The LuLu Sessions
[screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2011]

In her 2011 doc, filmmaker Casper Wong chronicles her complicated relationship with prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Louise Nutter. The two had kept a deliberately long-distance friendship, hoping not burning each other out. This changes when poetic irony intervenes, and Louise is stricken by cancer, the disease she worked tirelessly to combat.

A film like this is begging to be done wrong. Tragic themes, like death and estrangement, are so well-worn into the doc landscape it takes a surprising amount of will to make them interesting — or even distinguishable from one another. It’s difficult to say in what measures the film owes its strength to an intuitive first time filmmaker, a dedication to candidly documenting these two lives, or the personality of the eponymous subject, but I’m going to lean toward crediting the third the most.

Louise Nutter seemed like a person that would irritate me in real life. However, her overflowing extroversion and over the top exuberance consistently deliver the perfect counterpoint to a topic that threatens to drag any story into numbing sentimentality. She alone may be responsible for making this movie interesting. Her expertise and unique relationship with the malady in her professional life denied her the uncertainty of a layman, and so what would be a shocking barrage of unanticipated horrors to most became a sparring match with a familiar opponent.

A non-franchise, non-comic book Hollywood blockbuster. Action, drama, sci-fi. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, and Cillian Murphy. Patrick’s rating: 7 crickets.

Official Film Site

Inception Trailer


THE ÜBER-LONG SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA (W/ SPOILERS):
Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach and is brought before an elderly man by guards. The guards show him that Cobb carries only a gun and a teetotum, which the mans says he had seen before “in a half forgotten dream.”

Cobb is in Saito’s (Ken Watanabe) dream, where he, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and dream world architect Nash (Lukas Haas) are on an extraction mission, in which an individual’s mind is infiltrated through dreams and information is stolen. Extractors and their victims have to sleep in close proximity to one another, connected by a suitcase device that administers a sedative and a shared dream world built on their mental projections. In a dream world, pain is psychologically experienced as real, but death results in awakening. The extraction fails, but Saito reveals that he is, in fact, auditioning the team to work for him, and have failed. Cobb then says that despite the failure, he is still the best infiltrator in the world. Saito takes Nash away and asks Cobb to perform the act of “inception” – using dreams to implant an idea into the target’s mind, rather than the more commonplace, and much simpler, act of stealing them. Inception is largely considered impossible, but Cobb says it is possible, since he has done it once before. Once Cobb is finished with his mission, he can reunite with his children. Realizing the extraction mission’s failure and the consequence of being eliminated by their employer within two days, a mysterious firm called Cobol Engineering, they accept Saito’s arrangement.

The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito’s terminally ill corporate rival Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father’s empire, preventing it from threatening Saito’s. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who can change his appearance inside dreams; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who develops sedatives; and student Ariadne (Ellen Page), who has been recommended by her tutor (and Cobb’s father-in-law) Miles (Michael Caine) who refused the job in the belief that inception is impossible. Ariadne is trained by Cobb and Arthur as their new architect, a role that requires the building of complex levels similar to labyrinths that mimic the real world. The architect must be able to recreate extraordinary amounts of detail in the environment while the dreamer provides the human projections. Along the way, Cobb observes firsthand Ariadne’s natural talent at building dream landscapes. Cobb explains to Ariadne that the human projections in a person’s dream act more or less like white blood cells. If the dreamer becomes aware that a foreign entity has entered his/her subconscious, and this could even be caused by simply being aware that they are in a dream, then the projections will become increasingly hostile. This leads to Cobb explaining a set of precautions that extractors take to prevent themselves from becoming lost in the dream world, such as never using real memories to build levels or carrying a “totem”, an individualized object carried by extractors in order to tell when they are dreaming. Cobb carries his wife’s totem, a spinning top. If Cobb’s top spins indefinitely, he knows he is in a dream; if it slows down and eventually stops, in accordance with the laws of physics, then he is not. Ariadne later tailors a chess pawn to move the centre of gravity towards the side. In the meantime, Cobb discovers Cobol agents who have been sent out to kill him, and barely escapes.

A plan is formed, and will use three levels of dreams – so to speak, two dreams within the dream. A team member is left behind on each dream level to prepare the others for their entry; Yusuf will remain on level one and Arthur will remain on the second level, and they will also have to protect the dreamers’ bodies and coordinate their eventual waking via timed “kicks”. Since Yusuf’s sedatives leave the inner ear unaffected, the sensation of their bodies falling will awaken the dreamers and so such falls are orchestrated at each level: explosives will level the hospital on the deepest level, explosives will blow the room the team is in up in the middle level, and the minibus will crash into a river. While the dreamers have forewarning of an imminent kick through music they can hear playing from the preceding level, the kicks must still be timed perfectly since each progressively deeper level of subconscious has a slower time scale.

