Armageddon
Not the Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis movie, although I feel that one would have been much improved with the presence of Andy Lau, spontaneous combustion, and lethal microwaves.
As noted previously, this involves lethal microwaves and the deaths of assorted famous scientists via spontaneous combustion. And as Rachel notes, she watched this first until a priest spontaneously combusted and then something else EVEN MORE CRACKTASTIC happened, fell off her sofa laughing, then stopped the DVD and decided she had to wait and watch it with me.
I am not entirely sure what this says about either of us.
Yoon, on the other hand, wisely abstained from watching, as the bad science in the movie probably would have caused her to spontaneously combust, leaving me and Rachel with only a remnant of spine, left foot, and liver to autopsy.
Spoilers would be movie-destroying if it were possible to truly spoil the effects of this movie
What happened after the priest combusting is the introduction of Andy Lau, aka, in a fit of unfortunate transliteration, "Ken Tit-sun." Seriously, they totally could have avoided that simply by spelling it "Titsun." Andy Lau is curled up on a yacht, looking extremely vulnerable and in need of cuddling, and dreaming about his fiancee, who is holding a bag of groceries probably with a baguette sticking out the top. The music is tinkling and happy and then....
WHAM! A BUS RUNS HER OVER!
Rachel was not kind enough to warn me that something would be coming, so I nearly fell off the sofa laughing AND nearly choked to death on wasabi peas.
After that, we and Andy Lau learn that something mysterious is killing off famous scientists, and since he too is a famous software engineer (don't ask), he is in danger! Soon, his world-weary cop buddy is trying to protect him while they get to the bottom of the mysterious spontaneous combustions.
At least, that is what would happen if the movie had a plot that made any sort of sense. Instead, the movie has about ten plots, some of which occasionally make sense, but unfortunately not all at the same time. My favorite plot is the sweet flashbacks to Andy Lau and his now-dead-but-maybe-alive-again-but-not-in-a-decomposing-zombie-way fiancee and how they tease each other, eat noodles together, get earwax picked, and are overall adorable.
That is, until the movie every so often reminds us of her fate in scenes like "Andy Lau and his fiancee eat the instant noodles he cooked her and plan their honeymoon!
"OH WAIT BUS WHAM!"
Because of his tendency to see his now-dead-but-maybe-not fiancee, Andy Lau eventually ends up in a hospital with a Hollywood-version-of-mentally-ill man who advises him that it's okay to be hit on the head as long as you don't throw up and is confined in Ace bandages, as the hospital or the production crew clearly did not have enough money for a straightjacket.
And then a Japanese scientist sequestered underground for his own protection by MI6 (oh yeah, it's Hong Kong pre-handover) spontaneously combusts.
And then some hackers Andy Lau knows hack into somewhere, causing all the printers around them to spew pages and pages of every single conspiracy theory ever.
And then the love interest of world-weary cop, who reminds me of Scully but unfortunately is much less cool, mentions her stomach tumor! Both me and Rachel think she's going to die via spontaneous combustion as well, or that the movie will make an abrupt turn into tragic kdrama territory, but apparently it was... pickled egg. No mention is ever made of this again.
And then we meet the leader of the Brotherhood of Technology (I forgot, this is who is leaving threatening notes to Andy Lau and presumably resurrecting his fiancee and/or lethally microwaving people). He is white and one would think British, given the pre-handover-HK-ness, but has an accent roughly like an Australian who lived partially in Belgium attempting to impersonate Liam Neesom doing a British accent. Maybe. It was hard to tell! Every time he spoke, Rachel and I would experience a minute of complete confusion before registering that he was speaking English, not Cantonese.
Although he does speak Cantonese in a few scenes. I think it is dubbed, since it actually sounds like Canto to my non-Canto-speaking self.
Oh! I forgot about the part in which Andy Lau and World-Weary Cop visit Prague, meet up with Maybe-Dead Fiancee, and Andy Lau attempts to commit suicide via subway. Maybe. We couldn't tell if he was being emo or simply slipping and falling toward the tracks.
And then the Brotherhood of (EVIL!) Technology drags Andy Lau into their lair, seats him, passes around a goblet into which they each slice their finger and bleed into, and the Evil Mastermind begins to chant something. The psychedelic display behind Evil Mastermind begins to psychedelically swirl with images of Maybe-Dead Fiancee when the police burst in and shoot him in the head! Unsurprisingly, the wound heals over and he's not dead. Surprisingly, the wound does a psychedelic swirl into his forehead before disappearing.
Somehow, Andy Lau then goes to a football stadium, in which Maybe-Dead Fiancee is beamed down, possibly from an alien ship, or from Heaven. I think Andy Lau was placing bets on Heaven, but I was placing bets on the alien ship. Evil Mastermind also beams down, causes the lurking police to spontaneously combusts, takes on the shape of World-Weary Cop, and proceeds to discuss apocalyptic armageddons and the judgment of Heaven with Andy Lau in what is possibly the most incomprehensible infodump I have seen since the Gundam Wing pacifist meetings.
And then everyone is resurrected, Maybe-Dead Fiancee is not dead, all the spontaneously combusted cops are back alive (possibly by adding water to their dehydrated remains!), and the shiny light/alien spaceship/spotlight of Heaven withdraws.
The end!
I realize there are absolutely no connecting phrases or really anything between each paragraph of plot point, but that is because there are none in the movie either! I have no idea how we got from one to the other, save via jump cut!
ETA: Also, in one scene, Andy Lau, is carefully slipping a ring onto his finger. His hand is held very close to his face.
RACHEL: Is he putting the ring on the wrong finger? Shouldn't it be on his right hand?
ME: Um. I was too busy admiring Andy Lau's cheekbones to notice. And his eyes. And jaw line. And nose...
