Thursday, April 05, 2007
Movies? Seriously?
Remember my last post about the 2 movies that I downloaded. Well, I guess I have time to blog about it today (cos I ponteng-ed my GP after going to pick up my Hannibal Rising).
$13 for my Hannibal, I am happy, happy, happy. 'anibal is my favourite character in fiction and I always dreamt to be like him. I have created a character of myself using 'anibal is the mold in my thory, tho I lobe 'anibal bely muth.
So onto the review!
First off:
The Trailer:
From IMBD:What you see in the trailer is a mixture of a fantasy world inlaid in the reality of the Spanish Civil War. It is a Spanish movie with English subtitles. One may think that I am too old for fairy tales, but nobody is ever too old for fairy tales. And when a fantasy movie is rated 'R' for excessive violence, you know that you are in for one hell of a strange movie. The press calls it 'adult fantasy', and the reality of the real world was brutal and sadistic and not suitable for anyone who is below 17.
"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944, after Franco's victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Fascist repression during the first years of Franco's dictatorship is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own."
The opening scenes of the movie opens with a tale, a fairy tale. Then the scenes zooms in to the main focus of the movie: Ophelia, the young girl who was reading a story book. She has her head wrapped up in fairy tales (just like me), but she has to wake up to the real world, where about two thirds of the movie is about. We get glimpses of the fantasy world through Ophelia's eyes, and the fantasy world is not a world pictured by Walt Disney with dancing fairies and grinning dwarfs.
This is the fantasy world that I have known before but have forgotten due to Walt Disney. Fairy tales are not always happy cheerful tales with no blood watsoeva. They were either toned down in newer editions or warped by Walt Disney.
Take for example Cinderella. Do you know what happened to the two stepsisters after Cinderella married her Prince? They were chained to a wall and their eyes plucked out by white doves.Not all tales are tales of pure goodness. There are the evil that lurks under every goodness. Not all tales are of happy, androgenous elves (Legolas) and child wizards (Potter) and evil gods (Eddings). There are the mysteries that we could never understand, legends that we could not comprehend. For people who reads the fantasy genre, think Raymond E. Fiest's FAIRIE TALE. It's a fantasy story, which scared the hell out of me the first time I read. Fairies that hunts you, fantastical beasts that hides in the shadows and wait for your soul. In ancient mythology, fairies are not like Tinkerbell from Walt Disney's Peter Pan. They are mischievious creatures, full of selfish pride and cruelty. They dance in the moonlight and wield enchantments that seduce men to them.
The evil stepmother in Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs? When Snow White became queen, the evil stepmother was forced into iron shoes that has been put upon fire, and she danced in the red hot shoes until she died.
The Juniper Tree by Grimm Brothers is another tale that leaps to my mind. It tells about a stepmother who kills her stepson and fed his remains to his father. Evil? And she was crushed by a millstone at the very end. Violent, bloody, and the kids who read it loves it.
Do you know the French version of Red Riding Hood, Little Miss Hood was not saved by a hunter. She did a striptease to escape, and the kids lapped it up.
Han Christian Anderson's little mermaid never gotten her Prince, and she turned into sea foam at the break of dawn.
Have you all read about Bluebeard, the mass serial killer of all his wives who keeps the dead bodies in the cellar preserved?
The original Pinnochio was hanged for his mischievious deeds.
You know about the Frog Prince, where the princess has to kiss the frog and the frog turned into a Prince? In the original tale, the princess had to chop the frog's head off.
The Red Shoes by Han Christian Anderson was about a vain girl who wore her red shoes to church and did not pay attention. One day the shoes started walking by themselves with her still in them. A soldier managed to help her and chopped off both her feet. Filled with regret, she wanted to go to church, but the red shoes with the bloody chopped feet barred her way.
In the 3 Little Pigs, the last remaining pig boiled and killed the wolf.
So you see, watching El laberinto del fauno made me recall those days of dark magic and creatures that are neither good nor evil, and filled with twists that IS very obvious, but yet you doubt yourself, and you will then be awaken like it was a spell and you wonder, is it all real, or just a fantasy?
