Branded [ Trailers ]

While flipping thru Flipboard on my Samsung Galaxy S3, I came across this article that talks about the New Trailer for Dystopian Sci-Fi Thriller Branded by heyuguys.co.uk. Even before playing the trailer, I was intrigued by the following synopsis.

“After Misha skyrockets to the top of the advertising business, a tragic mishap on the set of one of his productions torpedoes his career and he retreats into self-imposed exile. Ten years later, Misha returns to a radically changed world and finds himself plagued by visions of bizarre and terrifying creatures with the ability to influence people’s thoughts, desires and actions. Creatures only he can see.

He soon realizes the creatures are part of a clandestine campaign unleashed by a rival advertising agency to make “fat the new fabulous” and create a new era of uncontrolled consumer appetite. In order to save mankind, Misha uses his own considerable marketing skills to launch an ingenious plan to try to eradicate the plague. But the corporate legions will not go down without a fight.”

I know this is a Sci-Fi movie that plays with fantasy elements but perhaps the subject matters that this movie is touching on couldn't be further from the truth. The advertising medium as the villain is pretty much a novel approach and the trailer somehow invokes the feel of Donnie Darko. I just hope that it doesn't take the easy "Hollywood" way out like the recent The Adjustment Bureau.

and here are the two trailers to wet your appetite

Trailer 2




Trailer 1

How I Spent My Summer Vacation | Get The Gringo [ Movie Review ]

The Pitch

"How I Spent My Summer Vacation" sounded like it was either going to be a slasher horror, travel comedy or a coming of age movie. But taking a closer look at the movie info, it's Mel Gibson and the movie plot is nothing remotely close to the impression given by the movie title.

Yup Mel Gibson, one of the most recognized but unbankable Hollywood star right now. His DUI anti-semitism remarks and the ex girlfriend's domestic violence still lingers around his reputation. Jodie Foster tried to put his career back on tracks with The Beaver but poor box office collection in the USA seemed to put the final nail on his career coffin.

Well he's back and in a movie that seemed seemed to tailor fit Mel Gibson's brand of screen charisma. It also seemed that to minimize the risk of another box office bomb in the United States, Mel Gibson's independent production company, Icon Production will be releasing this movie through video on demand. The rest of the world who don't "hate" Mel Gibson that much will be getting a theatrical release.

The Plot 

The story of Driver, a career criminal who is picked up by the Mexican police as he desperately tries to cross the border in a car stuffed full of stolen cash. The police take the cash and dump him in the infamous El Pueblito prison - a hell on earth where the prison gangs run the show.

Driver has no ID or fingerprints but he still gets a visit from a corrupt American Embassy official who has heard about the money. If Driver doesn't find a way of paying him off while he's inside, then he's going to let the authorities know where Driver is. And it won't be long before the guys he stole the money from find him too. Driver knows it is sink or swim. He hooks up with a young boy who shows him how to survive in the prison, but the kid has a terrible secret. He shares a rare blood type with Javi - the criminal who ruthlessly controls the prison and everyone in it. The kid is Javi’s life insurance policy and he has doctors on standby to transplant his liver whenever the time comes. But Driver has other ideas and pretty soon he devises an audacious plan to escape with the kid, the kid’s mother and the money.

(Plot Outline taken from Cathay Cineplexes)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation or otherwise known as Get The Gringo in America

The Avengers [ Movie Review ] ★★★★1/2

The Pitch

The Avengers is not like any summer blockbuster movies that came before. It's a comic book superheroes team like no other. The seed for this movie was planted in the first Iron Man, way back in 2008. From then on, it was a cumulative of movies that introduced the likes of The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America that collective forms the basis for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

With this group of super-powered individuals, it gave Marvel the opportunity to bring one of their most beloved and long enduring superheroes team onto the big screen. Personally The Avengers is one of the most anticipated movie of the past few years.

The biggest worry would be how would these characters be handled. Will the main characters from four different movies blend well together or will they be jostling for screen time? Would the filmmakers be able to make a villain / threat so menacing that requires a team up of such super powered individuals?   

The burden / task / glory lies in Joss Whedon's hands. Mainly known as the creative force behind the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly television series, Joss Whedon had only directed one movie and that's Serenity, a movie spinoff from Firefly. The Avengers would mark as his second directorial effort and it makes me wonder if he could handle the scope of such magnitude. He is a comic book fan and wrote well received comics for Marvel Comics before but it was the Astonishing X-men comics, not the Avengers.

But still Joss Whedon has impressed many with his writing skills and it's unlikely that Marvel would just throw one of their biggest movie event in recent years to someone who might not be up to the job. There's only one way to find out if The Avengers will live up to the hype.

The Plot

Marvel Studios presents “Marvel’s The Avengers”—the Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.

