spoonfork

bullet points on the departed, and why martin scorsese should and shouldn't make movies with plots.

• matt damon, leo the crap, marky mark, jack nicholson aka vincent price, alec baldwin and vera farmiga were all excellent. however their characters especially that of leo the crap and matt damon lacked the emotional intensity and moral ambiguity that were so prevalent in the original infernal affairs.


• the drug bust scenes and the one where leo the crap almost discovered the rat weren't that gripping and suspenseful either.


• the love thingy was good. so good that it made Kelly Chen looked like a cheap perhiasan, or like an after-thought ("oh we've forgotten to put a sui chah boh in the film, let throw kelly in there").


• the first hour was original, while the next one and half were just botched imitation of the original.


• the scenes with the chinese gangsters were simply awful, and showed martin's lack of sensitivity to international audience. first, the cantonese was bad. mandarin should have been spoken instead, and not to mention that the gangsters were from mainland china. second, the cantonese scripts were bad. i no speaking cantonese, but i can tell a bad cantonese when i hear one. marty dude, your movies are not just for americans.


• jack nicholson was great, but too much over the top. marky mark was good. his character should have been given more screen time, and more cusses


• there's one too many shot in the head

now, if this movie is more about the characters (which the original had successfully blended together, especially for andy lau's character), then it would be a great martin scorsese movie. martin has been about characters (taxi, raging bull, goodfellas...) and not plot and this movie clearly shows how bad he is making movies with plots.

listening to: the rolling stones - not fade away

recent movies:

• l'appartment - reminds me of one of those shakepearean tragedies where things never worked out for the characters. the old buildings in paris look terrific in this movie though, and i think roman duris suits the main character better than vincent cassel


• casino royale - the best bond movie if memory serves me well. a little bit more violence will make it better, imho.


• adam & steve - terribly funny, and funnier if you're into gay romance and stuff like that.


• borat - there's will ferrell and gang kind of funny, there's adam sandler and gang kind of funny, there's the monty python kind of funny, and now, there's sascha baron cohen kind of funny. love the part where he sings the kazakhstan national athem to the tune of the US's national anthem.


• clerks II - you'll love it if you're a fan, and you'll go "hmmm... so what?" if you're not. or maybe you'll go "yeah..." without really knowing what you're agreeing with.

listening to: death in vegas - so you say you lost your baby?

some random observations during my short stint as a kopitiam keeper, in 93200, kuching:

• drinking on the job!


• the average healthy male body has roughly 45kg of water, mostly distributed in fat, muscles and bones. that is roughly 45 litres of water. i've observed that during a period of five hours, a person can drink up to 5 litres of heineken beer. that is a carton (24 cans) of heineken for one person.


• repeat customers make up about 30% of your daily sales revenue.


• the most popular beer: heineken, followed by stella artois, and tiger beer. stella artois comes second because it is cheap.


• drinking on the job!


• kuching drinkers drink more than they smoke.


• the natives: ibans, bidayuhs, kayans, etc are the most hardcore alcoholic drinkers in the world borneo.


• most clubs and karaokes in kuching are dominated, or rather, controlled by heavily tattooed iban and chinese gangsters. so the sights of men with full body tattoos coming the shop every day is, well, a sign of approval.


• interestingly, the gangsters don't drink, they just sip coffees and buy drinks for their anak buahs.


• just as the people in kl/pj can sit for hours drinking a mug of coffee at starbucks, people in kuching can sit for hours drinking litres and litres of beers.


• drinking on the job!

listening to: the prodigy - one love