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November 16th, 2009
 | 08:42 pm - Reasons to get work done
Cris just started watching Lilo & Stitch. All of the humans have excessively large and rather oddly positioned noses. I find this quite off-putting.
Also, the main character is apparently a psychopath.
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October 11th, 2009
 | 11:29 pm - Oh, thank you Wacko, it all makes sense now...
Discovery of the night: it turns out that my big recent director discovery--Pang Ho-Cheung (You Shoot, I Shoot (probably in my top 10 of the year), Exodus, Isabella (which I just watched & is fantastic), Men Suddenly in Black (which is still indefinitely unavailable on Netflix))--was also the author of the novel Fulltime Killer, which the same-titled Johnnie To film is an adaptation of. Which is one of my favorite Johnnie To films.
So anyway, it makes a lot of sense, because his own films--especially Exodus, and a little bit the other two--have a pretty similar vibe, especially a similar black humor and a similar (but less explicit) meta undertone to them.
As for Isabella?
I thought it was very good. Definitely something to watch if you are in the mood for something a little more on the slow/arty side, with a strong emphasis on character & little emphasis on plot. Those who are actually seeking such may find it a bit insubstantial, but I thought it was excellent. It kept me rapt throughout, which is a pretty decent accomplishment.
Oh, yeah. It bears pointing out that Isabella Leong & Chapman To are both really good in it and the latter, at least, seems like quite an accomplishment as I wouldn't have believed he could pull off such a subtle role.
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August 9th, 2009
 | 08:51 pm - Shorter movie review: _Shamo_
OH MY GOD THAT WAS DEPRESSING
DEPRESSINGLY AWESOME
?
At times.
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July 11th, 2009
| 03:56 pm
Watching Heroes Against Heroes while folding laundry.
It's like a martial arts after-school special starring Wong Fei-Hung and Beggar So about the dangers of smoking opium in 19th century China.
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May 13th, 2009
 | 10:36 pm - Randomness in Reading
Finally finished Candace Pert's memoir, Molecules of Emotion, a few weeks ago. It was definitely very good, and very thought-provoking. My main real complaint is that, by the end, it was clear that the part of the story that she thought was interesting was her hippie-flake new-age ideas (receptor activity is all vibrational, so maybe matter is just a vibrational expansion of consciousness! No, seriously, she discovered Jesus, started going to a chiropracter, met Deepak Chopra and started doing TM in the space of four pages. I had whiplash of my skeptical crazy-detector. It's still sore!) whereas the part of the story that I thought was interesting was her career in the sciences and the progression of her actual research... and our ability to compromise on this was drifting further and further apart.
So yeah, I ended up skipping most of the last 20-30 pages anymore because I just didn't care about her 10 rules to happiness (which weren't actually "10 rules of happiness", the phrase is merely a placeholder) and wanted to get to the end of her Peptide T story... which didn't actually end in the book. Doh.
Anyways, I started reading The Scarlet Pimpernel as my new bus book--just to make ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) da_wyf jealous, I think--and it's been going pretty well although I just barely started. I'm really quite wishing I hadn't left it in the lab this afternoon, actually. I'm not in the mood for How to make sex marvellous tonight, so I've been alternating between Bruce Lee's The Art of Expressing the Human Body, Pharmako/Poeia (which I still don't know how to pronounce!), and my college Chem textbook. None of them are really doing it for me, though--I'm in the mood for some fiction!, but I hate starting a novel while I'm in the middle of another one. That way madness lies, I swear!
On an alternate media note, recent movie watchings:
* We watched Wing Chun and Iron Monkey last weekend at our weekly movie night (showing the Dead or Alive trilogy this weekend, I think) to much acclaim. I'm just realizing now that it's been at least a decade since I saw Wing Chun, and I've been looking for a cheap copy on DVD ever since... which I just finally picked up on the honeymoon.
* The watching-all-of-Doctor Who-available-on-DVD project is nearing completion (bet you didn't know about that!): I just finished Trial of a Time Lord so I'm about to start Sylvester McCoy, who doesn't seem to have a lot on DVD.
I am deriving a lot of amusement from the bizarrely specific subgenres that Netflix has been pitching on their front page as of late: "Mind-bending Foreign Crime Movies!" "Quirky Independent Sci-Fi & Fantasy!" It's actually pretty tame at the moment, in comparison to much of what I've been getting.
I think that's all for now.
Current Music: HYDE - Evergreen ~English Ensemble~ | Powered by Last.fm
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May 6th, 2009
| 06:03 pm
The Netflix synopsis of last year's Benny Chan thriller Connected (emphasis mine):
In the first Chinese remake of an American blockbuster, helmer Benny Chan updates the 2004 thriller Cellular, with Louis Koo starring as a single dad debt collector who becomes embroiled in intrigue when he responds to a stranger's plea for help. An out-of-the-blue phone call from a woman claiming to be held by kidnappers sets off a chain of events that will terrify and test the beleaguered man in this action-packed adventure.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!!?
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July 1st, 2008
| 12:31 am - Two unrelated things
From this AP article:
The Televen channel yanked the animated hit from its lineup in April after regulators said its 11 a.m. showing violated broadcast rules intended to protect young viewers. "The Simpsons" returned to the air at night, and was replaced in the morning with "Baywatch Hawaii."
In other news, tonight I watched Boarding Gate, an Olivier Assayas film starring Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, and Kelly Lin. Also, Carl Ng, but I don't care about him. Anyways, it was a weird little movie, not at all what I was expecting (I'd just seen the Asia Argento + Michael Madsen and assumed that = bad actioner starring Asia & Madsen without looking at the director or the rest of the cast list). It very much felt like the first half was a French film and the second half was a Hong Kong film. Which, in a way, makes it sort of like the ultimate HK film. So of course, I loved it far more than it deserved.
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