(Plot taken from The Avengers Singapore Facebook Page) 


The Perspective


Joss Whedon's The Avengers definitely managed to live up to the hype, met the expectation of (most) comics fans and set the bar real high for the next few superheroes comic book movies to come. It's been a long time since I had so much fun with a superheroes comic movie and the last one that made me craved for more was Iron Man. Here are some of the highlights of The Avengers movie.


First and foremost, the movie did a great job in characterizing the various superheroes in the limited time frame. There are four main heroes (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Hulk) and three supporting ones (Nick Fury, Hawkeye and Black Widow). It's not easy to handle all of them and yet this movie managed to put enough focus on them for the audience to care about their respective motivation and struggle. 

It's a delight to see how these various characters interact with each other. Their conflicts in personalities and opinion brought out quite a few interesting insights to their character and how much they differs from each other. The only thing that topped their fight with each other was the antagonist of this movie, Loki.


Let's just put it that these heroes need a cause so epic and a villain so devious that they would brand themselves together to fight the common enemy. Loki's evil plans and methods in this movie were definitely the crescendo rising to the climatic finale.


Last but not least, I couldn't remember caring so much about characters like the Hulk, Thor or Captain America. Iron Man was a delight when the movie came out but the other three were simply unmemorable. In Joss Whedon's direction, he brought out the essence of why these characters had remained so popular after all these years and he did it while juggling with all these other characters. Marvel needs to rethink how to handle those three characters in their respective upcoming sequels.


The Avengers is simply the best movie of the year. Nuff Said. Now go watch it in a good cinema near you.

Rating: ****1/2
 
Coda

As usual for the movies in Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are some goodies left after the movie. The scene occurs during the mid Credits. It's Thanos getting report from the minion that the invasion had failed. There's a line in that scene that the minion said gave me goosebumps ... the Infinity Gauntlet type of goosebumps ... and that line is ""To challenge them is to court death!""

Reportedly, ComingSoon mention that there's a additional second scene at the End of Credits that's NOT included in the international prints. Yup that's right! Only the US theaters get it. But then again, there are those people who seen it and complained that the scene was too short and was a waste of time to stay back for. I was anticipating that scene and was disappointed that it wasn't included in the Singapore print. In case you want to know what is it about, it was a quiet scene of the Avengers having shawarma together in a diner.

The Avengers Official Trailer 2

 

Marvel's The Avengers Super Bowl 2012

The Avengers Official Trailer

 

New Set of Avengers Banner poster
 

Marvel Studio just released a set of characters poster for the upcoming The Avengers at Comic Con 2011. Awesome piece of work isn't it? Nuff Said!

Love | 愛 [ Movie Review ] ★★★

The Pitch

No, this is not the movie installment for the popular long running Taiwanese television series that just ended it's run in Singapore. This is Doze Niu's Taiwanese rendition of "Love Actually" that's out to wrestle with Sammi Cheng's Romancing in Thin Air and Ah Niu's The Wedding Diary for the Asian Valentine Day box office profit love.

Love 愛 comes with a stellar cast of actor and actress from Taiwan (and China). Shu Qi and Zhao Wei probably needs no introduction in this part of the world.  Ethan Ruan, Mark Chao, Eddie Peng, Ivy Chen and Amber Kuo are the new upcoming good looking Taiwanese young stars who each had participated in at least one movie that was shown in Singapore cinema recently (Monga, Hear Me and Au revoir Taipei).

But personally, the main attraction for Love 愛 would be due to Doze Niu's participation in this movie as the director and actor.  His previous two full length features "What on Earth Have I Done Wrong?" and "Monga" (which he directed and acted) were pretty enjoyable and it made him one of my "Asian directors to watch out for" list.
 
It's not easy to make a "Love Actually" type of movie and quite a few had already failed badly (Valentine Day and Hot Summer Days). It's not easy to manage multiple plots and numerous big stars but I am having good vibes that Doze Niu might be able to deliver this.

(Special Thanks to Festive Films for a chance to preview Love 愛)

The Wedding Diary | 结婚那件事 [ Movie Review ] ★★★

The Pitch


This year, there's three Asian movies that is out to cash in on celebrate the Valentine Day season. From Hong Kong - China, there's Romancing in Thin Air. From Taiwan - China, there's Love. Last but not least, from Singapore Malaysia, there's The Wedding Diary. 

The Wedding Diary is a comedy about the difficulties in preparing and executing the most important day in a couple's life. It features artists across the straits such as Ah Niu 阿牛 (Anniu), Elanne Kwong 江若琳, Kara Hui 惠英红, Zhu Houren 朱厚任, Marcus Chin 陈建彬, Chris Tong童冰玉 , Shaun Chen 陈泓宇 and Maggie Theng 邓妙华.