Due to the plan involving powerful sedatives and creating multiple dreams within each other, an in-dream death will not awaken the dreamer but instead send them into a limbo dream world where their mind will remain trapped for an indeterminable amount of time. In Cobb’s mind, Ariadne discovers that a vision of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) continually haunts him, sabotaging his missions. His children also haunt him – he never sees their faces when he sees them, and this always distracts him. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he and Mal spent fifty years in a limbo forging their lives. After waking, Mal remained convinced that they were both still dreaming and committed suicide to return to reality, hoping to force her husband to join her by incriminating him in her death. Cobb refused and was forced to flee the U.S. and leave his children to avoid murder charges. In return for completing the mission, Saito promises to clear the charges and reunite Cobb with his children.

When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Saito and Cobb’s team share the flight with Robert Fischer back to Los Angeles and drug him. They enter Yusuf’s dream, a rainy downtown area, and kidnap Robert. However, they come under attack by Fischer’s trained projections, since Fischer has been trained to fend off potential extractors. In the ensuing shoot out, Saito is badly injured. Eames impersonates Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Fischer’s godfather, to extract information from Fischer. This does not work, though, so they try a hostage situation, and ask him for a safe combination. Neither of them know, so when asked for random numbers, Fischer says 528491. Except for Yusuf, who must remain on the first level to drive and administer both the kick to wake the team up and the next dream, they then enter the minibus and sleep into the next dream level.

They enter Arthur’s dream, a hotel where the team tricks Fischer, who is talking to a blonde who has just provided him with her number (528-491), into believing that the kidnapping on the first level was orchestrated by Browning. Cobb convinces Fischer to enter Browning’s subconscious in order to find out his motives, but, in fact, the team enter deeper into Fischer’s. Arthur remains to provide the kick by planting explosives on the ceiling of room 491, which would blow the team into the ceiling of room 528 directly above.

The third level is Eames’ dream (though Fischer believes it is dream-Browning’s), a hospital located in the mountains, which Fischer must break into to reveal the planted idea. The first kick strikes – the minibus hits a barrier on a bridge and begins to fall. The kick causes Arthur to fly backwards in the hotel (then the falling motion causes a loss of gravity on this level), and triggers an avalanche in the mountains. During the operation, Fischer is killed by Mal, causing him to go into limbo. Ariadne and Cobb follow Fischer to this fourth level in an attempt to salvage the mission and confront Mal. Level four is Cobb’s dystopia, and Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay with her by making him question his reality as he was chased by agents that could have been projections. Cobb reveals that he was the one who had planted the idea in Mal’s mind to wake while they were in limbo, but which unfortunately persisted even after she did wake and made him indirectly responsible for her suicide. This is how he knew inception was possible. Mal attacks him with a kitchen knife, but Ariadne shoots her. Cobb then tells Mal of a promise he made to her – that they would grow old together, and that they did, but she did not remember because it was a dream. Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountain fortress by jumping off the building, where Fischer opens a strong room where his terminally ill father is still alive. He reaches the intended understanding that his father had wanted him to be his own man, and retrieves a will from the safe next to him, using the password 528491. Cobb remains in level four.

A wounded Saito dies at the snow fortress, as the kicks take effect. The explosives planted around the hospital complex level the place, then in the hotel – where Arthur has improvised with the zero-gravity by wiring everyone together in a lift, snapping the cables and blowing it towards the top of the shaft with the remaining explosives – and the minibus hits the water.

Cobb washes up on a beach, carrying nothing but his spinning top and a gun. He locates an aged Saito, the old man from the start, and tells him to escape back to reality. Cobb suddenly awakens to find everyone on the plane, including Saito, awake and well. Saito honors their arrangement, and Cobb enters the United States without any incident, and is greeted by Miles. When he arrives home, he spins his top as a test, then sees his children’s faces again at last as Miles attracts their attention. As Cobb reunites with them, the top begins to wobble, but is not seen to fall, implying that he may still be in a dream.

A Hollywood action, adventure, fantasy blockbuster. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Patrick gave it a rating of 10,000 crickets for context and 250 crickets for execution. Mike rated it a “perfect execution of averageness”.

Official Film Page

The Last Airbender Trailer


FROM FANDANGO.COM:
Suspense auteur M. Night Shyamalan takes a break from crafting original screenplays to tell this tale of a 12-year-old boy (Noah Ringer) who provides the last hope for restoring harmony to a land consumed by chaos. In a world balanced on the four nations of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, people known as the Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders, and Airbenders have mastered their native elements. Though the masters can each manipulate their native elements, the only one with the power to manipulate all four elements is a young boy known as the Avatar. When the Avatar subsequently appears to die while still mastering his powers, the Fire nation launches a global war with the ultimate goal of global domination. One hundred years later, two teens discover that the Avatar and his flying bison have in fact been locked in suspended animation. Upon being freed from his prison, the Avatar embarks on an arduous quest to restore harmony among the four war-ravaged nations.

