Weekend of Eye Candy

June 4th, 2006

i am a happy girl! for the past two days, i’ve been treated to some fabulous eye-candy of the theatrical and cinema sort :D here are some short reviews of the last three i watched : Daisy, The Fastest Clock In The Universe, and Dead Poets Society.

(no spoilers, so dont worry!)

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Daisy

Jeon Ji Hyun is only like my favouritest Corean actress EVAR (i’ve lost count how many people i pimped her Giordano video to), so when i caught the trailer of Daisy a few months ago, i knew i absolutely had to watch it. the movie is set in picturesque Amsterdam, and it tells a story of a love triangle between a cute and rather estranged artist Hye Young (Jeon Ji Hyun), a professional assassin who is obsessed with her, and an undercover Interpol cop who loves Hye Young as well. so the gray area of this triangle is, which of the two does Hye Young really love?

Hye Young, on a short trip to the countryside to paint a gorgeous field of daisies, falls into a brook, losing her satchel of art supplies as she does. some time later, she comes back to find that a lovely new bridge has been built, and her satchel hanging dry on one of the wooden posts. in gratitude, she paints a beautiful piece of the daisy fields, and puts the painting on the same wooden post for the person whom she believed built the bridge just for her. after that incident, she recieves a mysterious pot of daisies everyday, and she falls in love with the anonymous sender despite never having met him. so she waits for him to reveal his identity, and that is how the movie unfolds.

i simply adore Daisy’s breathtaking cinematography - there are a lot of closeups that make the moviewatching experience so much more intimate. also, there is an extremely loaded moment in the movie where all three main characters are in the same room for the first time ever, and the scene is done in a way where the screen is split into three, and the camera zooms in on all three of their faces, showing very clearly what they are all going through. this exhibition of emotion is SO well done and really, really pierces the heart.

this flick was an aesthetic wonder - colourful enough to bring an innocent happiness to the film, calm enough to give it sublime undertones. beautiful daisy fields, mossy brooks, green spring grass, red cobblestone pavements, studios with gray cement floors, sand-coloured Netherlands architecture .. simply gorgeous. art direction was just superb.

acting is pretty good too. in aforementioned three-way scene, the emotions splayed all over the screen are so real, and makes you, as a spectator, exhume those very same feelings from your own history and past experiences - putting you in their shoes, helping you feel what they are feeling. only very talented actors can do this, i believe, and i think all three of the main cast did a great job in the movie.

mega kudos to director Andrew Lau - i’ve watched some of his other films (Initial D, Infernal Affairs 1,2,3, The Park, A Man Called Hero), all of which were great, some AMAZING - and i think Daisy is one that falls in the Amazing category. i loved the movie, anyone who likes bittersweet movies should definitely catch this one before it stops showing in Malaysian theatres. (and go to GSC because their subtitling is so much better than TGV!)

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The Fastest Clock In The Universe

after being disappointed by Julius Caesar and The Homecoming, i was a little bit skeptical about Fastest Clock. nevertheless, i was still very hyped about going to watch it, and i am VERY GLAD to say that i totally LOVED this play. it was better than The Homecoming, and in leaps and bounds more bang for my buck than Caesar was.

this is a play written by Ridley, and directed by Malaysia’s Joe Hasham. it tells a story of Cougar (Gavin Yap) who is super narcissistic and obsessed with retaining his youth. he abhors clocks, believes that they tick away his precious age, turning him old and ugly. any sign of age, such as wrinkles or white hair, is a pain to him and if anyone so much as hints at his real age, he breaks down into convoluted crying fits. he lives with Captain Tock (Ari Ratos), a mousy and jumpy man who waits on Cougar and shows signs of adoration for him. Cougar, on his ‘19th’ birthday, has invited a naive young lad, Foxtrot (Niki Cheong), to his party with plans to seduce him, only to find out later that Foxtrot has a nasty surprise for him in the form of a girl called Sherbert (Joanna Bessey).

so, why i love this play, is purely and solely the ACTING. all 5 of the cast are so extremely wonderfully SUPERB, and gave so much life and personification to the characters. Gavin Yap pulls off his stoic and sullen role very very well, Niki Cheong really makes you believe that he is an innocent and earnest 16 year old boy - but the stars of the show were most definitely Joanna Bessey and Ari Ratos.

