Golden Horse Shit

Just saw the full nomination list for the 42nd Golden Horse Award (the Chinese film award which is supposed to be equivalent to the Oscars) and I was surprised.

Before I come upon the full list I already knew that Kung Fu Hustle had been nominated for Best Picture which shocked me. True, Kung Fu Hustle is an enjoyable action comedy but honestly, it had no substance. After I saw the list I was even shocked! Jay Chou is nominated for best newcomer for his horrible potrayal of Takumi Fujiwara in the movie Initial D! My God, what does he even deserve to get nominated in the Best Newcomer Category? Music-wise, his music are enjoyable but his acting, frankly speaking, sucks.

There are a few nominations which surprises me as well, like Aaron Kwok in the Best Actor category, Yuen Wah and Anthony Wong in the Best Supporting Actor category. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy these 2 veterans and I am a fan of Anthony Wong's acting, but I don't think that they should get nominated for their characters.

Is it just me or the standards of the Golden Horse Awards had dropped drastically?

Doom Doom Doom

Just back from the movie Doom and unlike most games-based movie, this one actually is decent. I don't know why they say this movie is based on Doom 3 since I think the storyline is more of a Resident Evil than a Doom. Instead of hell's forces invading Mars, its genetic engineered demons on a killing spree. The only similiarity between the movie and the games is the violence and gore. Heck, who cares, Doom don't even had a real storyline anyway.

The action in Doom is actually decent and I actually got excited at some parts. Even the emotional scenes are decent. The Rock's performance in this movie is great but still I would be happy if he does his signature moves on some monster. There is also a first person shooter (fps) view near the end of the show which I find it very funny. Its one of those laugh out loud moments in the show and I think the producers put it there for comedic effects as well as to satisfy fans of the game.

There are a few annoying moments in the movie which is the censoring of the word "Fuck" and dub it with other words by our censorship board. I would appreciate if the censors do not censored of the part where The Rock describe the BFG as Big Fucking Gun.

Overall Doom is a decent flick if you do not have high expectations of it especially if you are expecting the movie to be like the game in terms of storyline. I give this film a 6 out of 10.

Initial D the Movie

When I first heard about a movie made based on the hit manga/anime series Initial D a year ago, all the classic scenes from the anime filled my minds. There are just so many scenes from the anime that I hope the live action adaptation will include unfortunately I am disappointed as not only the live action adaptation have very little racing scenes, it had deviate greatly from its source material.

First of all there is no Takahashi brothers (Ryosuke and Keisuke), there is only Ryosuke. The Ryosuke in the movie seems to be a mix of both Keisuke and Ryosuke. The Ryosuke does not seem to be as cool and composed as the anime version. Heck, he is not even the data freak like he suppose to be. Ryosuke is not even the legendary street racer he is in the anime in the movie. He seems to be just another bratty racer who wants to conquer the streets with his white Mazda RX-7 FC3S not the legendary "White Comet of Akagi".

Next, the racing scene is not exciting at all. Its like it happen suddenly and within a blink of an eye the whole race is finish and the next thing you know it Takumi wins the race. The final three way battle between Jordan Chan's character (forgot the name), Ryosuke and Takumi is very anti-climatic. It is not even built up properly and that really kills off the excitement.

On the light side, the movie is funny with most of the comic relief coming from Itsuki and Bunta. The scenes involving Bunta (Anthony Wong) and Takumi (Jay Chou) is just hilarious. Its like they are actually enjoying themselves on screen. Itsuki is much more funny than the anime version of himself and that is good since I find Itsuki very annoying in the anime.

Overall this movie is watchable and can be enjoyable too as long as you don't mind the mediocre racing scenes and keep your expectations to rock bottom level. Overall verdict: 5.8 out of 10.

Final Fantasy VII Advent Children

For those who are still ignorant of what on earth AC is, it is basically a sequel to the PlayStation classic RPG Final Fantasy VII. It is set 2 years after the events of the game. The plot? It is about 3 Sephiroth (the main villian in FF7) clones searching for the head of Jenova (an alien that came from the sky a few thousand years ago) so they can destroy Planet using it by spreading it cells causing a disease call Geostigma and resurrect Sephiroth. Ok, I won't spoil anymore of the story so I will just stop here.

So how's the show you say? To me the story have lots of potential if it is made into a 20+ hour game but by squeezing all of it into an hour and a half movie plainly kills it. Everything happen so fast that there is hardly any character development. To make matters worse, Square Enix tried to focus on so many characters at once. The villians are not even one tenth the badass of Sephiroth. What's worse, they are all a bunch of crybabies >_<. Apart from the story, the graphics is awesome. Unlike Final Fantasy Spirits Within (the crappy movie with the Final Fantasy label), the lipsynching is near perfect. The computer generated characters are able to express their given feelings perfectly unlike in Spirits Within where the character's eyes look so dead. The action sequence is good as well. The fight scenes (reminds me of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon with all those flying) are beautifully cheorograph. After all this ranting, here's my conclusion. AC is nice only if you didn't expect too much from the storyline from the start. For me, other than the storyline and the fact that Aeris only appear in the show for only a mere few seconds its actually a nice show. What's more, there are lots of eye-candy coming from all the female characters. I am never a Tifa fan but all I can say is Tifa is damn hot in AC, Yuffie is cuter than ever and even Elena the Turk is beautiful. No comments on Aeris since I am a huge Aeris fan so I am a bit bias on how she looks.