2007 HKIFF : Part 1

The Italian a.k.a. Italianetz (Space Museum) Director : Andrei Kravchek / Cast : Koyla Spiridonov – In a Russian orphanage, 6 year-old Vanya is adopted by an Italian couple. But when a mother turns up at their home looking for her son, Vanya begins to wonder about the whereabouts of his own mother. The Italian does not really deviate from the establish formula for “orphan” pictures first established by Dickens’ Oliver Twist. So no real originality here. But what we do have is a gruelling look at a poverty stricken modern Russia and a utterly convincing performance by child actor Koyla Spiridonov. Recommended.

Retribution a.k.a Sakebi (UA Times Square) Director : Kurosawa Kiyoshi / Cast : Yakusho Koji - I went to this film based on the synopsis in the programme guide, and it was a sold-out show. Best known for his role in Japanese romance Shall We Dance, Yakusho Koji stars as a detective who is assigned to a case where the evidence seems to reveal he is involved in murder. But behind the evidence lurks supernatural forces. Retribution seems to be a police drama cum horror thriller, but unfortunately it succeeds at neither. I found the film overlong and dull. Most of the viewers in the cinema laughed at several of the scenes; I don’t think the director meant for those moments to be comedy. Not recommended.

Love and Honor a.k.a Bushi no Ichibun (Cultural Centre) Director : Yamada Yoji / Cast: Kimura Takuya, Dan Rei – The final instalment of noted director Yamada Yoji’s samurai films exploring honor, relationships and class in feudal Japan, the Gala Presentation of Bushi no Ichibun was packed with female fans of Japanese heartthrob Kimura Takuya, who plays a samurai who tests his lord’s meals for poison. One day, his samples a toxic sashimi and loses his sight. As financial crisis looms over his household since he can no longer work, his beautiful wife is taken advantage of by a high ranking samurai, and the blind samurai decides to challenge his ex-superior to a duel to protect the honor of his wife. Compared to the director’s first film in the trilogy Twilight Samurai, Love and Honor seems more pedestrian and offers few surprises. Kimura Takuya is his usual self and is nowhere as convincing as Hiroyuki Sanada as a low ranking samurai. Still this is a very good drama with a nice touch of comedy.

Top 10 Classic Kung Fu Movies

I’m a great fan of classic martial arts movies and Kung Fu Cinema is a brilliant resource for news and reviews. The site boasts an extensive database of reviews that also contains details regarding the film’s availability on DVD (as well as the pros and cons of various editions).

They recently posted a solid list of Top 10 Classic Kung Fu Movies. I found the list interesting and have watched 6 out of the 10 movies.

Kung Fu Cinema

Electric Shadows : Discovering Hong Kong’s Cinema Classics. A Kung Fu Cinema blog focusing on 50s and 60s B&W films.

Pirates of the Carribean 3 trailer at You Tube

The final instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy will be released this summer. Here’s a preview trailer (duration 2:30).

Ghost Rider : a major disappointment

Now that movies adapted from comics can lead to huge box office, the studios and comic publishers are really working hard to churn out more and more superhero flicks. In this respect, Marvel seems alot more aggressive than DC. In recent years, they have released movies based on The X-Men, Spider-man, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Blade, Daredevil, Elektra, and now Ghost Rider.

Starring Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist during the day and a demon of vengeance at night, Ghost Rider should in theory be a romp. But it turns out to be quite a bore. What went wrong? For one, there is way too much plot and not enough action. When the action does happen, it is not of a high calibre. The stunts don’t impress and aren’t very creative or original. The villains don’t appear to be particularly menacing. And Ghost Rider doesn’t really have a killer move that wows us – his most lethal weapon is a stare!! The CGI is par from course, not a total disgrace but nowhere near being awesome. No wonder the studios didn’t hold press showings till the night before the film opened in the States.

Verdict : another pedestrian Marvel movie like Daredevil and Elektra.

 

2007 Oscar films capsule reviews

Many of the Oscar winning films only hit the screens in Hong Kong after the award ceremony was held in the US. I finally managed to see these films in late February and early March.

