Musings

Surrogates (2009) – on rental. There was critical acclaim heaped on Surrogates when the film was screening in theatres here last year: but I gave it a miss back then for a really dumb reason. Don’t laugh now – but I skipped it only because the film was a disappointing 89 minutes long, and I concluded it wasn’t worth $10 and decided to catch it on rental instead. I like long films – make me feel it’s worth the price of admission.:)

Seriously though; Surrogates is a sci-fiction thriller and includes elements and elements already seen in several other movies of this type,including The Matrix, I, Robot and The Island, all from about the last decade, and even the recent Avatar. This film is set in the near future – the year 2017 where robot surrogates are used in place of human beings to do just about everything: at work and even at war. The robot avatars are ‘driven’ through mind-links with humans who remain in their safe confinements of home. Not everyone’s thrilled with this technological evolution though: humans who resist the use of robotic surrogates have formed city enclaves, and tensions between them and the rest of the world are high. The leader of the enclave is known as The Prophet, played by Ving ‘M.I.’ Rhames in hilariously funny dreadlocks.

Now, these robotic surrogates are supposed to have fail-safes that protect their operator from harm in the event that the surrogates are injured or destroyed. However, the opening scenes of the film establishes that this is no longer the case: two surrogates are destroyed, killing their operators as well in apparently brutal fashion (the violence fortunately is all off-screen). Bruce Willis and Rahda Mitchell play FBI agents Greer and Peters, and who’re assigned to the case. And soon enough, both discover a plot and conspiracy that’s bigger than just two seemingly unexplained incidents, and which involves even millions of lives.

Visually, the film doesn’t spell out loud that This is the Future, aside from those eerie-looking robots which look like anatomically and facially perfect representations of their human operators. Case in point: Rosamund Pike plays Greer’s wife, but as stunningly beautiful is this British actress in person, her avatar ironically looks like an awfully creepy version of the real person. From the looks of it, CG was used to airbrush (or something) each actor’s facial features. Sort of how Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were digitally de-aged in the opening scene of X-Men: The Last Stand but somehow in disturbingly hair-raising way.

The film’s 2017 world also looks pretty much like today’s 2010, and there aren’t space ships or jet propulsion cars flying about. But the moralistic issues and themes of technological use are right center and forefront in the narrative: when does the use of technology come to a point where we lose our humanity. There’s a terrific subplot of Greer’s marital relationship with his wife whom he has not seen in person for years, but only her avatar – his wife has not stepped out of his room through all these years, and for him, her perfect avatar is no substitute.

The 89 minute run length of the film though I think works against the film. I would have like the film to run a lot longer with a more thorough fleshing out of several story points, including of a very interesting law enforcement operative who has the power to remotely disconnect – with the appropriate warrants – robot surrogates from their operators. In a couple of other cases, key story points needed to have been explained but were glossed over: like how that unique weapon actually results in the violent killing of operators.

Still, the film was a terrific ride. I’ll recommend this for any one who like their sci-fiction thrillers with thoughtful themes.

500 Days of Summer (2009) – on rental. Romantic comedies are a dime a dozen these days, and while the quality of the spoken dialog and chemistry between leads do continue to vary from film to film, more often than not many films of this genre don’t see much range in terms of their stories, the general plot arc of meeting to conflict to reconciliation, nor the atypical outcome at film’s end.

I guess that’s why I really enjoy romantic comedies that are either offbeat or even just a little out of the norm. There’s the pair of real time-esque comedies Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and now this: 500 Days of Summer. The film starts off with a startling voice over – that this is not a love story, though that in itself is a misrepresentation: 500 Days is a love story, just not a conventional one.

The compact 95 minute film tells of a relationship between Tom, a card writer who dreams of being an architect and who begins the film believing in the power of love and fate; and his co-worker, Summer, who doesn’t believe in either. By the film’s end, both persons’ perspectives would have changed, though their individual journeys to this vary in efficacy: it works for Tom, didn’t work for me in Summer’s case.

