BRIEF MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CASUAL MOVIEGOERS


Monday, March 24, 2008

Unintentionally funny Korean brand

It's not mine. I got it from former America's Next Top Model Season 1 contestant, Elyse Sewell's Live Journal. She regularly posts pictures and anecdotes about her adventures in modelling, and they're pretty funny stuff.

Brotherhood of the Freaks


Freaks forever.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

The price of living far from the city

That's what I felt like doing to the car of the person who schedules the Oscar movies in Singapore. But I wouldn't know who that person is, or even know where to begin to find his car. Furthermore, I don't plan on going to jail for it, so I'll have to be contented with Walter doing the deed on my behalf.

If you're not following, then you must have missed my earlier posts about the near-impossible task of watching the Oscar-nominated movies especially if you're car-less and live and work at least 25 minutes away from the city. The movies are rarely ever shown outside the city, and often scheduled during working hours or very near to closing time, leaving not much time for travelling. Late shows are out of the question because the buses and MRT stop services right before a late show ends.

I had no choice but to attend surcharged weekend shows. This was how the cinemas f***ed this stranger in the ass:

Minimum weekday ticket cost = $6 ($30 for 5 movies)
Minimum weekend ticket cost = $8.50 ($42.50 for 5 movies)

The price of living far from the city = $12.50 or 42% above weekday prices, suckers!

Also, last Monday's Evangelion 1.0 : You Are (Not) Alone ticket fare = $8.50! Why?
One, the cinema that's showing it increased their fares recently.
Two, the movie is exclusive to this cinema.
Three, therefore every single Evangelion fan in Singapore will be bottlenecked to the only two cinemas showing it, thus guaranteeing that seats will be unavailable. Price for booking a seat in advance = add. $1.

To see the complete BMF Budget, click here.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Review: 10,000 B.C.

A really stupid caveman movie

(Spoilers ahead!)

I'm fine with movies that have silly premises. Movies like Blade, Underworld and Resident Evil offer a hodgepodge of scientific and supernatural themes that border on unintentional parody. But the stories are often excuses for stringing a few fun action or special effects sequences together, and for the aforementioned movies, the action is almost always the best thing about them. The preposterous story of a vengeful black half-vampire goes down much easier if you're having too much fun watching Blade eliminate vampires with his silver samurai sword. Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. is just as ludicrous, probably more so, but unfortunately it failed to impress in every aspect that mattered.

Thus, It goes without saying that 10,000 B.C.'s weakest attribute is its storyline. It's a shameless rip-off of Apocalypto's first half and Stargate's second, also an Emmerich movie. Circa 10,000 B.C., a group of horsemen pillaged a tribe of mammoth hunters, and captured some of its people, including blue-eyed prophecy child Evolet (Camilla Belle). Her boyfriend with the rapper-sounding name D'Leh (Steven Strait) immediately embarks on a rescue mission, together with mentor Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis, who's in everything these days), rival hunter Ka'Ren (Mo Zinal) and recently-orphaned Baku (Nathanael Baring). They travel beyond the mountains of their icy plains to discover Africa, and then, within walking distances, Egypt. There, he finds his people being forced to work on building pyramids for a mysterious, god-like figure. D'Leh may lack modern weaponry and Kurt Russell, but luckily the Egyptian slave masters don't shoot plasma bolts from their staffs. He manages to round up an army of African natives to help him, because, conveniently, he also happens to be the Chosen One. He proves this by making friends with a sabretooth in one of the most intellectually insulting sequences ever. But it can't beat the one where a witch doctor revived a dead person by exhaling a misty puff of breath from hundreds of miles away. Meanwhile, D'Leh's hot girlfriend gets thrown into the company of thousands of deprived and depraved primeval men without causing much incident, a la Rambo 4 and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Faring badly too are the action sequences, which managed to take the best from Jurassic Park, Stargate, and 300, and actually made them worse. For example, it cribbed 300's spear-throwing finale, but lacking 300's editing sensibilities, 10,000 B.C.'s scene just plainly unfolds without ever bothering to build any semblance of suspense. Next thing you know, the villain's dead, and... that's it? The one action scene that we don't often see elsewhere is the mammoth hunt, which should have been the movie's highlight. But the ferocity of these ancient creatures barely even registers, which made the hunt no more exciting than if they were hunting regular-sized elephants. Although I like action, I'm not a gore lover, but this is one instance where a movie might have benefitted from some blood-letting.

Not helping Warner Bros' cause for a hundred million dollars is its hundred-dollar computer effects and production values. It has been three years since Chronicles of Narnia's fake-looking lion, but it seems like the development of computer generated felines never progressed. The mammoths were better animated, but looked like they lacked definition and seemed blurry at times. The man-eating birds are the only ones that get a passing grade, but it's probably because they whisked across the screen too fast for closer scrutiny. The set (or was it all blue-screen?), character and costume designs are a notch higher than Xena: Warrior Princess', but they are still as unauthentic, unless you believe dental care and sailboats had already been invented before the mammoths were extinct.

Probably the only way to stomach 10,000 B.C. is to think of it as one of those cheesy Eighties Conan The Barbarian-type of movies. But Apocalypto is clearly the better ancient-civilisation-action-movie. 10,000 B.C. is as pointless as the rave scene from The Matrix Reloaded. - BMF


VERDICT:







For the record:

Emmerich movies: Stargate > Independence Day > The Day After Tomorrow > The Patriot > Universal Soldier > Godzilla > 10,000 B.C.


Directed by Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, The Patriot) and screenplay by Emmerich and Harold Kloser (debut). Stars Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Affif Ben Brada, Mo Zinal, Nathanael Baring, Mona Hammond, Marco Khan and Omar Sharif as The Narrator.