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Rodney and Jane came over to our place during the weekend for a movie night on our giant TV. I wanted to watch a movie that looked great in HD, and my friend Netflix recommended I check out Red Cliff. Never heard of the movie, but it was apparently a recent blockbuster in Asia about Three Kingdoms stuff. It also stars the hottest Asian guy ever (AKA Takeshi Kaneshiro), so hey, why not?

The red cliff in question

We watched the full, two-part Asian version. That’s almost 5 hours of epic Chinese movie… LOTR territory there. We started at 7:30ish, had a late dinner, and finished the film around 2:30AM. (Of course, Rodney passed out during the movie.) It looked very, very pretty on our TV. So if you want a film to test out your home theater system that’s not Planet Earth, this is a good one to try. Audio was great, too.

You have a lot of boats, I get it

The movie itself is entertaining enough. It’s the most expensive movie made in Asia to date, and it shows. Sometimes, it takes itself way too seriously and is inadvertently funny as a result. For a movie of this budget, it has a surprising amount of stupid in it. Also, the movie borrows a lot from other films; 300 in particular comes to mind (anything involving shields, extraneous sex scene), Saving Private Ryan, Star Wars (scene transitions, ha!)… It lives up to the main expectation of most viewers, which is lots and lots of epic battles. I love the heroes in the film, too. All their fight scenes are very well choreographed. It makes me want to go play Dynasty Warriors.

Fighting with baby a la Hard-Boiled. Go figure, it’s a John Woo film.

Here’s some more not-too-spoiler-iffic screens from the film. I already returned the Blu-rays, so I could only grab stuff from the theatrical US version, which is edited down to half the length, off Netflix streaming. From what I browsed, I can’t believe the stuff they cut. I can’t believe the stuff they left in even more!

The two leads. Notice the incessant sexual tension between the two.
Their Chinese harp battle is pretty steamy…

And as hot as Takeshi Kaneshiro is, does he really look like the greatest strategist that ever lived? He looks like a doofus.

Tony Leung flying through China in his mind. I can’t believe they kept
this in the theatrical US version. All four of us LOLed during this part.

Sun Shangxiang, the token girl. Surprisingly, she was one of the best characters
(she’s like Mulan!)… and they cut out all her scenes for the theatrical US version!
No acupressure or Shaolin soccer, WTF!

Sure, it looks cool… but it makes no f*cking sense!!

Here’s another Takeshi-Tony love gaze battle for good measure.

In summary, a worthy movie to test out your new HDTV with. I know Kelvin disagrees with me, but I recommend watching the full 5-hour version. Some of the most entertaining scenes are cut out (I mean, who wants to miss horse-birthing?!), and several crappy scenes are left in the shortened version anyway.

New thing I learned today: Chen Chang, who plays Lord Sun in the film, was the bandit guy in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I knew he looked familiar! And the pirate guy in Red Cliff was in Letters of Iwo Jima and Fearless.

Kevin Butler spoke many truths during his speech at E3 a few months ago. We now literally live one of those truths. Unless bathrooms count as separate rooms, in which case I suppose our place technically has three rooms.

This is pretty much our entire apartment.

In celebration of having two paychecks again, we (and by we, I mean Kelvin) decided to upgrade our television. We had a nice 42″ Sharp Aquos we bought a while back (which was already a super nice TV), and now we have a 60″ Sony Bravia. We bought it from Costco, and it came with a sound system for free, which is good since Kelvin was planning on getting one. The new TV is… really big. I think it’s excessive. Kelvin thinks it’s perfect.

My camera is crooked, not the TV

Geoff came over yesterday and helped Kelvin mount it, so our TV is on the wall FINALLY. It’s still not within most recommended minimum viewing distances you find online, but oh well. Colors are vibrant on this TV, so Kelvin’s turned down the backlight and brightness so we won’t go blind. For gaming, graphic flaws are more obvious, and SD content (like Wii stuff) looks terrible. However, HD content, especially Blu-rays looks fantastic. (Pixar’s Up looks AMAZING.)

Because of our new toy and new Netflix subscription, I’ve spent most of my weekend watching television and movies instead of gaming. (btw, Dear Zachary is one of the best crime documentaries I’ve ever watched. If you’re into that sort of thing, don’t read up on the background at all and check out the movie.) I’m sure that will change once I figure out a console game to get into.