The film is presented in nonlinear narrative fashion. In any other circumstance, the narrative might have caused audiences getting madly disoriented as the film jumps between points in the timeline. To the film’s credit, these timeline points are presented through a numerical measure of how many days Tom and Summer are in in their relationship. Some of the funniest bits are the juxtapositions between past and present. For instance, in one scene you see the relationship at a high point, and a second later, you see an identical scene but only 100 days later where the relationship is at its low point.

Character pair engagement, chemistry and general likability in romantic leads are of great importance in films of this type. Tom and Summer are played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, not exactly unknowns but so over-exposed in films of this genre either like Jennifer Aniston is these days. You’ll empathize with Levitt’s Hansen – he’s the average guy in a job that keeps him occupied and puts food on the table but he has secret dreams.

But it’s Deschanel’s Summer that left me with an impression: she’s unconventional, refreshing despite her pessimistic attitudes towards love, but constantly still surprises with her actions despite that. It’s telling that Zooey Deschanel is an attractive actress in person, but her costumes and weird 1960s hairdo hides that and lets her facial features takes over the visual aspects of her representation.

It’s also refreshing to see a comedy that doesn’t rely on adult gimmicks to relate a story point, like in the recent but really disappointing The Ugly Truth. In this sense, 500 Days doesn’t feel false but exactly what relationships are like.

We watched the film the other evening with Matt, and it gets Ling’s approval.

I’ve posted here before about a music service I subscribe to, namely eMusic. The service used to be a huge bargain with thousands of classical music albums on sale at very affordable prices. However, the attractive pricing plans were changed late last year, and while it’s still cheaper than equivalent purchases at Amazon or in brick-mortar CD shops like HMV, it’s no longer the bargain it once was.

The net effect of the price changes is that these several months now I’ve become a lot more careful about what music tracks I purchase, since albums now cost typically about USD4.80 in their MP3 versions. That means I should leaning towards acquiring new classical compositions I haven’t heard before. But ironically a good amount of my most recent purchases are still old compositions!

There’s a couple of works I’ve fallen in love of late with revisits, and in the last 2 years have picked up several performances, two of which I’ll mention here. There’s Bach’s six French Suites that he wrote for the clavier but commonly recorded today on the piano. I first heard the work on an old Decca CD recording performed by András Schiff. Most of the several dozen short pieces in the suites were unknown to me (my only exposure to Bach as a piano learner 25 years ago was his Preludes and Fugues), but the Gavotte from the French Suite No. 5 in G has a wonderfully sprightly and melody that I remember from the very old but popular Hooked on Classics albums with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from the early 80s. A Youtube recording of the Gavotte is below.

My most recent acquisition of this composition was just over the weekend was a performance by German-American pianist Wolfgang Rübsam. By far though my favorite performance of the work comes off a recording before a live audience by Simone Dinnerstein, an American-born pianist I’ve blogged about a year ago here.

The other work that I’ve spent a lot of time listening to are Mendelssohn’s two Concertos for Two Pianos. These are far less frequently recorded than the Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin or other late romantic equivalents, but they’re some of the most amazing works demonstrating collaborative keyboard artistry. There are perhaps six performances of these two concertos available for online purchase anywhere; I’ve got four of them already and I still haven’t tire of listening to them! This is music I could set to Repeat on my music player and not get tired of listening to them for hours. My favorite performance of the four sees Swedish pianist Roland Pöntinen and Love Derwinger supported by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta conducted by Lez Makiz, an ensemble who also recorded another one of my favorite performances of Mendelssohn’s twelve string symphonies.

Inglorious Basterds (2009) – on rental. Quentin Tarantino is one of those film directors who can make any film he pleases: and even with the trademark eccentricities in his productions, everyone of them will still be critically acclaimed hits. The entire list of A-actors in Hollywood typically line up for roles in his films, even for cameo work.

The story of Inglorious Basterds concerns a small squad of Jewish-American soldiers in World War II specifically organized for one reason: to kill Nazi soldiers in the most vicious manner possible, with each person in the team expected by their commanding officer, Lt. Aldo Raine played by Brad Pitt in his usual bad-boy mode, to chalk up 100 scalps as due payment to him for accepting them into his squad. Tied into this main overarching story are major story lines of a young Jewish woman Shosanna who operates a French theater selected by Joseph Goebbels, the German wartime Minister of Propaganda to premier a Nazi-produced war film, and also a senior German SS investigator and officer, Colonel Hans Landa, nicknamed the “Jew Hunter”.

