Stinker of the Year

This is frightfully bizarre. When I got sick before, a loss of appetite usually came along with the whole deal. But this time around, I'm actually hungry. Incredibly, fucking hungry. I ate like a pig today. Meal after meal, snack after snack. Of course, I couldn't taste anything - which had both negative and positive effects, depending on the original taste of the foods consumed. I just munched and munched and swallowed. Very strange indeed.

Managed to sneak in Howl's Moving Castle today, since I was feeling slightly better. Still, a Miyazaki film always takes its own sweet time getting around to things, and it feels even longer when you're groggy from illness and medication. I guess this was probably the reason why I didn't enjoy it as much as Spirited Away. It feels very similar to the latter though, and there's only one thing that I didn't really like - the whole war theme seemed tacked on and unsatisfactorily explored. Yeah, there are warships and bombers going about their business, but no one seems to know why there was a war in the first place, and why they suddenly decided to end it. Or maybe I missed something as a result of being groggy.

Oh yes, and I said I'd blog about Avatar.

My God, what a piece of shit.

I have a lot of respect for Kuo Pao Kun. After all, he was an extremely important figure in the local theatre scene. That respect, however, does not unconditionally extend to members of his family, and it certainly does not extend to his daughter, who has brought this demonic spawn screaming and kicking into the world.

Where does one start a movie? With a good script, something Ms. Kuo should have learnt. This muddled, half-assed sci-fi mumbo-jumbo crap is not a script. At best, it'll make a mediocre TV movie with desperate actors trying to break out of soaps. At worst, when your talent doesn't even have the ability of desperate soap actors, it becomes fetid sewage. First there are tons of needlessly complicated twists and turns, then entire scenes filled with bad exposition, then scenes with just plain bad dialogue, then... at this point you pretty much wanna blind yourself.

It feels like a filmed theatre production. This doesn't come as too big of a surprise, since many of the cast and creative personnel are from the stage. However, someone also needs to teach them the lesson that what works on stage may not necessarily work out for film. Lighting, for example, was way too theatrical and unrealistic. It seemed like they just tossed the concept of motivated lighting entirely out the window. This even translated to acting style, where everyone was doing everything so over-the-top. Every gesture, every eyebrow raise, took on Loads of Meaning. Ugh.

The sound design was just plain awful. Whoever did it should be shot. A couple of thuds when cups are placed on a table does not mean that your sound design is complete. It's really sloppy work when your actors' voices have the same quality no matter what surroundings they're in - open air, elevator, penthouse apartment. Add annoying music to the mix and you have something that makes me sick.

I don't even want to mention the "special effects". Groan. If I can do similar stuff on AfterEffects, you should be able to do better.

All in all, this looks like it's shaping up to be the Stinker of the Year.

Before I saw it, I was complaining that no one seemed to want to take a chance on Singapore films and screen it publicly. Now I take it all back. Thank you, distributors, for not giving this crap a chance to inflict its full horror upon the public. Honestly, I'd rather see (*shudder*) Bringing Down the House.