Oxide Pangs Ab-Normal Beauty [Sei mong se jun] Hong Kong
So, last night rivetmike brought home Ab-Normal Beauty by Oxide pang [one half of the Pang brothers] of Bangkok Haunted, the Eye and Eye II [amongst others] fame. It looked a pretty intersteing story I thought and although I have only seen the Eye films with Eye being rather good but Eye II being below par I keep reading great things about these Pang boys.
The story, really, surrounds three young people Jin and Jas [real life sisters in Pop act 2R] who are cast as lovers and Anson the boy who tragically follows Jin like a Puppy filming her constantly. Jin is a morose student who enjoys photography and yearning from some 'new material' she photographs death in a car crash. From this point on Jin starts to get weird and fast. Flashbacks of a past moment of abuse when she was young also start to emerge in points of the film. She begins to take even more pictures of death and even pays to see it [okay, okay only animals not humans] which culminates to a point when jin calls her sweetheart as she is at the point of 'breaking'. But Jin's troubles don't end here and soon she is receiving photos and snuff films of the torture of young girls. Who is this stalker [like we can't guess already by this point] of course Jin stands firm in the face of ... abnormalities and 'beats' her inner demons.
What a load of crap. Okay, sorry I should explain myself here really shouldn't I? What's wrong with this film? Okay so it has a few good points firstly the colours were vivid [which was nice] only when you got to the darkroom scenes at times it was rather difficult to see exactly what was happening. Some of the effects that he has used seemed, like he was trying to hard to be arty. Various points during the first storyline [Jin's madness] there were painfully obvious points where he was trying to create tension and atmosphere where frankly if it had not of been for the kooky camera-work and music you would never have guessed.
One of the 'bad poiints' I list I will also give to him as a good point in filmwork - the kooky camerawork.
Good points- the music, in particularly the parts which sounded like industrial-noise in an ambient manner. Now This created much more of a mood.
The second storyline [the stalker/tapes] was the much better part of the film. Although it felt to me that Oxide had very distinct sets of ideas but not enough to create two films so he stuck them together. The photography idea could have been rather good but it was so vague. Ooh Jin likes now to photograph dead people, Jin is clearly going insane, Jin was abused fuelling her desire for revenge, Jin might kill.... oh no she's perfectly fine now because her girlfriend smacked her bout the face. LAME. The snuff video like most of the film, looked good and the pace was a lot better and I actually almost felt something... Oh yes that's it 'has this film not finished yet?'.
All in all quite a dissapointment and I would rate it 2/5 overall.
[EDIT] Oh and the subtitles were fucking lazy too! Talk about literal translations. Rubbish.
In other disapointments I bloody forgot about Dual Project at the Prince charles cinema *cries* as I have felt so utterly rotten this week. I have the cold of doOM! :( rivetmike has been looking after me though :) The hospital now have my letter of referal and so I await an appointment [12 weeks - 6 months dependant on a consultant] which is good because my tutchi pegs hurt very much indeed.
Oooh my ears just popped - I can hear again! W0000t!
The story, really, surrounds three young people Jin and Jas [real life sisters in Pop act 2R] who are cast as lovers and Anson the boy who tragically follows Jin like a Puppy filming her constantly. Jin is a morose student who enjoys photography and yearning from some 'new material' she photographs death in a car crash. From this point on Jin starts to get weird and fast. Flashbacks of a past moment of abuse when she was young also start to emerge in points of the film. She begins to take even more pictures of death and even pays to see it [okay, okay only animals not humans] which culminates to a point when jin calls her sweetheart as she is at the point of 'breaking'. But Jin's troubles don't end here and soon she is receiving photos and snuff films of the torture of young girls. Who is this stalker [like we can't guess already by this point] of course Jin stands firm in the face of ... abnormalities and 'beats' her inner demons.
What a load of crap. Okay, sorry I should explain myself here really shouldn't I? What's wrong with this film? Okay so it has a few good points firstly the colours were vivid [which was nice] only when you got to the darkroom scenes at times it was rather difficult to see exactly what was happening. Some of the effects that he has used seemed, like he was trying to hard to be arty. Various points during the first storyline [Jin's madness] there were painfully obvious points where he was trying to create tension and atmosphere where frankly if it had not of been for the kooky camera-work and music you would never have guessed.
One of the 'bad poiints' I list I will also give to him as a good point in filmwork - the kooky camerawork.
Good points- the music, in particularly the parts which sounded like industrial-noise in an ambient manner. Now This created much more of a mood.
The second storyline [the stalker/tapes] was the much better part of the film. Although it felt to me that Oxide had very distinct sets of ideas but not enough to create two films so he stuck them together. The photography idea could have been rather good but it was so vague. Ooh Jin likes now to photograph dead people, Jin is clearly going insane, Jin was abused fuelling her desire for revenge, Jin might kill.... oh no she's perfectly fine now because her girlfriend smacked her bout the face. LAME. The snuff video like most of the film, looked good and the pace was a lot better and I actually almost felt something... Oh yes that's it 'has this film not finished yet?'.
All in all quite a dissapointment and I would rate it 2/5 overall.
[EDIT] Oh and the subtitles were fucking lazy too! Talk about literal translations. Rubbish.
In other disapointments I bloody forgot about Dual Project at the Prince charles cinema *cries* as I have felt so utterly rotten this week. I have the cold of doOM! :( rivetmike has been looking after me though :) The hospital now have my letter of referal and so I await an appointment [12 weeks - 6 months dependant on a consultant] which is good because my tutchi pegs hurt very much indeed.
Oooh my ears just popped - I can hear again! W0000t!