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Money matters:
Graham Macdonald MBMG International Ltd.
Which currency?
In these days of global media and sound-bites, words tend to
be one of the most powerful policy tools available to central bankers. Alan
Greenspan perhaps has been the greatest proponent of this policy tool so far.
For all his shortcomings as an economist and central banker, he should perhaps
consider giving a master class in this particular aspect of policy to his
somewhat frustrated European counterpart, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg
premier and chair of euro zone financiers. The G7 powers came out and hailed
“sharp fluctuations in major currencies” as being a major threat to economic and
financial stability (we sometimes wonder whether the biggest threat to economic
and financial stability is the combined actions of the G7 powers themselves).
The euro has surged to new record highs, causing an increasingly frustrated and
threatening sounding Herr Juncker to say, “I don’t have the impression that
financial markets and other actors have correctly and entirely understood the
message of the G7 meeting.” Those teeth sound pretty gritted to me, Herr J.
This is all becoming a political issue now - US retreats into its shell while
devaluing its currency. Euro zone responds with trade “protectionism” and then,
surprise surprise, devaluations and embargoes become the order of the day! This
is already happening with Herr Juncker threatening the US that it will get out
of hand unless the dollar’s slide is halted and with President George W. Bush
making soothing noises while presiding over further slides in the greenback.
It’s all coming to a head. On top of Herr Juncker’s warnings, “The moment will
come where the exchange rate level will start to cause serious harm to the
European economy,” we also have Louis Gallois, head of Airbus, chipping in, “The
euro at its current level is asphyxiating a large part of European industry by
shaving export margins,” and the European Central Bank revealing that foreign
direct investment (FDI) into the euro zone has fallen by €269bn over the last
two years as foreigners wind down operations and move manufacturing, in
particular, to dollar zone regions.
Structurally we’ve warned of changes in global reserve holdings pretty much
since the launch of the euro and it’s now obvious that one factor in the rise of
the euro against the US dollar has been the move by Asian central banks and by
sovereign wealth funds away from holding dollars to greater currency management.
Research from BNP Paribas shows that $1,160,000,000 in reserves has been
accumulated over the last year alone and that only 19% of this was invested in
dollar assets (in the past you might have expected the vast majority to be). We
highlighted Australia and New Zealand’s central bank activity in this area a few
years back and expected Asia to follow suit. Well it’s happened and we seem to
be the only ones not shocked by this. How much further can Greater China, Middle
Eastern oil producers and the likes go? A lot depends on the perceived outlook
for the euro.
In his recent book, ‘The Euro’, Otmar Issing warns of a “disastrous outcome” if
the euro zone fails to embrace greater market flexibility and in a recent
article in The Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that this is
already happening with a North/South divide appearing in the euro zone. Germany
and Holland continue to relatively prosper while most of southern Europe and
Ireland is in economic trouble - “Current account deficits have reached 9.2% of
GDP in Spain and may touch 15% in Greece. The European Commission’s economists
fear that the loss of competitiveness against Germany over the last decade may
have passed the point of no return. At best, these countries face years of
belt-tightening as their property booms deflate.” We actually think that
Mediterranean belt-tightening is the only way to blow off these excesses but we
don’t find ourselves in the position that we have to sell that one to the
electorates.
The relative outlook for euro remains much more attractive than USD or sterling.
That said, we think that the dollar has gotten ahead of itself and although we
have long been dollar bears we think that it is 5-10% weaker than it should be
at this point in the cycle and that unless a total USD collapse is on the cards
(which we don’t rule out, but on balance we would say is slightly more unlikely
than likely) then you wonder how much further there is to go until we reach the
bottom. Economically quite a way but how will this translate into FX rates?
Maybe the real answer lies in something that George Soros said, “Currencies are
always in a state of flux. They move from where they are now to where they
should be but they never quite get exactly there! They overshoot and then they
have to correct and they change direction and overshoot again on the way back
and constantly seek their true value and are constantly at variance from this.”
For the record, George is currently aligned with our theme about the volatility
in fiat currencies when people suddenly lose the faith - and like us has
advocated for some time a flight from the most vulnerable paper currencies into
gold (both yellow and black varieties) and silver.
However, when it comes to the euro, not even George Soros has been as prescient
as he could have been. Or indeed as MBMG and MitonOptimal were. We called it
right at that time. When the euro was launched in a marketing hullabaloo our
house view was very negative because of the fudging process that had preceded
this in order to get non-compliant nations to qualify. It was obvious to us that
euro was overpriced at launch and we predicted a fall to below parity with US$.
