the by-product of Superman’s unsafe sex with Lois Lane. There’s a plot in the movie where the kid flipped a grand piano to crash on one of Lex’s henchmen, to rescue Lois. And that kid, is IMMUNE to kryptonite, unlike his gayish daddy.

There you go, your spoiler of the day.

Emily & I were there to watch “The Poseidon”, but somehow, the show has stopped screening. And we were left only with a few choices : “Mission Impossible 3″, “X-Men”, “Over the Hedge”, “Da Vinci Code” and a bunch of movies that didn’t catch my attention.

Since:
- both of us didn’t like Tom Cruise,
- I had slept through the first 2 X-Men movies
- I’ve read Da Vinci Code, and I think it’s fucking boring.

We settled for “Over The Hedge”. Was it a good choice? Depends. If I’m an excited 5 year old who has never seen a raccoon before in my life? Hell yeah. If I’m a guy who expects more from the CGI world after watching the likes of “The Incredibles” or any other motion pictures animated by Pixar? Nope.

Somehow, the graphics failed to impress me and the storyline was just OK.

The movie starts with a naive raccoon that hit a boner when he tried to steal a hibernating bear’s junk food out of the compulsion of hunger, ended up waking the disgruntled bear and inadvertently trashing his stuffs. The bear got tulan, caught him up and was about to gave him a big brain squirt, when the smooth talking raccoon manage to convince the angry bear that he’s able to restore everything he trashed as ever before, and was thence given the time to fulfill his pledge until the bear wakes up half a moon revolution later.

And that’s how the raccoon came to this oasis of little wood smack dab in the middle of a modern human suburb (which was separated by a perimeter of hedge, hence the title) and met a group of rustic animals who have never seen humans before. (how they end up in that little area of woodlands without noticing the humans around them, still escapes me to this hour. But hey, it’s just a fucking 3D cartoon, they needed no logic in that…). From there, the raccoon works out a plot to convince (he’s good in convincing) the bunch of animals to help amass his promised loot back to the bear within the promised dateline - and adventure ensues.

Overall, it was just adequately entertaining. It didn’t flop too bad, nor did it fare well enough. It’s just another mediocre animated movie that simply didn’t cut the cake. For this movie, I’d recommend a pDVD instead, and watch it at home… unless of course, you’re itching of an outing and you’ve watched everything else at the cinema.

I’ve been longing to watch “Fearless” ever since it was launched on 26th Jan, but couldn’t get myself any tix to watch it. Well, that’s because all the major theaters in town has been fully booked in conjuncture with the CNY holidays. After a few attempts (and a great deal of perseverance), I finally watched it yesterday.

And it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Sure enough, it’s good, but it wasn’t as good as I’ve anticipated. Being an avid fan of kungfu flicks, I’d say this movie is pale in comparison to those legendary kungfu blockbusters such as Tsui Hark’s “Once Upon A Time In China” and “Swordsman” trilogies.

I think it lacked of a certain something that would make many kungfu fanatics (like me) find appealing - a main villain for the hero to stomp at - A tacit formula for any successful kungfu films. A symbolical victory of good against evil. A purpose in life, you know, shits like that. I know it’s corny but hey, it’s always better to have an object to hate at and later to have that hero weed that motherfucker’s ass out. You get what I mean?

But not in this movie. The villains are more like sporadic. Apparently, the director (whoever that was), tried to make the villain of the movie to be Master Fok (the protagonist of the film) himself. As a result of that, you’d get a batter of dramatic character played by Jet Li, which I find unappealing. I think he’s more suitable to play solemn looking roles. One that’s cruel and doesn’t even elicit a half hearted smile. (even if he were to smile, it’s only for his awesome looking girlfriend in exchange for a round of steamy sex, oh yeah bebeh). Check out the Master Wong role he played in “Once Upon A Time In China”… it’s awesome.

Some preposterous plots too. I’m not too sure if it’s suppose to conform to the original historical happenings that befell on Master Fuck Fok himself, but the part about his repentance after being a farmer, is goddamn ridiculous. Things that I failed to comprehend:

1) Why in the world would planting rice crops teach a conceited person to realize that he should respect life in general? Why wouldn’t he listen to what his mom said to him in length but would find his nirvana when a knockout gorgeous chick merely uttered something colloquial in just one sentence? Chick power?

