slumdog miracle

It’s a miracle! No, not Slumdog Millionaire’s achievements at the Oscars but rather how fluency in English is achieved by rolling off a train! It would have been a great movie for me if not for the miraculous language switch.

I like how Mukul Kesavan put it in his article “Lost in Translation: Slumdog Millionaire uses Hindi as authenticating décor” for The Telegraph, Calcutta:

“The transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out.”

Read the entire article here.

cantonese banned in singapore!

Believe it or not, all non-Mandarin Chinese dialects are banned in cinemas and free TV in Singapore! All Hong Kong films are dubbed into Mandarin, and apparently, this is sometimes done very poorly resulting in lost nuances at best, lost ambient sound at worst! Some Singaporeans actually troop to JB to catch Hong Kong flicks!

apocalypto

I enjoyed watching Apocalypto and would recommend it to anybody who’s not a Mesoamerican historian. I really liked the colourful depictions of the Mayan city.

Apocalypto official website and on IMDB.

censorship goood, communists baaad

Malaysia has banned another Amir Muhammad film because it “distorts historical fact”.

the departed should be interred

I watched Martin Scorsese’s The Departed recently. A rather decent movie on its own, but it pales in comparison to the original Infernal Affairs, directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. Why, oh why would anyone remake an excellent movie that was released barely 5 years ago? It was not just inspired by Infernal Affairs, it is Infernal Affairs combined with some parts of Infernal Affairs III, set in Boston instead of Hong Kong, and with a slightly different ending. Very, very disappointing.

If it wasn’t based on a vastly superior original, I would have given The Departed a score of 6.5 out of 10; but since we already have the very well-made Infernal Affairs series, I would give it a 2 out of 10. It shouldn’t have been made in the first place…what a waste of precious resources! By comparison, I would rate Infernal Affairs 8.5 out of 10, Infernal Affairs II 8 out of 10, Infernal Affairs III 7 out of 10, and the entire series a solid 9 out of 10 (that's synergy there).

So, if you haven’t watched The Departed, I would highly recommend that you watch the entire Infernal Affairs series first if you have not already done so. If you have already watched The Departed, and have not watched the original Infernal Affairs series, please watch the original Hong Kong version as well (and let me know what you think).

The Departed official website and on IMDB
Infernal Affairs official website, US distributor website and on IMDB
Infernal Affairs II official website and on IMDB
Infernal Affairs III official website and on IMDB