A Nutshell Review by daface

last SG · 2005-05-29T10:42:43+00:00

A Nutshell Review: I Hate Valentine’s DayI haven’t seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding from start to end, but from what I gathered from scenes, Nia Vardalos is qui...

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Invisible City

I must confess I had eagerly anticipated Tan Pin Pin's latest work Invisible City since I caught wind of its production. Given that I had enjoyed Singapore GaGa tremendously, and having had the opportunity to view Invisible City in a special bloggers' screening, I just can't contain my glee enough. But the mood I experienced when watching the movie was somewhat sombre if compared to GaGa, which had lovely tunes sprinkled around.

If I could use a word to describe Invisible City, it will be 'Important'; an aptly timed wake up call. Given the recent (coincidental) slew of news on conserving aged architectural beauties, I thought the documentary touched upon issues of importance vis-a-vis those articles, that as material things get demolished and destroyed, what's left are the memories of what once were. And when memories fade, become faulty, not get recorded in some medium as evidence of its existence, what then? It's as if what was, had fused into a part of our current e-world, something virtual and intangible, from a long time ago, far, far, away, unrecognizable.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

Keen to watch Invisible City and watch for free? Click on http://invisiblecity.sg to find out how - from the 19th-21st July 07! Tan Pin Pin herself will be present for a Q&A session after the screenings!

Click on the following link for the Q&A session (spoilers!)
http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Ex aka Fast Track

If I were to look at it, I would say The Ex aka Fast Track forms a loose trilogy of sorts with regards to growing up, and somewhat like a natural progression in the different stages of life that Zach Braff's characters form when stringed together. With Garden State, it's in the 20s where you're having a feel for the ground, exploring your options and not knowing exactly what life will dish out to you.With One Last Kiss, so you think that you're dead sure about your other half, you're getting married and vowing to spend the rest of your lives together, and suddenly an ingenue comes along, and cast doubts about that.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/ex-aka-fast-track.html

Watch Tan Pin Pin's Invisible City for free?
Click the following link to find out how! http://invisiblecity.sg
Review is available here: http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Finally, Harry Potter's gotten a decent clean cut hairstyle, compared to that ghastly shaggy dog manes that he spotted in the previous installment Goblet of Fire. The much touted scene here is The Kiss (about 1 hour into the movie), but seriously, that's much ado about nothing compared to what the rest of the movie has in store for audiences around the world. Just so you know, I've still not read any of the books by JK Rowling thus far, preferring to rely on cinematic magic to condense the ever increasing thickness of the novels into 2hrs and 10-20mins of full sensory invasion.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/harry-potter-and-order-of-phoenix.html

Watch Tan Pin Pin's Invisible City for FREE?
Click on http://invisiblecity.sg to find out how!
Review available at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Broken English

Broken English referred to, and this is the more obvious reference, the way English is not spoken by native speakers, thereby creating at times some comedic situations when accents come into play to dilute the actual meaning of the words. But Zoe Cassavete's movie isn't an outright comedy, or one which deals with language in Mind Your Language style. It's actually a dramatic look at Romance, from the point of view of a 30-something.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/broken-english.html

Watch Tan Pin Pin's Invisible City for FREE!
Click to http://invisiblecity.sg to find out how!
Review of Invisible City can be found here: http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Who Slept With Her?

The poster hailed Who Slept With Her as the "most hilarious sex comedy of the year", a classic case of tooting the horn too loudly. For sure it definitely is not the most hilarious, as most of the time, the jokes felt quite juvenile and akin to what any hot blooded lusty adolescent male will come up with.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/who-slept-with-her-aka-sexy-teacher.html

Watch Tan Pin Pin's Invisible City for FREE!
Click to http://invisiblecity.sg to find out how!
Review of Invisible City can be found here: http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-city.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Invisible Target

There's nothing invisible about the target in Benny Chan's latest movie Invisible Target. And in actuality, it seems that the constant target for everyone in the movie here, be they the bad guys or the good cops, are the plenty of glass lying around, getting smashed into smithereens by hurled projectiles, or more frequently, human bodies. See that nice looking glass window? It'll be smashed soon. Or that double panel glass facade? Yup, as soon as you notice it, the next scene will show it in a million bits on the floor with a writhing body. It could be aptly titled Glass Target.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-target-nan-er-ben-se.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Vacancy

For starters, if I own a BWM, I'll make sure I have a baseball bat handy and near enough for that occasional road rage, and am sure as hell gonna bring it along with me if my car stalls and I need to journey into the night. And to remember never to bicker incessantly with my wife because she's always right, and everyone else deserves to have their heads bash in because otherwise, they'll snuff us.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/vacancy.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Alone

If you think Banjong and Parkpoom are one hit wonders with their debut movie, then Alone will prove you wrong. Despite having counted on the usual lighting and shadow techniques, quick cut surprises and scares, and the pristine, well-crafted sound effects, it demonstrated that as long as you deliver the product with great technical skill and respect for the medium, it'll still be as enjoyable as watching it all for the very first time. Having a storyline which engages helps as well, and here the duo still seemed to have a thing or two for old photographs, this time showing the subject material of siamese twins, although not as grotesque as those shown in the Alone trailers.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/alone.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Black Sheep

I haven't the opportunity to follow many New Zealand movies, besides the recent memory of Sione's Wedding and In My Father's Den, both of which were of different genres, and mighty enjoyable. Written and directed by Jonathan King (who is also writing the Raintree produced movie The Tattooist), Black Sheep takes the well-established genre of zombie movies, and with its fusion of local flavour, presents its own worthy take in giving us the attack of the killer sheep.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/black-sheep.html

Catch 4th Singapore Short Cuts for Free!
Click to http://www.nationalmuseum.sg to find out how!

