Just a quick reminder on current films to catch.

House of Sand and Fog
Lost In Translation
21 Grams
Last Life In The Universe
Gothika
Dogville
Irreversible
A Good Lawyer's Wife
Torque ( just to enjoy the taosiao stunts, i'm no motor-siao )

D-mystifying the DVD

I wrote this blog in response to an article in today's Life section titled : "Disc Overdrive" , which attempted to cover some information regarding DVD pricing, censorship and quality in Singapore, but instead dished out some laughable hogwash and a gamut of loud, verbal responses from me. Herein subject notwithstanding it is noteworthy to mention here that this article is an excellent example of a coverage in a trusted print media providing false information and inaccuracies in reports because the interviewed party stood to gain from what they would be quoted on, as well as the reporting party's lack of knowledge in the field, which then makes one wonder : How much of what you hear or see on the news is actually accurate ?

Anyway. I quote " And there are hardcore buyers who BELIEVE there is a difference in quality between the different regions ". Well surprise surprse - there certainly is, and its not a matter of belief for sure. Let's quote point to point and try to do some damage control.

Quote : " While distributors say there is no variation in quality between DVDs of different regions... "
Fact : No difference my foot. These guys must be watching with their eyes closed. The local code 3 version of Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love had cropped titles, oversaturated and crushed colours, the altogether feeling of everything blending into everything else. In short, think VCD. Folks who are familiar with photoshop can liken it to a jpeg file saved over a thousand times and getting all details mixed up and "dirty". In comparison, the Criterion Edition of the same title, code 1, had crisp clean images, correct colours, and for once I could see the whole title in full frame. Bliss. The same problems reprise itself for Amenabar's The Others, as well as MIB. Then again, if the distributors had said there was a difference in quality, it wouldn't sound too good for sales would it ?

Question : Ok, so all code 3 dvds have crap quality.
Answer : No no no. REGION CODING OF DVDS IS NOT AND NEVER AN INDICATION OF QUALITY. Rinse and repeat please. However, because local code 3 releases have so conscientiously churned out crap material that we have come to associate code 3 dvds with inferior quality. Korean dvds, all on code 3, have beautiful, outstanding visuals most of the time. On the contrary, a code 2 Japanese version ( Japanese dvds are the world's most expensive ) of Tsui Hark's Blade sucks, but that's because they started out with a bad print. THE MOST IMPORTANT CRITERIA IN DETERMINING QUALITY OF ANY DVD IS THE ORIGINAL COPY ( on beta format , I believe ) BY WHICH IT IS MASTERED FROM, AND BY ITS MASTERING TECHNIQUES AND CARE TAKEN TO IT.

Question : So Why ? Why is it that Singaporean dvd makers can't get a good print ?
Answer : Oh, because we chip chip Singaporeans want the same thing, i mean pseudo-same thing at 10-15 dollars cheaper ! Any discerning buyer should smell a rat when supposedly identical items on sale have a marked difference in price of as much as 30-40%. Something must be missing, for there is no free lunch when it comes to buying dvds. You can get good deals once in a while, but not all the time on all titles.

Question : You're just a nitpicker, that's what you are. A small difference in quality for a big difference in price, why not ?
Fact : I am really particular when it comes to quality for my dvds. And the difference in price is definitely enticing. But the insiduous factor here is the small difference in quality. If you were to take a look at the code 1 version of MIB, then the code 3, you'll be able to tell : code 1, crisp images, code 3, almost crisp images. It is this ALMOST that is very important, because its like an image on screen that focuses and blurs on and off, and an entire movie of this will make your viewing experience very very frustrating. You're spending more for a quality product that you'll be enjoying for the rest of your life, so why compromise ? I certainly wouldn't, but hey, I'm a nitpicker.

Quote : "...it is a fact that dvds cannot be censored after they are produced "
Fact : As far as I know this is quite right, unless they have some unknown encoding device that can burn out the parts to be censored. However, Singapore makes it even easier by not importing the titles that need censoring, so you get to watch nothing at all ! Nadda. Most RA films you get to watch in theatres here are almost guaranteed never to be found in dvd format here, titles like Schindler's List, Ryan, Fight Club, Se7en. Even seemingly decent PG titles are mysteriously absent here, stuff like Great Expectations, Road to Perdition and Minority Report. Wierd huh ?

