LEGION Movie Review. WHEN GOD WANTS TO END THIS WORLD.

PRESS PREVIEW

STAY BRACED to your seat in the theater.

We all know whenever DOOMSDAY comes a-calling.

How can we ever forget?

Not with this season of prophetic cinematic offerings:

ends-of-the-world, famines, tsunamis, snowstorms, killer earthquakes, natural disasters and other unspeakable destructions.

Grim questions are always screaming in our minds reminding us:

“Why won’t we be more mindful of the earth’s crust and stop brutalizing it?”

“Why didn’t we love one another more and respect cultural differences?”

"Why are we so selfish when we ignore the plight of the innocents who are being crushed, exploited, humiliated and degraded?"

to religious wars that led to mindless terrorism.

Too late!

BEWARE THE WRATH OF GOD.

GOD has taken in so much and is now sending his legion of ANGELS to destroy the earth, wipe away MANKIND, in short: to evoke the APOCALYPSE.

This is the main setting of the story, beginning with a small motley of strangers stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a diner, in an out-of-the-way countryside.

And this becomes the unlikely battleground for the survival of the human race where the ANGELS OF DEATH via destruction come a-visiting.

There’s a woman who is expecting this child, a baby whom we are led to believe isCHRIST in his second coming, who is the only glimmer of hope of stopping the massive slaugher.

There is also the archangel apparent who stands between MANKIND and theAPOCALYPSE.

Now, folks, don’t be too biblical if you want to enjoy this movie.

It focuses on the fallen angels versus mankind when GOD is disdainful of cruel people and their evil deeds.

LEGION the movie is a part supernatural and part horror flick and not a religious picture per se, so don’t reach for your bible.

It’s a mix of the EXORCIST and the TERMINATOR, if you must.

Will GOD finally cleanse this world of evil?

You will be jolted out of your seat when you watch this little frail old sweet lady transforming into a bloody violent demon.

You will be treated to graphic scenes of violence, guns, sexual references and language, plus grotesque images and transformations.

But you will enjoy the fast stomping action from tip to toe, heart in your mouth.

When the last angel falls,

the fight for mankind begins.

Directed by SCOTT STEWART, it’s a GEM of a movie.

GO WATCH IT NOW.

This Movie Review is specially written for

www.bookmarqc.com

PEACHES AND BITCHES. HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED.

Have you watched beautiful, yet really vile women snarling, bitching and tearing one another apart?

Wouldn’t this scenario be smashing?

HONG KONG’s prime TV STATION, TVB excels as a master of reinvention.

Learn a lesson, dear silly billy competitors in ASIA who are ever-so-ready to jump on any bandwagon.

The creative content and marketing people in TVB are a formidable team, doing a great job at pushing their programs up to the fore.

As far as home entertainment is concerned for the CHINESE community all over the world, there’s nothing like a TVB drama series.

Nothing comes close.

They are adept at eleventh hour 360 degree turns, anytime, as soon as they sense that their prime time audiences are seemingly bored ….

It’s little wonder that HONG KONG is the HOLLYWOOD OF THE EAST.

Nope, you just cannot always churn out the usual bubble-gum idol drama fare,

not season after season,

Dipping ratings will account for dwindling advertising spending as well ….

These days, audiences may appear easy,

but they are equaling demanding and very discerning.

More so, the advertising clients.

You’d need them both for a successful business module.

Every advertiser wants a quick bang for their bucks.

So the current flavor of the season offers peaches and bitches, pretty-but-scheming damsels all in a row.

Welcome to the devilish stares and snorting aplenty…

All the gorgeous actresses who are playing “bitches” need to undergo dramatic highlights on make-up over their eyelids and squinting their eyeballs sideways to emphasize that ” don’t-mess-with-me evil glare” in key scenes.

The actors are but second fiddle here …

It is a woman-dominated series, mind you.