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Condemned

At first glance, the storyline looks like a distant cousin to the Japanese movie Battle Royale. Instead of having sent unruly students to an island and see them finish off one another, The Condemned follows the same lines of having 10 death row prisoners from around the world being brought to an island, and given a simple rule to kill everyone else in order to earn their survival, and freedom. They are similarly rigged with an explosive device which if tampered, or if they choose not to participate, they too will be blown to bits.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/condemned.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: La Vie En Rose

Of late, musical biographies make popular films especially when they dish out anecdotes on the various ups and downs in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and especially so when the music they play and the songs they sing happen to be evergreen classics, or at least those which you've probably heard before at one point in time. In recent years, Walk the Line and Ray have also garnered popular film awards, and not to mention raised the profiles of the stars like Joaquin Phoenix and Jamie Foxx respectively who played the musical legends.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/la-mme-la-vie-en-rose.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Knocked Up

Writer-director Judd Apatow is probably best known for last year's sleeper hit comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin, where Steve Carrell played the titular character whose friends tried to get him laid. In Knocked Up, most of the familiar faces in Virgin returns for Apatow's latest offering, this time with Seth Rogen cast as one of the protagonists who has his hands full when he learns that he's going to be a father. But here's the catch - the pregnancy is totally unplanned, and was a result of a drunken one-night stand.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/knocked-up.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Disturbia

Disturbia played it smart in its release locally, by having pushed back its release date until almost every cinema goer had seen Michael Bay's Transformers, and become acquainted with the latest Hollywood "It" kid, Shia LaBeou, otherwise also better known as "the Transformers boy".

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/disturbia.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Gone Shopping

Singaporeans are known for our passion for food, be it either great tasting humble hawker fare, or exquisite fine dining at various swanky restaurants. Food has been featured in a number of our local movies, with yellow flat noodles being the Mee Pok in Mee Pok Man, Chicken Rice in Chicken Rice War, and the ubiquitous coffeeshop locales in almost all of director Jack Neo's movies. The other passion we have is for shopping, no doubt with our most famous road being Orchard Road, for its malls and food of course, and the various generic shopping malls (with almost the same shops, that each mall seemed xeroxed from the preceding success story) that have sprung up in various neighbourhood heartland town centers all over the island.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/gone-shopping.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Simpsons Movie

I'm a big, big fan of the Simpsons, and word that the movie version of the hit TV series would be made had been out for the longest time possible. Toying between trying to cast actors in a life-action movie (rumoured at one point to have Bruce Willis playing Homer because of the err, balding pate), and sticking to its 2D version of yellow skin and four fingers on each hand, I'm glad that the movie was done in the latter version, simply because casting will be a nightmare to flesh out the inhabitants of Springfield, and 2D allows for many insane jokes and situations to be played out without reliance on CGI and the likes.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/simpsons-movie.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Cashback

How can anyone miss the poster for Cashback? Featuring a beautiful blonde in a supermarket who's almost naked from the waist up, her modesty protected by the words of the title, I guess you're forgiven if you mistake this for some low brow sex movie. But Cashback is anything but low brow, and sex is just a small part of the equation. Based on a short film of the same name written and directed by Sean Ellis, this is easily one of my favourite movies this year. It's intelligent, sexy, and nothing as raunchy as the poster would suggest, but full of little elements of surprises that connected, some of which are wickedly naughty.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/cashback.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Flash Point

In his black leather jacket and oozing plenty of charisma, Donnie Yen's Inspector Ma Jun quite resembled his other character in SPL, which was also directed by Wilson Yip, because at one point Flash Point was supposed to be an SPL sequel. But in any case, the character is slightly tweaked. Early in the movie, Ma Jun tells it straight to the camera that as a cop, his job is to apprehend criminals, and it's as simple as that. And the trailers would have you believe here's a man who's lightning quick with his punches, throws and kicks.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/flash-point-dao-huo-xian.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Secret

While Jay Chou no doubt holds court in today's Mando-pop scene, he gets no love from the movie-goers who snigger at his expressionless performance in Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower. It indeed is quite brave of him (though it's arguable to strike while the iron is hot) to diversify and have a hand in directing so early in his cinematic career, and coming up with quite an interesting, engaging story, though like any creative work, his story did make him seem quite intelligent, in spite of his usual laid-back demeanour.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Perfect Stranger

Perfect Stranger is far from perfect, and this is yet another classic example of the marketers taking the source material, and letting their own imagination run wild to get bums on seats. Bruce Willis in a seedy role, and Halle Berry oozing sex appeal with assets spilling out of her dress? That's what the trailers would have led us to believe, that the movie's a classical sexy thriller, but the movie is many miles away, southwards in direction.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/perfect-stranger.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: 881

The Seventh Month, according to Chinese beliefs, is the month where the gates of Hell open, and the ghouls and goblins of the underworld get a one-month visit-Earth pass. They roam around, hungry and looking for entertainment, so to appease the spirits, humankind will offer food and fruits, and burn paper money to line their pockets so that they do not disturb us. Also, we have to provide entertainment, so that happy souls do not come haunt us, like those in Kelvin Tong's The Maid, which is also set during this lunar Seventh Month.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/881.html

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