The Lives Of Others – In East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the secret police apparently keep loads of files on just about everyone. This German film follows a dedicated officer who is assigned to spy on a playwright. As the operation progresses, the police officer begins to sympathize with the writer and even ends up meddling with evidence. I found the movie abit too long, but very watchable. (Winner: Foreign Language Film)

Letters From Iwo Jima – Superior to Flags Of Our Fathers as a war film but much more traditional in treatment. Reflecting on the battle at Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective, Letters From Iwo Jima offers more action and makes the Japanese as human as viewers have seen in WWII films made by non-Japanese directors. Ken Watanabe gives a thoughtful turn that I thought was stronger than many Oscar nominated performances. (Winner: Sound Editing)

The Queen – As a piece of contemporary history-comedy, The Queen is quite fascinating. The success of this film stems from director Stephen Frears avoidance of making the film too uptight and arthouse. Watching it in the cinema, I found the film lightweight, but entertaining. I think Helen Mirren gives a stronger performance as Detective Inspector Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect series, but her role in The Queen probably has more worldwide appeal. (Winner: Actress in a Leading Role)

Pan’s Labyrinth – I had high expectations for Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, especially since it received rave reviews from all quarters. The basic story follows a little girl who arrives in a farm during the Spanish Civil War and runs into a creature who tell her she is actually their lost princess. To reclaim her rights, she must perform three tasks. Del Toro mixes the harsh realities of war-torn Spain with the girl’s fairy tale fantasies. I found the script extremely well-written and the fantasy elements engrossing – particularly the monster with eyeballs in the palm of his hands. Highly recommended. (Winner: Art Direction, Cinematography, Make-up)

Samsung YP-T9 : Part 2 – Sound quality

I loaded a bunch of Lame encoded MP3s at V2 (around 192kbps) and did some listening with my Creative EP630, ATH-CM7Ti, Senn PX100 and HD595. All EQ was turned off.

Overall, I found jazz sounded best on the T9 with its crisp sound and good sense of rhythms. Music feels more open on the T9 than on the Creative ZVM or the iRivers. Subjectively, I think I can tell the difference between 160 kbps from 192 kbps MP3s on the T9. Bass is tight, not muddy and not lacking. Soundstage is expansive. Stereo imaging is good. The gap between tracks is there, not horrendously long, but definitely noticeable.

The T9 seems to be very sensitive to “defects” in MP3 files. I don’t really know how to explain this but I had the following experience. When I loaded a pop track – Carly Simon’s James Bond theme song Nobody Does It Better – there were more than a few glitches, sort of like a skip on a CD player or HD based player. The same file displayed no such problem on the other 3 DAPs I have and was also problem free upon playback in Foobar. After mucking around, I failed to locate the problem, so I re-ripped the track with EAC and reloaded it onto the T9. It seems fine now. I have noticed that a few other tracks are behaving the same way, and I suspect it has to do with clipping and high gain on the tracks. This situation is particularly bad with no EQ (i.e flat / normal mode). After I applied some EQ (I boosted 60Hz by one notch under User defined EQ), these glitches seemed to go away. Initially I thought I had a defective player and even went back to the retailer to exchange for a new one. So if you have alot of crappy sounding or badly ripped music, this player might give you a nasty ride!!

After a second night of use, I found the T9 rather unforgiving on older recordings or over-compressed CDs. I found hiss ing much more prominent on the T9 than any other DAP I’ve used.

How loud does it go?
Volume ranges from 0 to 40. With the EP630, I normally have it between 22 to 26. To achieve the same levels of volume with the EP630, on the H320 I have volume at 20-25 (max is 40), on the iFP-795 volume is at 16-22 (max is 40), and with the Creative ZVM I normally have it between 15-20 (max is 25). The iRivers’ output feels more muscular than either the ZVM or the Samsung T9.

Using my Senn PX100 on the T9, I really had to push the volume up to the 30-35 range, though sound was still clean. I feel the T9 does not have the juice to drive the 595. The CM7Ti was the easiest to drive and was damn loud even at under 20/40 volume levels. Headphone output is rated to be 20mW at 16Ω in the manual.

The T9 has some volume features I have not encountered before. Namely, the player automatically resets the volume to 20 at power up regardless of the volume during the previous session. The user can also set a volume limit if needed.

Samsung YP-T9 : Part 1 – Overview

The Samsung YP-T9 comes in a smallish cardboard box. Included accessories include 1) earphones, 2) proprietary USB to DAP cable for file transfer and charging, 3) Samsung Media Studio CD, and 4) quick start manual. The full manual can be found as a PDF file on the CD.

Appearance & Build
The T9 obviously trumps all of my other DAPs in terms of size, thickness and weight (see photo below). The T9 feels solid, well built and is a beautiful little gadget. It fits into trouser front pockets with no problems, and is light enough that it doesn’t really make shirt pockets droop. I prefer its slightly shorter and ever-so-slightly thicker body to the iPod Nano – I think it “feels” more sturdy and less likely to snap into two in my trousers. The damn thing is a magnet for finger prints on both the front and back. The screen is not recessed into the front and will probably get scratched soon. Overall, tactile feel is good.

