movie journal: the "trying very hard" hookwinked story, fast and furious tokyo drift

Hookwinked

Now we all know the story of little red hat and that big bad wolf.. or do we? i seem to forgot wot the original story was talking about... but anyway, fox has just released (straight to piracy it seems) a little red hat story for the modern day. now i'm talking straight after my home screening and prior to any IMDB reading, the initial feedback from my trusty brains says "mediocre"

there are always those "priceless moments" of a movie that you just think is ingenius. in Pixar's cars, it's:

• the short "one man band"
• how that WW2 jeep teach hummers offroad
• luigi and little wheeler's tyre change
• the cocky sports car dudes and how they seduce big MACK to sleep
• and the list goes on

now let's talk about the "priceless moments" of hookwinked. top of the list is that "triple G" mark behind granny's neck, an obvioius reference to xXx series. the ensuing action scenes also felt to be a direct carbon copy of vin diesel. fair enough, granny zipping down an explosive slope x-treme sports style, lot of fun. the second priceless moments can be attributed to the little squarrel talking super fast, but somehow you are reminded of the little rat from "ice age" and millions others side kicks in such movies. nonetheless, it provided loads of fun. the smooth talking wolf is different too, but i would've thought of it even if i'm asked to write the script, so no surprise there.

the biggest let down or dissappointment of this film, however, is not in its plot, but rather the graphics. CG came a long way and this fox production was still stuck somewhere before toy story. characters appears lifeless and rigid. what happened to a little skin tone on red's face or some scars on that big tree hacking dude's head? wolf was rather convincing though, but then again it's to be expected from a hairy animal. hair is the least they have to do.

so to sum up, hookwinked opens internationally on the internet, rated E for everybody. just realised it's not by fox, but what the hell. IMDB says it's independent and director's first feature. full kudos to him. IMDB was right in saying it's more entertaining than "chicken little" can ever hope to be.

Fast and Furiouis - tokyo drift

After the annoyingly disappointment of the second instalment to the fast and furious franchise, the story moved to tokyo for a surprisingly good oriental twist. the plot itself it nice and simple, a natural trouble maker kid can't make it anymore in the states and got sent across the pacific to his divorced/depressed Navy dad stationed at populous Tokyo. Now if hollywood ever makes an Initial-D movie, this would be the closest they ever got. Jay Chou & co's attempt at visualizing drift never looked this good. our protangonist got hooked up to an underground gang that shift illegal goods at day, drift nissan 350Z at night. sounds intriguing right? and probably very convenient too. so the only sensible sentence of the whole movie is probably "know what you want, and don't stop until you get there" by our guy. sweet.

apart from the so-so leading actress, the movie pretty much a drift show shown first in 350Z, 180sx, evo 9, rx-7, and finally muscle mustang with nissan engine.