"EVERY BREATH YOU FAKE" a Short Film by JUN KIN
Scheduling in Year 2016
Monday, November 15, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
“LET ME IN” Movie Review. Knock! Knock! “I WANT YOU. I WANNA COME IN. LET ME IN!”
“LET ME IN” Press Preview
Geez, the creepy title is enough to create goosebumps.
“Let me in …” (softly)
Let WHO in? (crying out loud)
My heart skips a beat.
That grotesque figure at that window?
An apparition?
Who’s THAT?
“LET ME IN” is a supernatural thriller that will surely drain your blood and chill your bones.
If that happens, then you’ll probably be dead meat.
It’s spawned from the successful Swedish movie “Let the Right One In,” which is ostensibly, one of the most thought-provoking, vampire films ever made.
This one is an Americanized version, paying a worthy tribute to the predecessor.
The scene shifts from Stockholm (the original version) to Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the 1980s, the current one.
Matt Reeves, who directed the shocking “Cloverfield,” serves as screenwriter and film director here.
The lead is 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a scrawny, perturbed looking boy with a doleful, wide-eyed innocence.
He is always the target of a bunch of devious bullies at school.
Karma has it that these obnoxious terrors will soon have their just desserts.
Enter a weirder-than-weird girl named Abby (Chloe Moretz).
She moves into the same apartment complex where Owen and his mother live.
From the start, it’s apparent that she’s a trifle peculiar.
Dishevelled, gaunt, walking around bare foot and even more solitary than Owen, Abby makes cranky nightly encounters to connect with her new neighbor.
Here, two lonely hearts beat, a secret shared.
When she tells Owen that they can never really be friends, she has this faraway gaze. Why so?
Naturally Owen confides in her about the school bullies.
And Abby cajoles him to stand up to them and fight back, hard.
Her father (Richard Jenkins) who lives with Abby disapproves and forbids her to see Owen.
Yet she continues to form a heartwarming bond with the lonely boy.
She sees in him a certain kind of attachment, a detachment of sort.
Thereafter strange things start happening following a string of bizarre killings.
The platter multiplies and the mystery deepens.
Until a police investigator arrives in the neigborhood to check clues and unravel the murders.
It is only then that Owen discovers that there’s indeed, more than meets the eye.
That Abby is possibly linked to all the blood and gore.
If so, he has to fear for his own safety.
Because Abby is a young vampire, thriving on human blood.
And her father, her protector, kills to procure more blood for her so that she may live.
At times touching, mostly horrific,”LET ME IN” weaves a tragic tale of two lonely young souls whose friendship grows and glows in an unusual way.
Is there a restriction that declares that you can’t form a liaison with the supernatural?
Stories of the macabre kind affecting the sweet innocence of kids who have this thirst for blood never fail to bring in the quiver, shiver and scream.
For sure.
Both Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz justify their innocent-and-demonic roles, playing their parts to the hilt, crafting screen personas with a good amount of sensitivity, laced with both depth and lurking horror.
The film director’s visual treatment, his affecting juxtaposition of tenderness and savagery, brings forth stellar performances from the rest of a competent cast.
“LET ME IN” makes for a unique experience unlike any other in recent horror-movie genre.
It is one creepy, chilling and scary film that will enthrall you and nail you to your seat.
Don’t look back!
For all you know, you may change your mind about your visit to the loo during the movie, for fear that you’ll miss part of the mounting excitement, leading to the heart-pounding finale.
Don’t we all?
Beware!
“LET ME IN” CAN BE THIS GOOD.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
I, MAN. You, DOG? On a LONG and WINDING road, You'd need this BEST FRIEND.
I think, therefore I am.
Rant, exploit, obsession, you name it.
Here’s a penny for your thoughts.
Have you ever sat in the middle of a long, winding road and look far ahead?
The horizon seems limitless, unfathomable, so out-of-reach.
It’s like frantically stretching out your hands, trying to attain something, yet it fraudulently slips away.
Sometimes you’d put on that brave front,
And smile that warmest smile,
But here’s looking at you, chum.
You can be lonesome, yes, life can be pretty lonesome for each and everyone of us.
Specially on days when we’ve nobody to share our innermost thoughts and dreams with, not even with our closest ones.
We are often, too selfishly wrapped up in our cocoons.
Too busy to appreciate the finer things in life that really matter, things we promised we’d do before we pass on.
Till, one day, the angel above delivers an urgent and unexpected wake-up call.
Then, maybe – it might be too late?
TALK to your DOG. He’s by your side.
Your DOG will never fail you.
He will listen, obey and agree with a woof and a wag.
Check this out.
Mine looks at me this morning, with wide quizzical eyes.
He seems to implore, “I am DOG, master. You are MAN.”
So there’s this differentiation?
Ahwwww …. not a very appropriate term, chum.
It’s kind of a put-down.
He is my friend, my partner, my defender, my DOG.
Is there a stark difference between MAN and DOG?
Both are living creatures.
I breathe. DOG breathes.
DOG has a life, except that MAN is the dominant master.
MAN calls the shots, shouts the command.
Aldo Kraas sums up the lot of a MAN when he laments in his poem:
“We are just a person with feelings,
And not an animal
Because we don’t think like an animal
And we don’t act the same way that an animal does.
We go out of our way to hurt others
Until they bleed …..
By telling them that we are always right
And they are always wrong.”
So that’s how this horrific word “war” is stemmed from.
Humans are faced with all kinds of wars.
Political wars. Religious wars. Household wars.
