More Docus and one lavish Malaysian film

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We saw some docus:Following Sean: A Capturing the Friedmans type thing with lots of the filmmaker in the docu, still interesting territory, looking up the grownup version of a 4 year old boy the filmmaker shot in 1969 haight-ashbury. Raises many more questions than it answers, imho, but very very interesting!Delamu (incredibly slow but then my husband and I were just getting food poisoning as we watched the end of this film, so if you are at all interested in Tibet/China/silk road era caravans that still go, check it out). One of a kind docu about traveling the tea horse road (southern silk road).Narrative film: Malay film Princess of Mt. Ledang, the most expensive Malay film to date ($4M), gorgeous, strong acting, fascinating themes. If this gets distrib'd, Joe Mysti Bob says check it out!Hawaii, Oslo this director was fascinating to listen to in the Q&A, his film wonderful to me, but might seem a bit slow to most American moviegoers? Anyway, I loved it.there's been more, but I'm at work and they need me to, well, work.More soon!Mysti

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Mysti - interested to hear if you've caught Tropical Malady (the film, not the ailment) yet and if so, what you made of it?

A

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[nq:1]Mysti - interested to hear if you've caught Tropical Malady (the film, not the ailment) yet and if so, what you made of it? A[/nq]
doesn't seem to be in our fest! Princess of Mt. Ledang had a pretty straightforward story structure (given that multiple protagonists are pretty standard in a lot of Asian film traditions!) compared to T.M.

I'll keep my eye out, sounds like it ought to play san francisco if it plays anywhere U.S.

Mysti

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[nq:1]Delamu (incredibly slow but then my husband and I were just getting food poisoning as we watched the end of this ... caravans that still go, checkit out). One of a kind docu about traveling the tea horse road (southern silk road).[/nq]
Sounds interesting. I wonder if they have any adventure travel packages that would take tourists on a thousand-mile silk road tour? That would be awesome (and expensive) (and dangerous).
Lois

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[nq:1]Narrative film: Malay film Princess of Mt. Ledang, the most expensive Malay film to date ($4M), gorgeous, strong acting, fascinatingthemes. If this gets distrib'd, Joe Mysti Bob says check it out![/nq]
Well, seeing as I'm Malaysian an' all, I just got to reply to this.

PUTERI GUNUNG LEDANG was heralded as the Great Malaysian Hope of the local film industry. We're a nation of rabid cinemaphiles - new movies, especially summer "event" movies, get sold out at the cinemas for months after release. A while ago we were named the pirated movie capital of the world, and we probably still are.
But our local movie industry is still nascent. A huge segment of the movie-going public still thinks local films are juvenile, amateurish **** that'll only play to the boondocks, and for the most part they're right. We look at countries like Thailand, South Korea, and even Indonesia who currently have thriving film industries that have a thriving local audience, and produce movies that become foreign film festival hits, with a great deal of envy.
PGL was supposed to be the movie that would put us up there. It had the budget, the cast, and the subject matter. What it didn't have was a good screenplay.
I was sorely disappointed, and so was practically everyone I know. The writing was riddled with beginner no-nos. Got off to a great "in medias res" opening, then wasted it with an hour of flashbacks before the plot even got moving. Mystical elements were poorly handled, making its Dragonball Z-style fight scenes laughable. Logical inconsistencies abounded - people travelled back and forth between two locations that we know are hundreds of miles apart, and should take a sea voyage of months during that period, but seemed to take only an hour or two in the movie.
I'm happy you liked it Mysti, but I can't help wondering if you're giving it too much credit simply because it's a foreign (to you) film. It's not IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. It's not a different cultural mode of storytelling. It's an historical epic. The plot is supposed to make sense. It doesn't.
But it is very pretty to look at.

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[nq:1]Well, seeing as I'm Malaysian an' all, I just got to reply to this. PUTERI GUNUNG LEDANG was heralded as ... locations that we know are hundreds of miles apart, and should take a sea voyage of months during that period,[/nq]
A sea voyage of a few hundred miles shouldn't take months, it should take weeks.
[nq:1]but seemed to take only an hour or two in the movie.[/nq]
I didn't ever thing the voyages were only an hour or two. My only believability issue was the ladies' makeup, which seemed quite modern

[nq:1]I'm happy you liked it Mysti, but I can't help wondering if you're giving it too much credit simply because ... not a different cultural mode of storytelling. It's an historical epic. The plot is supposed to make sense. It doesn't.[/nq]
Well, it made sense to me. I'm not in the habit of cutting slack to films simply because they are foreign I see far too many of them for that. I didn't say it was a perfect film. The magic elements worked well for me, I agree with the director that having them simply flow from the action without remark made it clear that the magic wasn't anything surprising or exceptional.
I didn't make the same assumptions you did about elapsed time in some of the travel scenes nor do I ever expect physical geography to map perfectly to movie geography (not after watching Bullitt, anyway!).

I didn't find the fight scenes laughable, though they clearly weren't choreographed by Sammo Hung, my husband, who was taught a beginner's understanding of the knife forms (I can't remember the name of the martial art, sorry!) by a nice kid named Jalani recognized the style from the fighting, so it wasn't all Dragonball Z. I thought the smooth movement into and out of "magical" events suited the material perfectly.

The director said his domestic b.o. was about 100th of the budget, and that they were hoping for international distribution to make up the shortfall. I wish him good luck with it.
Australia used to suffer from the same "home grown" issue you report about Malaysia actors had to make it in Britain or America before being taken seriously in their home country. I hope you all outgrow it, because it sure looks like you have a lot of talented people in your country.
Mysti
P.S. The Malaysian people in the audience were pretty loud about liking the movie, the ones who stayed for Q&A.

More Docus and one lavish Malaysian film

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