Sugar Storm

I have dedicated most part of my two years in Japan traveling inter-city for a movie cinema. Last week I graduated to a whole new level: traveling inter-country for a movie cinema. I have my defense: the movie was Gone Girl by David Fincher and I was peer-pressured into traveling by most of my friends here. So there I was, finding myself on a morning bus from Milan to Zurich. It was a 3-hour journey with bonus of some amazing scenery on the way. I was also planning to see Guardians of the Galaxy, because I am the only one left in the world who hasn't seen it. But man, tickets were so expensive, for the sake of survival I had to save some money.

Gone Girl is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best seller (which I'm reading right now), adapted by one of Hollywood's ace directors David Fincher. It tells the story of a missing wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) at the time of her fifth anniversary with her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck). With the media coverage to find Amy, Nick's life is overturned as more and more secrets are unraveled.

Gone Girl is amazing. I wish I could just end this review like that. But we gotta elaborate right? Firstly, it's a Fincher film; he just couldn't do bad films. I even like his Alien 3, it's not bad and the ending is brave. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike is great. This film pumped me up for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (what a fucking title). Don't you just want to see all those Fincher-trademark, dimly-beautifully lit scenes and that ethereal score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross? Not to forget, this film's source material is already top-notch. And author Gillian Flynn penned the screenplay herself. Combined it with Fincher and we had a great, dark, un-Hollywood thriller. It's so not Hollywood and it's definitely not the usual major studio material. But thank God it's out there for us to see. I see the story as a criticism of media and how media is driving the people to some serious allegations. It's an evil thing if not handled well. I can only say this much about this movie, fearing I would spoil some things. But all in all, it's one of the most fucked-up movies a major studio has ever made in America. Definitely one of the year's best, and would love to see it recognized in the awards season. Gone Girl: rated 4/4.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts where I will dissect Fox's new, picked-up-for-second-season, mediocre Gotham.

Shameless Self Promotion

So back in July 31 until August 4, I shot a film with some of my friends. A more mainstream fare than my previous film titled Cops/Thieves. The new film is titled #3, you read it as Number Three. It's about a boy who's trying to win back a girl and at the same time asks, what is the most important thing in your life? So, here's the film, and tell us what you think about it :)

*it's mostly in Indonesian, but we have English or Japanese subtitles for em.

The Struggle

First moviegoing experience in Milan! So it was a Monday and there's a happy monday promo which makes the ticket 3.5 euros, way less than the usual 8.90 euros. My first movie here was Step Up All In, I specifically chose this film because Step Up films has no story, the real spectacle here is the dancing. Why so? Because all the major cinemas in Milan are dubbed in Italian. Yeah. So they released A Walk Among the Tombstones early here but I couldn't watch it. And I don't know how do they decide the seating, because the ticket box person didn't show me any seating arrangements. So I thought it's the who's in first system, like the one I encountered in the Philippines. But no, it actually has a seating number. Another unique thing here is there's a 5 minute break random in the film. It was literally at a middle of a dialogue and bam! Pause to relax.

This fall-holiday season, there aren't many films I wanna watch in the cinemas (a result of 2 years of prioritizing in Japan). My little list of films only consists of Gone Girl, Interstellar, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies. These are the major ones. The award-season films are not included. WHICH led to the biggest regret of the month: Birdman was shown here in Milan but I found out a day before the screening in which all the tickets were sold out. And this week, Zurich Film Festival is here. And George Clooney's wedding in Venice. hashtagThepainsoflivinginEurope

Anyway, Step Up All In was pretty bad. The flash mob story was, in the Step Up films scope, revolutionary because it didn't involve some tournament. And the dance wasn't even that cool. It looked cool thanks to the super Briana Evigan. And that leading man looked like Chris Evans' stunt double. On a different occassion, I watched Jeff Bridges-starrinThe Giver. It's not bad, but it has all the potential to be amazing. It should be better than Divergent but apparently not. That's a shame. It could be more epic and more thought-provoking, but it ended up talky and bland. Sorry, precision of language; it's quite boring. But the color scheme thing works beautifully. And that overhyped Taylor Swift appearance is only maybe less than two minutes. Hey but who doesn't love Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep?