When the euro hit 0.86, we issued an interim price target of 1.30 and an
ultimate price target of 1.50. That may sound obvious now but it was a very
contrarian stance at the time. We’ve now exceeded the long term target at an
earlier stage than we had envisaged but fundamentals still favour the euro even
though we believe that the single currency is overpriced relative to where it
should be at this stage in the cycle - George Soros’ golden rule of currency
fluctuations yet again.
The question for investors right now isn’t whether euro will fall apart - Otmar
Issing’s book is fascinating for economists and academics but just a distracting
noise for anyone wanting to manage portfolios today. The question is whether
fundamentals will worsen for the US$ greater than the extent of current
undervaluation. This is possible and in fact probable but by no means certain.
US$ can go 2 ways from here - it can continue to drift and can even implode from
current levels - there is no bottom as to how low the US dollar can go if the
economic news out of America worsens. However, it could also stabilise on the
basis that bad news is priced in and, barring US economic calamity, it could
build a base from which to rebound in the future. There are times when currency
directions are very clear to us. This is not one of them. US$ is at a fork right
now - waiting behind it is the euro - the fate of the euro is largely an inverse
relationship with the dollar as well as a reflection of its own intrinsic merit.
We’re happy to sit on fences right now and hold a combination of client base
currencies and Asian currencies with some euro exposure as opposed to the last
couple of years when we’ve been gung-ho on the euro. We’re now constantly
monitoring this situation for short-term developments in the absence of the
clear long-term picture that we’ve seen in the markets the last 10 years. The
bottom line is that currencies tend to be more driven in the short term by real
factors, trade balances, capital flows, relative interest rates. Governments can
say and do what they like but research from Appleton Capital Management suggests
that government financial intervention has an impact of, at most, 2 weeks.
So words are not only cheaper but sometimes more effective too!
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The above data and research was compiled from sources
believed to be reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its
officers can accept any liability for any errors or omissions in the above
article nor bear any responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any
actions taken or not taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For
more information please contact Graham Macdonald on
[email protected]@mbmg-international.com.com
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Snap Shots: by Harry Flashman
White balance
and grey cats
Read an interesting article on ‘white balance’, making
out that this was something new and magical with digital photography.
Let me assure you, it isn’t new, it isn’t magical and it isn’t the sole
situation vis-à-vis film and digital photography.
 Two
real grey cats!
Have you ever tried to photograph a polar bear? Or a black cat? Or even
a white car, or a plain black one? If you use an automatic camera (film
or digital) set on A (for “amnesia”) then the chances are very high that
you ended up with a grey polar bear and a grey cat. Very highly likely.
The reason for this is poor white balance, expressed as the magic
photographic number known as 18 percent grey!
All photographers should become acquainted with the color known as 18
percent grey. Why? Because after you understand 18 percent grey, you
have complete control over blacks and whites in your photographs - and
by that, I mean in color photography, not just the B&W kind.
The really dedicated photo buffs will recognize 18 percent grey as being
the cornerstone of the “Zone System” and Ansel Adams superb prints are
trotted out with sage mutterings that if you understood the zone system,
then your photos would look like his too. This is, of course, frog
spawn. Ansel Adams spent many hours painstakingly printing his B&W work,
specifically burning in some areas, holding back others and if you think
he didn’t then think again.
However, here is the “short course” on the Zone System. What you have to
remember at all times is just the simple fact that the meter in your
camera knows intimately what is 18 percent grey, and is programmed to
produce as much 18 percent grey as possible. In other words, point the
camera at your subject and the meter will work out a combination of
shutter speed and aperture to give an exposure to get the whole shot as
close to 18 percent grey as possible.
Back to digital photography. All digital cameras, straight from the box,
are set to automatically correct white balance, but it doesn’t always
work well. What part of the shot is actually white? One camera
correspondent did not give up, he then used white balance lens caps and
set the white balance manually. His manual results were a bit better,
but still not good enough in tricky lighting situations (like tungsten
illumination, for example.) Then he used an 18 percent grey card to
preset white balance and got the best results. The image using the grey
card needed no post-camera color correction, and the colors were the
most true to life. The grey cat really was a black cat!
So what to do? You can go into your digital camera’s menu and find the
‘white balance’ and then set it on pre-set or manual and focus the
camera on an 18 percent grey card (very cheap at large Bangkok photo
shops) and snap away from there. The results should be better than those
from the auto white balance.
The next step I recommend is to bracket your shots, giving different
exposure settings, depending upon whether you are trying to photograph a
white cat or a black cat. . Remember that when you are photographing the
white cat the exposure indicated by the camera is the one that will make
the white color 18 percent grey. To get the color back to white it will
need more light on the film.
