Iron Man
I didn’t exactly watch this on Vesak Day itself but have watched it like more than 2 weeks ago.

I liked this movie as I have always been a fan of powered suits, even though I was never impressed by rich guy superheros like Batman, Ironman or even aliens like Superman. Personally speaking, my opinion is that the capabilities of Ironman’s suit itself was a little far fetched but of course Marvel comic fans would disagree.

However, all that being said, the movie itself didn’t disappoint. The story itself was very well rounded up and the CGI was very well done. Though impressive, I would say the CGI is still a class away from Transformers.

While I really disliked the after credits, I would recommend this movie to you. I won’t tell you what the after credits is, though in my opinion it hints of a possible part 2 of the movie.

*** spoilers alerts *** I have ranted about this before in this post. So, if you haven’t watched the movie and intend to catch it on DVD, please refrain from checking out the post.

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon [三国之见龙卸甲]
Actually, I was looking for a Chinese Central TV (CCTV) documentary known as ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ [丧钟为谁而鸣] (not related to Ernest Hemingway’s novel) when I hit this bittorrent seeding site. As I attempted to download the documentary I was introduced to a software called Webthunder (迅雷). It is a Chinese software and a little challenging to install because the fonts do not appear in its proper code, but I managed to install it nonetheless.

So, once the download for the documentary was underway, I started looking around the site and found some of the movies I did not manage to watch because I was unable to find someone to watch with me on the big screen. After which, I decided to download the few movies I have missed.

If you are a history buff, you will be appalled by the distortion of recorded history. It is of no surprise Cao Cao [曹操] and even his descendants continued to be vilified in spite of the review of history that is going on. However, I don’t really mind the makers trying to fit Maggie Q into the movie by changing the sex of a historical character, Cao Ying [曹婴] into a woman.

Of course, you must already have heard about the criticisms regarding the Japanese look of the armor of the troops in the movie, though I would say its dark coloring was a futile imitation of what was done in Lord of the Rings (LoTR for short). And if you haven’t already watch it, you are really not missing a lot. The story surrounds the character of Zhao Zilong [赵子龙 aka 赵云], from how he rose through the ranks from just a conscript to becoming one of the five famous generals [五虎将] of the State of Shu [蜀国] in the Three Kingdoms Era (三国时代).

I suspect the makers of the movie tries too hard to make the battle scenes impressive. But after the Battle of Helm’s Deep scene in LoTR, is there even a point trying at all? The entire story also make the life of Zhao tragic – it was as if whatever he has done in his military service, was ultimately meaningless. And that’s not mentioned that in the movie, he never managed to settle down to raise a family. In the end, he still have to fight one last battle as an old man and die a heroic death. (Though why is death glorified, I really do not know. Chinese historical characters almost all died some kind of gruesome death before they are immortalised.)

I won’t recommend the movie to you, even though it isn’t really that disappointing.

Forbidden Kingdom [功夫之王]
I thought that the reviews exaggerate and that this movie can’t be that bad when you finally have two of the most famous Chinese kungfu stars – Jackie Chan and Jet Li – in the same movie. Sadly, this time round, the kriffing move critics were quite right.

Anyway, the entire story was a spin off from the Journey to the West [西游记] and in specific, about the Monkey God [孙悟空]. It was a story about how the American boy travelled through some kind of time gate into a mystic world to rescue the Monkey God who was turned into stone by an evil deity dominating that world.

The fact that all the casts of the movies spoke English is a little awkward aside, some of the lines they said were pretty lame. For e.g. after wacking the American boy with a bamboo stick, Jacky Chan said, “You want to learn Kung Fu? This is a strike. I will teach you how to block tomorrow.” It may sound funny and a little Confucius-like to the angmohs, but it gives me the impression of a stereotyping of the Chinese. It is as if we always speak in some kind of riddles or dish out pearls of wisdom. Granted we have 5000 years of history, but that doesn’t mean we speak like sages!

The Kung Fu scenes I have no complaints of course. Even though the reasons why they both fought was pretty thin, you finally get to see Jet Li fight Jacky Chan, with no one gaining the upper hand. (Though I suspect that was deliberately done so none of the fans will be offended.)

My only complaints was that there wasn’t enough screenings of Liu Yifei (刘亦菲) and Li Bingbing (李冰冰). If there were more screenings of them perhaps the eye candy would ease some of my disappointments with the movie… hiak hiak hiak.