Two more film reviews

The remaining reviews are being attempted tonight. Maybe I should make myself write them all before I sit down and watch all those first episodes I’ve been collecting… Ok, I’ll stop procrastinating here.

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Reviews: Schindler’s List and Shichinin no Samurai

Schindler’s List
Seven Samurai
Pretty Face
Russian Dolls
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Onegin
Ju on (The Grudge)

I’ve work and study to do, but if this list isn’t attempted, I’ll be needing to watch these films again!

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Three to go before Schindler’s List!!

It’s no secret that Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is an outright adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, except that Africa has been replaced by a Vietnam in the grips of a civil war that blew out to international proportions (i.e. the Vietnam war). Like it’s novel counterpart, this experience of darkness is framed by the man (Marlowe in the novel, here known as Willard) given the mission to track down a man named Kurtz. Unlike the novel however, this mission is a non-existant assassination assignment. I have never seen the original 152 minute version (does a dvd of that actually exist?) so this is based entirely on the huge 202 minute long Redux. All up, my conclusion is…one should never watch such a long film based on material one does not truly understand.

霍元甲

Directed by Ronny Yu, 霍元甲 (Huo Yuan Jia), aka Fearless, is a semi-autobiographical account of the life of the man who is recognised as the founder of 精武門 (this link also contains another account of Huo’s life), a martial arts institution that has since spread over the world. Yu mentioned in an interview that filming went so well that this would have been the last time he works with Jet Li. Li has actually decided that this would be his final martial arts film. I’m not entirely sure if he never intends to make a film again (I don’t believe he has ever done a non-martial arts film), but after decades of entertaining fans and film-goers with his skills, I don’t blame him for deciding that this is probably enough, and that it might be better to spend the rest of his life to what he feels is more important to him. Before he quit, he wanted to make a film that represents what he felt to be the true spirit of martial arts. IMHO, the basic message is achieved, but I wonder if certain decisions taken by the production team may have prevented the making of a better biopic.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Thanks largely to Memoirs of a Geisha being sold out, I caught this little gem with SC and two of her college friends before I headed to Singapore. Unless one is a student of history, sociology, politics, or something along those lines, Joseph McCarthy is probably a name that wouldn’t register. In the 1950s, the Cold War era being in swing, this senator took it upon himself to remove all traces of communism from American soil, a political and ideological approach named McCarthyism (here’s the wiki article – I don’t know how accurate it is) after him. In 1953, CBS news journalist, Edward R. Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, examined McCarthy’s actions on Murrow’s ‘current affairs’ program, “See It Now”, with far-reaching consequences.

Book Reviews – Schindler’s List and Freakonomics

Schindler’s List (Thomas Keneally)

Since 2004, I’ve had lists of ‘books…’ and ‘movies I intend to see’. Schindler’s List has always been on the latter list, and thus by default, on the former as well. Haven’t seen the film yet, but NK had the book, so…