For those of us not in the know – scalping is most commonly associated with the practices of Native American Indians in the 19th century in claiming trophies when they killed their enemies: and it involves using a sharp knife to remove part of your enemy’s forehead, usually but not always when they were dead. Just to get it out of the way: you’ll see this act of scalping in Tarantino’s film – and it’s only for this reason why I didn’t watch this film when Ling was around. She might just have fainted from the sight!

But like Spielberg’s films, you won’t feel that gore or violence is gratuitous in Inglorious Basterds, unlike say the two Kill Bill films, also by Tarantino. The violence here is tightly integrated into the narrative, and it’s portrayed as it might had been in reality – war is a nasty and messy business. The film has substantially more talky and dramatic scenes of tension than outright violent action (i.e. combat). There is a handful of scenes where firearms are used and people are getting killed, but they are very few and short but extremely violent.

There are two more aspects of this film that must be mentioned. Firstly, there are no sacred cows in Inglorious Basterds. Every character is fair game, even the main leading ones. You don’t expect a main character to meet his demise, and when he suddenly does (or doesn’t), you’ll be left shocked as how next is the story going to turn. That contributes to a very high level of nervous tension in the film, and it’s worth mentioning again that that anxiety doesn’t come from violence but simply well-written and dialogued dramatic scenes. I haven’t chewed my finger nails while watching films for a long while, but this film had me doing just that!

The stunning script is matched also by some of the best acting performances I’ve seen in the last 12 months, of which Christoph Waltz’s Colonel Landa (above picture) tops the heap. The Austrian actor speaks three languages fluently: German, English, and French – and he exercises this linguistic talent by speaking all three and Italian in the film. His Landa is a cultured, well-mannered and milk-drinking (!) gentleman, but also frighteningly and ruthlessly methodical, and efficient with a brilliant mind at investigation. The closest match in character composition and theme I can think of is Ralph Fiennes’ Commandant Amon Göth in Schindler’s List, but Waltz beats Fiennes by the mile here. His portrayal of Landa is utterly mesmerizing, and he now ranks as the best onscreen villain ever – Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector is now a distant second. Waltz has been unsurprisingly nominated for the Best Supporting Actor in the upcoming Oscars (he’s already won an astonishing 26 acting awards for his role in this film) – an award I hope he wins!

Inglorious Basterds has also been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director apart from Waltz’s Best Supporting Actor nomination. I’m uncertain if the film will take the first award though, given the stiff competition it’s getting from the other war-film nominated in the list, specifically The Hurt Locker, and also James Cameron’s Avatar – which was all spit and shine but relatively little substance. Even if not, Inglorious Basterds is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while, and rates an unqualified…

There were several high and low points in my revisits to the three films too this week: memorable scenes that worked very well, and scenes that were just awful.

For the former: the standout scenes included the introduction of Jack Sparrow  – the character sails into Port Royal about a rapidly sinking little row boat, and the trilogy’s final scene (not counting the easter-egg after the credits roll) is of Jack sailing off to find the Fountain of Youth in a similar dinghy. There’s also Sparrow and Orlando, whoops, Turner’s hilarious theft of HMS Interceptor, the three-way sword fight between Sparrow, Norrington and Turner, and Elizabeth Swann’s attempt at parleying with Captain Barbossa (“The code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules!”). Heck, all the scenes with Barbossa were a hoot to watch, and I’m glad Geoffrey Rush is returning with Johnny Depp to do the fourth film “On Stranger Tides” together.

As for the low points, well – all the scenes with Keira Knightley’s Swann in pirate gear and trying to pirate talk. Really CMI: she just does not look or talk like the part requires. The lowest point was when she tries to do that inspirational “Let’s go get ‘em!” talk for the Brethren Court fleet against overwhelming odds in the form of the Beckett’s East India Fleet just before the climatic battle of the last film. Maybe she was to trying to channel William Wallace. Too bad it just didn’t work. Her counterpart, Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner fared better though it’s still a huge strain listening to his slightly tenorish-baritone mixed voice trying to sound macho.