This entry was originally posted at http://oyceter.dreamwidth.org/849325.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
As noted previously, this involves lethal microwaves and the deaths of assorted famous scientists via spontaneous combustion. And as Rachel notes, she watched this first until a priest spontaneously combusted and then something else EVEN MORE CRACKTASTIC happened, fell off her sofa laughing, then stopped the DVD and decided she had to wait and watch it with me.
I am not entirely sure what this says about either of us.
Yoon, on the other hand, wisely abstained from watching, as the bad science in the movie probably would have caused her to spontaneously combust, leaving me and Rachel with only a remnant of spine, left foot, and liver to autopsy.
Spoilers would be movie-destroying if it were possible to truly spoil the effects of this movie
What happened after the priest combusting is the introduction of Andy Lau, aka, in a fit of unfortunate transliteration, "Ken Tit-sun." Seriously, they totally could have avoided that simply by spelling it "Titsun." Andy Lau is curled up on a yacht, looking extremely vulnerable and in need of cuddling, and dreaming about his fiancee, who is holding a bag of groceries probably with a baguette sticking out the top. The music is tinkling and happy and then....
WHAM! A BUS RUNS HER OVER!
Rachel was not kind enough to warn me that something would be coming, so I nearly fell off the sofa laughing AND nearly choked to death on wasabi peas.
After that, we and Andy Lau learn that something mysterious is killing off famous scientists, and since he too is a famous software engineer (don't ask), he is in danger! Soon, his world-weary cop buddy is trying to protect him while they get to the bottom of the mysterious spontaneous combustions.
At least, that is what would happen if the movie had a plot that made any sort of sense. Instead, the movie has about ten plots, some of which occasionally make sense, but unfortunately not all at the same time. My favorite plot is the sweet flashbacks to Andy Lau and his now-dead-but-maybe-alive-again-but-not-in-a-decomposing-zombie-way fiancee and how they tease each other, eat noodles together, get earwax picked, and are overall adorable.
That is, until the movie every so often reminds us of her fate in scenes like "Andy Lau and his fiancee eat the instant noodles he cooked her and plan their honeymoon!
"OH WAIT BUS WHAM!"
Because of his tendency to see his now-dead-but-maybe-not fiancee, Andy Lau eventually ends up in a hospital with a Hollywood-version-of-mentally-ill man who advises him that it's okay to be hit on the head as long as you don't throw up and is confined in Ace bandages, as the hospital or the production crew clearly did not have enough money for a straightjacket.
And then a Japanese scientist sequestered underground for his own protection by MI6 (oh yeah, it's Hong Kong pre-handover) spontaneously combusts.
And then some hackers Andy Lau knows hack into somewhere, causing all the printers around them to spew pages and pages of every single conspiracy theory ever.
And then the love interest of world-weary cop, who reminds me of Scully but unfortunately is much less cool, mentions her stomach tumor! Both me and Rachel think she's going to die via spontaneous combustion as well, or that the movie will make an abrupt turn into tragic kdrama territory, but apparently it was... pickled egg. No mention is ever made of this again.
And then we meet the leader of the Brotherhood of Technology (I forgot, this is who is leaving threatening notes to Andy Lau and presumably resurrecting his fiancee and/or lethally microwaving people). He is white and one would think British, given the pre-handover-HK-ness, but has an accent roughly like an Australian who lived partially in Belgium attempting to impersonate Liam Neesom doing a British accent. Maybe. It was hard to tell! Every time he spoke, Rachel and I would experience a minute of complete confusion before registering that he was speaking English, not Cantonese.
Although he does speak Cantonese in a few scenes. I think it is dubbed, since it actually sounds like Canto to my non-Canto-speaking self.
Oh! I forgot about the part in which Andy Lau and World-Weary Cop visit Prague, meet up with Maybe-Dead Fiancee, and Andy Lau attempts to commit suicide via subway. Maybe. We couldn't tell if he was being emo or simply slipping and falling toward the tracks.
And then the Brotherhood of (EVIL!) Technology drags Andy Lau into their lair, seats him, passes around a goblet into which they each slice their finger and bleed into, and the Evil Mastermind begins to chant something. The psychedelic display behind Evil Mastermind begins to psychedelically swirl with images of Maybe-Dead Fiancee when the police burst in and shoot him in the head! Unsurprisingly, the wound heals over and he's not dead. Surprisingly, the wound does a psychedelic swirl into his forehead before disappearing.
Somehow, Andy Lau then goes to a football stadium, in which Maybe-Dead Fiancee is beamed down, possibly from an alien ship, or from Heaven. I think Andy Lau was placing bets on Heaven, but I was placing bets on the alien ship. Evil Mastermind also beams down, causes the lurking police to spontaneously combusts, takes on the shape of World-Weary Cop, and proceeds to discuss apocalyptic armageddons and the judgment of Heaven with Andy Lau in what is possibly the most incomprehensible infodump I have seen since the Gundam Wing pacifist meetings.
And then everyone is resurrected, Maybe-Dead Fiancee is not dead, all the spontaneously combusted cops are back alive (possibly by adding water to their dehydrated remains!), and the shiny light/alien spaceship/spotlight of Heaven withdraws.
The end!
I realize there are absolutely no connecting phrases or really anything between each paragraph of plot point, but that is because there are none in the movie either! I have no idea how we got from one to the other, save via jump cut!
ETA: Also, in one scene, Andy Lau, is carefully slipping a ring onto his finger. His hand is held very close to his face.
RACHEL: Is he putting the ring on the wrong finger? Shouldn't it be on his right hand?
ME: Um. I was too busy admiring Andy Lau's cheekbones to notice. And his eyes. And jaw line. And nose...
This entry was originally posted at http://oyceter.dreamwidth.org/849325.html. Please comment there using OpenID.