Antara Dua Darjat

Antara Dua Darjat Movie Poster

This movie was made in 1960, wow! This is the only Malay movie I ever watched from the beginning till the end, and i really enjoyed it very much. This movie is directed by P. Ramlee, written by P. Ramlee, starring P. Ramlee, and music by P. Ramlee as well. P. Ramlee is so talented. Of course he had other actors in it, not just by himself. At the beginning, this movie looked a lot like horror movie. The scenes where the maid saw a human figure outside her room, and it was raining heavily at the same time. It was creepy and very funny at the same time. 

The band in the movie

In the movie, P. Ramlee is in a band and he sings and plays the piano very well. Throughout the whole movie the band played songs a few times. The music was very real and pure as it was real instruments and no filtering. The music today have a lot of filtering and electronic generated sounds which makes it unreal to me. Besides Ghazali, starring P. Ramlee, and Ghazali's brother in the movie, I can't really tell or recognize the other members of the band. 

Tengku Zaleha & Tengku Hassan

I realized there were some errors in the movie, like scenes that don't make sense. The only one i could recall is when Tengku Hassan killed Chik, the mother of Zaleha when they got to Singapore, then Tengku Zaleha called the police and told them their address immediately. But the thing is, before the murder, Tengku Zaleha was sedated and when she woke up she was already at Singapore. How would she know the exact location? Nonetheless the exact address??

New York I Love You

New York I Love You is a very confusing movie! Honestly, I did not enjoy the movie although it has many well-known actors in it like; Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Blake Lively and many more! It is one of those movies that has many stories in it and keeps jumping around and I think I am not smart enough to understand movies like this. 100% attention needs to be given to watch movies like this.

New York I Love You movie poster

What I understand from the movie is that they are trying to show that New York is the city where many cultures and different types of people can be found. This movie is not like other normal movies, it shows the other side of New York, the reality. I find the whole movie very dodgy, all the places and people in it. It gives me a feeling that there are many lost souls in the movie.  That many people don't know what they are doing with their lives. The movie shows a scene of the story of two people, then jumps to another scene of different story and people, totally separated stories, but in the end everyone is linked together. To me there is no end to any of the stories in the movie and it kind of leaves everything hanging and i don't like it. There is no consistency. However I find the shooting style very artistic.

There are quite a few movies that I have seen that have similar style to this movie. Like "Valentine's Day"

Valentine's Day movie poster

Even the movie poster's design is the same! The heart shape with faces in it.. Valentine's Day is also one of those that have different characters, separate lives but everyone is also inter-connected. But this movie is much brighter, funnier and happier, not as gloomy as New York I Love You. Another similarity is Bradley Cooper is in both the movies! I've watched Valentine's Day but did not want to watch New York I Love You when i saw it screening in the cinemas because it doesn't seem attractive to me as it looks similar to Valentine's day. It's not something new & fresh to me.

THE OVERTURE

Movie Poster of The Overture

This Thai movie was a little bit harder to understand compared to the other movies because it was difficult to read the subtitles as the subtitles sometimes blend with the background and can't be read. The Overture is about this young man Sorn who has a brother that is a very successful musician that plays the ranard-ek, a wooden percussion instrument. He looked up to his brother very much and wanted to follow his brother's footsteps but his parents didn't encourage it. However, his brother died in a fight with rival musicians and after that, Sorn decided to take ranard-ek seriously and to honor his brother. The story of this movie was inspired by the real life story of a Thai musician, Luang Pradit Phairao. 

Ranard-ek (Thai Xylophone)

I find this movie very interesting as it carries history about Thailand when they were trying to push Thailand into a modern era, and how music gives people inspiration at that time. Being able to watch and listen to the instrument was very eye-opening as there won't be so many opportunities for me to come across such traditional instruments easily in my daily life. This movie using traditional is a very good reminder of the existence of all the instruments that we don't know of, or have forgotten because of the busy life everyone in this society have. It could make any audiences start picking up this instrument after seeing and hearing the beauty of it. Listening to the music played using the ranard-ek really gives a warming feeling. This movie really did an excellent job showing the beauty of this traditional Thai instrument. In the movie, there's a scene towards the end where Sorn had to compete at a Thai kingdom's musical performance where he had to face his worse fear, a bearded man that was inferior to him named Kun-In. That scene was awesome as it was so intense and both the contestants had to play it so well to compete with each other. First they played with others as a group, then they had to rematch to see who wins because they were both thought to be equally as good. To see who's better, they both had to have a battle. During the battle both played so well and so fast that it was so amazing. The wrists must be so strong to be able to control such speed and for such a long time!