A mainstream Hollywood comedy. Directed by Steve Pink and starring John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, and Crispin Glover.

Their official movie website URL currently goes to the movie’s Amazon Blu-Ray DVD page.

Hot Tub Time Machine Trailer:


FROM THEIR AMAZON BLU-RAY PAGE:
Group of friends use hot tub to travel back to 1986.

A mainstream Hollywood action blockbuster. Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Justin Theroux. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johannsen and others.

Official Film Site

Iron Man 2 Trailer


FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
The world is aware that billionaire inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is the armored Super Hero Iron Man. Under pressure from the government, the press and the public to share his technology with the military, Tony is unwilling to divulge the secrets behind the Iron Man armor because he fears the information will slip into the wrong hands. With Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) at his side, Tony forges new alliances and confronts powerful new forces.

An independent musical comedy. Directed by Chil Kong and written by Kong, Erin Quill, and Ryun Yu.

Official Film Site

The Mikado Project Trailer


FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
The Mikado Project is a musical comedy (based on the stage performance written by Ken Narasaki and Doris Baizley and adapted for film by Chil Kong) of a struggling Asian American theater company that, in a desperate publicity stunt to save their company, decides to produce a modern reconstruction of Gilbert and Sullivan’s, The Mikado, to stir controversy and jolt ticket sales.

The Mikado, one of the most beloved comedy operas by legendary collaborators, Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert, first opened on stage in 1885 in London. The story was set in Japan (considered an exotic land to the British during that era) which allowed Gilbert & Sullivan to satirize British politics. However, by doing so, Asians around the world and Asian Americans today have found this opera hard to embrace—making the notion of Asian American actors performing The Mikado controversial and palatable only through a comedic reconstruction.

A comedy / romance set in Taiwan. Written and directed by Arvin Chen.

Au Revoir Taipei Trailer


SYNOPSIS:
Kai, a brokenhearted young man from Taipei, yearns to be with his girlfriend, who’s left for Paris. He spends his days working at his parents’ noodle restaurant and his nights trying to learn French at the local bookstore, where he meets Susie, a sweet but lonely girl who works there. Afraid of losing his girlfriend, and in need of money to get to Paris, he accepts a dubious offer from a local gangster to deliver a mysterious package to Paris. It’s the beginning of a wild night for Kai, at the end of which he realizes that leaving both Susie and Taipei will only take him further away from true love.

An independent drama / road movie. Written and directed by Abraham Lim.

Official Film Site

God Is D_ad Trailer


FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
Tim, a comic book store clerk puts an advertisement in the newspaper looking for travel buddies to share an RV with him headed for Chicago. Together with his reluctant best friend and the three misfits that respond to the ad, they take to the road. Tim’s final destination is a fantasy/comic book convention where he will unveil his new game world in the hopes of winning the trophy for best original game world.

When they find themselves lost in the backroads of the Midwest, Tim entertains them with the story of his dark exotic world. But soon their journey becomes an adventure itself, with each telling of his story seeming to nudge fantasy into reality. Soon the travelers own personal demons and desires pull them all into a dark world of their own. To find their way out they willl have to abandon their individual ideas of who and what they are and come together to make a choice.

An independent drama set in the Philippines. Written and directed by Gerry Balasta.

Official Film Site

The Mountain Thief Trailer


FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
In a world of monstrous mountains of trash, Julio and his son confront their ultimate fight for survival as they seek refuge and redemption from war and hunger. Together, they navigate territorial rivalries and intense desperation among scavengers, surviving–and finding love–despite horrific living conditions. Julio, involved in a murder incident, must prove his innocence to avoid his family’s banishment and ultimate starvation.

A story of triumph over unusual circumstances, The Mountain Thief reveals the unimaginable realities of people living in extreme poverty, and what happens when their tenuous hold on hope and survival is threatened.

A family drama / coming-of-age story written and directed by Leena Pendharkar.

Official Film Site

Raspberry Magic Trailer

FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
Raspberry Magic is a coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old girl who believes she must win the science fair in order to bring her father back after he runs out on the family. She blames herself for her parents’ problems, and takes charge when her mother falls into a deep depression.

Set behind the backdrop of a beautiful Pacific Northwest forest, Monica’s experiment uses touch therapy to help raspberries grow faster. She asks, is it nature or nurture that can truly help a being grow? Does it even matter? Through her ups and downs with her family, she learns that it’s a complex question, and the answer isn’t so simple.