A case in point would be the refreshingly successful drama series BEYOND THE REALM OF THE CONSCIENCE (period drama extolling scheming palace shrews) and THE BEAUTY OF THE GAME (modern fare that points out that even your two-timing best friends can backstab you in this competitive game called FAME).

With ice-cool pretensions aplenty, the principal subject is WOMEN positioned as either as PEACHES or LIMES, metaphorically.

Women may be liken to ovens exuding electrifying heat waves.

They can also be HOT but OH-SO-SCHEMING.

They may stir the male libido.

Yet, please remember:

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED.

You may love beautiful women or PEACHES,

PEACHES are ever so sweet and succulent.

Or shall we say, yummy?

But do you relish LIMES or scheming shrews?

Guess not.

LIMES are ghastly sourish

and leave behind a sharp acidic aftertaste …..

Stay braced, folks.

Let’s see which rival station in ASIA is going to jump on the bandwagon first,

After all, there are always loads of copy-cats around.

‘Tis the season when the prime time audiences are bored and are looking for a new angling on TV entertainment.

Throw in a sultry plot, lots of beautiful bitches spitting venom and spite.

And you have a saleable product at hand.

Now, did I hear that stunning female model out there screaming at someone, “DON’T YOU FUCK AROUND WITH ME!”

Awwwwhhh ……..

ACTORS. A TIME FOR REFLECTION. A TIME FOR THE GREAT CALM.

So you are an ACTOR and you have your set of problems too?

Don’t we all?

LIFE HAS IT HARD KNOCKS,

We face these from time to time.

What would you do when you find that your entire emotional world collapses around you, and that you are left alone to fend for yourself ….

that you have fallen from your pedestal ….

that producers and directors are eluding you ….

and that fortune and fans are out of your grasp?

You cannot hang on to glory and fame forever,

Every dog has its day,

you have come to realize this now …

Where’s your “icy cool facade” you once adopted?

It’s not going to be easy, but you are this ACTOR, and you must play your card well.

Pride and anguish, you must embrace in one stride.

You are in the acting profession, all the world is a stage and all men and women are merely players.

Everyone has his own exits and entrances.

Whatever it is, you must find always, a time for the great “calm”, a time to reinvent, maybe to improve your acting skills.

There should be a time for reflection, to look back with few regrets, to change positively, and then move on.

FRANCIS BACON described it aptly when he wrote:

“Little do men perceive what solitude is,

and how far it extendeth.

For a crowd is not company,

and faces are but a gallery of pictures,

and talk but a tinkling cymbal,

where there is no love.”

Chill, but take note, chum.

CARRIERS the MOVIE. RUN, BABY, RUN!

PRESS PREVIEW

Arghhh ….

I thoroughly enjoyed CARRIERS the movie.

Surprisingly.

It’s a poser, a human mirror.

It makes you think.

It’s thought provoking.

It urges you to take a walk “outside of yourself” ….

and assess your exterior image.

Don’t you like what you see?

Aren’t you a prick?

So you don’t like yourself very much?

What if you are placed in this situation:

you are a sick dog thrown in one corner and your psychotic master is brutally kicking and maiming you ..

Would you snarl, bite and fight back ….the animal instinct in you that demands you stay alive …to survive?

Bet you do.

Take a simple plot of survival, amid a chaotic world that is infested with the deadly viral pandemic.

Throw in 2 eye candy couples.

Put these anti-heroes in a car and send them on a journey of survival because the entire world is dying from a deadly, unexplainable virus assault .....

put on your breathing mask and along the way, trust no one, help no one.

This is the name of the game, a horrific one, if you want to stay alive because everywhere, most infected people are already dead.

CARRIERS picks up after a contagious unnamed disease has wiped out most of the world’s population.

In the hope of finding someplace isolated, four friends are making their way to Turtle Beach where two of them, brothers Brian and Danny, spent their summers growing up.

They abide by a set of rules that is supposed to keep them all alive and uninfected.

