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Posts tagged with "Movie"

Unlike Reality, Fiction Doesn't Really Have to Make Sense

Saturday, 3. March 2007, 21:27:45

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Sometimes ago, I took a causal walk to the Babbling Linguist's blog. Her new "Subject: Q" post caught my eyes with a simple question of "If something we never know we have disappears, do we miss it?"

So I gave it some thoughts and followed it with my humble reply:

The Q sounds like a philosophical one.

But, it looks more like an account of illogicality for testing our IQ / EQ ;-)

I suspect that that something is not a real 'thing' with a form factor, as you tagged this piece 'sentiment'.

It may be 'something' temporal or transient.

Virginity could be one of those that we didn't know we had.

We 'missed' it and miss it.


Days later, she re-subjected it as "V for Vanishing" (maybe in reply to my 'Virginity' proposition) and gave an update to many of her "dear little readers" by citing one of her readers' response, "Unlike fiction, reality doesn't have to make sense".

Again, I gave it some more thoughts and dropped my reflection as follows:

Unlike commonsense, sense has its individuality, when it comes to have intrinsic connection with an identifiable being, which differentiates itself from the others. It has its own peculiar characteristics not necessarily be aware of commonly.

Sense is still an important component among others in the university of life, in a world where we often confuse words with actions, images with realities.

Reality always makes sense, no matter you notice it or not. Sense as a reflexion of it is 'real'. Unlike fiction, we often make up what we wanted it to be.

I would rather say, "Unlike reality, fiction doesn't really have to make sense."


The Babbling Linguist is not a frequent blogger, however you may drop by her site once in a while for some enlightening and intellectual interflows.

P.S. The blogger hints us in her P.S. that her original "Q" was actually abridged from an episode (Walk on Water) of the ABC drama series "Grey's Anatomy".

Further Reading:
  1. Babbling Linguist
  2. Grey's Anatomy: ABC.com, TV.com
  3. Writers' Blog of Grey's Anatomy
  4. Grey's Anatomy Insider


The Departed Sequel of The Departed

Tuesday, 27. February 2007, 12:27:18

Martin Scorsese has finally got his damn hardware, the one he most hopes for since 1973 (Mean Streets, Robert De Niro) to complete his collection. Yet, he wants to fuck with it no more. Once you have it, you had it. He shall have nothing to do with "IT" from now on. He felt sick and tired of "IT" the other day after the presentation at Kodar Theatre. That was the work of the endocrine system and musculine hormone that influences him, even at his age.

This morning Marty called his departed gang for a trivial meeting at a cafe on Sunset Strip. William Monahan and Matt Damon are the two he most wanted. Leonardo DiCaprio too, whom he sees as his adopted son after the making of Gangs of New York and The Aviator.

INTERIOR. BEVERLY HILLS. CAFE. DAY.

MARTIN SCORSESE
Matt, you look awful.

MATT DAMON
Who wouldn't be? They don't even know I exist last year. Well, I'll be fine.

JACK NICHOLSON
If you want to make it in life, you have to be like me, Harvard boy.

MATT
I have to develop a comical-looking smile and do successively worse impressions of myself in every movie, Jack?

MATT'S EYES MEET MARTIN'S

JACK SHOWS HIS TYPICAL COMIC SMILE AT LEONARDO DICAPRIO.

LEONARDO
You're doing good, Matt. We've won Best Acting Ensemble twice, not an Oscar though.

MATT
Yes, not well in a group. I wanna be myself like you, and all others. I think I'm done with acting. I better go writing scripts again.

WILLIAM MONAHAN CRINKLES

WILLIAM
That's not a bad idea.

LEONADOR
Do we have to win an Oscar in our lifetime?

MARK WAHLBERG
Don't tell me you don't want one.

MARK EYES ON MARTIN. MARTIN LOOKS ELSEWHERE.

JACK
You played better a smuggler in Blood Diamond than a cop, Leo.

MATT EYES ON JACK

MATT
You play a psycho better than yourself.

JACK SHOWS AGAIN HIS COMIC SMILE AT MATT.

MARTIN
Let's do it again, boys. Jack, are there Oscar-winning Pictures or Directors in a sequence for a movie series? I guess no.

JACK
Not to my knowledge. You probably remember I presented Oscar's Best Picture to Sylvester Stallone's first Rocky at the 49th Academy Awards 30 years ago.

JACK CHECKS EVERYBODY'S ATTENTION.

WILLIAM
Not even for Best Adapted Screenplay.

MATT
If you put me in, maybe.

