The Grand Escape

By SS Lau

It is pretty obvious that I like watching movies. I have often used movie titles as "subjects" in e-mail messages to the Lighters . For example, I used "A funny thing happened on the way to the forum" ( after a political satire ) as a subject for the parable of the Fish and the Scorpio; "A funeral and a wedding" ( after the romantic comedy " Three weddings and a funeral") for the real life experience of Sai Moe's funeral.

Well, I like watching movies since Pui-Ching days. Peter Tong and I used to watch movies together a lot, " Cat on the hot tin roof" ( an adaptation of a Tennesee Williams play. I came to appreciate the movie years after I saw the first first time with Peter) is among some of the more memorable ones we saw together. Later on, Peter became more diversified in his interests, such as girls. I kept on watching movies. It was not I was not interested in girls, it was just the interests were not often reciprocated. I still think Peter was just "lucky" in some of his successes, although Peter might dispute that "luck" had anything to do with it. By the time I realized that "No" often meant "yes" for girls, I was no longer all that interested in girls. (I came to the realization some time in life that " no" can mean "yes", 'no" or anything in between for women, you know those girls who became more worldly as they grew older.)

I am glad I am more interested in movies and tennis than anything else at this stage of my life.

The reason for me to watch movie and, perhaps, for a lot of movie watchers is primarily to seek temporary relief from our own story of life. If the movie was well-made, we got hooked onto the characters in the movies and for 100 minutes or so we lived the lives of the characters in the movies. We felt the pain and experienced the joy of the characters. That is why I much prefer comedies than sad stories. I also like mysteries and detective stories if the endings provide gratification, such as solving the murder or catching the bad guys. In real life, we don't always catch the bad guys or solve the mystery. In movie-land, anything is possible, justice is always served, boy gets girl and good guys always win. Occasionally bad guys win or boy does not get girl in a few, often highly acclaimed, movies. I don't think I would enjoy these movies. Who cares about these "artsy" movies, I certainly don't.

I watch movies purely and solely to seek "The Great Escape" (you remember Steve McQueen in this movie, right ?).

Now I have seen a lot of movies, some of the more memorable ones in recent months include :

"LA Confidential"-- a detective story with relativelyunknown actors,
"The game"---an intriguing story,
"Lone Star"---a murder mystery centered around a border town next to Mexico with mostly unknown actors,
" Shall we dance" ---a Japanese movie about the joy of dancing and the dull life of a middle-age Japanese accountant.
"Temptress Moon"---a Hong Kong movie about Shanghai in the 1920s.

Some of the not so memorable ones include :

"Pillow Book"---a Japanese/Chinese movie, it is just bad, although highly acclaimed.
"Conspiracy Theory "---Mel Gibson messed up here.
"Peace maker"--- Come on, you call that a movie ? !!!

Now before you tell me I am way off and I don't know what I am talking about, let me tell you my all time favorites to calibrate my taste for movies --- (1) "Casablanca", and (2) The year of living dangerously. If you like these two movies, you'll probably agree with me about the movies I mentioned above; if you don't, all bets are off.

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