Aaron Kwok’s reaction to Murderer’s script.

Murderer is the kind of film that makes me both relish and regret my position as a movie reviewer. For those of you who’ve seen this turkey of a film, “relish” might be an easy reaction to understand, thinking that I would love, love, love to mock this movie. But “regret”? Maybe you’d think I mean that in terms of regretting to have to sit through it, but that’s not what I mean by “regret” at all.

While I recognize some films are work-for-hire/totally commercial enterprises, I would hope that most movies are labors of love for the filmmakers involved. Why dedicate a good chunk of your life to something you don’t feel strongly about? Why even bother? A quick glance at the “Making of” Featurette included on the Murderer DVD confirms that director Roy Chow (not to be confused with Rey Chow), writer Christine To, and two-time Golden Horse winner Aaron Kwok devoted countless hours to preparing for this movie.

And after all that hard work, here I come — the snobby film critic — ready to pan their precious creation into oblivion. To tell you the truth, I actually don’t like being in that position. Writing reviews is sometimes difficult, but negative movie reviews are probably some of the easiest reviews to write, as it’s fairly easy to list all the ways you didn’t like a given film. But with that “passion” there’s also the potential to be just plain catty or unnecessarily personal in a review, and I really try to avoid that. I haven’t been perfect; there are plenty of reviews where I’m just a little too snarky, but otherwise, I do try my best to stick to the film at hand.

Anyway, it’s been over a year since the movie was released in theaters, but since most people outside of Hong Kong haven’t necessarily seen Murderer or even heard about it, I have to be careful about spoilers. For those of you who do not want to be spoiled about the plot, continue no further. Some would say that you need to come into the film totally unspoiled to appreciate the twist, but I went in having a somewhat vague notion (Kevin told me, but I forgot the details) and it wasn’t a problem. Actually witnessing the scene play out was nothing less than breathtaking. I’m not kidding. So, for those of you who’ve seen the film and for those of you who haven’t but would like to be spoiled, please feel free to follow me down the rabbit hole…

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When Wind and Cloud unite…you’re in deep $#!t.

Hi, I’m Calvin McMillin, and I like Storm Riders.

Now, of course, my lack of even the most fundamental Chinese reading skills puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to truly immersing myself in the world that Ma Wing-Shing created in his beautifully illustrated comic books, but that hasn’t stopped me from being a fan of the franchise. Still, I’m pretty familiar with the early story arcs since I own almost the entire run of the English language translation of the comic book published by the now defunct company, Comics One (those graphic novel reviews should be coming sometime around 2046). During my trips overseas, I’ve bought several Storm Riders artbooks, desk tchoktkes, and a pretty badass poster of Nameless that I keep threatening to hang up against my girlfriend’s wishes. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my bad habit of collecting those little Storm Riders figurines that come out every so often. And of course, I own both Andrew Lau’s initial Storm Riders film as well as Dante Lam’s animated “sequel” Storm Rider: Clash of Evils. Heck, I even introduced the original film at a student-run film festival back at my alma mater, Oklahoma State University (in hindsight, we should have shown Shaolin Soccer instead, but I digress).

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As promised, in anticipation of the new HK movie, here are some photos from the Storm Warriors exhibit at VivoCity at Harbourfront in Singapore. After making the rather long trip on the MRT (subway to Americans like me) to see the exhibit, I was a little annoyed that the people at the Information Counter had no idea what I was talking about. You would assume that a major Hong Kong star like Ekin Cheng coming to a mall in Singapore would be kind of a big deal, but not only did the young man that I talked to NOT have an earthly clue who or what I was talking about, but he had the nerve to say — when I asked whether his co-worker might know — “She doesn’t know either.”

Ah, so helpful.

Thankfully, I found the exhibit all by myself. It was hidden away in the lobby of the theater. For more information on Ekin Cheng’s visit to Singapore to unveil these props, click here. Sorry about the image quality!

Since those pics aren’t exactly earth-shattering, I’ve embedded a link to a high quality version of the Storm Warriors Final Theatrical Trailer that was released a little while ago. Enjoy!

 In tribute to James Cameron’s new film, Sanjuro employs Lee Byung-Hun as his official LoveHKFilm.com Avatar.

Well, I’ve finally made it to Singapore, so it’s time for a blog update. During my stay I’ve already seen the Laughing Gor prequel, TURNING POINT, and I hope to see OVERHEARD eventually as well as the Singaporean film WHERE GOT GHOST? perhaps as early as today. I also finally got the opportunity to watch Pixar’s UP, which is hands-down the best movie of the summer.

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