In Chinese, this name 天天好天 is admonishing us to treasure the tiny element called TIME, that “each passing day can be a wonderful day”.
Cool.
It is also a stark reminder that time and tide wait for no man.
So savor precious minutes, because you’ll never know when you are going to stop breathing.
Kindly avoid griping, preening and pruning.
Today your skin may be supple smooth as an adolescent, but as the years pile on, you will arrive to be an old person with wrinkles.
In case you don’t believe, just take a good look at your mummy-ah and daddy-O.
It’s a fact you can’t be always young, nor can you live forever.
Let’s sum up that “GREAT DAY” is a didactic, “feel-good” comedic film produced by MALAYSIA’s ASTRO, targeting at the family and holiday crowds.
It’s an apt title to usher in the LUNAR NEW YEAR 2011.
Can you feel the advent of Spring?
“GREAT DAY” is a 100% made-in-MALAYSIA movie boasting a truly all- MALAYSIAN cast.
Well, we have a talent ensemble starting with well-known DJ JACK LIM and friends such as ROYCE TAN, VIVIAN TOK, WAN WAI FUN, LIM YEW BENG ambling close.
The film director does not rely on artistes from across the Causeway nor the regular local “oft-cannot act” pretty faces we see all the time on prime-time television. Wise move.
Film Director CHIU KENG GUAN, fresh from last year’s box-office blockbuster “WOO HOO!” is back again, this time with boundless confidence and one rural parable about love, love, love.
Yeah, there’s boy-meet-gal love, parental love and neighborly love.
An assortment of love delicacies on the platter to titillate your palate and reminding us that:
MALAYSIA BOLEH!
“My name is TAN HAU YEN. Ain’t I cute?”
“DADDY-O and MYSELF are the BEST of PALS”
“I love my GRANDMA and DADDY-O VERY MUCH.”
“I am CRYSTAL LEE looking for GRANDPA. Help me, I am LOST.”
CRYSTAL LEE with screen GRANDPA (LIM YEW BENG), Mum (VIVIAN TOK) and UNCLE (ROYCE TAN).
Above Picture: ”OUR BOX OFFICE TARGET is set at 5 MILLION RINGGIT. Now make our GOAL come true!”
“GREAT DAY” 天天好天 dictates to us that the elderlies must be respected.
It’s a lesson for us to nurture our love for our mum, dad and everyone in our family tree.
You may flaunt your youth today, but like everyone else, there will be a time when you, yourself will all be at the mercy-of-time.
This is when you get married, become a parent and face your own children.
Then you’ll have a dose of your own discipline because the past will come back to haunt you on how you treated your parents.
For Asians, unlike the Westerners, parental dedication is a form of filial piety and woe betide you if you don’t follow the rules.
Because what’s goes around, comes around.
Take note that FILIAL PIETY is to be good to one’s parents; to take care of one’s parents; to engage in good conduct not just towards parents – but also outside the home, so as to bring a good name to one’s parents and ancestors.
“GREAT DAY” starts with two quarrelsome uncles, LIM and LAM who live in an old folks home.
For want of nothing to do, these two men often pick on the most trivial of issues to create a dispute.
Tired of their everyday frolics, they escape from the old folks home to find their children just to compare whose children is better. Uncle LAM hurts his leg leaving Uncle LIM to continue his journey alone.
Fortunately, Uncle LIM stumbles into AH HOCK, a hard-working widower with his son AH BOY who are heading for Kuala Lumpur in a pick-up truck.
But when Uncle LIM arrives at the big city, everything is not what it seems.
His son and married daughter are juggling their lives, not doing as well as they appear.
Nevertheless, it’s all well that ends well.
In the end, there’s a big reunion bash for everyone at the old folk’s home, just in time to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
This movie is likely to give Director CHIU another boost as he stands proud with an able cast of mostly DJs and one heartfelt script with scenes that are definitely going to sear your heart.
In the acting department, JACK LIM triumphs in a competent performance as a filial son who is steadfast in his selfless love for his mother and young son.