The CG work for all three films are amazingly good and on high def you see a lot more detail that you might have missed on the big screen or on DVD. Especially those visual characters that makeup Captain Davy Jones (veteran Brit actor Bill Nighy)’s cursed crew. I thought Gollum from LOTR looked obviously computer generated, but in Pirates, the crew members look so real I have a hard time believing that they are all CGed, logic at whether creeping tentacles for beards and dread locks are even humanly possible aside.

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As for missed opportunities: starting with music: Hans Zimmer I think took a lot of flak for self-plagiarizing and mining his earlier soundtracks for the Pirates trilogy. I thought the music is indeed semi-repetitive across the three films and aimed squarely to please the mass demographic without concern for musical subtlety or sophistication. There was another pirate film – Cutthroat Island – from 1995 starring Matthew Modine and Geena Davis, the latter actress who seems to have nearly completely disappeared off film radar. That film had a superb film soundtrack by John Debney, and it played homage to the 1930-1950s swashbuckling film scores of Erich Korngold. The music in this Pirates trilogy on the other hand is easy on the ear and catchy enough. But there’s little in its main themes that signify it’s a series of films on the colorful Caribbean era of the 16th century. In other words, the music here is what you’d found in King Arthur which in turn was what you found in Gladiator which sounded suspiciously like what one heard in The Rock.

There’s also the absence of character-pair conflict and tensions in a couple of spots. In some instances where there is, it works: e.g. Barbossa and Sparrow’s mutual antagonism over the Black Pearl’s ownership makes for some of the last film’s biggest laughs. Remember that scene about telescope sizes, or that “Belay that belay order!” scene of dialog between the two? The Laurel and Hardy character team of Ragetti and Pintel works for me too.

What didn’t and not trivially so: lovebirds Turner and Swann. It doesn’t help when the two of them have about as much chemistry as oil and water, and both were miscast if for different reasons. The two of them start out having hots for each other at the get-go and it’s sustained for the next two films. The one spot which presents an opportunity for conflict and which should had been farmed for material is given short drift instead. I’m referring to the scene when Turner sees Swann smooching Sparrow (before she ties him down with the ship to appease to Kraken LOL) and mistakenly believes she’s got a thing for him. It’s resolved in the third film in a lover’s quarrel scene, but not satisfactorily.

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All said and done and on balance, I enjoyed my week-long revisits to the three films. Based on my original viewings, I would have rated the trilogy perhaps two stars. But for the revisits and perhaps now that I’ve paid more attention to the proceedings, the experience improved significantly. Not perfect, but still a terrifically enjoyable…

One of those challenges about producing film trilogies themed on fantastic premises is coming up with story arcs to string and relate the three films together. Ideally, you’ll want to write the entire story for the three films first before even making the first one, rather than make a film with only very loose ideas about where to go from there and suddenly realize that you have lots of backtracking and corrective exposition to do after the fact when the first film turns so successful studios demand sequels.

Film trilogies like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (LOTR) are lucky in this respect: their stories were written for the printed word first, so the films just need to follow the original text close enough and the audiences can then sufficiently draw relation between the films to see the continuity from one to the next. We also had The Matrix trilogy, which only casually introduced overarching story points in the first film and left it to the second and third films to actually flesh them out. And then we had the Star Wars original trilogy, which I thought was the worst offender of “making it up as we go along”, enjoyable as the three films to me were. I’m thinking specifically of Obi-wan Kenobi’s claim to Luke Skywalker that Vader “killed his father”, to which he could only clarify as “in a manner of speaking” in the third film when it’s established Vader was Luke’s Lao Pei.

I felt the Pirates trilogy was somewhere in in effect between LOTR and The Matrix in this regard, and it’s something I’d mostly missed in the original viewings. In my revisits on Blu-ray, I now noticed there were numerous references in the first film to significant story points in the second and third films, and winningly, those references weren’t just casual. For instance, the legend of Bill ‘Bootstrap’ Turner is solidly explained in the first film, which the next two films properly follows-up on, as is also Sparrow’s ownership of the Black Pearl and constant cycle of experiencing mutiny with his crew and island marooned. Another example: why Barbossa was brought back from the dead by Calypso in the second film is revealed in the third.

