Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008). I thought the first one was awful. It could had that starting a few years back, we’ve got saturated with animal-esque animated films. Few productions can match the consistent inventiveness and visuals of a Pixar animated picture. It didn’t help that as great comedic actors are Chris Rock and Ben Stiller are, their voices just don’t translate well to animals on-screen.
Surprisingly, the second one is an improvement. Not great, but really more enjoyable. The gyrating voices are still there, but the story moves faster, jokes less cringe-inducing, and the militant Penguins are still there.
Heck: maybe they should just do do a full 90 minute picture on those four penguins: they’re a hoot to watch. And why not a crossover even with everyone’s favorite sabertooth squirrel?
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Red Cliff 2 (2009). Ann, our small group friend, likes John Woo’s USD87 million big budget take of the classic novel. I watched the first film last year but held off commenting until I’d watched both movies. The critics had a field day on the first one: too much talking and too little action. This one’s almost the polar opposite: both bickering sides get down to business quickly enough with an hour strategizing and making small maneuvers before the climatic battle that runs in excess of an hour from the second half of the film.
It helps that I don’t follow Chinese or Japanese productions: the cast are all unknowns for me even if they’re really megastars. So I didn’t lose the suspension of disbelief as far as the character looks were concerned.
However, as soon as the big battle scenes started, I started laughing. There is no subtlety in this movie. Woo’s depiction of the two warring sides is painted as clear as black and white: Team Cao Cao are all moronic buffoons. I thought he actually had capable and highly skilled generals on his staff besides those two he had beheaded?
In Woo’s vision, all Cao Cao’s generals do is run around like headless chickens and give panic reports to their boss that state the bloody obvious: “Our positions are getting overrun! What do we do?!” If I was management, I would have lopped off a few more heads.
On the other hand, Team Liu Bei/Zhou Yu/Sun Quan and their band of merry men are all superheroes whose Hit Point scores are maintained at Maximum when they’ve got arrows and spears sticking out of their guts. Maybe they’ve wearing Rings of Health Generation +10? And their generals are Alpha Males who inspire men to follow them to their deaths by catapult and fire bombardment.
Then Zhou Yu pulls a one-man invasion of Cao Cao’s personal stockade. Why do you need 50,000 soldiers when you’ve got Zhou Yu?
And cinematography was a mixed bag. It’s gorgeous when it wasn’t CGed. But even putting aside the hokey CG, it’s strange how Woo set up a couple of shots: especially the ones when Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang are talking to each other’s faces – literally.
So, watch if you’re a fan of the actors and would like to see them in period costumes waxing poetry and waving a sword or two. For me, a watchable but nothing great
oh man, takeshi kaneshiro in any costume is worth watching haha… but yeah, they didn’t really portray history accurately according to chris.
i watched madagascar on the plane to bali cos that was the shortest one that i could finish within the flight… quite sianzz…zzz…