Indulgence

random musings 02.20.06

Li Po
We have never grown tired of each other, the mountains and I.
Wallace and Grommit, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is one of the funniest cartoons I've ever seen. I watched it last night with my Dad and I was laughing so loud that I accidentally woke up my 1 year old niece from her pleasant slumber. Datu, my brother and the father of the beautiful little child, had to step out and warned me that I was laughing too loud. Funny, to think, that in the past few weeks, we've been watching movies left and right. I've seen action films and comedies and everything in-between, even scary films but in the past few weeks, it was watching that hilarious cartoon that made me laugh so hard that actually woke up the beautiful baby in our home. Hayao Miyazaki already won an Oscar for Spirited Away and while I've never seen Howl's Moving Castle and I know it's probably good; there is no possible way that Wallace and Grommit, the Curse of the Were-Rabbit can lose. It's just so damned funny, charming and, surprisingly, touching. The animation was superb and there was so much character. From a clay-mation dog, of all things, I've seen better acting than many human actors. It's amazing! It deserves an award.

It bothers me, sometimes, to know that I go around and have this great appreciation for things and that I can find only a certain number of people who enjoy these things as much as I do. For one thing, a lot of people really, truly found Brokeback Mountain a gorgeous film. I thought it was over-rated. Sure, Jake and Heath were fantastic. It was great acting and they pushed themselves further than anyone could have ever hoped or asked. Even Michelle William's performance was given much praise by the press and rightly so. The cinematography was gorgeous. But the movie was too long -- it becomes dragging right after the two leave the mountain. The short story is better. The short story got it right. Brief, intense, powerful and immediate. The movie drew out the story to the point where it's impact, in my opinion, was less evident as time moved on. I didn't and don't really care about Ennis' daughter or how she grew up (though I will admit that actress was lovely and she did a fantastic performance) but the story requires immediacy to make that sort of impact and dragging it did nothing for the film and instead made it crumble apart at the end when the beginning was so powerful. It was almost as if Ang Lee did not trust the material to carry out the message.

And as much as I hated The Cave, I thoroughly enjoyed The Descent. There really is something about the British who can handle a good story and good story-telling. The Cave was badly directed and had no real logic to it's reality, The Descent worked on so many levels and worked in all of them. The Descent was frightening in 3 ways -- the psychological, the immediate reality of their situation and the possibility of something more, something horrific. It was unexpected and was well done and I was genuinely frightened, and more importantly, I really cared for the characters, which makes the experience more frightening.

I also watched Aeon Flux with Berna last week and enjoyed myself. I was very disappointed with the direction because I didn't see much of the action -- it wasn't well covered and so at one point, I don't know exactly how Charlize Theron brought down her foe or, due her fight with Sethandra couldn't tell who was getting hit, who was winning and who was losing. Note to directors: when doing fight scenes, have an equal measure of tight shots, medium shots and long shots that way we can see what's going on, feel the action and have a clear image of the movements. I can't enjoy an action film if I can't see the action! But nevertheless, the movie was enjoyable and it's very hard for Charlize Theron to do wrong for me. She's a good actress and she certainly looks fabulous in skin tight clothing. And the movie made me understand the cartoon more now. I feel that they could've made the world of Aeon Flux more strange, more surreal like the cartoon but maybe they didn't want to alienate unfamiliar audiences. Cheesy dialogue too, but otherwise, I had fun.

At one point, I realised that as much as I enjoy watching films, I learn so much about my own craft and there's always something new that I can pick up. The more art I take in, the better I become. I become more aware about character development, pacing, exposition of theme and plot, how to obscure and how to create more engaging metaphors and symbols for my story. This isn't just leisure for me, it's research, it's studying. How cool is that?

posted by wanggo @ 4:02 PM