Hannibal Rising
Peter Webber
If this movie were a dish, Hannibal would send it right back to the kitchen. And then have the chef for dinner instead.
It’s a confused fusion creation which ultimately leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Movie No. 4 in the lucrative Hannibal franchise (not counting 1986’s Manhunter) sees rising French actor Gaspard Ulliel (A Very Long Engagement) playing the young Hannibal Lecter and promises to tell us what makes the carnivorous one tick. But by the time the big denouement comes around, it is a case of too little too late.
We are first transported to the harrowing last days of World War II in Lithuania, where a recently orphaned Hannibal is left to fend for himself and his little sister Mischa.Unfortunately for him, they run into some Very Bad Men, a group of militiamen led by Grutas (Rhys Ifan exuding dull-eyed evil).
Cut to eight years later and Hannibal is now haunted by nightmares. He flees from an oppressive orphanage, ends up in the home of his dead uncle’s Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), and eventually proceeds to wreak vengeance upon those men.
Hannibal also has to deal with an Inspector Popil (Dominic West) on his trail.
There are simply too many ingredients simmering in the pot. The result is a protracted and plodding film punctuated by bursts of increasingly gruesome mutilations and death.
It does not help that some of the elements are just plain jarring in the first place. The most egregious offender being the character of Lady Murasaki, which is shamelessly exploited for an over-the-top Exotic Orient effect. Even Gong Li cannot emote her way out as her character worships ancestors, arranges flowers, teaches kendo, and then morphs into biker chick.
Ulliel has an even more unenviable task of tackling a role Anthony Hopkins made his own. He cannot erase the memory of Hopkins’ bravura performance and director Peter Webber does him no favours by echoing the iconic image of Hopkins in a bite restraint mask. But the actor does leave an impression with his coolly reptilian stare and a menacing scythe-shaped scar on his left cheek, the result of Ulliel being clawed by a dog when he was six.
(ST)

midnight’s children
salman rushdie
the mother of all novels about India’s birth pangs and growing pains? this book is an explosion of wondrous sights and pungent smells, tapping into and deconstructing the myths and history of the country.
yet for all its breadth, it also feels like an intimate portrayal because of the device rushdie has concocted – a group of magical midnight’s children, born in the hour of india’s independence, to mirror the nation’s development.
the focus of the sprawling story is further sharpened by another device – the re-telling of history by one saleem sinai, born on the stroke of midnight itself, to his devoted audience of one (and the reader.) with the benefit of hindsight,the smallest event has the portentousness of history and the heavy shadow of fate lurks everywhere. this is simultaneously undercut by the triviality of these happenings.
there is much to savour in the playfulness and inventiveness of his writing and the dazzling array of fascinating characters and plot developments. despite the sheer number of elements, rushdie does a dextrous job of juggling them with a fluidity that belies the complexity of the task.

the painted veil
john curran
enjoyed the painted veil and it grows on me the more i think abt it. it's a simple story of a couple who meet, marry, weather a crisis, then fall in love. the focus of the movie is largely on them yet the 2 hours don't feel overly long because ed norton (walter fane) and naomi watts (kitty fane) simply bring their characters to life. kitty agrees to marry walter because it means freedom from her mother, not because she loves him. but as she later points out to him, she never pretended to be something she wasn't. he knew this but married her all the same, hoping that he would win her over. it turns out to be a recipe for disaster and she embarks on an affair. walter finds out and in a fit of anger, decides to punish her by dragging her along to a cholera outbreak area in the interior of china. isolated from the rest of the world, they are forced to confront with what has happened.
there are elements of melodrama - an affair, a pregnancy, a death - but they are dealt with in emotionally truthful scenes. at one point, kitty laughs and asks if a woman has ever loved a man for his virtue, but this is precisely what happens to kitty, and the ending shows us that this love has transformed her into a woman of virtue as well. it's ultimately about the redemptive power of love, but it's never preachy.
the exotic locales were fully utilised and the cinematography was lush and gorgeous.
liked the fact that nothing was black-and-white in the movie, that even the orphanage run by the nuns was not seen as an unadulterated good.
there was also the curiosity factor of seeing anthony wong, brows perpetually furrowed, in an english-speaking role. and that the prc government had final cut approval.
in 6 words: love in the time of cholera