Wes Anderson

For a person who get tired of things quickly, being a fan of anything or anyone for 13 years is pretty insane. It all started when I saw Royal Tenenbaums in 2001. 13 years, eight full-lengh movies (including two films prior to 2001), and several short films later, I am addicted to Wes Anderson's films more than ever. He is the only director in the US who has established his own style and reflects it in every movie. If I could, I want to merge into his movie, like walking through a magical mirror, and be a dysfunctional character (that should not be difficult for me). I'll be a crazy bunny or a grumpy sloth in Fantastic Mr. Fox or an unpaid intern in Life Aquatic.

Living in Southwest has some fun factors, but it is unbearable when a movie I want to see first hits the theaters. On average, I have to wait three weeks before the movie gets here after people in LA and NYC have seen and bragged about it all over the internet. Spoilers.

The same thing happened again. I finally saw The Grand Budapest Hotel last weekend. One thing I started doing when I go see a movie is to keep my expectations low except when the movie is created by Wes Anderson. No matter how enormous my expectations are, Wes Anderson always go far beyond it. Out of hatred I have toward anyone who spoil movies by giving away too many details, I will not talk about the movie. Besides, it doesn't matter what I, critics, or any other people think of a movie; all it matters is if each person like the movie or not. I don't care what people say, I was not fond of Titanic and English Patient. And I have been a Juliette Binoche fan since the late 1980s. I will just say one thing, it was delightful to see Ralph Fiennes in a comedy. Here is a trailer of The Grand Budapest Hotel. You can decide if this is your cup of tea:



Now I need to see this movie ten more times when it's available on Amazon.

Watch a short film by Wes Anderson: Castello Cavalcanti

Ip Man and Ip Chun

Netflix offers many foreign films some viewers may never watch unless included in monthly fees. The best thing about the Netflix's system is that we can stop watching any boring movie without losing money. Back in the day, returning a movie was never an exciting part of watching a movie, but returning a movie I HATED used to ruin my day. With Netflix or Amazon Prime, all I have to lose is ten or fifteen minutes of my time I could have used for something else, like watching sloth videos.

Sloths are lovely, but I can only watch so many sloth videos. After a while I crave for some action movies. Since an action sloth movie is unavailable, I often look for martial arts movies. Ip Man and Ip Man 2 (the reason why the American movie title is not "Yip Man," I'm not sure) were surprisingly entertaining. Prior to watching these movies, I had seen Donnie Yen's action cop movie Flash Point (which is also on Netflix) and I enjoyed his fight moves. Two exciting Ip Man movies lead me to look for more Ip Man movies including The Legend is Born: Ip Man. There is an old man in this movie by the name Leung Bik who meets young Ip Man and becomes his mentor. This old man is played by Ip Chun, Ip Man's son.

 (photo from Ip Chung Wing Chun Martial Arts Association website)

Ip Man: The Final Fight is the newest Ip Man movie created in 2013. According to IMDB, there is "Ip Man 3" in development, but no details are disclosed at this point. IMDB got me excited so many times with movies in development and then left me in valley of sorrow when the movie deal fell through. What happened to the movie version of Silence based on a novel by Shusaku Endo rumored on IMDB five years ago? Of course, I would rather see the deal gone if the casting and script is not aligned with the novel. We'll see.