2) A chick that’s blind, would have little narcissism left in her. That’s because she can’t fucking see the mirror. She would have no regards of how she would look but would focus on how to be tough and persevere to cope with her disability. But in this flick… nevermind.

The fight scenes were nicely choreographed though - the main selling point of the movie. I particularly loved the sword fight (or sabre fight) with that bald villain inside a restaurant. It’s energetic and very violent. I LIKEEEEEE!!! And that, was the only cream I enjoyed about the movie. I totally do not dig the uplifting and Zen part of the work.

Perhaps, I’m more ‘accustomed’ to the conventional kungfu films that feature heroes kicking asses. Only kicking asses, not being kicked at.

*****

Something I shared at the cafeteria today:

How would “Fearless” look like if it were to be directed by the following people?

John Woo - Fights would be screened in slow-mo. Halfway through the climactic fight, there would be pigeons flying out of nowhere.

Ang Li - Master Fok will be portrayed as a homosexual wuss that does odd job pimping for a living. He was later engaged in an anti-gravitational fight that mind boggles the viewer. The film would then end abruptly with an ancient Chinese pictogram text that nobody understands.

Quentin Tarantino - The script will consist 30% of the word ‘fuck’. 20% of it will be ‘mother’. 10% of it will be on various expletives. And there will be gangsterism, drugs and sexual elements in the movie.

Steven Spielberg - The villains Master Fok up against turn out to be robots planning to take over the world. And halfway through his quest, he’d met little fairies and disproportionate friendly aliens that would aid him through his course.

James Cameron - The entire film, fights and plots took place on a giant wooden ship, which would sink at the finale of the movie and everybody fucking dies.

Peter Jackson - Master Fok will sport a beard and a silky smooth rebonded straight long hair (like Cher’s), and his adversaries are green in colour and looked like Triceratops.

Sam Raimi - Master Fok will be cutting up plasticine zombies instead of live humans. With a chainsaw.

Martin Scorsese - Master Fok will be an artist instead of a kungfu master. He would then become an alcoholic and later die out of self injury with a vibrator.

*****

Spoiler alert: King Kong croaks in the end and everyone was fucking thrilled

Goddamn! Peter Jackson’s rendition of “King Kong” is awesome! The movie’s like what… 3 hours? But you can barely feel it’s actually that long. That’s because it’s so exhilaratingly entertaining and mind blowingly splendid… by the time it’s over, you’d go “wow! what a ride!”. Yeah… it’s that good.

The storyline conforms to the original & was very well edited. There are no preposterous plots and it was packed with action from almost the beginning till the end (the first 30 minutes of introduction can be kinda boring, though necessary). See bottom of this entry for the longer write-up of the storyline.

In this 2005 installment of King Kong, I’ve noticed that the big ape was kind of different from the original King Kong. The original King Kong, was a bipedal anthropoid looking primate that very much resembled a yeti or my colleague Elliot (whichever applies…) - shorter frontal limbs and longer legs… looks like as if it can actually drive a standard transmission vehicle or something. But the 2005 King Kong, was somehow modeled after a silverback gorilla… longer (but powerful) hands and midget legs. (reminds me of the flick “Mighty Joe Young”, not very King Kong-ish)

And judging by the proportion of the Empire State building versus the ape, I’d say the 2005 King Kong is kinda smaller in size. The original King Kong was almost the ultraman standard… but this one is just slightly bigger than Shaquille O’Neal. I mean, they could have actually made him bigger you know… and make him swim to Japan to meet ultraman or something like that. (a sequel perhaps?)

Maybe not. Sequels tend to flop big time. This movie’s already a legend now. It has a good storyline (though not self-conceived), has comedic elements (have you seen a gorilla snigger?), it’s sentimental (I saw a few ah lians sobbing outside the cinema) and it gets you to the edge of your seat. What more could one ask for? (though it could still do some topless scene… ahaks!!)

If there’s only 1 blockbuster movie in 2005 to be reckoned with, this would be it. I’m going to look out for the DVD version.
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Some guy didn’t like my “War Of the Worlds” review and decided to lash it all out.

I replied him, of course:

Goddamn.