Who’s the Predator?
I hate to admit this, but I enjoyed eating shark’s fin soup.
There is a certain expectation for the delicacy to appear in the second dish of every Chinese wedding dinner. As what some of the elders tell me, you judge how ravish a wedding dinner is by the shark’s fin. Many friends have stopped eating fins (which are tasteless on their own anyway), but I took a “If I don’t eat it, it will go to waste anyway” attitude.
Movies featuring sharks are not helping. Almost every shark movie poster portrayed them as ferocious creatures with bleeding sharp teeth.
As a child, watching Jaws 1-4 in the cinemas and national television made me fear going out to the open waters. Looking back at all the shark movies, ranging from Shark Attack, Jaws of Death, Deep Blue Sea, Blue Demon, and Red Water, every shark is a monstrous one that stops at nothing to devour the next harmless bikini babe.
The truth is: sharks rarely attack human. Many shark movies are fictional, using mechanical sharks rather than real ones.
The recent documentary Sharkwater aim to debunk this myth, and results are showing. The filmmakers managed to make the Costa Ricans protest against the shark fin industry. However, it would be a long battle before such movies can affect the Asian countries where sharks are preyed for food and unproven medicinal properties.
As what an interviewee in Sharkwater (who looks like a Singaporean bride) said, “It’s like cutting my ears off, and leaving me to bleed till death in the waters.”
A diver friend who has witnessed the cruel deaths of finless sharks at the bottom of the ocean, ‘battled’ with his mother over what to serve in his wedding dinner. It was a choice between his love for sharks, and the family’s pride. He lost in the end.
The fight will continue. Interestingly, Peter Benchley the author of Jaws spent the last years of his career advocating for shark conservation, saying "Sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors."
片名让我想起了张洪量的歌。。。"你像只蝴蝶在天上飞，飞来飞去飞不到我身边。。。" 感觉有如《粱祝》那对恋人，苦苦相爱却不能在一起。
仔仔的首部影片， 杜琪峰再导爱情片，满怀期待，甚至想准备深深地感动。毕竟人鬼练的情节，坎坷的感情路，应该可以博取一些泪水。
结果，影片好象一只不知去向的蝴蝶，谈的是生死之恋、父子恩怨还是未了心愿? 仔仔和冰冰的结合，一个柔一个刚，分不清两人在一起是玩笑，还是冲动。
台湾偶像剧有它的肉麻、韩国爱情片有它的感动、香港片也有它的执着。《蝴蝶飞》充其量只能说轻轻戴过。
Linger - Lingering with no direction
这样的影片不是典型的好莱坞影片，题材也不会吸引太多人去注意。但它象一口窗，尽管话题在敏感，也要看看现今社会的丑陋与凄凉。
天真活泼的孩子，美丽动人的少女，就连纯洁的小男生，也象奴隶一般被贩卖，美好的前途一切毁于一旦。看过后不禁感到心酸。
突然想起数年前有些本地孩子被怀疑被绑架到曼谷当乞丐，从此好无音讯，一切的不可思议，确实是残酷的现实。
影片过于戏剧化，导演在技巧上尚未成熟，观众不能充分感觉到演员的恐惧。原本相当好的题材，却不能引起轩然大波，只能说可惜。
Trade - Controversial subject wasted
“So who’s going to die this time?”
That is what I would get when I try to get my friend Esther to watch a Korean movie with me. For the last 5 Korean movies we have watched, the protagonists are always dying of something. From cancers, blood disorders, AIDS, cancer, terrible accidents, you name it, you will have it.
The stories are terribly predictable and cheesy. Nevertheless, Esther who prides herself as an intellectual and knowledgeable manager just adores Korean movies despite all her complains. It’s like her saying how Korean barbeque would make her clothes smell, but she still goes back to that same smoky restaurant every other week.
The comedy Le Grand Chef is no exception to the formulaic rule. Well, nobody dies but you would probably predict the ending of this story of two young chefs cooking up a storm in competition to out-cook each other. It does not help that one is good looking, while the other just has that rough bad guy look.
Unlike Hollywood movies where the leads are always suave and charismatic, there is always something very ‘kampung’ about Korean male leads. Call it the ‘curse’ of The Sassy Girlfriend. Lead Kim Kang-woo though not the typical male macho, exudes an earnest and sincere charm that every mother would approve should their daughter bring him home for dinner.
Let’s not forget the two other important people in a Korean movie – the pesky girlfriend and a silly looking sidekick. They are absolutely needed to stir up laughs by being very ridiculous. Perhaps the fierce and shouting girlfriends can always satisfy the inner desires of the traditionally submissive Asian girls.
Movies do not often reflect reality. With no offence to all my Korean friends, Esther was indeed terribly disappointed when she did not find any Rains or Sang Woos in her trip to Seoul. She has to understand that no every Singaporean girl looks like Fann or Fiona either.
My advice to guys would be to bring a packet of tissue if you are bringing your girlfriend to watch a Korean movie. Even if the protagonist does not die of cancer, it would come in handy when the male lead is a lot cuter than you.
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