bluemechaoxide

Sorry, couldn’t help the title. In any case, prepare for a wall of text.

What can I say about this movie? It rocked, obviously - $66.4 million dollars, to be exact. But you know this already.

I think that this is one of the best movies of all time, but only in the same way that movies made in the 1920s were the best movies of all time, and then were later surpassed as time moved on. But I digress.

I’m not saying it’ll stand forever as a beacon of how films should be made, but it does right now. And that’s plenty good enough.

In opposition to Iron Man which was about the blockbuster facet of a superhero movie, this Batman series is about the superhero psychology. It’s like my Psych class in first year college all over again, only this time it’s down a darker path, it’s much more enjoyable and I’m eating popcorn. There’s a reason for the title of Dark Knight, the movie really is on almost all of its elements - plot and setting, cinematography, dialogue, characters.

Christian Bale was solid, just like he was in the first film. Always brooding, weary with responsibilities, yet a starkly different person when going out as Bruce Wayne. I realized the raspy voice which I didn’t like in the beginning was a necessary part of the Batman character, since this version banked heavily on the fact that he could intimidate anyone greatly. This Batman had to be scary. He had to bark at his opponents, and when needed, bite.

But as everyone says, this was Heath Ledger’s movie. Of course his recent death increased the publicity of this whole thing on a massive scale, but even if he was still alive now I would say that this was one of his best performances ever. In fact, I would go on to say that this was the best Joker, ever. This character was the reason why some people are afraid of clowns. You could imagine that he could exist in real life alongside all of us, and that’s scary for the audience. Everything about him was there, and it all backed his presence up to a frightening degree - the disheveled hair, the running makeup, the scars, the mismatched clothes, the tongue mannerisms, the pinched voice, the insane laughter, and the real conclusions about the world as we know it.

I don’t get why some people say Jack Nicholson would have done a great job - to me his Joker was just not twisted enough for this film. While Nicholson was all comic-booky in the original Batman, Heath Ledger’s Joker was real. With Nicholson’s Joker, it was a spectacle. With Ledger’s Joker, it was… how would I put it? An experience. He pulled it off so, so, so well. He was that good. Just, wow. I have no more words.

From reading just up until here people might think I’m just giving so much praise to this guy because of the whole media buzz thing, but by going on further you’ll realize I’m really affected by how well they’ve handled this series. As a guilty fanboy of Batman, I want everything surrounding the character to be great - even his Hollywood movies.

What I think was overshadowed by the giant mystery of the above actor’s death was Aaron Eckhart’s performance. He was really good as Harvey Dent, and you could feel the transition from himself to Two-Face even before the physical transformation took place. The anger was there, it was building up. I liked how they managed to make him a sort of unwilling hero even with all of his anti-crime conviction (I believe in Harvey Dent!), right up until the point where he became the villain. Genius.

This movie, like my former teacher said, had the layers which all successful movies have. There was so much meat to the story, so many themes that were explored - justice, duty, the almighty gray area in morality - and I think each one was given enough exposition without it being too contrived. Definitely a well-done script.

The score was fantastic too. It really heightened the tension even more, especially in the scenes where a character was about to make a particularly big decision.

With Heath Ledger’s recent immortalization by the movie and his subsequent death, will there be any actor brave enough to take on this performance of a lifetime? That actor would have a LOT of people to convince. Also, I don’t see lots possibilities to go on from here story-wise; with Nolan’s tendency to focus on things that could happen, that could be reality (meaning no super/subhumans or overly-sci fi stuff), you wave goodbye to the likes of Penguin and Clayface. Bane’s always a possibility, but I like Zsasz more as a villain myself, he’ll seem to fit better with the overall direction and tone of the series. But then you can argue those aren’t mainstream characters, and it might not make sense for a big production studio to do, blah blah blah…

I really find it hard to think of any way in which Christopher Nolan can outdo himself with another one. Actually, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind if this did turn out to be the last Nolan Batman film - it’s shaping up to be so legendary, waaaay beyond the levels of other movies like 300 and Iron Man, what with the events surrounding it as well as its own merits, that anything following it could greatly pale in comparison.

Superb film. It not only outdid its precursor but itself as well. Watch it, period.

One of my friends, the manager of the Ateneo Rowing Team, showed this to me. It brought back a lot of good memories.

If you’re interested in signing up, feel free to contact the current captain through the details presented. The Ateneo Rowing Team takes anyone from any level, from beginner to experienced.

Urduja was alright. Not great, but not terrible either.