Fantasy movie or not, this is not a movie that you will take your younger siblings too. I have read some pretty strange reviews about people who was not expecting the violence (read the rating next time, idiots). This is a violent movie (18-PL in M'sia), and the blood and gore even made me flinch. When I watched the movie, the sadism and unfairness displayed in the reality was a stark wake up call to what the world we live in today is about - a world where the good and innocent dies for no reason at all. I will not spoil the story here, but Wikipedia has a pretty good plot outline complete with spoilers and all.
The first thing when I watch the movie was to remind myself that this is not a Hollywood movie, this is not a movie in the familiar American-sense. This is a Spanish movie, and you have to know that the Spanish is very different from the Americans, so you are not supposed to expect something you will usually expect from the Americans. The Spaniards are a whole different group with different culture and standards. The men are stiff, proud and unforgiving, the women tough yet knows that their place below men. Some plot lines may not make sense to you, but to the Spaniards, they apparently do.
The plot is pretty straight, it is like trying to watch 2 movies at one time - a fantasy and a war story, and it is pretty disconcerting at times. But when you watch the ending, you grin to yourself and say, "Happy ending..." and then you pause, "...I think." But is it a happy ending? Because when I finally off my comp for the night after watching it, I was left with a gut-wrenching feeling of doubt. What if it was not real, what if it was all in her head... What if the ending displayed was just a tale and a dream...
And then the horror sets in, and the dismay... was it really a happy ending? Or not?
And like the ending that was one of the few open endings in movies I have watched, I will leave this part of the post as that.
Next movie is:
Trailer:
Don't let the trailer fake you. It is like in Madagascar, where the funniest parts are everything you see in the trailer and nothing else. Same in this movie, the fantasy part seen in the trailer is every fantasy part in the movie, which is only one-third of the movie. Do not go there expecting something like the land of Narnia. I think Disney is trying to sell this movie for a fantasy movie like Narnia, but be warned, the fantasy part is very little, and I thought it was only an ok movie if not for how the main character managed to draw me into her world of imagination.
My Summary:This movie is based on a book of the same name by Katherine Paterson and the plot is pretty straightforward. (Come on, it is a kid's movie). Critics were pretty angry about how Disney marketed the product and thought that the kids were not prepared for such an intensed movie.
Jesse is a boy in school who is a bit of a wimp. He gets bullied around and never stood up for himself or his younger sister. He is the only son in a family of 4 girls and his family is really short on funds. His mother loves the girls and being the only son, he has tons of chores to do. His talent is art, but his father disapproves of it. Leslie is the new girl in school, and being new, was the perfect target of bullying. The only difference between Jesse and Leslie is that Leslie dares to fight back. Being loners, both of them became friends and Jesse discovers Leslie's power of imagination, and together they created the world of Terabithia.
The only thing that made it intense was the way the main characters act. Just by being herself, I could identify myself with her, the fun loving, hyperactive, over-imaginative kid. What I love about this movie is that it reminds me on being a kid again and letting my imagination run wild. Imagine the unbelievable and believe it, and these things will come true.
Leslie: Just close your eyes, and keep your mind wide open.
I used to be able to do that, to just let my imagination flow into my surroundings. I was a tiger with wings, and I was captured and angry about it. I was a mountain climber, and my beds and book shelves were the Mountains of Haevenia. I drew and wrote about dragons with ten heads, thousands of knights battling riding on flying unicorns and gryphons. The cobra was the signet of Clan Assylaria and the gryphon was the coats of arm of their archrival Clan Leonadar (And this was before Harry Potter even existed).
I brought my fantasies to school. I was a dinosaur in my school courtyard, a T-Rex that goes around stomping on mud castles. I renamed every part of my school like it was my best friend's and my personal world. I look out of the window of my classroom and imagine a dangerous jungle out there, with teachers as tigers coming to get me, and I was ready for them. I remembered I was once a priest with a black dictionary as a bible and I somehow married my wife to three other girls... hmmm. And I was a butler to my friend who has a secret identity...