Despite the pain, poverty and heartache that he sometimes goes through, he remains a generous man whose primary goal is to make his demential mother a happy woman till the end of time.
Yet it’s clearly the child stars CRYSTAL LEE and TAN HAU YEN who shine, who give the adults a run for their money and are pivotal in rendering “GREAT DAY” a deserving uplift.
We really hope to see more of these kids in future dramas.
The morale here is:
“Blood is thicker than Water”
and
“Tomorrow’s HOPE should mean a lot more than yesterday’s MISTAKE”.
There are fertile countries and there are barren lands.
There are high places where the peacocks strut
and slums where the lowly sparrows flutter around.
In life, there will always be a caste distinction and a discrimination of certain creeds and breeds.
It all depends on whether you are born at the right place, at the right time.
Fate never dealt with a fair hand.
The only way anyone can do to make the world a better place is to accept things as they are,
to work harder and to spread a little sunshine.
HAPPINESS is an aesthetic taste of the peace, love and joy in the world
expressed through the actions of another.
Joy is the very essence of life circulating
and pouring through the body
and filling your heart with the world.
Poetic dramatization of life?
“When all comes to all,
the most precious element in life is wonder.
Love is a great emotion,
and power is power.
But both love and power are based on wonder.”
~D.H. Lawrence
This is what Iranian director Majid Majidi, who also wrote this exquisite film with Mehran Kashani, is attempting to convey.
He highlights how the most important things in life, are the simple things we may sometimes neglect.
“THE SONG OF SPARROWS” is a touching parable about family and commitment, hardship and eventual redemption told in stark reality, with a profound wisdom.
Film director Majid Majidi invites us on his journey of humanity, the ostrich and God.
A sparrow is not a lark nor a canary, so can it sing?
There are strong moods throughout, a grim reminder exuding poetic remnants from ROBERT HARDY’s “THE DARKLING THRUSH”.
This metaphor may be Muslim in nature, but the teaching comes straight from the heart.
This film has a soul.
It is a portrait of one Iranian family on how they cope with life and living, of loving your family, friends and neighbors.
It is a film of warmth, virtues and dignity, defined by its humanity and adherence to tradition, in the face of changing modernization.
It injects a potent question:
How can anyone maintain his goodness in a self centered modern world?
This film cajoles us to examine our own existence, irregardless of religious affiliations, and savor life’s simple beauty.
The Story:
Karim (Reza Naji) is a dedicated ostrich farmer living in the Iranian countryside.
His wife is Narges (Maryam Akbari) and theirs is a loving relationship.
Until one fine day, a wayward ostrich escapes into the mountains, he promptly loses his job and becomes financially strapped.
Money is scarce and becomes an issue when he has to replace his daughter’s broken hearing aid.
His filial young son Hossein also tries to aid the family by buying goldfishes to breed in a local well hoping that they will multiply for later sale. Overzealousness causes this plan to fail.
Karim then travels to the city to repair his elder daughter’s hearing aid but finds himself being mistaken for a motorcycle taxi driver.
Thus begins his new profession: ferrying people and goods through the dangerous traffic.
But the people he meets and the material goods that he deals thereafter change his perspectives in life.
He becomes materialistic, selfish and intolerant,much to the distress of his wife and children. He has lost his sense of humility.
There’s one poignant scene, when Karim learns that his wife has given away a battered blue door, he angrily goes to reclaim it and carries the door home on his back.
Behold the magnificent colors of Karim’s lonely trudge carrying the door, juxtaposed against a sombre landscape. It’s an aesthetic albeit poetic pleasure of one man’s persistence spread before our eyes.
The family then rallies in hope to restore the values that he once cherished.
The acting is superb, touching and uplifting.
Karim’s world is a world of the lowly sparrows, depicting the struggles of the common man and how survival in this forlorn world is sometimes fraught with desperation and harsh realities.
Every sparrow has a song to sing.
And in “THE SONG OF SPARROWS”, it is essentially Karim’s melody.