We fight because we hate . We rage because we love.
We cause stress to our minds, we bring hatred and misunderstanding to ourselves and to others, when a smile and a kind word would have worked wonders.
For the human, this is what we called LIFE.
What about the lot of an animal, the DOG?
Aaron Eckhart has his piece about Man’s best friend:
“I have a dog and sometimes I’ll be the littlest kid with my dog and marvel at his ears and his nose and how he looks at me. If he died, I’d bawl like a baby.”
Anyone who owns a canine pet couldn’t have agreed more.
One of the most loving and unconditional relationships you will ever have is with your dog.
Their sense of loyalty and devotion can be compared to no other.
In return for the companionship they provide, it is our responsibility to show them love and take care of them.
Like I say, I think, therefore I am.
Rant. Exploit. Obsession. Whatever.
I am what I am.
No less.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
THE FAMILY COURT 走进走出 Singapore Drama. WHAT when YOU have ONE FOOT stuck in and TWO FEET protruding Out?
TAY PING HUI
QI YU WU structs the PEACOCK FLUFF
DANCE the Can-Can with EELYN KOK
THE FAMILY COURT 走进走出 SINGAPORE DRAMA REVIEW
With this Chinese title 走进走出 “SAUNTERING IN, WALKING OUT” virtually screaming out for attention, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d better hurry, lest there could be an impending traffic jam.
But NO, this is not the case.
We have competitive lawyers snarling and furiously fighting their civil cases in court, hours later the scene shifts to a pub where they gather for friendly, frivolous banters.
Life’s like this, when you dwell on the unreal.
Which is what THE FAMILY COURT is all about.
Forget corporate fights.
This drama is laced with family disputes aplenty:
Estranged mother suing lawyer son then perished miserably when she was knocked down by a running car (accident or murder most foul?), deranged masochistic husband sexually abusing wife, a frustrated housewife fighting custody of her only son, legal comrades taking bosom buddy to court, swearing in one paradoxical bated breath, “We are your close friends, you know?”
More …. our lead actor recklessly impregnated a young gal during his youth and is now punishing himself in a second life as a doting single father.
That was a teenage past conveniently thrown in to fuel another sub-plot – that of an old forsaken love and nursing a piping new one.
Hurrah!
Yeah, THE FAMILY COURT reveals that friends are for daily wear and tear, for clubbing on sunshine days, and then unceremoniously taking them to court, when winter beckons.
What are friends for, really?
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Not only that, lovers are for utilizing.
Love them dearly when you need them today.
Then trample and discard them tomorrow.
That’s the nutshell plot of THE FAMILY COURT, glaring in your face.
YES, Nothing is What It Seems. (English tagline)
Surely not. (guffaw).
NOW, LET’S SETTLE OUT-OF-COURT:
TAY PING HUI puts in a commendable performance over a well-worn, predictable script that meanders over the obligations of being a righteous man as well as being a dutiful father to a bright youngish daughter. In court, out of court, he stays impossibly squeaky clean.
Come on.
QI YU WU is an otherwise charming, roguish lawyer with a materialistic slant who will stop at nothing to achieve his selfish aims.
His is a case of rags to riches (mind you, his mother is a Geylang prostitute) and to him, life is one precarious “I earn it!” daredevil running treadmill.
Really, why shouldn’t he?
Why can't you leave him alone to climb his ladder of success?
EELYN plays the affable follower-type lawyer who believes that love maketh the world go round. She pursues love relentlessly and her focus seems to be anything but the law books.
CHRIS TONG, an upcoming Malaysian actress who’s currently in virtually every Malaysian drama, has a comely role as a tough lawyer with guts and grit.
She is basking in the glory of being MALAYSIAN CHINESE DRAMA QUEEN.
CHRIS may be lovely to gawk at, but she clearly lacks the alluring charisma of fellow Malaysian actress JESSICA LIU.
Her acting is passable and would have garnered better praises, if she has been styled more like a lawyer than as a polished newscaster.
So there!
Now, it is the SUPPORTING ACTRESSES that take center stage, giving the leads a run for their money.
Lovely ONG AI LENG excels as a desperado housewife who’s facing a nasty divorce and wants to keep her son. Watch her as she rants and tears dramatically in a surprising role seldom seen before.
HONG HUI FANG as a demeaning, fading prostitute who’s out to get a “piece of her own son” before her life eclipses.
And yes, lovely ANN KOK, she’s really wonderful, despite several scenes where she tends to overact when she breaks into hysterics.
Don’t you ever learn that it may not be necessary to wince and squint those many expressions to milk sympathy from your viewers?
Take a good look at KARA HUI.
Her screen time is brief in her award winning art house feature AT THE END OF DAYBREAK.
It is THAT only one rotund scene ….. a bedazzled faraway stare that bowled over regional judges and won her seven BEST ACTRESS AWARDS at the major Asian film festivals recently.
Less is MORE.
Yeah, THE FAMILY COURT is a much more comfortable, watchable drama than UNRIDDLE.
At least to this Reviewer.
It’d have helped if the four lead characters are given more depth, more emotive character development.
Especially that of QI YU WU’s and HONG HUI FANG’s characters.
Theirs can be said to be the highlight of the entire drama,
but this particular section is nipped peremptorily in the bud, even before it can take flight.
What would you have done if you have your one foot stuck in and two feet protruding in the rut?
This is one fine oxymoron that I am also seeking the answer.
Ambiguity prevails.
YOU TELL ME.
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