The net effect of properly establishing numerous story arcs that are introduced early and resolved later really made for a better sense of continuity and cohesion between the three films, though as these fantastic adventures go, there’s still a lot of belief suspension needed on its sensibility. For instance, after the third film I’m still wondering what exactly was Calypso’s reaction to being freed by the fourth Brethren Court aside from the maelstrom that she coughed up. Or the inconsistencies surrounding the prowess of the Flying Dutchman’s ship and crew: is the ship indestructible and the crew immortal for them to have easily swept through the opposing pirate fleet – shown early in the last film – but somehow seemed more vulnerable in the climatic fight at the film’s end.

Concluded in the next post.:)

Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy – on HD. One of Disney’s most profitable film franchises is the Pirates of the Caribbean trio of films: starting with The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003, Dead Man’s Chest in 2006 and At World’s End the next year. I thought the first was alright, second was goofy, and the third was just awful when I caught them at the theatre.

But as my purchases of home entertainment goes, I’ve been especially keen on acquiring Blu-ray editions of action-adventure films and the odd romantic comedy or drama. Specifically, nothing beats watching well-done visual spectacles on high-definition, even if the films are pretty crappy at times. So, I picked up the Pirates trilogy on Blu-ray two weeks ago, and spent about five evenings going through the approximately 7.5 hours of film (haven’t started on the feature supplements yet). And surprisingly the trilogy made for a better viewing experience than at the theatre or on DVD (yeah I’ve got all three films on DVD too LOL).

For those of us living under a rock since 2003 and without knowledge of the three films, the trilogy covers the adventures of a cast of piratey characters, some memorable, some played by actors who fit their characters to the T, and others so badly miscast that I cringe whenever they show up in their scenes. There’s Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, who’s dressed up like a 16th century rock star in dreadlocks but is played like a queer, Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Hector Barbossa who got all three films’ best lines – even if he was almost completely absent from the second film – and Tom Hollander’s Lord Beckett who bestows his antagonist character with the appropriate level of sneer and menace.

Those were the bright lead-character spots, but the three films were counter-balanced by others who were anything but. There’s girly-man Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom who looks absolutely lost without his quiver of arrows and bow (personally, I think he should stick permanently to either playing leads in non-period romantic dramas, or elves), and Keira Knightley with that protruding and terrifically distracting jaw of hers as Elizabeth Swann, only child and daughter of Port Royal’s Governor Swann (Jonathan Pryce) and Turner’s love interest.

The lot of supporting characters sandwiched in between the leads of contrasting quality fare actually quite well. There’s Commodore James Norrington, an intelligent if somewhat constipated military officer turned pirate and played by Jack Davenport – I’d love to see him in dramas; First-mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally), who plays the role of exposition-filler and helps clear up all those confusing plot points and mythology to the audience. Pirates Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook) and Pintel (Lee Arenberg), the 16th Caribbean equivalents of Laurel and Hardy and who dish up a number of laughs about pirate negotiation (“Parley…?”) and the afterlife. Even Asian super-star Chow Yun-Fat shows up in the last film as Captain Sao Feng in hilarious costume and makeup.

Continued in a later post.:)

Coco Chanel (TV, 2008) and Coco avant Chanel (Film, 2009) – on rental. The only thing I know about Chanel really is the fashion giant has something called “Chanel No. 5”, though what exactly that item is I had no clue until recently. In the last year or two, there seems to have been a new interest in film depicting the person who started the empire. The more well-known production was Coco avant Chanel starring the pixie-like Audrey Tautou which was shown in theaters here last year. There was also a second and earlier production – a 3 hour made-for-TV film called Coco Chanel from 2008. Both productions became simultaneously available on rental, and the TV drama the first to arrive.

Coco Chanel begins from the advanced stage of the Chanel’s life. We see a Chanel in her late 60s just having put up a fashion show that hasn’t gone well with the audience. Interestingly, the TV film doesn’t recollect her past from that point, but continually in the next 3 hours 10 minutes juxtaposes her life as an established and world-famous designer in the 1960s, and her early life and years from the nunnery from about 19, and her first romance with French textile heir Balsan. Unlike Tautou’s film, this TV production is more expansive and covers more ground than the film.

