Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Enter The Watch Log
Another week, another change to the “What’s Sanney Watching?” bit. This time I’m changing the name from “What’s Sanney Watching?” to “The Watch Log”.
Why? Well, Manny Kok, my manager here at the Kozo Entertainment Group, consulted a fortuneteller and was advised that re-naming the bit to “The Watch Log” would bring me more good luck.
Just kidding. I’m having a little fun with the Gillian Chung Dik-Shan to Gillian Chung Ka-Lai to Gillian Chung Yan-Tung segment from Ah Gil’s TVB interview last week. In case you didn’t already know, Gillian Chung changed her name from Chung Ka-Lai to Chung Yan-Tung because her EEG manager, Mani Fok, went to a fortuneteller and was told Yan-Tung would increase the amount of luck Gillian Chung has careerwise. Worked like a charm, didn’t it?
Anyway, I’m changing the name of this feature to “The Watch Log” because “What’s Sanney Watching?” contains my name and it makes me feel like one of those pretentious dopes that refers to themselves in the third person.
With that, here are the latest entries to “The Watch Log”:
March 10th, 2009: IP MAN
A colossal success as a kung fu movie. Unfortunately, it claims to be a biopic and, as a biopic, it’s a colossal failure. Biopics are supposed to dramatize the events of a real person’s life. They don’t have to be meticulous Ken Burns-type documentaries but, at the very least, they should enlighten the viewers on the big picture details of the subject’s life. IP MAN’s portrayal of Ip Man the person is so thin and shallow, it’s more of a superhero movie than a biopic. Instead of IP MAN, a biographical drama about Bruce Lee’s sifu, the movie felt like it was about a Chinese superhero named IPMAN. All that was missing was a SPIDERMAN-like theme song that goes like this:
Ipman, hero of song and story!
Ipman, winner of Chinese glory!
Fighting for the right, fighting with his might.
He can beat ten Japanese men!
Ipman, Chinese are safe when near him.
Ipman, only the evil fear him.
Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs;
Virtue in his heart, fire in every part
of the mighty Ipman!
Heck, with the success of the first movie, the franchise is already in place as there are plans for IPMAN 2 and IPMAN 3, uh, I mean IP MAN 2 and IP MAN 3.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie very much. It’s a great popcorn action flick. It’d just be a travesty if it beat THE WAY WE ARE for the Best Film HKFA.
One last thing, the big final fight between Ip Man and General Miura was a bit of a letdown because it was so one-sided. General Miura got off so little offense, it felt more like a squash match than a definitive showdown between two martial arts titans. There was more drama wondering whether or not Sato was going to shoot Ip Man during the fight than there was in the fight itself.
March 8th, 2009: SHAOLIN GIRL
I was warned by Kozo and others that SHAOLIN GIRL was a terrible movie. However, much like a child who touches a hot bowl even though his parents have said: “don’t, it’s hot”, I had to see it for myself. An aimless abomination that drifts tediously from one plot point to the next, SHAOLIN GIRL squanders the goodwill created by SHAOLIN SOCCER and wastes the talents of the lovely Kitty Zhang and leading lady Kou Shibusaki.
If you put a gun to my head and made me say something nice about the movie, I suppose I could say that it isn’t a total loss because I learned that “hug it out” is, apparently, one of the 72 Supreme Arts of Shaolin (少林七十二絕技). It seems to me that “hug it out” may be a more effective skill to use against female opponents than “art #1: the grinding palm” or “art #55: the bristling hedgehog strikes a hole” or “art #12: the hand as accurate as the spittle of the white snake”.
A note of thanks to reader Alex L. for saving the Leung Treasury $16 by sending me his DVD of the film.