New thing I learned today: Factory farming is a farming livestock in high density to produce highest throughput at lowest cost.

Another decent documentary I checked out this weekend was Food Inc., a documentary that talks about where your food comes from. (Summary: Most of it comes from evil corporations.)

Kelvin and I went to watch Up at the Camera 7 in Campbell with Ravi, Jess, and Avery last Friday night. Ravi helped us get tickets, we had dinner in the Pruneyard, and went straight to the theater right after we finished. We still had a good 45 minutes until our 9:15PM showing. There was a short rope line by the door, and we were told by staff to form a line by this rope. Originally, we were the only ones standing there, but as time passed, a formidable line formed behind us. For the entire wait, people would ask us what we were waiting for, since we were at the front of the line.

I was trying to get a pic of the line, but instead I get this blindingly white pasty
face on the bottom. At least the lady behind us has a decent pic :P

I thought it was a little ridiculous to make us wait in line for a movie when it wasn’t opening weekend. Even tho it was a June evening, it got cool quickly. Jess was getting cold, because she didn’t want to bother with a jacket, as we were expecting to go in any minute. 15 minutes prior to movie start, we still weren’t let in. At this point, even I was getting cold in my hoodie. 10 minutes before, everybody in line was getting antsy. I saw a couple people go inside and ask if they were in the right place. We kept waiting and waiting until showtime passed. We STILL weren’t let in. We made plans to take the center of center seats. The staff finally let us in a few minutes after showtime, and even tho we were at the front of the line, we rushed to the theater just in case.

We walked in, and there were already 10-15 people in the theater. WHAT THE F*CK, CAMERA 7? You make us wait in line for no reason, and you let people who sneaked in the theater stay before folks who waited in line. F*cking asinine. Of course, all the center rows, center seats are taken. We went to an optimal row, where some jerkwad was saving two seats aside from his own in the center and keep us from taking them. I said something stern/irked along the lines of “No way! We waited in line!”, while Kelvin was more chill/obnoxious, like “It’s cool, we waited in line” and sat in one of the seats he was saving. I’m glad this guy wasn’t feeling particularly entitled to argue with us as he let Kelvin take the seat, tho I think he later realized he was being a dick, as he asked Kelvin if the staff had really told us to wait in line. I’m willing to bet he saw the line, but chose to not inquire about it to feign ignorance when sneaking into the theater and taking seats early. I was still pissed; because of this guy who cut the line, Ravi and Jess and Avery weren’t particularly centered. Kelvin and I tried to give our seats to Ravi, who got us the tickets in the first place, but he wouldn’t take them. Whether or not that guy is a jerk, this stupidness is totally Camera 7′s fault. They should have just cleared the theater before letting people in. Seriously, what was point of the damn line??? I feel a complaint letter coming on…

Eventually, everything settled, and they finally started showing stuff on the screen. We were watching a 3D showing, so the ticket office had given us these dorky sunglasses-looking 3D specs to wear. The 3D took some time to adjust to; most of the trailers looked kinda blurry to me. I guess it’s good to let your eyes adjust during crappy trailers instead of the actual movie. The animated short shown before Up was Partly Cloudy. It’s a cute short film, with an interesting spin on creationism. Then it was finally time for Up.

Prior to seeing the Up, I had only seen the teaser trailer, its RottenTomatoes rating, and comments from my friends about how sad it was, so I knew Up was a really good film about a guy who’s house floats away in balloons with emotional moments. And that’s pretty much what it was… except I had no idea the movie had talking dogs! Talking dogs automatically make this movie awesome. I loved how they made them talk while maintaining their doggy mannerisms. Dug is, by far, my favorite character; he’s so adorable and hilarious! Actually, I really liked all the protagonists in the film. I think Pixar did a good job developing the characters and making us feel attached to them.