But the rules aren’t perfect, trust me, especially when you break them.

The SURVIVAL RULES are simple:

Mind your own business. Don’t be kind.

Pick up a stranger along the way, and you stand a good chance of confronting a possible carrier.

Even when your girlfriend is infected, you best dump her out in the desert to lessen the burden.

Even when your own brother is infected, you must shoot him in order that you stay alive.

This is the name of the game.

Kill or shoot if you wanna live.

No regrets, as it is the survival of the fittest.

There, I have told you all.

You won’t like yourself very much, after the show.

In most of us, there’s this mean streak, applicable in all situations.

I stab you, you stab me.

Is there such a word in this selfish world called REAL FRIENDS, much less DEVOTED BROTHERS when you have only one choice to stay breathing?

You live, I die.

You die, I live.

CHOOSE.

(Now go watch this gritty, fast-paced and brutally shocking thriller directed by ALEX and DAVID PASTOR).

This Review is specially written for www.bookmarqc.com

MERANTAU WARRIOR the Movie. BREAKING NEW GROUNDS, HOPEFULLY

PRESS PREVIEW

MERANTAU WARRIOR.

It’s being touted as the “Biggest Indonesian Action Movie of the Year”.

Not Wushu, not Muay Thai but the
Silat martial arts.

Does it live up to this claim?

Way back in 2005, in Bangkok, I attended the preview of the MUAY THAIblockbuster TOM YUM GOONG starring TONY JAA.

I vividly recalled this scene where a dishevelled KHUN JAA rushed into a building in Australia and screamed frenziedly “Where the hell is my elephant? Where is my elephant?”

The audience broke into absolute hysterics and some even shouted “Boo!”

That’s the name of the game.

Yeah, we all that TONY JAA can fight, but act he can’t.

Home-bred blockbuster or not, TOM YUM GOONG’s Thai box office takings may be phenomenal, given a generous film budget allocation of over 200 million Thai bahts, but it also earned scathing reviews.

TOM YUM GOONG has a lame plot. It’s focuses on a stolen elephant and for that reason,TONY JAA goes all the way to Sydney to rescue his pet. And in doing so, he must face his opponents one by one, back-to-back and takes them all to task.

Now, years later MERANTAU WARRIOR a martial arts venture from INDONESIA,dogged closely on the footstep of TOM YUM KUNG, but tailing at a much lesser pace, in terms of context, budget and experience.

Duplication or pure coincidence?

The hero is IKO UWAIS who bears an uncanny resemblance to TONY JAA, but this Indonesian actor has a fresher face, better complexion, and an a more amiable persona.

MERANTAU WARRIOR is helmed by director GARETH EVANS and it’s his second feature so far and his first venturing into the foray of martial arts genre.

It’s a commendable effort but not without flaws.

GARETH EVANS’s attention to details is admirable, but don’t you think that when every single piece of attire worn by the actors seems to be so meticulously pressed and clean in very fight scene or otherwise – this becomes unreal?

That when the rural settings are so darn neat and painstakingly arranged, the film reeks more like an elongated television commercial instead?

MERANTAU refers to a century old rite-of-passage where every young man leaves the comfort of his village and trudges to the city to “make good” as our leading man IKO UWAIS does here.

Endless problems ensue when he attempts to save a damsel-in-distress from being a pawn in human trafficking.

Thereafter there’s plenty of running, jumping, kicking and acrobatics in dark alleyways and congested side streets ….

Mind you, the plot is paper thin as the bone-crunching action triumphs over story and character development.

The acting in some parts is laughable with a banal script, and the delivery is a tad off putting, to put it mildly.

Yeah, there are some impressive fight scenes more like a watered down version ofTOM YUM GOONG where the hero faces a multi-tier layer of obstacles to confront his opponents, with a dash of caucasian rogues thrown in for good measure.

You either love or loathe MERANTAU WARRIOR.