The old Chanel is played by 73 year old actress Shirley Maclaine (above, first picture), still amazingly feisty and sprightly for her age. It’s telling that while the film purports to tell the story of Chanel through the years from being unknown to international recognition, it’s Maclaine who receives title billing for scenes taking up perhaps just a quarter of the film’s total screen time.

The younger Chanel is played by Czechoslovakian actress Barbora Bobulová (above, second picture), whom I mistook for Juliette Binoche (prior to watching this movie I had no idea of this production or its cast) until the end credits rolled. The other recognizable face besides Maclaine is Malcolm McDowell, playing the older Chanel’s business partner, Marc Bouchier. I’ve never quite liked McDowell as an actor: it could be his snarly voice or his naturally sinister look. Either way, I thought him an ill fit for a character who’s supposedly looking out for Chanel’s interest.

The production with Audrey Tautou in the title role is a very different film. Visually, the film benefits from a bigger budget, so what you see on the screen looks appropriately more splendid. The costumes, the settings, the backdrops, the props etc. Both films present somewhat different perspectives of similar events: e.g. the famous singing scene where the title character got her nickname, her first romance with Baisan, then with Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, her early struggles as a hat maker then transition to fashionable wear.

After watching the two productions over three evenings, I think I far prefer the Maclaine TV production than Tautou’s film. Many reasons. For starters, as stunningly beautiful and talented an actress as Tautou is, she perpetually scowls and pouts her way through most of Coco avant Chanel, even in scenes or story points that shouldn’t had called for that kind of negativity. It’s like she’s an angry woman throughout, and that made it difficult for me to empathize with the character – especially when the character just isn’t likable. Bobulová is far less well-known internationally, but she plays a Chanel of similar time period with a lot more subtlety and emotional range that you’ll feel for her, especially in her see-sawing relationship with Baisan.

The supporting cast was also a problem in Coco avant Chanel. The Baisans in both productions were written as playboys interested in horses, but Benoît Poelvoorde (film) also plays the character like a low-IQ dolt that it’s real difficult to see how any one would even fall for him, never mind the fact that the actor himself even looks a lot older than the 12 years between his and Tautou’s ages. The Arthur Capels in both films are played as suave, well-mannered gentlemen who’ll win Chanel’s heart, with Alessandro Nivola (film, picture below)  easier on the eyes than Olivier Sitruk (TV). However, the Capel from Coco avant Chanel has far too little screen time to properly establish any sort of significant presence. He shows up at the couple of key points in Chanel’s life with little lead-in to establish either character’s motivations, then it’s the end of the film. Not satisfying.

The biggest problem I had with the film though lies in the script. Both productions covered at least the same material, with the TV production extending the Chanel story to her old age, but I never got the sense of the character’s journey or maturity development in Coco avant Chanel that I got with Coco Chanel. Scenes were quick-cut and transitions jarring. A lot of times when a new scene began, I was left going “huh…? What just happened?” And mind you – I watched the film after the TV production so I had a rough idea of the key story points. I wonder if dialog had been snipped out of the film’s final cut, but it’s really bad.

Case in point of a key story point left unexplored in the film: how Coco fell for Baisan. One scene has her dripping with sarcasm and dislike of Baisan, and in the next scene they’re ripping each others’ clothes off in lust. Sorry, didn’t work for me.

Equally as telling is the music used in the film. The TV production features an absolutely romantic and lovely soundtrack – which  further underlines the production’s underlining agenda: that theirs is a Chanel love story. The film is on the other hand a by-the-numbers retelling of Chanel’s key points in her life, all dark and grim with little cheer throughout. You get moody music. You actually feel more depressed than inspired at what Chanel did for feminism.

Oh, and one final remark. The closing scenes of both productions are strikingly identical: both the film and TV drama closes with a Chanel fashion-show, and the models and audience applauding Tautou’s artificially aged 40 year old Chanel, and Maclaine’s naturally 74 year old wrinkled-looking Chanel. Food for thought and not sure if people noticed: the film’s models in that final scene all look so very 20th century: young, anorexic-looking models you expect out of a modern-day Victoria’s Secret catalog. On the other hand, the TV drama’s models in the same final scene all look like they’re indeed living in the 1960s with appropriate body styling, hair-dos and fashion ware. Sometimes, a mega budget works against you.