Question : Ok, after all this banter, so where would be the best place to get dvds ?
Answer : You don't really have to ask do you ? For chip chip code 3 dvds, everywhere. For your good quality code 1 releases not found here, Amazon would be your best bet, and for Korean/Asian and Japanese films, yesasia.com and cdjapan.co.jp respectively.

January 22, DJ Paul Van Dyk at the powerhouse. Music was good, and the laser strobing lights feeding me with the illusion that I can dance really well, with every girl looking real pretty as I groove to the heart pounding beats.

Head hurts now. Off to bed.

Mona Lisa Smile - beautiful photography, laudable performances, but somehow, *yawnz*.

For a film that advocated "free thinking", original thought, fighting tradition and being yourself, its production methods were anything but. This is your Hollywood vehicle at its most archetypal.

Films Retrospective 2003 / Top 10 Favourite films poll ( not in any order of merit )

For complete list of films watched, please click on the comments box.

1)The Pianist ( Roman Polanski )
2)Tasogarei Seibei ( Yoji Yamada )
3)Lord Of The Rings The Return of the King ( Peter Jackson )
4)Matchstick Men ( Ridley Scott )
5)Tale of 2 Sisters ( Kim Ji-Wun )
6)Hero ( Zhang Yimou )
7)City of God ( Fernando Meirelles )
8)The Hulk ( Lee Ang )
9)Finding Nemo ( Andrew Stanton )
x)Swimming Pool / Bon Voyage ( Francoiz Ozon/Jean Paul Rappaneau )

A bountiful year for the cinema, having watched about a hundred films altogether, give or take a few that I've missed the ticket stubs. This year especially we saw the closure of 3 trilogies, Hollywood behemoths The Matrix series, Lord of the Rings and our asian Infernal Affairs, some more palatable than others, but all highly anticipated. The Singapore Film Festival still proves a valuable event for catching good foreign films, although often with clashes in schedules.

Notable misses include Chen Kaige's Together, and a few films from the recent German Film Festival, but I believe we still have a chance to catch Goodbye Lenin. With outstanding films like Korea's Memories of Murder failing to show up in theatres ( hitherto at least ), it proves more so that outsourcing non hollywood fare on magazines and websites are imperative if we want to catch them, on dvd at least. ( David Cronenberg's Spider, Shunji Iwai's All About Lili Chou Chou, Intacto, just to name a few. )The rest of the local population at least, will never know what they are missing.

An evening train ride home after a friend's wedding dinner ( yes, yet another single bits the dust. ) had me standing within audible conversational range of a young couple, JC students. The routine courtship manoeuvres ensue, hushed voices, attempt at witty jokes, and happy holding of hands. What was etched deeply in my mind and that reawakens distant, lost memories were those moves and actions that I had seen happen on myself many many years ago, when all that mattered, all the wonderful bliss in the world was contained in the sparkling eyes of that person looking straight back at you.

That indescribable feeling of love had long since abandoned me.

It is my policy to never purchase dvds of films that I've not seen at the theatres online, a rather bizzare and perhaps antiquated school of thought seeing the cinematic experience as a rite of passage, a self imposed vetting process before the film can be canonized, elevated to dvd-worthy status. However, because of inherent market forces at work that favours the mainstream blockbusters releases rather than your occasional arthouse film, a considerable number of excellent foreign films ( read non hollywood ) slips past our theatres without ever been noticed, save for some limited screenings at our annual Singapore Film Festival packed into 2 short, hectic weeks.

Now this is when the exception to the rule appears. Sometimes the obssessed film purist, having done some homework and research, will take the plung, calculated risks to import contraband, films that have yet gone through artistic apotheosis. So far there's been a fair share of hits and misses, with films like I.G's lacklustre anime Blood, and highly accomplished Korean film Take Care of My Cat, which I had missed at the film festival.

This time round, I struck cinematic gold.

Between the years of 1986 and 1991, a small village in Korea's Gyeonggi Province was witness to the rape and murder of 10 women, all in the same groteque and brutal manner. Korea had never before experienced serial murders of this kind, and an intense media frenzy and police investigation followed. As the murders continued to take place over the years, investigators grew more desperate, at one point even consulting a shaman who advised them to move the gate of the police station to a more favorable location (which they did, to no avail). Ultimately all their efforts would be in vain, and to this day nobody knows who the murderer was or whether he is still alive.

