Shows

Finally watched Red Cliff after all these days! I shall not elaborate on how many times I tried to watch but somehow didn't manage to since it started showing... no good timing, missed timing, pple don't want to watch, sold out etc etc... lets just say that I never tried so HARD to watch a movie before. Anw, I finally managed to watched it!

 

Ok la, not bad. Slightly less Dynasty Warrior. Zhaowei's role as a spy is quite interesting. Lin Zhiling's role as Xiao Qiao has finally 'upgraded' from a vase to a... stupid woman. She is totally redundant but at least she brings a tat of 'unexpectedness' to audience who knew the story inside out, since that part is not inside the original story. It makes people wonder what the f will happen to that stupid woman. She also served the purpose of stirring up audience's emotions - that of anger... (tmd wtf is that cock doing???) So actually she has quite an 'important' role after all.

 

Oh well, all in all Red Cliff is not a bad movie. The battle scene is exciting, got a bit of Saving Private Ryan feel - (Destroy that enemy bunker! Its machine gun... no, its arrows are decimating our army!). Humourous elements spreaded throughout the film to lighten up the atmosphere. The ending is not bad too. "其实，我们都输了。" A good line to conclude this epic battle - makes you ponder for a while. Overall 3.5/5.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

I watched 4 theatre shows in Jan. Frozen Angel, Betrayed Babies from M1 Fringe Festival, Whispers and Design for Living from Huayi Festival. I noticed a trend with the local theatre productions - nowadays we tend to try a lot of tricks, be it 剧中剧, multimedia, etc etc. And one favourite trick these days is to jumble 3 different stories up into one play and tried to make it seems connected when actually they are not.

 

Betrayed Babies and Whispers both used this trick, and it is actually very irritating for unprepared minds.  It is like trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle only to realise in the middle of the show that it is 3 different jigsaw puzzles. Then you try to piece the 3 different puzzles again until, to your horror, it has reached the end of the show and there are still pieces missing! Sometimes there will even be some extra pieces left over to confuse you even further.

 

Then these days, for Black Box shows, they like to have post-shows dialogue with the director. The directors, upon getting feedback that most audience don't understand what their show is talking about, will say things like:

 

"Ya... we did considered that some audience may not understand the show, but as a director, we should be one step ahead of the audience, instead of staying at the audience's level. It is purely an artistic choice. However, I really did worried that I may be a little self-indulge, so what you all said is valid also..."

 

Upon hearing this, I felt a little pissed off. Wtf. After trying so hard to understand the show, you then tell me that it is actually not meant to be understood ?!?

 

But I totally understood what they meant la. Afterall, I did self-indulge myself at the expense of audience in my own hall productions last time. Haha! But now, after leaving production and going back to becoming an audience, I realised that what is most important in the play, is not all the pattern (more than badminton) used, but simply a good and complete story told in an interesting way. You can use all the tricks in the world, but once it compromises the audience understanding of the story, then, enjoyment level dropped. Simple as that. Look at some of the most enjoyable and loved plays in history (《暗恋桃花源》and Pillowman comes into mind), did anyone fail to understand the story??

 

Local staged drama production somehow have the tendency to put more emphasis on playing tricks than storytelling in the recent years. Last time I used to like experimental/abstract plays. But somehow these days I enjoyed those kind of plays less. Perhaps I had seen too much of these tricks. Perhaps I had become narrow minded. Perhaps I became old.

 

返朴归真.

 

Sometimes after doing lots of complex and complicated stuff, you will realised that the simplest things are often the best.

 

Personal opinion.

 

P.S. I really like Design for Living 《生活与生存》. An example of what I meant by "a good and complete story told in an interesting way". It's ending: "李想(理想), 我好像还记得你..." I LOVED it. But of course, its ticket price is about the combined ticket prices of all the other 3 shows that I watched this year. Haha!

 

One article on Design for Living :

http://yule.sohu.com/20081205/n261031882.shtml