Coco Chanel (TV, 2008)

Coco avant Chanel (Film, 2009)

Cross-posted from my other blog.:)

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There just isn’t any stopping the BioWare juggernaut. Hot on the heels of their critically-acclaimed RPG Dragon Age Origins that was released just a few months ago, Mass Effect 2 – the second in a planned trilogy of sci-fi CRPGs – was just released for the Xbox 360 and the PC.

The second game in the series sees players back in the role of Shepard, ex-Spectre and commander of the space frigate Normandy. The opening cut-scene though sees the destruction of the Normandy while on hunting for the remnants of the race of sentient machines, the Geth, from the first game. Shepard is technically (?) killed, but his body is reconstructed and consciousness restored by the powerful pro-human group, Cerebus, and headed by the secretive Illusive Man, voiced by the veteran actor Martin Sheen from The West Wing TV-series.

Convinced that the Geth were acting as proxies for a more dangerous threat, the newly restored Shephard is tasked with first finding and recruiting companions, most new but some old and returning from the first game, then investigating the disappearance of human colonies that eventually reveals the galactic threat.

Most of Mass Effect 2 worked well for me. The voice-acting is back in top form, with a couple of easily recognizable voice actors, including aforementioned Martin Sheen, Battlestar Galactica Reimagined alumnus Tricia Helfer and Michael Hogan, and even Michael Dorn from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Funnily though, Jennifer Hale’s voice delivery of the female Shepard is more nuanced and make for better listening and story immersion than Mark Meer’s delivery of the male equivalent. So, if you have no compunctions playing the female version of the hero character, that’s the way to go for a better overall experience.

(more…)

Last year in August I did a post on upcoming films of 2009 I was interested in catching. So figured it’d be fun to do a regular iteration of posts on upcoming films. This list runs till about May this year. Not all these films are going to be big hits though, but they’re all films I’m interested in catching.

Clash of the Titans (26 Mar 2010)

This is the much hyped remake of the original 1981 film. I actually still remember the original film from nearly 30 years ago quite well – not only because Anglo-Chinese Primary School if I remember rightly organized class outings that year for those of us in primary 4 to watch the film at the nearby Cathay Cinema back then, but also because of the many repeat TV runs on the then old Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. The remake enjoys all the benefits of computer generated visuals, stars Sam Worthington of Terminator: Salvation, Ralph Fiennes and even Liam Neeson as Zeus. The teaser trailer looks fabulous though Neeson looks real weird as an armor-clad Zeus.

Agora (Mar 2010?)

Rachel Weisz returns to ancient Egypt, but not in Mummy 4. She plays Hypatia, a Greek scholar and teacher of mathematics and philosophy who lived around the 4th century and during the rising tide of Christianity in Roman-occupied Egypt. Historically, she was apparently and unfairly blamed as the cause of tensions between the ruling Roman officials and the Alexandria Pope, and was murdered by a Christian mob. The Spanish-produced historical drama has already been released in certain areas in Europe, but no idea if it’ll ever reach Singapore. Still, hopefully it shows up at least on rental or Blu-ray. I’ll be interested in catching this film either way.

Iron Man 2 (30 Apr 2010)

The next film in the successful launch of Marvel’s armor-clad superhero. I found the first film a bit of a mix bag. I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr’s performance of the title character, the chemistry between Starks and Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), the quips and story humor, but thought the antagonist rather bland. Oh well – it was still much more good than bad, so watching Part 2 is a sure-given for me.

Prince of Persia (27 May 2010)

It’s finally nearly here, and the buffed-up Jake Gyllenhaal actually looks the part of the Prince Dastan from the trailer, even pulling the same stylistic acrobatic stunts from the video games. I’ll put money on that this will be a runaway financial success for Walt Disney Pictures and will begin a film franchise like Pirates of the Carribean.

Further down; there’s The A-Team (Jun 2010), The Expendables (Oct 2010), Toy Story 3 (Jun 2010), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (Nov 2010). Next update later in the year.:)