Curious Cat

Finally finished this movie (which I’ve been trying to watch for a couple of weeks now - I watched it in parts for the last three days). ‘Always Sunset on Third Street 2’, as I didn’t realize until I looked it up afterwards, is apparently a sequel to the first one released in 2005. Will not delve into the movie’s intricacies, but will say it’s a simple, touching, heartwarming, drama-comedy of bygone days. I think it will be enough to make anyone feel nostalgic for Tokyo in the 1950’s as if we’ve all lived there, in another life; the setting ‘being as much a character as any of the individuals in the sprawling story.’ (variety.com)

So if you feel like a down to earth movie that reminds you of what it is to be truly human, then this one’s for you.

Thanks to one of my readers, ‘Fishman’, who recommended this film. :-)

Have a good weekend! 

x

One of the best Sundays I’ve had in Hong Kong:

3:30am Skype with Gus

11:00am Wake up

12:30pm Lunch (KFC chicken sandwich! Only HKD10!)

1:30pm Meet with Daniel and Javier at Admiralty interchange

2:30pm Meet with Kristina and Benj in Chai Wan

2:45pm Start hike up the cemetery to Dragon’s Back + Shek O Country Park

5:00pm Hot chocolate at some quaint cafe by the beach (Deep Water Bay?)

8:00pm Skype with Gus + Shower

9:30pm Indian Dinner with 5 Indians, 1 Colombian, and 1 Irish girl in Wan Chai

1:00am Watched this super feel good movie! :)

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that could’ve changed the course of human history. (IMDB)

 I really hate watching period dramas/films not in their original language. It removes from the authentic feel of the movie. Gong Li, Chow Yun Fat, and Ken Watanabe were speaking the kind of English that Chinese and Japanese people during that time would never have spoken. I’m not saying that their English couldn’t have been perfect (as it very well could have been though highly unlikely), but they were speaking a formal and proper kind of English with a syntax I can imagine being unique to upper-class English (now) or Americans (back in that period) - not even normal, everyday English that native speakers would use. Hence the unnatural feel of the dialogue, at least for me. I can get very nitpicky about these details. However, Shanghai redeemed itself by having a very sound conclusion (sounds unconvincing, but come on, how often is it that a movie’s ending satisfies you in terms of being realistic or resolved?). And usually, in WWII dramas, the Japanese are always portrayed as evil butchers (think Pearl Harbour, Lust Caution); in this film, however, I think a fairer picture was painted. Although there were still violent deaths-by-bayonet and war atrocities, there was also honour, respect, and humanity piercing through that image.

Randomly:

1. There were a few similarities between this film and Ang Lee’s ‘Lust, Caution (2007)’, which I remember seeing with Anna in our room in Rennes (France) back in 2008. 

2. Rinko Kikuchi (who played Sumiko) seemed to be such a promising beauty in ‘Shanghai’, until I googled her and found out she now sports a bowlcut and is otherwise blonde.

3. The movie was written by Academy Award Nominee Hossein Amini, an Iranian scriptwriter - the same guy behind the hit “Drive” (2011), which I saw last November with Alex, Kuba, Juan, Gemma, June, and Felipe. 

4. I’m perplexed by the lack of hype and publicity for the movie. Nobody seems to have said much about it (not the press, critics, whatever) despite its star-studded cast. I felt John Cusack was hard pressed to hold a candle to supercelebrities Ken Watanabe, Gong Li, and Chow Yun Fat (powerful acting, riveting screen presence… deserving of their pan-continental stardom). And to think they had to act under unideal conditions (the script was in a second language). Ken Watanabe and Gong Li, especially, I could literally not take my eyes off.

5. Whilst on the topic, the Weinstein Organization was supposedly hesitant to release the film in the West. From Unseenfilms.com: “It’s ultimately that they are balking at the fact that most people don’t like films with Asians in the lead. It’s sad but true, we in America simply won’t watch Asian films unless they are martial arts flicks or way out horror, and even then the audience for those is limited, since those two genres are looked down upon by many film goers. It’s sad. It really is. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you know that highlighting Asian films of note has been one of the driving forces behind it.”

6. Director Mikael Håfström went on to direct “The Rite” (2011) starring Anthony Hopkins. I remember my Catholic university encouraging us to watch this, even holding a premier attended by the exorcism practitioners in the Philippines.

(The trailer is in English, but I watched the movie in Mandarin, with English subtitles. Always better that way.)

I’ve been wanting to watch this film since falling in love with South Korean actor Jang Dong Gun in this movie:

Directed by Chen Kaige, The Promise is a 2005 Chinese epic fantasy film starring Jang Dong-gun (South Korea), Hiroyuki Sanada (Japan), Cecilia Cheung (Hong Kong) and Nicholas Tse (Hong Kong). The film is based on the wuxia (martial arts themed genre of literature) romanceThe Kunlun Slave, written during the Tang Dynasty. (Wiki)

I found it so strange but awesome that the director casted big Korean and Japanese stars into the lead roles, making them learn how to speak Mandarin just for the movie. Throughout his acting career, Jang Dong Gun had to learn two different languages for two roles: Japanese for his role in 2009: Lost Memories, and Mandarin for this movie. And you will probably know Hiroyuki Sanada as Ujio in The Last Samurai. 

For lack of a good briefer of the movie online, I’ll just come up with my own summary: The movie beings with a girl named Qingcheng who made a promise to an Enchantress to sacrifice love forever in exchange for wealth and adoration. Years later, a general and his slave, seeking to save the emperor, exchange identities and begin a confusion that leads everyone in circles throughout the rest of the movie. 

Well, I think I did a bad job of that. But anyway, graphics were amazing, possibly even surpassing that of Hero (Jet Li):

…which is quite an impressive feat, if you ask me. Although I believe the directors had totally different ideas of how the CGI was to be executed for either film, anyhow, so there wouldn’t really be any use comparing the two. Hero was more naturally beautiful while The Promise ethereal. Or hyperreal.  

The plot was criticized for its incoherence, and it’s admittedly not the most brilliant or profound one out there, but I felt Chen Kaige was being indulgent in telling a Chinese fairy tale of epic proportions, and I appreciated that. 

‘The Promise’ (known as Master of the Crimson Armor in America) was nominated for Golden Globes Best Foreign Language Film at the 63rd Golden Globe Awards.

And, one last question, for whose who’ve seen it: What happens to the enchantress? 

“What language do you need that in?” :)

Can’t count the number of times I heard this question. People were so eager to give me a guide in Chinese/Japanese/Korean that it made me feel slightly bad and weird to decline their offers and choose the English one instead… they were probably thinking I was being stubborn and in denial.

x