In 1996, the poignant memories of this incident were reshaped into a successful stage play directed by Kim Kwang-rim. The dramatic intensity of the story attracted the interest of several filmmakers who wished to make a film of the material, but ultimately it would be Bong Joon-ho, the talented director who debuted in 2000 with Barking Dogs Never Bite, who would be charged with the task. Bong took the stage play and, consulting historical documents, wrote a screenplay focusing on two of the police investigators. Bong's primary addition to the material was to highlight the era in which the murders took place -- a time in which the Korean populace was struggling to shake off its authoritarian and militaristic past.





The end result is perhaps Korea's biggest event film since Joint Security Area, a masterfully directed, superbly acted film which is at turns blackly humorous, thought-provoking, and horrifying. The film stars top actor Song Kang-ho (JSA) and Kim Sang-kyung (Turning Gate) as two investigators, the former a local policeman and the latter a detective who comes from Seoul to assist in the case. The first part of the film focuses on the two men's characters and the rivalry that builds between them. As time passes, however, the narrative becomes more complex, as our leads begin to transform under pressure and as we see references to the social situation in Korea at the time, when the government was too busy suppressing its own citizens to put resources into a proper investigation.

Although this movie features one of the best performances ever from Song Kang-ho, one of Korea's most talented actors, the film's amazing ensemble cast almost succeeds in stealing his spotlight. Minor characters such as the old police chief (played by Byun Hee-bong), the slightly retarded Baek Kwang-ho (played by theatre actor Park No-shik, who now has his own fan club), violent investigator Yong-gu (Kim Rae-ha, in his most prominent role to date), Song Kang-ho's girlfriend Sul-young (played by Jeon Mi-seon, who was Han Suk-kyu's old flame in Christmas in August) and the new police chief (Song Jae-ho, also in Double Agent) are only a few of the memorable characters created by this skilled cast. Park Hae-il from Jealousy Is My Middle Name also takes a role towards the end of the film that is sure to stay in the memory of viewers.

Another impressive aspect of this film are its visuals. The production set a record for using the most locations in any Korean film to date, in an effort to recreate the underdeveloped rural landscape of the mid-80s. Director of photography Kim Hyung-gu (who also shot Musa, One Fine Spring Day and Chen Kaige's Together) creates striking images out of ordinary objects, with earthy browns and yellows painting an unforgettable portrait of small town life.

Recently, many critics have begun saying that Korean audiences no longer appreciate good films, that they prefer instead the light comedies that have dominated the box-office over the past couple years. The smashing popular success of Memories of Murder now acts as a counterweight to that argument, signalling that ambitious, serious, well-made productions in Korea still have potential if they can capture the imaginations of ordinary viewers. ( Review by Darcy Parquet, english subtitler for Memories of Murder )

Point in note : Music for this film was written by Taro Ishiwaro, a prolific composer who has done other outstanding music for films by Shohei Imamura, as well as the more familiar Japanese serial The Inanimate World, starring Nanako Matsuhimoto.

Easily one of the best movies I've seen this year, though sadly not in a theatre, where the emotional impact would have been exponential.

Film review for Jane Campion's ( The Piano ) latest film, In the Cut, from British Film Institute's (BFI) publishing Sight and Sound Magazine, December Issue :

In verbatim : ( Final paragraph )

As finely wrought as In The Cut is, one could argue that it fails as a genre exercise. Experienced thriller fans will guess the killer quicker than it takes to recit and Emily Dickenson poem. But once the mystery's burned away, what's left is a minutely etched study in mood and female pyschology.

To read the full review ( highly recommended, but only after watching the film to avoid revealing plot points ), just click on the Comment's Box for this log entry.

Blaue Reiter : Now this is a film review. ( compare previous blog entry below ) Its not too difficult to surmise that the person or persons who contributed to the review below couldn't understand, hadn't the foggiest idea what the film was about after watching it, but decided to play it cool anyway and give it the "nude, very nude", "well, she strikes again" treatment, an unfortunate occurrence sad to say, ubiquitious in Asia's Premier movie magazine.

