Homecoming, Crippled Ho and Demigod Peacocks

Guys, start popping the popcorn!

My C/HK/TW Movie Watchlist 2014

In order of anticipation.

Every big name director is having an epic out in 2014.  This is already my shortlist, there are many I am not interested in but make good business sense.  Quite a few, I can not wait!

JinLing 13 Chai (aka War of Flowers) and Shame

I know I’ve been dumping a lot of moody funk here lately, looks like it’s not stopping tonight.  I went to a late Shame showing. I’m not sure what’s with me, but I’m only interested in mind and appetite ruining joyless amazing provocations.

I did not get the full blast of the Fassbender fandom until I watched Fish Tank.  I was impressed w/ things I’ve seen him in, Inglorious Basterds, Magneto in X-men and Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, but I don’t find him too handsome nor too good for any roles.  I didn’t find him that gorgeous in RL, then.  Fish Tank is exactly my thing, acting is seamless, storytelling is unforced, the pace is leisurely, allowing me to ease into that world, the stories of these characters and participate as a true observer. it’s very similar in theme to An Education, just grittier, in the now instead of 60s, in East End/Essex.  Fassbender floored me by his ovaries exploding magnetic physical attractiveness the second he’s on screen.  It’s a toned down, less abrasive entrance echoing that of Marlon Brando in StreetCar. He’s playing an extremely hard to commiserate character towards the end with the brain in dick guy-psychosis that requires castration, yet till the bitter end, I don’t see him as menacing nor deceitful as despicable as he is. His Connor is a very flawed, weasel in a very pleasing exterior, but I still get he is capable of tiny tender loving feelings for people he cares.  I feel the lowest of scumminess having panty-losing hots for his character…still, but his performance is so simple, direct and effortlessly spot on.  He didn’t do much with expressions or any part of his physical body, but his eyes are treasure troves, it’s all there for you to pick out, somehow he delivers everything that’s necessary for us to know about the character so thoroughly at any specific point of the story.  He’s so entirely persuasive with minimal visible effort and that’s very disturbing in the best way watching someone acts.   But then he’s playing an irresistible charmer, art imitates life much.

Shame is a joyless, lingering, profound movie and I really hate the thoughts on the human condition it’s provoked in me.  No, I didn’t go in to witness Fassdong on big screen and ‘extraordinary’ did not cross my mind at all except it is attached to a bigger chunk of flesh usu forming a whole man, but this perfectly-made junk is so devoid of care, dissolute of feeling anything but pain, an unknown traumatizing past he is mentally wrestling to contain, yet overwhelming him raw every waking moment and we audience are kept ignorant fr his entire history and causation.  We’re just presented with the present bout of disfigurement of his mind and loss of control of his body.  I watched a studly piece of flesh overtaken by a mentally debilitating addiction for 90+ minutes, I wondered every second, hinted by the fleeting damaged vulnerability inside his hollow, lifeless yet intense, almost pleading globes how excruciatingly scary it must be for him to keep up the decorum of putting the right clothes and face on, say fewest words as close to a normal man every second in public and not be a totally pathetic piece of trash he sees himself staring back at him.  Sadly, the opposite of panties shattering sexy.  Shame is almost perfect a piece of storytelling of a story unpleasant to sit through. Shame is really the best most befitting word ever to describe what I experienced.  For Fassbender, carrying around that perfect physique, displaying it unadorned, yet still every second convincing me how deplorable shitty it is to be him, in his body, doing his things.  It’s his eyes, there is that desperate intensity that attracts his ‘prey’ and when we are ‘invited’ in, we only find an emptied out, lost soul yearning for help, for feelings, for everything human he’s detached his physical existence from even when he’s doing the most human carnal acts.  He is ROBBED of his GGlobe. Clooney, u owe him wayyyy more than a flattering peen joke.   He is having some nec sex on screen, surprisingly not a lot and tamer than I expected, and though I recently find him extremely hot!Irish attractive even as a pedophile *am extremely guilty of blasphemy and iz whipping myself*, I don’t want that pathetic shell of a man near my vicinity, at times I am ashamed of myself of wishing to not know of the fact people like him is suffering and existing.  I feel just enough sympathy for his Brandon as a victim of a psychological disorder but at the same time I’m as repulsed as the character is of himself.  For the entirety of the movie, I’m sucked into his character’s damaged beyond repair psyche and it’s an ugly stinky demoralizing existence.  Mulligan is as perfect as Fassbender, there are a couple scenes, esp one she’s singing, that’ll stay with me on both the awesomeness that is Mulligan AND Fassbender.   Give them all the awards.

Before I can gather myself to pour out everything on JinLing 13 Chai, I was sitting in my closet, distracting myself playing with cedar balls until my husband was looking for me and told me it’s bedtime.  I was (very early) spring cleaning, in prep for Lunar New Year day Monday.

I am numb, overwhelmed, staring at the goosebumps from the emotions that shot through me, the same feelings watching JinLing 13 Chai/War of Flowers swarmed me once again.  The cedar balls were to be in the tissue-lined box housing my most precious possession,  qipaos handed down to me by my grandma and mother that started this catatonia.