Ah Niu's recent debut as a director and leading actor for  Ice Kacang Puppy Love was pretty impressive. The Wedding Diary marks the second time for Ah Niu in the leading role. Not bad for a guy who don't really fit the usual handsome suave stereotype for a male lead in a movie. It would be interesting to see how he fares in this movie.

This review is made possible with special thanks to Clover Films.

Chronicle [ Movie Review ] ★★★★

The Pitch

In recent years, the "Found Footage / Shaky Cam" genre has branch out to many interesting premise. No longer constrained in the conventional horror genre, it has move on to mega monster invasion (Cloverfield), space exploration (Apollo 18) and even religious faith (The Last Exorcism). The latest offering of the "Found Footage / Shaky Cam" would be a Chronicle of a group of high school kids gaining superhuman power after exploring a mysterious crater.

Chronicle's premise sound like a dream come true for anyone who had ever fantasize about gaining superpower abilities to rack some havoc or gain some form of popularity. It's probably going to appeal to the comic books readers and fans of anime. As someone who reads comics during the school days and had daydreams of flying in the skies, Chronicle became a highly anticipated movie after watching the trailer at their youtube channel.

The climatic end of Chronicle trailer also send vibes of the Japanese animation Akira ( アキラ ) . One of the friends is going to get mad with power and it's probably up to his friends to stop him. I can't wait to see how they are going to pull this off with shaky cam.

Quick | 퀵 [ Movie Review ] ★★★1/2

The Pitch

Quick 퀵 caught my attention with it's box office performance in Korea. It didn't managed to top the box office during it's run in Korea cinemas. Each week, it was outflanked by other Korean movies like The Front Line and Sector 7. But at the year end tally of total admissions, Quick was ahead of The Front Line and Sector 7. That piped my curiosity. What the draw of this movie which look strikingly like Keanu Reeves' Speed?

The Plot

Legendary biker Han (Lee Min-Ki) used to roam the streets recklessly with their motorcycles. Now he works as a courier boy who delivers his customer's goods in record breaking time.

His past caught up with him when his colleague dispatch him to send Ah-Rom (Kang Hye-Won) a member of a successful pop idol group to a concert. It turned out that Ah-Rom used to be his girlfriend and he broke her heart by cheating on her. Just as Han was about to proceed with the delivery, a mysterious caller warns him that Ah-Rom is wearing a helmet with explosive. If Han doesn't makes the deliveries within the time limited that the mysterious caller set, the helmet will explode. If they try to remove the helmet or are separated more than 10 meters, the helmet will explode.

The deliveries that they have to make are obviously explosive in nature. Not only that, they have to deal with Ah-Rom insistence on making a detour for her pop idol group's performance, the persistent hounding by Ah-Rom admirer cum Han's ex arch rival cum traffic police officer Kim Myung-Sik (Kim In-Kwon) and a conspiracy theory involving Japanese Yakuza. The chain of events and characters provide the set up for a series of unexpected fun and thrills.

The Perspective - Quick Movie Review

Quick 퀵 - think of it as "Speed" infuse with nonsensical humor and what a ride it was. In fact, there's even a climatic ending on board on a speeding train that stood out as a form of "homage" to "Speed". It might not have been equally thrilling but Quick stood out on with it's side bursting gags that kept me laughing as the explosive thriller unfolds.

The Billionaire | Top Secret | วัยรุ่นพัน

The Billionaire Singapore Poster

The Pitch

It's been a long time since a trailer got me so excited over a movie and The Billionaire | Top Secret วัยรุ่นพันล้าน trailer did just that. A tale of rags to riches based on the real life story of a very young Thai businessman who created the crispy Japanese Seaweeds Tao Kae Noi (which I assumed that it's from Japan till I came across this movie) seemed to have the winning formula.

It starts by questioning what are we doing at his age. It would seems that our protagonist was like any teenagers of his age, addicted to games and failing school. To make matter worse, he had to leave school and his family went bankrupt. How did he turn the situation around and became a rich man?


Another hook for this movie would be casting choice for the lead actor. Staring "Peach" Pachara Chirathivat from Suckseed (my recent faveourite Thai Movie),  The Billionaire | Top Secret วัยรุ่นพันล้าน would test his ability to carry the movie on his own. I believe this movie would also test his dramatic abilities way more than Suckseed had.

Can't wait till 5th Jan 23 Feb 9 Feb 2012

The Billionaire | Top Secret Thai Poster

The Plot

What are you doing at his age?

Age 16, TOP gained 400,000 Baht monthly from playing online games.

Age 17, He was willing to fail school and instead earned money from selling chestnuts for 2,000 baht.

Age 18, His family went bankrupt and remained 40 million Baht in debt.