The things that happen in the film are pretty ridiculous, especially when you consider you have an elderly man and an 8-year-old as the main characters in an action adventure. And *slight spoiler alert on the antagonist* the bad guy has to be at least 90 something years old! All the crazy things they do, somebody should have broken a hip. And Carl (the main character) spends most of the movie dragging a house around! The movie lives up to its name, with many action sequences taking place up in the air. Pixar did a pretty decent job giving the viewer a sense of height. As a person who’s afraid of falling, I found myself a little anxious during some of the high altitude scenes. Watching the film in 3D was neat (reminds me of pop-up books), but I think about halfway through the movie I forgot about it because I was too enthralled with the flim. Ravi later told me it made his eyes hurt. The trailers showed the next Toy Story movie is going to be in 3D; I hope this isn’t a gimmick that Pixar is going to bank on.

Despite all its goofiness (house flying to South America using balloons, talking dogs, fistfighting elderly men), the film is surprisingly poignant. Like many other people, I did tear up a few times. Carl’s backstory is particularly touching and relatable, assuming you are (or were at some point) in a long term monogamous relationship. The film really takes you on an emotional roller coast, and I think it’s because of this, Up is definitely one of my top Pixar films. My favorite is currently The Incredibles. I haven’t figured out if I like Up more than The Incredibles, but it’s sure awful close.

New thing I learned today: Dug is voiced by the co-director of the film, Bob Peterson.

Last week, I used up my freebie Watchmen tickets with Ted, since Kelvin saw the movie on opening day with his coworkers. It was kind of nice to watch it over a week after opening day on a weeknight. Space in the theater was plentiful, and only a handful of people meant we probably weren’t going to have annoying people with us, which was the case (thank goodness). We both chowed down on super nachos and giant Icees, so the theater basically made its ticket money off us anyway.

The movie was pretty decent. I read the graphic novel before (if you haven’t come borrow my copy!), and I felt the movie was good truncation of the graphic novel. There’s no way they could have put all the stuff from the book into a movie, and they picked and chose their scenes well. I also approve of most of the changes they decided to do. The ending, in particular, was probably a lot more palatable for general audiences than the book ending, yet the movie ending still made the same point as the book. I liked most of the casting, with the exception of Adrian Veidt; I don’t get what his inconsistent accent was supposed be. I am SO glad they didn’t mess up casting for Rorschach. Rorschach was the best character in the book, and he was definitely the best character in the movie. Jackie Earle Haley rocked the role. Like 300, the movie is visually spectacular.

It’s not perfect tho. Laurie’s character is underdeveloped compared to the graphic novel, so when her personal conflicts come to a turning point, it’s not particularly compelling. Dr. Manhattan’s CG weirded me out, but maybe that’s intentional. Veidt’s cat definitely didn’t look right. The movie was more graphic than the book, both in violence and sex. And speaking of sex, WHAT A TERRIBLE SEX SCENE. Unnecessarily long, awkward, and what the f*ck was with the background music?

Is this song better porn music or intimate love scene music? The answer is: IT SUCKS EQUALLY FOR BOTH. I don’t know what emotions Zack Snyder is trying to convey. Passion? Love? Sadness? They’re going at it like horny rabbits with this somber music in the background. IT MAKES NO SENSE. The sex scene was also my biggest beef in 300, so I’m guessing “crappy sex scene” is a Zack Snyder signature. Kelvin suspects that he’s watched too many Showtime softcore pornos.

Anyway, I still feel the book is better, just because it goes into things in so much detail. The movie was a good summary of the book, with some changes that I preferred over what was in the book. I give it an 8 outta 10.

New thing I learned today: Those inkblot tests are called Rorschach tests. (Okay, I didn’t learn this today; I learned about it when I read the book, but whatever.) The Rorschach test uses a set of 10 inkblot images, always the same 10 images and always in the same order.

I’m pretty sure this is my “Best Movie of 2008″. Thankfully, it was so good, morons at the theater didn’t have time heckle, so watching it with an opening night crowd (even 3 rows from the screen… we showed up an hour before 12:20AM showtime, but I guess we needed to show up 3 hours early or something) was still incredibly enjoyable.

Christian Bale was hot. (He was looking pretty good as John Connor, too.) Heath Ledger was an amazing Joker. The movie was action-packed, wonderfully dark and sickly humorous. The only thing I didn’t like about it: even with a runtime of over 150 minutes, it could have used another half hour. I wanted another half hour.

I think that’s all I can talk about at this hour and without spoiling stuff.
Rating: 9.7/10… at least until I see it again whenever it comes out on Blu-Ray. We’ll see how it holds up to rewatch.

I really need to go to bed now.