Film review for Jane Campion's ( The Piano ) latest film, In the Cut, from local film magazine FIRST - ASIA'S PREMIER MOVIE MAGAZINE, December issue :

In verbatim :

"The first thing you probably want to know is : How nude does Meg Ryan get In the Cut ? In answer you your question, we'd like to say : Very, very nude. This is the one thing everyone is talking about when it comes to In the Cut, and we guarantee you this is the only thing anyone will remember. Ryan's body may be shapely, but the rest of the flick is a formless mess. We hate the murky colours. We hate the male lead. We hate the stupid and sluggish serial killer plot. Director Jane Campion caused a sensation by showing Harvey Keitel's privates in the Piano. Well, she strikes again. "

WHO THE FUCK IS WRITING ALL THESE REVIEWS ???!!!

To Editors/writers of FIRST - ASIA'S PREMIER MOVIE MAGAZINE : For the love of film, please, go grab a copy of BFI's Sight and Sound magazine.

Over the last weekend right up till Monday morning I was involved in a 16mm short film production, my boss, having been the DOP of the shoot, have had me taking up the post of 1st camera assistant. Although I was rarely, if ever behind the viewfinder I must still say it has been an enriching experience learning the ins and outs of a film production, where my job scope was a multitude of varied tasks including prepping the SteadiCam for my boss, checking zoom and focus distance, as well as the dolly operator ( well, the guy that pulls the trolley lah ). Man I tell you that is tough. You have to be sure to keep a constant speed at all times to achieve a smooth dolly, something which the very experienced bunch of gaffers and grips have told me, requires a considerable amount of "feeling". Just pushing a goddamned trolley right, what's so hard ? My foot. I make it a point to be more appreciative of all the steadiCam and dolly shots in future films that I watch.

Watch out for the screening of the short film on Arts Central soon.

Watching 2 ultra violent films back to back was not the easiest way to spend a peaceful, idyllic Sunday, but they were films that I had already planned to watch beforehand. Descriptive words like "empty", "void" and physical, frenzied parodying of the "human blood fountains" were attributed to the movie Kill Bill by one of my friends. ( whose taste in film happens to be slightly different from mine ), However, he remained solemn and relatively quiet after the Japanese film Brother, whose stark and realistic portrayal of bloodied gunfights and Yakuza honour, as well as pathos ending the night with an air of eerie stillness. Violence can see so many different forms.

First day of work, Wizards of Light. Its a photography studio covering commercial photo work, running the gamut from product to fashion shoots. Today the term desk bound job ceases meaning for me ( yes, I still have a desk, albeit spending less than five minutes at it for the entire day ), with 2 fashion shoots packed back to back, in between buying Milo "bing" and Marlboro Menthol Light for my lead photographer and the clients, I must say its quite a change for a job.

Not that I'm complaining though, learned quite a few things today, tons more to pickup, but we'll see if this photographic passion of mine will stand the test of time.

Watching Len Wiseman's UnderWorld, then Yoji Yamada's Twilight Samurai in one evening was a jarring, cinematic dichotomic trip. These are the last 2 films that anyone should be comparing by virtue of their vastly different, intrinsic genres but it was interesting to note.

1) UnderWorld is Len Wiseman's directorial debut, uninspiring start; Twilight Samurai auteur filmmaker Yoji Yamada's no 77th ( I'm not sure if I've even watched 77 Japanese films hitherto ) film, a masterful piece.

2) Where the latter was a film graced by its use of quiet, cinematic sublety ( in a scene where a simple holding of hands was sufficent to create an intense carthasis and emotional emancipation ), the former is sucked void of any, ( a supposed romantic kiss exchanged between the 2 protaganists had about the same blandness if one were swallowing chalk. )

In this respect as least, less is certainly more. Glad I watched it in the right order, or it would've been a bad evening all the way.

Never rains but pours. For a while there were hardly any decent films to watch at the theatres but now they're tumbling down in a flurry. Just a checklist to be sure I don't miss any. ( left out most of the mainstream releases )

Magdalene Sisters
Brother ( kitano )
Dirty Pretty Things
Matchstick Man ( Ridley Scott )
Swimming Pool ( Francoiz Ozon )
Infernal Affairs II
Underworld
No Where In Africa
Twilight Samurai ( Yoji Yamada )
Millenium Actress

Quite a number on non commercial films, good breathers in between your standard Hollywood fare. I'm hoping the cinemas here would bring a few highly acclaimed Korean titles like Memories of Murder ( shot by DP Kim Hyung-gu, who also did One Fine Spring Day )and Wonderful Days ( heavy tanker in Korea ), but we'll see.