One of the nice features of the T9 is the eye candy Samsung has created for the menus. Samsung offers users plenty of customization options for background screen color to screensavers and visualizations during playback. The T9 has the nicest looking interface when compared to my other DAPs. Battery life is listed to be around 30 hours for audio playback.

How long does it take to load up the player?
I loaded 279 MP3 files in one folder totalling 1.81 GB onto the T9 via drag-n-drop. This took just under 10 minutes. Subjectively, it seems slower than either the H320 or the ZVM, but much much faster than the iFP-795, which takes me generally 20+ minutes to load 500MB. Transferring files through Samsung Media Center appears slightly slower.

Loading is done via a proprietary socket to USB cable included in the package. Charging is also done via this cable. I would have preferred a standard mini-USB socket.

Can you drag-n-drop music onto the T9? And do the ID3 tags work properly?
Music can be browsed and selected in 2 ways, via ID3 tags or by file directories. Many have claimed the T9 to be a drag-n-drop player. This is true with a caveat. You can load the DAP via simple transfer of files via Windows Explorer, but in this scenario, you can only browse for music under the File Browser menu and NOT using tags under the Music menu. To enable browsing via ID3 tags, you need to use the Samsung Media Studio either to transfer the files or the refresh the music library.

Another caveat is this – the T9 is erratic with regards to ID3 tags. My T9 reads some ID3v2.4 tags but not all of them – I had blanks in artist, album as well as genre tags in some but not all my files. I reloaded the songs via Samsung’s software. I also used the software to compile a playlist and use that to sync songs over to the player. BAD MISTAKE. Upon restarting Foobar, I discovered that the Samsung software screwed up all the tags on the tracks it transferred. I had to re-tag all of these 200+ tracks!! I am now convinced that one should simply avoid using the software for anything except refreshing the DAP library. The downside is one can never be sure whether the DAP will recognize tags of all the songs transferred over via simple drag-n-drop.

To be able to browse media under the Video and Photo menus of the DAP, you will also need to transfer these with the Samsung Media Studio. It is possible to just drop jpegs into the appropriate folders by drag-n-drop, if you don’t mind using the File Browser (without a preview thumbnail) to find and view them. The file structure inside the DAP is pretty self-explanatory and the folders are clearly labelled as Music, Photo, Video, Text, Playlists, Recorded, and System. The folder names are not cryptic.

Next post : how does it sound?

300 : it’s a fantasy and not a historical

Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300 surprised most industry insiders to become the first outright hit of 2007 in the US. I initially became aware of the film when browsing on the net and the publicity stills as well as the trailer looked fabulous. Without a star-studded cast or a prominent director, 300 relied on stunning visuals and the Frank Miller fan-base for a strong turnout. And in many ways, this film provides more mainstream appeal than Sin City (the other highly stylized Frank Miller adaptation).

The film opens with a short introduction about how Spartan boys are brought up to become fearsome warriors. The plot movies quickly and in no time, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors have set off to confront the Persian army. The film delivers non-stop action that is extremely well done – in fact, 300 offers the best action scenes I have seen in the last few years. Much has also been said of the amount of violence and gore in the film. I didn’t find it that excessive although there were a few beheadings; I found Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto much more gruesome.

Being based on a graphic novel, 300 doesn’t really pretend to be an epic film or an accurate historical. As a fantasy film, I find it compares favourably with Conan the Barbarian (which incidentally, I consider to be a landmark sword and sorcery film). It does not offer the scope or the visual finesse of the Lord Of The Ring trilogy, but on the other hand, the film does satisfy with more immediate thrills.

Verdict : Very highly recommended. One of the best fantasy films ever.

Cowon D2 : A real beauty

Cowon D2 – one of the most highly touted DAPs currently in the market. Apart from looking really cool, it features :

1. 2.5 inch 16 million colours QVGA LCD touch screen
2. Long battery life : Music playback over 50 hours / video playback around 10 hours
3. Extendible storage with SD / MMC card slot
4. Strong output : 76mW @ 16 ohm
5. TV output
6. Lyrics display
7. Supports OGG andFLAC on top of more common file formats like MP3, WMA
8. Clock, Alarm, Pre-Scheduled Recording, Sleep Function, Power Saving Shut down
9. Supports ID3V2, ID3V1, FileName