This is actually the first fully Thai movie i have ever watched. Before this I have watched many Hollywood movies that were shot in Thailand with the Thai people, but never before a fully Thai movie like this one. It was a great experience. I would personally rate the movie 6.5/10. I didn't give it a very high rating because I couldn't understand everything that happened in it, only roughly what happened because of the obvious, but didn't understand the details very well because of the subtitles and the transition of the younger Sorn, and the older Sorn scenes. I couldn't understand that it was the same person at first, until after half of the movie.

BRAVE

Brave Movie Poster

Brave is one of those movies where all the parents will be dragged to by their kids. This movie is one of those traditional Disney movies where there's a princess, the queen, the kind, and an old witch who lives in the woods. Sadly it is not one of those original groundbreaking movies like; Wall-E and Up. 

Princess Merida

This movie is about a young princess, Merida, a Scottish tomboy who loves archery, horse riding, rock climbing and just to be a free spirit during the medieval in Scotland. She was given a bow as an early birthday gift, which inspired her to be the best archer in the kingdom. However, her mother, Queen Elinor constantly tries to teach Merida how to be a lady so that she can grow into her future role as a queen. 

Queen Elinor

Queen Elinor forces her daughter, Merida to choose among three possible candidates to be her husband. Merida runs away into the forest and stumbles upon a witch's cottage. Merida was then granted a wish and she wished for her mother to change her mind. Unfortunately for the both of them, the spell casted did not change Queen Elinor's mind, but turned her into a bear. Queen Elinor and Merida have two days to reverse the charm. They then started working together and grew closer while finding ways to reverse it. This movie sends a very warming message to audiences about improving communication between mothers and daughters. Many parents do not understand how their children feel and why do they want or do things differently, and children don't know that parents only want what they think is best for them.

Brave, when Queen Elinor turned into a bear

Picture of Brother Bear

I have realised that Brave and Brother Bear are very similar. In Brave, Queen Elinor is transformed into a bear by the witch's spell. In Brother Bear, an Inuit boy name Kenai is turned into a bear because he killed a bear revenging his brother, and angered the spirits. Brave and Brother bear both have scenes of the human turned into a bear and trying to adjust to the lifestyle of a bear. Both of the movies have the fishing scenes which are almost identical. After adjusting to becoming a bear and understanding the life of another, in both movies, the bear is threatened to be killed by a loved one as they do not recognize the bear. At the end, in both the movies the one who is turned into a bear learns his/her lesson and is transformed back to human form again at the last second. Both Brother Bear and Brave are Disney movies. It is surprising that nobody in Disney have said anything when producing Brave, as Brother Bear came out first. Being so similar kills joy of audiences. "Again??!"

Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa

  Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa Movie Poster

Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa,  also known as The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines & Clash of Empires: The Battle for Asia in the United Kingdom. This movie was made in 2011 based on the 16th century document Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. This film is directed by Yusry Abdul Halim, starring Stephen Rahman Hughes as Merong Mahawangsa, who escorts the Prince of Rome, Prince Marcus Carprenius to Langkasuka to marry the Princess of China, Princess Meng Li Hua.

Stephen Rahman Hughes

Stephen Rahman Hughes is my favourite character in this movie. He played Merong Mahawangsa and did a very good job. Stephen is of English, Welsh and Malay ancestry. Stephen starred in a few TV Series like; Bad Girls, Doctors and Sky One Dream Team. In 2006, Stephen starred in the Malaysian musical production of Puteri Gunung Ledang. In 2010, he did a shower gel advertisement as a Bollywood image-obsessed actor known as "Abhi Mumtaz'. In 2011 is when he made his breakthrough into the silver screen as the lead actor of this movie, Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. As Stephen isn't fluent with the Malaysian language, he has to learn his lines phonetically. Aside from that, he is also in a Singaporean TV series, The Kitchen Musical. Stephen does not only act, but also sings. He is in a recently formed male group opera, Teatro, a group of 3 British and 1 American. 

Stephen interest me the most because he played the character, Merong, very well. As Merong, he had to save the Princess of China, which is kidnapped by the pirates to reunite with the Prince of Rome. He portrayed Merong to be a very brave and fearless character. Quite a number of his scenes contained humor. The humor in the character, Merong, suits Stephen's character. According to one of the interviews of him behind the scenes for this movie, he said he had to go through intensive training to build his body to fit this character. Once again, he did an amazing job and had the perfect body to fit the character Merong. I've seen a few of his interviews and I find Stephen a very nice and humble person.


Joanne Chee Siew Kuan