I used to envy my brother who can write compositions and karangan about monsters and fighter planes when he is Form 3!! I would tell him, "For goodness sake, grow up!" and yet inside I envy that his mind never grew up. Cos if my mind remains naive and ignorant, I can write things that I want to and never care what my readers think about.
But now, having swallowed all the cheap teen flicks and lousy Hollywood movies has really damped my imagination. I used to pride myself of reading tons and tons of books, with an imagination that is as vast as infinity. But the thing about reading is, the more I read, the more I find myself copying. I think that even if you come up with original plots, ideas start seeping in from all the other books you've read and somehow you'll find yourself implementing them in. I mean, look at other writers, the trolls, the giants, the gods, aren't they all written by someone else before?
Quidditch does not count. I created underwater rugby (which is before I even saw Final Fantasy X's blitzball).
Take for example the kid who wrote Eragon at the age of 15. Big deal, my friends and I have written since we were 10. We just never finished and published. But that is beside the point. Look at Eragon. Notice the similarity between that book and Eddings and E Fiest and Tolkien and countless other books?
I tried creating a character of my own, with me as the basis of creation. (The main character of my very first sin).
14 year old female child genius who has a Honours degree in Computer and Hardware Engineering and currently on holiday before finishing her degree in Acturial Science. Her father is a Senior Chief of Research Team AURIS of the United States Military, Science Division. His team created and developed the Auris Medius Communicating Device (AMCOD) (I later found out that the game Metal Gear Solid called it Codec with a similar working technics) which is a communication device imbedded into the bones of the middle ear and coupled with a transmitter on the vocal chords. Her mother is a nano-analyst with a psychology degree and is part of the NANO team with her father where they developed the nano-machines for use in the body. (Again, I was surprised at the similarity between my vision and Metal Gear).And again, notice the similarity between my pet character and several other characters in books that is scattered around the world? So I thought to myself, if I can't come up with original plot, why not I take all the plots of the books I have read and squeeze them together into a plot I have in mind?
My main character was injected with nano-machines when she was a child due to some serious accident and the accident left her deaf in one ear. Therefore her father restructed the bones of her middle ear and implanted the AMCOD into it. Her whole body is now part of a walking computer as the nanomachines dissolves in the blood stream to produce electroconductivity and used to carry electrical signal through the body, and it is connected 24/7 via satellit to KINGDOM - the most powerful AI in the world. The main processing unit on her body is a small processor barely larger than an IPOD shuffle (it gets smaller everytime I describe her) and she carries it around. The monitor is her specially designed spectacles and input is done via voice activation or a mini holographic-sensor keyboard which is actived by her watch.
She by no means is free, she is a test subject for both the AMCOD and nanomachines and a property of the United States. But she goes through life like any other teenager, She has a boyfriend, two best friends and is one of the best thiefs and gamblers around. She is slightly schizophrenic where she turns really violent when her other side take over. Her grandfather is a Master Thief, her 2 godfathers are the Triad Chief of Celestial Dragon Triad in Hong Kong and Chief of the London Gangs. And amazingly, her father's two best friends who have watched her grow up are the Chief Commissioner of the Scotland Yard and the owner of Monte Carlo, Monaco. She has an uncle who is the Commissioner of the Interpol.
When you design a character to your liking, might as well go all out.
So now I'm currently working on a piece of work which is my epic work with some other side dishes when I'm having writer's block with it. Epic makes it sound so big and important, but it is just a past time. Fingers crossed that I do not tear it apart again before I even finish 50% of it.
Coming back to the post before I started rambling (I tend to do that when I start talking about my hobby), blogging isn't really my cup of tea. I do not like writing about myself (oh really?), I do not like writing about the world around me... but I guess all of us have to start somewhere. Until I can come up with posts as thought-provoking and intense as most of my batchmates', I will keep my little dream to myself.
So there, 2 different movies, yet so similar in so many senses. Watch them, and see for yourself. Going off to download more movies. 300 is out next right?
If this is all a dream, don't wake me up.
- Cloud, Final Fantasy VII
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