The advertising headlines proudly announce:
“CHASING DREAMS. FINDING HOPE. BEAUTIFUL ….. REACHES INTO YOUR HEART.”
So it’s no less surprising that I passed on the chance to review the first one.
That was a year ago.
I’ve always harbored the notion that people who pay to get themselves “spooked” are a crazy lot.
The first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was an independent American film, cheaply-made.
It dwells on spooks that bumped and thumped in the night, not without warnings.
And if you chose not to believe, then woe betide you,
because the noises should then rise to a threatening crescendo …..
getting louder, bolder, angrier and end up as deafening bangs and thuds.
The apparitions would eventually appear in the final consternation, to haunt and shock the ballers out of everyone.
Don’t watch if you have a weak heart, lest you land up having a cardiac arrest.
The first film was shot in the faux-documentary style.
It signified a smashing 2009 worldwide box-office hit in the making.
Journalistic reviews collectively rated it “two thumbs up”.
A die-hard colleague even swore that PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 1 was amongst his all-time favorites, to date.
What of this predecessor, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2?
Grapevine is rife that critics are lauding praises that it’s a wonderfully directed and superbly acted horror flick.
The intensely ” real” chilly atmosphere is a profound factor.
It delivers some genuinely heart-thumping shocks, switching back and forth, to steal ideas from the first film.
Horror fans are a loyal lot.
Keep them really scared, and they will repeatedly come back wanting more.
Curiosity kills the cat and seeing is believing.
I had looked forward to the prequel.
At last, here’s my personal rating:
There’s too much-hype on this home made horror flick that’s stitched with surveillance footages.
Nevertheless it’s always enjoyable to watch something unpretentiously different.
Shooting in documentary style creates a sense of intensity and realism.
The point-of-interest to other film makers is, everything is entirely produced on a shoe-string budget,
made heaps for the investors and producers and is keeping everyone happy and hungry, longing for a further chapter, whilst the soup is still warm.
In PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, we are introduced to a new pair of gregarious victims, Kristi (wife) and Dan (husband).
This time they come with additional baggages in tow – a child (Hunter), a teenage daughter (Ali), plus a German shepherd dog (Abby).
Initially Dan is skeptical about spooks dwelling in his new home.
The maid has a premonition of impending evil, but she cannot convince the family of her belief. Instead, she gets fired.
But after a bewildering break-in where the whole house is ransacked, Dan then
decides to have cameras installed in every room.
It’s through these cameras that we witness the bizarre happenings.
It is a creepy follow-up on the first one.
There are inexplicable going-ons.
Kristi eventually sinks into a trance-like stupor, creating exasperation for those around her.
She acts like she has been “possessed”.
Abby the German Shepherd dog is persistently attacked by an unknown power.
Everything takes place within the house where there are safety cameras everywhere.
Combining the look of the choppy home video and surveillance cameras, each creepy creak, thud, and humming of the refrigerator motor in the still of night is bound to create goose bumps.
The ending is as gruesome as it is mind boggling, leaving the final pieces of jig saw puzzle in disarray.
We have to assemble these into one cohesive piece before we can arrive at an answer.
The scares are all the more effective by coercing the audience to use its own imagination to fill in the blanks.
The natural performances of the actors, their fright and astonishment at unexpected occurrences, including that of the dog’s, make the film believable and disturbing.
People go to “Paranormal Activity 2″ with fond memories of the original film.
This one is low-tech and teasing in the way it cajoles our eyes and expectations.
The audience is scared, but hooked.
The audience will come back for more.
Are there roaming spirits in this world?
Do you believe in the undead?
What’d you do if you hear unexplained thumps at night in your home?
As you leave the theater at the end of the movie, these will be your lingering thoughts.
“Tonight is the night When leaves make a sound Like a gnome in his home Under the ground, When spooks and trolls Creep out of holes Mossy and green.”
Will there be a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 after this?
Likely.
Wherever you go, tread with caution.
The unexpected can always come a-calling, when you least expect it.
“GREAT DAY” 天天好天 MALAYSIAN FILM PRESS PREVIEW