Wait, what am I talking about? For those who are only in-tune with what’s new from the other side of Pacific, ClickTheCity provides us with a good primer:

The Philippines has a pretty long history in animation, though few people really care to notice. Filipino animators have worked on the likes of Scooby Doo, Captain Planet and The Incredibles, providing talent for foreign outfits. Urduja is the first major effort to create a local animated feature, and though it still isn’t a full showcase of what we can do, it’s a pretty great effort.

The film tells a tale of Urduja, the legendary warrior princess of Pangasinan. Her father, the chief of the tribe, has fallen ill. Simakwel, an ambitious young warrior, seeks to gain the chiefdom by marrying the headstrong princess. But his plan encounters a hurdle when the dashing pirate Lim Hang arrives on their shores and saves Urduja from a Badjao arrow. Lim Hang and Urduja begin to play out a forbidden love, while Simakwel schemes to take back what he saw as his rightful place.

Being a locally produced animated feature film, I honestly did not expect Disney-caliber quality in terms of animation. There’s just no way around it; animation wholly produced here just isn’t ready to compete on a world stage yet. And it shows in the movie: the animation jumps from frame to frame in an irregular fashion, faces and bodies morph a bit during movement, and frames per second doesn’t stay consistent throughout the entire film. Sometimes scenes move along well, and sometimes they really don’t.

Another thing of note was the sound quality. During the first part of the movie dialogue was nearly inaudible due to great amounts of noise in the recording. Characters felt like they were far away from the scene they were actually in when they talked. Sometimes I even heard a bit of an echo in their voices. It sure wasn’t the cinema I watched this in. This led to a bit of confusion in the first part of the film, especially when coupled by a few snags in the animation. I really couldn’t understand what some of the characters were saying in the early segments.

What I didn’t expect at all, but enjoyed anyway, were the song numbers. In another moment of emulating standards set by Disney there were songs interspersed within the movie. Some of these songs were pretty forgettable (Kukut and Tarsir’s song comes to mind, which one could almost say tries to copy Hakuna Matata), although some were pretty good melodies as well, like the one sung by Lim Hang, even more so when you consider that Cesar Montano isn’t really a trained singer.

It lacks polish, and I definitely think Pinoys can do better. Still, at the end of the day no one can really say that Urduja isn’t something. The animation for all its odd hiccups serves its job of conveying the narrative. The dialogue, while a bit bumpy due to its mixing of old Filipino ideals with modern colloquial language, sees the audience safely to the end. And while the animators are still using a lot of ideas first made famous by Western studios, at least it’s applied to a distinctly Filipino milieu.

Urduja is definitely something to start on, and maybe years from now it will be looked back upon as the foundation of great Philippine animation.

Disclaimer: Some spoilers may be up ahead.

The tagline said “Prepare for Awesomeness”. And yes, you had to be, because there was a smattering of awesome right there in the moviehouse.

Kung Fu Panda is the latest feature film from DreamWorks Animation. The whole thing is being billed as an homage to actual kung fu films, instead of being another cartoony parody of the genre. It’s a surprising tactic, and for what it’s worth, the content of the movie does have enough of that Chinese martial arts film feel in it to warrant such a billing. After all, the moves you see are based on real kung fu fighting styles. From the fights to the choreography, everything feels authentic and top-notch.

Animation, as you’d expect from a studio like DreamWorks, was silky smooth. It was like watching water flow from one container to another - no wrinkles or out-of-place frames. Especially in a movement-heavy film such as this the quality of the work is really brought to the fore. And lo, it passes the test of the audience with flying colors. Palette-wise the whole thing was vibrant. I especially liked the way Tigress’ and Tai Lung’s eyes, as well as the Hall of Heroes were colored.

The character voices were generally good. Jack Black lends his usual off-beat self to the character of Po. I thought that he didn’t veer too far from what he usually does in his other movies (namely School of Rock and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny), so in that sense it’s a bit limiting. Still, few can argue that he also lends his tubbiness well to the Panda. It was great to see it translate successfully onto the screen. Angelina Jolie was great as Tigress, the character sounded perfectly confident and sure of herself. A few surprises for me, and maybe for you: Jackie Chan as Monkey, and Lucy Liu as Snake. I didn’t see those coming. However, the best surprise of all was Ian McShane as Tai Lung - his naturally menacing voice was a perfect fit for what I thought were some of the best lines in the movie.

The dialogue gets a bit contrived and cheesy sometimes, but it’s all right: I’ve come to regard these kinds of lines as a necessary evil especially when dealing with a General Patronage audience, because writers have to extend a moral to the story. Having said that, I think that this is my only real complaint about the movie. Otherwise I thought people were getting a lot of bang for their buck.

For an animated film touted as a real kung fu flick, I guess it gets by. But if you see it with the intention of enjoying animation at its finest as well as getting in a lot of laughs, I’m sure you’ll find this as a great movie. I certainly did.