For me, I have mixed feelings.

It’s often easy to “dress” a film down, bludgeon it to death, but when you are behind that camera, it is a totally different story.

We have to look at the film told through the director’s eyes.

Like everything else, MERANTAU WARRIOR deserves a second chance.

There has always been a deluge of kung fu, chinese wushu and muay thai films that has been done to death.

A subject on the SILAT martial arts can break new grounds.

Therefore, please go and check MERANTAU WARRIOR out.

This Review is specially written for www.bookmarqc.com

HEIRAN the Movie. A STARK look at a LOVE LOST in IRAN.

PRESS PREVIEW

How stark can it be when, during the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, 3 million Afghans, mostly illegals, flooded into Iran, causing enormous problems for the Iranian society to accept them?

In director SHALIZEH AREFPOUR’s maiden effort at helming this feature film “HEIRAN“, she takes us on an eye-opening journey exploring the plight of the Afghan immigrants, whose rights are crushed along with the rights of the Iranian women.

It’s life itself unfolding before our eyes and it’s kinda sad, you know?

SHALIZEH AREFPOUR assures us that love transcends all boundaries, creeds and religions.

She draws a fine line between reality and art showcasing fragile bonds tenuously holding individuals, families and religions together.

For real?

We watch with sympathy when it is apparent that the universe that she has created is a troubled one and is threatening to swallow everything along with it.

You take this headstrong and stubborn 17 year-old Iranian girl, a college student.

A brilliant student, she has everything going for her until …

she meets this strapping young Afghan migrant worker on a bus.

They have the hots for each other.

They fall in love … at a wrong time, in a wrong country.

Ignoring parental objection, she flees to Tehran, marries him and bears him a child.

Her discovery that life is not a bed of roses and love is not just about fresh air throws her immediately into premature adulthood.

The issues of love and family ties will surely strike an emotional chord in us.

They always do.

But we are talking here about hopes lost, renewed and then dashed.

This is one gem of a movie from IRAN, a complicated family drama steep in simplicity in the “treatment” when it comes to a fine director’s touch.

A pitch-perfect ensemble of professional Iranian actors lends credence to the story.

Baran Kosari (female lead), Mehrdad Sedighian (Heiran) and Khosro Shakibaei (grandpa) put on compassionate performances as they chronicle the desperate journey of love and survival across troubled Iran.

You don’t need a super duper budget and a great cast to make you sit on the edge of your seat and take stock of how lucky we all are, and that we tend to take a lot of things in life for granted.

HEIRAN is one compelling, unforgettably moving film.

With excellent true-to-life acting and a sincere script, it makes for exceptionally, intelligent entertainment.

Truth piques our minds, shall we say?

HEIRAN is didactic in approach, and at times we tend to confront our own pain and guilt hoping for a healing process,

Somewhere along the line, through certain poignant moments depicted in the film, I cannot help but feel that there’s a touch of YASMIN AHMAD, the late Malaysian director in the treatment.

GO WATCH IT!

2010. THE WAY WE ARE NOW. THIS WORLD THAT SHOULDN'T BE.

DARN IT ….

A BRAND NEW YEAR IS HERE!

So soon?

What’s the hell am I thinking?

Reflecting on 2009, the year that was …..

those roller coasting events that beastily threw me up in the air precariously

and in delirium, brought me down firmly on my own two feet.

Did I look at truth the way I should?

Guess not.

LIFE IS BRUTAL and REALITY BITES, right?

Oh yeah …..

We all drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much and pray too seldom.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.

We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.

We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.

We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

YES, WE ARE IN DEEP SHIT.

IS THIS WHAT A REAL LIFE IS ALL ABOUT?

There’s a saving grace though.

RE-INVENT OURSELVES.

Just like an old home that needs a new coat of paint, each and everyone of us needs a new “interior”, from time to time.

Check this out.

Make this our new year resolution, chum.