MARTIN
You're in. Right, Billy?

WILLIAM (UNWILLINGLY)
You're the boss.

JACK
Feel a little balanced now, Matt? Don't let your privileged upbringing spoils you.

LEONARDO
I'm too good to be a good guy, like in Titanic. I wanna play badguy this time, really bad.

MATT
Let's all play good badguys.

MARK
Or bad goodguys.

JACK
And, more killing. Red is good. Let's play violence aesthetics to the extreme. We maybe able to win the Chinese market this time. They like it.

LEONARDO, MATT, MARK
Violence plus Sex!?

WILLIAM
({Good/Bad} + {Bad/Good}) x (Violence + Sex) x (Kungfu + CGI) = (Cop+ Mob)2

JACK
Last but not least, Marty then throws a little bit of his mummy dust in...

MARTIN
Done.


The Departed

Winner of four Acadamy Awards at the 2007 Oscars: Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Director for Martin Scorsese.

A remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film called "Infernal Affairs" (Wu Jian Dao or Mou Gaan Dou), "The Departed" tells the story of two men from opposite sides of the law who are undercover within the Boston State Police Department and the Irish mafia, but violence and bloodshed boil when discoveries are made, and the moles are dispatched to find out their enemy's identities.

Written by William Monahan, based on an earlier screenplay by Felix Chong and Mak Siu Fai.

Box Office
The Departed
US Gross: $131,438,000
Worldwide Gross: $278,200,000

Further Reading:
  1. The Departed, Internet Movie Database
  2. Film Reviews
  3. Final Shooting Script, Screenplay by William Monahan (PDF, 325K)
  4. Download Movie (DVDRIP-RMVB, 526M) Or here (XviD.AC3.3CD-WAF, 2G), if you have BitTorrent on your computer. I have not tried these downloads yet, risk is all yours.


Curse Of The Number 23

Sunday, 25. February 2007, 12:44:27

Jim Carrey is making a 'horrifying' comeback this year. The funnyman departs from the funny-side of his career as his The Cable Guy once did in 1996 to embrace more with the unknown sphere of life's thrilling adventure. His new film comes also closer to his 1998 story, The Truman Show, but less with fun and happy endings. The protagonist of his new film has surprisingly found out that he has been following the footsteps pre-sketched by a novelist.

The psychological thriller The Number 23 stars Jim Carrey as a man whose life unravels after he comes into contact with an obscure book titled The Number 23. As he reads the book, he becomes increasingly convinced that it is based on his own life. His obsession with the number 23 starts to consume him, and he begins to realize the book forecasts far graver consequences for his life than he could have ever imagined.

The Number 23 is out this week in the States and Europe. Film critics have not given Jim Carrey many encouraging compliments and starred it an average 3 (or 2-3!) out of 5, albeit it garnered $5.8 million in its first day of release on 2,759 theatres in the U.S., compared to $5.9 million for Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider (3,620 theatres).

I believe DVD will be out in the Chinese market very soon. For the time being, a complete shooting draft of the film is here (PDF, 860k) for your perusal.

The Story

Walter Sparrow is a simple, quiet family man, a dogcatcher by trade. One evening, a mysterious dog leads him on a convoluted chase that causes him to be late for a meeting with his wife. While waiting for Walter, she wanders into a used bookstore and buys a book. This book will change Walter’s life forever. Walter hates to read but reluctantly begins thumbing through the short novel called The Number 23.
The book chronicles the murderous obsession of a man named Fingerling with the number 23, and how this number comes to rule his life. To Walter’s horror, the book seems to mirror intimate details of his past. The more he reads, the more revealing the book becomes, and he begins to notice the number 23 popping up in almost everything he does. Before long, Walter shares the same obsession and paranoia as Fingerling. Now the book not only knows his past, it begins to forecast his future. And his future seems to be that of a killer.

Walter discovers that the book is actually a confession to a 15-year-old murder that he seems destined to repeat. He realizes he is becoming a danger to those around him, especially his family. The only way to save himself, to prevent the number 23 from driving him insane, to stop fate from turning him into a killer is to find the book’s author and uncover the truth.

Is the curse real? Has the number 23 taken control of Walter’s destiny or is it all just the power of suggestion? Does Walter suffer from some kind of dementia or is there a killer out there waiting for justice? How far will the number push him? Will it force him to become a killer? The answers will lead him to a truth more horrifying then he could have ever imagined.