Anyway, the only films that I would watch that would be screened here in English next month is only Lucy. So that's pretty retarded. Italy is even worse than Japan in terms of movie going.

Buona Sera!

Hi! I'm very honored to introduce this blog's third base camp which is in--drumroll--Milano, Italy! Unbelievable and crazy right? Suddenly this blog just went places. This boring blog. Anyway, I celebrated by staying at home watching two movies back to back (if you're wondering, they're The Rover and Chef) while also accomplishing my first laundry and eating lunch. I know what you must've been thinking: man, this is one lazy Asian over here.

So, good points: new experiences, new friends, all of those new things right?
Bad points: dubbed cinemas and unfriendly locals.

Say whaatt? Dubbed cinemas?
Yep, while the film distribution is pretty good Italian cinema going is a product of the country's history of anti-English/anti-American. Therefore they dubbed all of English-speaking films to their own proud language. They claimed that they have the best dubbers in the world, and from what I've been seeing from the Italian version of trailers, it's true. But fuck that, come on. We're in one of the most famous cities in the world and you can't find an English speaking cinema? Yes you can apparently, but the movies played in those cinemas are limited and not updated ones. And there are only THREE cinemas playing this lingua originale films. Struggle is not over from Japan, guys. Let me get tickets to Coppa della Stelle or some of that three-worded Italian title of The Fault in Our Stars. There are people who needs to watch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy in English here.

Please Stop

Just watched Transformers: Age of Extinction a couple of weeks ago. It was just released on early August in Japan. My expectations were very low. I didn't expect anything. The trailers look okay, but I wasn't expecting much. This is going to be real short.

The story takes place after the events from Transformers: DOTM. Transformers is now branded alien and dangerous no matter whether it is an Autobot or a Decepticon. Now the humans are played by Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor--which is less appealing than Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. Transfomers are now hunted but at the same time a company is making a Transformers army with less cool impact. There's also a bounty hunter who wanted Optimus Prime. I don't know, too many stuff going on.

I'll start with the good ones: Optimus Prime and Bumblebee's new design is cool. Okay that's it. The fact that Age of Extinction spent its first 45 minutes for human exposition story is kinda wtf and infinitely boring. It's cute that they think they have a legit human story to tell. We don't need Mark Wahlberg talking to Nicola Peltz for 45 minutes. The story is all over the place. The characters are bad. They actually lost me when Ratchet was brutally murdered and another part of the interest was lost when TJ Miller was Sodom and Gomorrah-ed. Apart from Prime and Bee, the other Autobots are crap. There's this racist Japanese robot whose design is like a samurai with full battle costume and he speaks like a Japanese person even though he transformed into a Bugatti Veyron. The John Goodman-voiced Autobot is basically John Goodman. The bounty hunter named Lockdown is one of the highlights. It's good and scary with some cool weapons. But the KSI Transformers (the manmade ones) are sleek but the way they transform is shit. The much hyped Dinobots is another bad thing, it made the movie weird--like really weird. I'd rather have Optimus narrate the phone book as the introduction than seeing dinosaurs in the first minutes of a Transformers film. And those obvious product placement Chinese drinks. And the racist thing that every Chinese knows kung-fu/martial arts. God. I really wanted to leave this film at some points--plural--of the film. The Bayhem seemed muted by the fact the story is really bad. Please stop making more of this atrocity. Transformers: Age of Extinction: rated 1/4

PS
This will be my last Japan-based post for 2014. Next post will be Italy-based!

In another note, my now 8-year old tradition continues with my second viewing of Godzilla, which with 2nd viewing doesn't get better. I'd give it a solid 3/4 now.