Age 19, He released 'Tao Kae Noi' seaweed to more than 3,000 branches at 7-Eleven.

At this present, Top is a 26-year-old businessman, the owner of the bestselling seaweed in Thailand. He owns 85 percent of the market share which is equivalent to 800 million Baht a year, and has 2,000 employees in his company.

THE BILLIONAIRE will let you get to know "Top Ittipat" in details about how he turned himself from an online game addict whom always got disparaged by teachers, to a famous young billionaire. How did he raise himself up to this position? Surely, everyone desires to get rich, yet not everyone dares to succeed like him.

(Plot Write Up from Golden Village Picture youtube channel)


The Trailer


Cool Dvd Alert

Stefan Shih had just send me Wise Kwai's blogpost on Top Secret - The Billionaire Dvd Special Box Set. The Dvd Box Set look so gorgeous that I am tempted to get it even though there's no English Subtitles and I have not seen this movie yet (as of 5th Feb 2012). 

Take a look for yourself.

Top Secret - The Billionaire Dvd Special Package Photo from GTH Facebook

The box set cover is painted like the handmade old movie posters. It comes with a 2012 calender and the box itself could be open up as a "monopoly" style game (complete with paper money, token, plastic houses and "Top Secret Cards" that probably function as the Chance and Community Chest cards ).

 There's even a Video for the Box Set (hosted by "Peach" Pachara Chirathivat, the star of Top Secret / The Billionaire)


According to Wise Kwai, the special artwork on the dvd box set is done by Somboonsuk Niyomsiri (or better known as Piak Poster). It turned out that Piak Poster used to paint movie posters and he went on to direct popular teen-oriented movies in the past. Top Secret - The Billionaire marks his acting debut at the age of 80 (he plays the uncle who help the teenage entrepreneur sell roasted chestnuts in the movie trailer). Interesting background information from Wise Kwai. It just fuel my anticipation for this movie even more.

Beyond the Movie

The actual billionaire Top Ittipat was in town for a special preview of The Billionaire (Top Secret) | 小富翁 | วัยรุ่นพัน on Wednesday (8th Feb 2012) at Golden Village Plaza Singapura. He even autographed on some of The Billionaire movie posters. Incidentally Golden Village is having a "The Billionaire Members Draw" (valid from 9th Feb to 22nd Feb 2012) and every purchase of a pair of The Billionaire movie tickets gets a chance to win a Tao Kae Noi Plush Toy and Movie Poster (It was not indicate if those poster in this draw are signed or not )

Credit: (Photo from Golden Village Facebook Page)

Underworld: Awakening [ Movie Review ] ★★

The Pitch 

Underworld Awakening is the fourth installments to the Underworld franchise. Just like Vin Diesel with the Fast and Furious franchise, the lead actress of the first two Underworld movies, Kate Beckinsale returns to the franchise after skipping one installment.

It's been reported that Kate Beckinsale had no intention to return to the Underworld series but was convinced by the quality of the script. Since Kate Beckinsale felt that the script was good enough to wear those tight rubber suits and corsets for another round of supernatural whack fest, the Underworld fans must be rejoicing to have another chance to see her strut her stuff on the big screen.

Personally,  I never seen any movies of the Underworld franchise, I had always been curious with the longevity of this series that revolves around the world of vampire vs werewolves. This series had always felt like a hoakey blend of two groups of beloved supernatural creatures with stylist tight clothing and a huge range of noisy weaponry. It isn't something that I would go out of my way to watch but since folks at Incinemas were nice enough to pick me from their facebook contest, Underworld Awakening shall be my entry point to the Underworld series. Let's hope that it would be a good jumping point for a Underworld newbie.

All's Well End's Well 2012 八星抱喜 [ Movie Review ]

The Pitch

When it comes to Chinese News Year period, the other activity beside celebrating new year at relatives and friends' house, it would probably be a trip to the cinemas for a He Sui Pian (贺岁片 Chinese New Year Movie).

In recent years, Raymond Wong and Eric Tsang had been consecutively churning out authentic He Sui Pian (贺岁片 Chinese New Year Movie) for the Chinese New Year period. This year, Raymond Wong is back with another installment of the All's Well Ends Well franchise and Eric Tsang has another installment of I love Hong Kong.  

All's Well End's Well 2012 八星抱喜 features the likes of Sandra Ng, Donnie Yen, Louis Koo, Kelly Chen, Chapman To, Lynn Hung, Yang Mi and Raymond Wong.

The interesting point would be to note that who has the better He Sui Pian and who takes in the biggest slice of the He Sui Pian Box office. Since it's impossible to gauge who is the winner in this box office until the end of the Chinese New Year period, let's just see who has the better Hei Sui Pian.