Further Reading:
  1. The complete shooting draft of The Number 23, Screenplay by Fernley Phillips (PDF, 860k)
  2. The Number 23, Trailer (WMV, 5.4m)
  3. Download movie, if BitTorrent is ready on your computer (I have not downloaded this yet, risk is all yours)
  4. Internet Movie Database
  5. Film Reviews
  6. Jim Carrey Online


Monkeys to Men: The Paradox of Identity

Thursday, 21. December 2006, 20:15:55

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A Tsinghua postgrad in linguistics has recommended one of ABC's latest soap-opera, "Men in Trees" at her blog.

After reading her brief review, MIT sounds like a romance-hunting story staged by a group of girls. It seems also to propose that men living in materialistic cities like New York doesn't help much of their spices-evolution. Rather, they devolve back to their animal nature when they encounter into affairs with the opposite sex.

The story is intentionally set in a 'less-developed' or 'more-spiritual' Elmo, an Alaskan town (hmm.. better than in Siberia) where Marin -- the leading role played as a novelist soon finds out (don't know if she did yet) that men aren't all monkeys. As the title of the series suggests.

The scriptwriter seems to adhere to the law of the majority and turn himself/herself into a situationalist, and the law of the gender-jungle, a sex-environmentalist.

Being a monkey in the cement forest and a subject of examination, I probably will follow her lead to see how men are being dissected and scrutinized.

In that sense, it's also good for men.

Further Reading:
  1. "Men in Trees" at ABC
  2. "Men in Trees, but not for men" at Babbling Linguist



Tess, Two Smoking Barrels & Crazy Stone

Thursday, 5. October 2006, 18:16:20

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I have committed a crime yesterday, a serial one. I bought an DVD from a pirate peddler at the corner of a Beijing hutong. It is a Roman Polanski's old time movie "Tess" (1980), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles - The Pure Woman (Read it Online here). Hardy reflects his disappointing views of urbanism through his protagonist, Tess. He characterizes Tess as a daughter of nature who endures the brutality of industrialism through the people and circumstances in her life. Using specific language, character depiction, and story development, he provides a strong argument against the urban movement by showing the reader its harsh effects on the agrarian lifestyle. The story tells about Tess, a countryside maiden, works as a maid for Alec in the city and is seduced and 'raped' by him. She fled then falls in love with Angel, son of a clergyman. On their wedding night, Angel confesses to Tess that he has been promiscuous in the past and begs for her forgiveness. Tess readily forgives him and with this opening provided by Angel, she proceeds to tell him of her past relations with Alec and the resultant early-died child, truly believing that Angel will forgive her too. But this is not to be and great tragedy ensues. The overpowering and eventual destruction of Tess parallels the industrial movement's negative results on the rural landscape of England.

With a little bit of guilt, I finally finished watching it until very late at night. I was wrong but with no regret. I should not have believed that widespread myth: only goodies deserve being pirated. The movie has nothing to compare with "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (1998), an English TV opera mini-series produced almost twenty years apres Polanski's eager but unsuccessful endeavour to revitalize the characters of Tess, Alec and Angel created by the novelist.

While I was doing brain searching then, a flash suddenly crossed my mind. Jason Flemyng, who protrayed the role of Alec in the mini-series, has once taken part into an UK movie, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (1999), directed by Guy Ritchie who previously shot commercials. It is a black comedy about a gang of four double-cross the robbers lived next door and get triple-crossed afterwards. Ning Hao, the director of "Crazy Stone" (2006) as part of Andy Lau's Focus Films First Cuts project, might have his story inspired by this cult comedy. It is also not difficult to find their similarities in terms of camerawork, insaned chain reaction of events and matrix of plots. The style of both melodramas follows more or less the tradition of Quentin Tarantino's films, "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) and "Pulp Fiction" (1994).

Feeling proud about this yet-still-to-be-proven and who-the-f*ck-cares finding, I said a little prayer and confessed once again to the Almighty about the wrong doing I did that afternoon and went to bed. That night I dreamt of Angel and wet my pillow with tears and sweat.

UPDATE:
  1. Well, Well, Well. My flapdoodle is justified here by An Interview with Ning Hao, in which he said Crazy Stone 'could be described as a tribute to Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie and Serbian art house darling, Emir Kusturica.'
  2. Nonetheless, I must say I am stupid enough to talk about my alleged 'finding'. People's Eyes Are Snow Clear! Follow this link for a Google of '中国版《两杆老烟枪》' (Two Smoking Barrels: Chinese Version). See if you could resist the temptation there, where bit-torrent link for downloading the movie is available.


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