Korean director Kim Ji-Wun's beautifully shot horror film A Tale of 2 Sisters is a compelling, albeit somewhat confusing tale of a dysfunctional family dealing with the return of 2 sisters upon recovering from a rare and unknown illness. The presence of any supernatural forces is quickly played down here, rather employing more implicit methods of intimidation that are by far the more scary and effective.

Whilst we seldom associate beauty with horror, the latter preferring subjects of grotesqueness and fear as bedfellas, A Tale of 2 Sisters succeeds in the cinematic marriage of the 2 with its elegantly staged camera work; often indulging in long, aptly paced shots of the largely vacant household interior as it takes relish in plunging the viewer headlong into the suffocating reek of the morbid tension, until the silence finally claws and screams for a release. The informed colour palette adds further strength to the mood and visual style with saturation jacked up to almost superfluous levels; blacks in the film are graded so intense they threaten to suck you into an endless, horrifying void, whilst the reds and ochre so vivid you can almost lean forward and smell the coppery reek of blood. At the end, the images will leave you fairly disturbed, but its intrinsic beauty will beckon for your attention more.

Certainly one of the more classy and calculated horror flicks I've watched of late, once again vindicating Korea as a filmmaking powerhouse.

The Medallion Sucks.

I haven't seen such hogwash in a long long time. Now there was this HK movie couple years back starring Leon Lai called Bullets of Love that came close, but The Medallion sets a whole new record for traumatic cinematic experience.

This is so bad, its not funny.

"Marriage is a Crazy Thing" is one interesting movie. There's just something indescribably honest and introspective about Korean arthouse films ( notable are 2 other films, "One Fine Spring Day" and "Take Care of my Cat" ) that I am unable to describe lucidly with my limited vocabulary and lexicon but which I shall dub as the "korean aesthetic" for easier referencing in the future. Only this time, it takes on a more adult theme with some fairly explicit love scenes, but that hardly gets in the way of good storytelling.

Here's an illuminating review : http://www.koreanfilm.org/kfilm02.html#marriage

and ditto : http://www.asiandb.com/browse/movie_detail.pfm?code=5293&mode=review&num=475

Go watch it before its gone.

Despite Finding Nemo's well intentioned story of a father's love for his son and his eventual coming of age, the coda a catharsis of freedom, their real life brethren have no such luck. Quite on the contrary, the success and popularity of the film has meant a dramatic surge in demand for clown fishes as pets, more often known just as Nemo. This is a sad, sad irony, the antithesis of the cause and intentions of the film. While marine hobbists and nature lovers are sure to sound out, urging prudence before buying, I fear these will fall on nothing but deaf ears.

As much as I enjoyed Ang Lee's treatment of the story and the movie itself, let's leave the debate on the merit of the show and talk just about Mr Green himself.

ILM's rendition of the Hulk has been nothing short of breathtaking. ( One writer in a local newspaper passed him off as been "rubbery", and I've since dispatched David Banner's mutant mouse after her, god bless. ) For the uninitiated, computer graphics are terribly afraid of a few things : close ups ( and we're talking full, cinema resolution ), water/wet skin, green or not, and notably, bright scenes with lots of sunshine and daylight, because its excruciatingly hard to blend CG and make it believable in such conditions. But here, the Hulk is just flaunting it, plain. In the scene where he bursts out of the containment chamber, water spewing and hands raised in rage, I might as well have believed that he was a living, breathing Hulk. Let's not even get started on the desert scenes.

Realism aside, my favourite scene has to be the electrifying shot of father and son, rocketing through the sky, their silhouettes etched onto passing clouds like giant impressionist paintings, coupled nicely with Elfman's dramatic score.

