Boom

Godaaaaammmiitttttt!!!

That was pretty much my reaction after seeing Lost's season-ender. Mind-blowing as usual. Still reeling from it, trying to process what I just saw: Jacob and his counterpart (Anti-Jacob?), the full statue, the contents of the box, "They're coming," some deaths and one heartbreaking fall into a hole and then the fade to white (but still can't beat season three's "We have to go back, Kate") and then the realization that it'll be almost a year's wait before some of the mysteries presented this episode will be answered.

Hence: Godaaaammmiitttttt!!!!

Vengeance is To's

Vengeance, Johnnie To's latest film, starring French actor Johnny Hallyday and To regulars Anthony Wong and Simon Yam. It's the one must-see this year that I doubt will even be shown in cinemas here in Manila. It's a longfuckingshot but here's a callout to any generous publisher out there: Send me to Hongkong to watch and review Vengeance for your publication and I'd be happy, ecstatic even, to watch and review a year's worth of crappy films for you.

And pulling my head out of the clouds and plunging back to earth... I guess I'll just have to wait and get a copy from the usual suspects.

Exiled

Finally saw it. Wow. My mind's still reeling in awe of it that I don’t know how to start.

Four men came knocking at a house looking for one man. Two came to kill him, the other two to protect him. The wanted man finally shows up and the gunplay and the violence begins.

Exiled is basically a western but instead of a frontier town the action is transposed to 1998 pre-handover Macau. And while director Johnnie To riffs from the masters of the western genre--traces of Sergio Leone in the first fifteen minutes (and throughout the film, actually) and there are tones of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch towards the end--the film is all To. And as with all Johnnie To crime flicks, the action set pieces are things to behold. The aforementioned opening fifteen minutes is fun, but it’s just a taste of what is to come. Personal fave though is the shootout at the underground clinic; close quarters gunfight in a claustrophobic setting and To stages the hell out of it. Jaw-dropper, really. Heck, I found myself slack-jawed even in some non-action scenes.

The cast consists of To mainstays: Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Lam Suet, Roy Cheung, and Simon Yam. It’s the classic cast of The Mission plus a couple of new faces in Nick Cheung and Richie Jen. Unsurprisingly, the leads do very well. Even Nick Cheung was bearable for I thought he was a bit annoying in Breaking News.

Yeah, the themes and situations are nothing new to To (he even gives some nods to his classic The Mission, which Exiled may or may not be a sequel to, but who cares, right?) but with this one, there’s a certain… exuberance to it. It’s like Johnnie To’s having fun on this one and it is infectious.

Not that the film is light. I think that parts of it are grimmer than The Mission. It turns somber towards the end but in a self-reflexive moment, the characters laugh despite their fate. They had a good run and they had fun and surely the audience did too.

Akira Lives

Leonardo DiCaprio will produce a live-action version of Akira.

It'll probably be westernized so instead of Neo-Tokyo, the story will be set in, um, Neo-New York?

And instead of shouts of "Tetsuuooooo!" we'll have "Jaaaaaaacccccck!" or maybe, "Miiiiiike!" I dunno.

I liked the anime because it was visually gorgeous but wasn't really into the story. I thought it was nice to look at but the story was a bit off. It's hard to compress a thousand-page (at least) manga (which I've not read except for the last few issues of its Marvel/Epic reprint) into a 2-hour film and Katsuhiro Otomo tried admirably but fell short. But he more than made up for it in the visuals. He came up aces on that department.

So the two primary challenges that the producers will have to deal with are to find a writer (or writers) who can make sense of the story and make it comprehensible (or at least near-comprehensible; I'm not asking for much. Hehe.) and find a director who can match (or even exceed?) Otomo's vision. Heck, maybe they could even get Otomo himself to direct the film. With Otomo at the helm, at the very least we'll be treated to an amazingly designed (he does awesome cityscapes) Neo-Tokyo (or Neo-New York), great action sequences, and a grotesquely mutated and bloated Tetsuo (or Jack or Mike) threatening to engulf Neo-Tokyo (or Neo-New York). I'll be first in line on opening day if that happens.