Bessey has the most delightful and original accent and mannerisms, lighting up the whole stage with her presence from the very moment she enters. it is the little things she does, like subtle glances to Cougar when making references to age, and the way she keeps a bounce to her step, that makes one see just how good of an actress she really is.

Ari Ratos is Ridley’s version of J.K Rowling’s Peter Pettigrew (of Harry Potter), and i am SO in awe of him after watching this play. i think any experienced actor can convince audience with his or her actions and speech, but only the creme de la creme can convey emotions successfully with their eyes. Ari Ratos’s scared eyes and fidgety fingers and bashful small steps really allowed the audience to connect with his character of Captain Tock, really let us KNOW him. within the first minute of the play, we already knew what kind of a person Captain Tock was, because Ari Ratos did such an amazing job of bringing out Tock’s idiosyncrasies.

at the end of the play, we find out what exactly is The Fastest Clock In The Universe, the one clock that makes hours seem like mere seconds and spirits away our years until we are left asking, where did all that time go? the ending is so well done, as are the events (fight scene!!) that lead up to it, fully exploiting the potency of the script, leaving the audience flabbergasted.

i loved this play. go watch it, it’s going on till the 11th of June at KLPac. and since it’s a free-seating basis, make sure you get there early to grab the front row seats!!! it really does make all the difference, being in close proximity to the actors.

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Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society is an 1989 flick about many themes - choices, non-conformity, youth, belief in oneself, friendship, and finally, making the most out of life. the movie’s most uttered line is ‘Carpe Diem’, meaning ’seize the day’, as English lecturer John Keating (played by the ever amazing Robin Williams) tells his students at the prestigious all-boys prep school of Wellton.

we have a main ensemble of several boys, all of whom are good friends, all of whom have an unbelievable amount of pressure to succeed in life, all of whom already have their lives mapped out for them by their parents. they encounter Mr Keating, Wellton’s new English teacher, who has a deep love for poetry, and incorporates life lessons into this English classes.

for instance, in one particularly memorable lesson, he brings the boys out to the courtyard, picks out 3 boys and asks them to walk around the courtyard. at first, they start out at their own pace, but after some time, they automatically start to walk, march even, at a uniform pace - left, left, left right left - and the other students start to clap to this beat as well. Keating then explains how in life, we always initially start out at our own pace, but when placed in a group, we somehow just subconsciously conform to the others. onlookers may look in from the outside and say, i would have walked differently, or, i may not have conformed, but if that is so, then why did the other boys clap along to the beat as well?

in his classes, Keating is passionate about poetry and the subjectiveness of it, the beauty of it, so much so that he tells his students of a little society he used to be a part of during his time in Wellton as a boy - a society of poetry lovers called the Dead Poets Society. they would gather at night in a little cave off-campus, and there they would read poetry out loud to each other, and ‘let the poetry drip from their tongues like honey’. the boys, thrilled by this idea and their newfound love for poetry, decide to revive this society and its activities.

we see great shifts in the characters of the boys once Mr Keating enters their lives. Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard, a GREAT actor even at such a young age) who all his life has been a pawn to the skyhigh demands of his father whom he addresses as Sir, defies his father and pursues his love for acting. Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke), a meek boy who lives in the shadow of his high-achieving elder brother, discovers he has a hidden poet in him and in that, finds his identity and niche in life. it’s quite powerful, really, these changes - makes one sit back and see just how FANTASTIC it is to seize the day, to follow our hearts.

the movie ends on a very tragic note, and ultimately highlights comradeship, and how the world we live in really has no place for non-conformity and individualism. we always go with tradition and whatever has ’survived time’, we always want to mould and control the minds of the young in the way we think is best.

acting is great, screenplay even better. Dead Poets Society is like one of my favourite movies right now. *HEART!*

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okay i am going to go look for food. i believe i have a pack of banana chips lying around somewhere…

Entry Filed under: Reviews