movies, august 2007
Surprisingly, I caught nothing last month, I’ll probably have to cite being busy, etc. I did however, attend the Australian Malaysian Film Festival, at the ACMI.
Opening night was fancy, we had wine, with roti canai and chicken curry :) We rushed in for the movie, The Red Kebaya, and without knowing, we sat right in front of Ramli Hassan (the main actor in the movie). Malaysians are usually highly critical of anything “Made in Malaysia” and are usually never proud of local fare, but I can say that I enjoyed the storyline and the plot of The Red Kebaya, very much. Its finally a movie of international class and quality. Oh, did I mention that it was nearly all in English? More interestingly though is that they only took about 35 days to film the entire show! Check out the official Red Kebaya site, and if you find it on DVD, do give it a watch (I hope to buy it at some stage).
Ramli himself, is very down to earth. Kudos, no air around him as an actor. The next day, they showed us a movie titled Chermin. This one was fully in Malay (with English subtitles), and was supposed to be a horror flick, that had to do with a mirror. I found this to be as logical as say, the average Chinese movie with flying kung fu stunts or hopping ghosts.
After a quick dinner, it was time to see Puteri Gunung Ledang. This was pretty good, but I don’t think it bore any resemblance to the actual history surrounding Hang Tuah. It had a good cast, though I wonder how it relates to the old movie released in 1961? Note that this movie is very lengthy, something along the lines of 2.5 hours.
Of all the movies shown at the film festival, I’d vote The Red Kebaya as a strong winner, followed by Puteri Gunung Ledang. Give Chermin a miss.
Technorati Tags: movies redkebaya chermin puteri gunung ledang red kebaya australian malaysian film festival filmfestival melbourne acmi
March 26th, 2008 at 9:24 am
The Red Kebaya DVD will be out 10 Apri. Distributor Accent film Australia. Please visit http://www.accentfilm.com . Please pass the word around.