{ Sunday, February 05, 2006 } 2:14 AM

Movie Crazy

Here are my views on the 2 movies which I am interested in watching:

FUN WITH DICK AND JANE
-------> This is a totally brainless movie. It has no plot no nothing, but it's just for pure laughter. Watch it when you are or not in the mood for a movie. At least you won't have to explictly figure out every step the lead takes - they show you directly! It aims to make you roll with laughter, not to get best movie awards or anything.

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
-------> This movie requires you to think. There is no laughter at all, and if you ever laugh, get out of your seat. You are in the wrong theatre. The plot is something you can never think of. At first, when I saw this Chairman talking to Chiyochan, and buying her sweet ice, I knew something was up. But I never thought it to be really that way. It's like, I thought Sayuri would finally listen to Mameha and agree to let Nobusan become her danna, but no way man. It's like, Nobusan did so much for her... Although he has a scarred face, it was because he was trying to save the Chairman (Ken Wantanabe). In the end, the Chairman couldn't suppress his love and desire for Sayuri anymore and decides to fight with Nobusan over Sayuri. It's like, the Chairman should be of age 40 when he met Chiyochan who is around 10, because he had children and a family, so when he is finally with Sayuri, who should be around 30, he should have been around 60.....???? Oh man, so when the both of them were hugging each other, I felt really damn disgusted. It's like, all the movie was about the lust of an old man, or even a pedophile... EWWWWW. No wonder the writer of this book was damn angry la. I were if I were the writer. And I feel damn disgusted.

Let me fill you on the details of both movies:

FUN WITH DICK AND JANE:

There were previous versions of the movie. This is the third one: And now we have the third version, updated for the post-dot.com bubble, post-Enron era. This time, Dick (Jim Carrey) works for a huge conglomerate that "consolidates media properties." Jane (Tea Leoni) is a travel agent. Dick is overjoyed to receive a sudden promotion to Vice President for Communcations until, in his first day on the job, he is appears on a television program to announce the company's projected earnings, only to be attacked by Ralph Nadar because the CEO (Alec Baldwin) has been secretly selling his stock and the company is under investigation for financial shenanigans. The company tanks. Soon, Dick and Jane are failing at various efforts to earn money, and finally -- the lawn repossessed and living off of all-you-can-eat buffets and visits to the soup kitchen, they take up a life of crime. See Dick steal. See Jane drive the getaway car.

In corporate terms, here is the movie's balance sheet: On the asset side we have two exceptionally talented and attractive performers in Carrey and Leoni. His loopy physical humor in the rendition of "I Believe I Can Fly" in an elevator and the portrayal of a marionette are perfectly matched by her more understated but equally precise comic timing. Further assets are some sly pokes at contemporary life -- Dick and Jane have a son who speaks with a Spanish accent (like the nanny) -- and some surreal detours (as when Jane signs up as a guinea pig for a new beauty treatment that goes very wrong and when Dick tries to get work as an illegal immigrant and is deported).

On the liability side is a script that relies too much on easy jokes like silly costumes and expects us not to notice that, for example, Dick and Jane are completely incompetent as crooks (hello, fingerprints?). If they had just had to rely in some way on the skills they had learned on the job -- if they had just been clever instead of lucky, this would have been a better, funnier movie.


MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA:

Movies can show us visions of other worlds, exotic vistas, customs, fashions, rules. And they can show us visions of ourselves, with our longings, our fears, our dreams, the and the way love can include them all. "Memoirs of a Geisha" does both. It's a story of a time and place whose mysteries have kept it hidden but whose secrets turn out to be our own -- the need for love, the courage to survive, the profound effects of cruelty and of kindness, the dream that is so deep inside that we barely breathe when we think of it.

Sold by their father, Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) and her sister are taken with no warning from their small fishing village to the city of Kyoto. At the doorway of a geisha house, Chiyo is grudingly accepted but her sister is not. Chiyo will later find that she has been taken to a house of prostitution. Geishas are not prostitutes -- the word means "artist." The most successful geisha's command huge sums for their ability to entertain and to charm. Their appeal in part is in what they do not reveal, what they hold back. While they are not chaste -- they begin their careers by having their virginity auctioned off to the highest bidder -- they are not afterward expected to provide sexual favors. It is this idea of being elusive but not unobtainable (or at least not unobtained) that is a part of their attraction and their power.

Chiyo is treated cruelly and beaten. She and her sister plan an escape, but she is unable to be at the meeting place. After that, the closest thing she has to a friend is fellow slave Pumpkin. The owner of the house is the chain-smoking O-Kami, who cares only about survival, and that means money. The most successful geisha in Kyoto, Hatsumomo (Gong Li) lives in their house and she is threatened by Chiyo.

Two tranforming events occur. One day, Chiyo meets a man who buys her a flavored ice and gives her his handkerchief. He is the Chairman (Ken Wantanabe). He becomes her hero. For the first time she has a dream -- she wants to be his geisha. She does not receive the proper training until Hatsumomo's rival Mameha (Michelle Yeoh) takes her on. Whether it is kindness, ambition, or just a strategy to further infuriate Hatsumomo -- or a combination of the three, Mameha devotes herself to her pupil. In a very short time she teaches Chiyo, now renamed Sayuri (and played by Ziyi Zhang) all of the arts and artifices of being a geisha. There are thousands of exquisitely intricate rules governing everything from the position of the hand in pouring tea to the position of the fan in performing a dance to the ability to cast a glance so devastating it can knock a man off his bicycle.

Sayuri is soon a sucess, and it requires even more diplomacy and strategy to maintain her position as her competitors use manipulation and deceit to try to discredit her. She again meets the Chairman and is admired by his close friend and colleague. Then the war comes, and when it is over, her geisha skills again provide opportunity and risk.

Sayuri is told that she has a lot of water in her, while her sister is wood. "Water flows from place to place quickly and always finds a crack to spill through. Wood, on the other hand, holds fast to the earth." Sayuri must be as adaptable as water, but she must hold fast to the earth, too.

The outlines of the story may seem soapy, but the details of the place, time, and culture used to tell the story elevate it to a meaningful and moving saga of identity, longing, and resiliance, as exquisitely presented as a silk kimono.