I'm not entirely sure how the makers of the Japanese horror film Ju-on decided on the peerless tagline "The scariest movie ever made"; painfully it is anything but. Gimmicky publicity notwithstanding, no one still has the foggiest idea why folks are willing to spend good money to get spooked, myself a guilty party, albeit a terrible choice this time.
The premise and plot of the entire story, juxtaposed on a nonlinear timeline, escapes me completely so let's just move on to the scare-o-meter. Woefully, this one barely registers a single hit, resorting so blantantly to cinematic devices already seen in more original films like Ringu and Dark Water, bordering on absolute banality and triteness. Developed photos getting wracked, ghastly figures peering into lifts, did I mention something wierd on TV ? In one particular memorable scene where the protaganist of the moment gets hunted down by her 3 dead friends, I was quite convinced that the filmmakers were on to a parody from Night of the Living Dead or the more recent Resident Evil, whichever one better.
"The scariest movie ever made ?" NOT ! Mr Nakata please, we're still waiting anxiously.

Pixar has outdone themselves once again with Finding Nemo, an animation feature so rich with overwhelming tapestries of colour and vibrancy its hard to appreciate with only one viewing, and where the words "computer generated imagery or CGI" seem to lose coherence with what the eyes actually see on screen. As animators ourselves, me and my friends have expressed both awe and disbelief at the level of complexity and depth of the character animation, which is only achievable by a marriage of immaculate animation techniques and self acting on the part of the animator to immerse himself/herself into the role. And of course, we were more than happy to see David Tart's name ( http://www.tartamation.com/tartamation/ ) as the credits rolled, an animator from Pixar that taught us for 3 days during a short program back in school. Yes, Pixar ok, don't play play.

Almost every other blog that I've visited have their owners writing about Matrix Reloaded and how it holds up, so I guess I won't dwell more about that. Instead...

Best dressed : The Merovingian Twins, complete with thick mascara and dreadlocks.

Worse dressed : Everyone else living down in Zion.

Best dressed female : Persephone ( black shiny outfits just got boring after a while )

Best/Worse philosophical banter : Chocolate cakes and going to the loo.

Best line, unanimously : "Sample this." ( Trinity setting her pistol on Persephone )
Anyway, if I were Neo, I'll choose Persephone over Trinity anytime. *laughs*

With my last film Dolls by Takeshi Kitano showing this coming Saturday, the film festival have once again come to and end for another year. Having caught 9 films altogether ( the biggest number since my first film fest ), many of which were packed on consecutive evenings, I must say its has been quite a chore ( I dozed off in the early part of Russian Ark ). As much as I enjoy watching movies, I don't believe in movie marathons for I feel to fully appreciate and "digest" the gist of the films you need to cater time for recovery from all the visuals and ideas still swirling inside your head, arty film festival movies more so.

On a sidenote, I've become increasing annoyed and resentful of a few individuals who dwell within the Singapore International film festival forum, criticizing any and every directors' ( including Royston Tan's 15, which won a FIPRESCI award ) work as been weak, undeserving, sucky, and whatever detracting word they can find. Its amusing how they could spend all their time in the forum writing lengthy reviews discrediting works when they've never so much as written a single line of script or shot a single take of film. What even made them think they are in a position to judge a piece of film work ? To quote Al Pacino in the movie Insomnia, where he was chastising an inept superior who never took part in any real action : "You, and all the assholes like you, risk nothing, spend the whole day sucking the marrow out of real cops when you just don't have the balls to be one yourself. "

Its at least comforting to realize that the filmmakers themselves are probably too wrapped up in some future work that they never have time to visit any of these forums filled with self consumed film critics.

Hitherto, a mixed bag of films at the Singapore International Film Festival, but unfortunately there seems to be more disappointment than pleasant surprises so far. 2 films, China's Dazzling and Japan's anime A Tree of Palme have turned out to be duds. Let's hope the remaining 3 films will be good ones, well at least, ones that I like. With commercial releases like My Little Eye, Together fighting for the limited time I have now as the SIFF is going on, I seem to be living in and out of theatres as of late.

Program for this year's Singapore International FIlm Festival ( SIFF ) have began with Love at 7-11, a portmanteau Taiwanese film revolving around the love lifes of 3 different parties of people. Next came Lilya 4-ever by Russian director Lukas Moodysson, a heavy, sobering film depicting the perfidious child sex trade still very much active in the now defunct USSR. Whilst it had an urgent and important message to deliver, it was also the saddest and grimmest film I've watched in a long time. More films coming up.