Let us imagine that your camera tells you that the exposure should be f
16 @ 1/60th of a second. You need more light in the camera, so make your
exposure f 11 @ 1/60th and another at f 8 @ 1/60th. That gives you both
one and two full stops of light more. One of those two will give you a
white cat, irrespective of such fancy terms as automated multi-phasic
metering, center weighted metering or whatever.
Now when photographing the black cat, do the reverse. Put the camera in
metered manual mode and then when photographing something black, set the
camera for one and two stops less light than indicated. It works!
Modern Medicine:
by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant
Mammograms and
BSE. Is it worthwhile?
Screening for breast cancer is still a subject that seems to
be controversial, though honestly, I do not know why. The sensationalist
press feeds on fear, and by instilling fear into women about detection of
breast cancer will always sell a few more papers. Despite mammograms and
suchlike, there were cases that escaped detection until it was too late and
other such negative predictions. Was it all then a waste of resources and
money?
No it is not, says the American Cancer Society’s director of cancer
screening, Robert Smith, PhD, who says there is plenty of evidence that
mammograms save lives, even for younger women.
“The American Cancer Society and other organizations have endorsed
mammography screening for women in their 40s because direct and inferential
evidence supports its value in reducing morbidity (injuries) and mortality
(deaths) from breast cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in
women,” he says.
Other groups that recommend mammograms every one or two years for women in
their 40’s include the US Preventive Services Task Force and the American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The American College of Physicians guideline says mammograms can reduce
breast cancer deaths by about 15 percent among women in their 40’s, but Dr.
Smith says newer studies indicate the benefit is much greater - 40 percent
or more.
Unfortunately, the cancer detection story is one that suffers from a problem
which can be associated with an inexact science. Since we can put men on the
moon, clone sheep (and even rabbits in Chonburi, apparently) and other
incredible facts, we should then be able to diagnose human conditions with
pin-point accuracy. Unfortunately wrong!
Diagnosis and detection are “real time” arts, not sciences, even though we
would like them to be. Sure, we use “science” as a tool, but that is all it
is. A tool to help us see the problem. Just like we can use a telescope to
see things at a distance - even if we can’t see the object, that doesn’t
mean to say it wasn’t there. The telescope was facing the wrong way, the
object was behind not in front.
There has been a bit of that thinking with mammograms of late. A lady has
three annual clear mammograms and then finds she has breast cancer during
year number four. Was the testing useless?
Again I ask you to look at the “real time” situation. So today cancer was
found. When did it “start” to grow? This week, this month, this year? The
answer depends upon the type of the cancer. Some fast growing cancers would
be impossible to pick up, even if the person had monthly mammograms. The
slow growing variety can be picked up years ahead. Unfortunately mammography
cannot be a 100 percent indicator - we are not that good - yet. But it is
still one of the best diagnostic procedures we have. And it is better than
nothing.
Likewise, Breast Self Examination (BSE) has its detractors as well as its
proponents. Sure, a lot depends upon how well the woman carries out this
self testing, but again, surely it is better to look than to carry on in
blissful innocence?
I do not believe the doomsayers who would tell you that the outcome is just
the same. Breast cancer is like all cancers - the sooner you find it, the
sooner you can deal with it and the earlier treatment is administered, the
better the outcome. In fact, studies from the American National Cancer
Institute show that 96 percent of women whose breast cancer is detected
early live five or more years after treatment. This is called a 96 percent
five year survival rate, one of the ways we measure the severity of life
threatening cancers. If it were a 10 percent figure - in other words, after
five years only 10 percent of the people were still alive, then I would
probably also feel that predictive testing was not all that worthwhile. But
it is not that bleak an outcome - 96 percent are still alive and many go on
for many, many years.
Ladies, talk with your doctor regarding breast screening, and ignore
sensationalism in the popular press!
 Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
I do love it when Rambling Syd Rumpo pulls out some anecdotes from his
ganderbag. My favorite at the moment is when you leapt into the ring at a
livestock auction and exclaimed, “Never mind the bullocks, here’s Hillary!”
Mistersingha
Dear Mistersingha,
I do love it when there’s a week when you don’t write in, even with unbelievable
anecdotes from your uncle Rambling Syd. However I think you have become confused
(perhaps it is the alcohol content) and I am sure the “bullocks” quote was
something to do with the Euro 2008 losing German team captain Herr Ballack, or
perhaps it was the Sex Pistols and “Never mind the bollocks” with Ronnie Biggs
on vocals. Or it may even be you’re confusing Buttocks and Botox; with your mind
streams anything is possible. However, Petal, it’s probably time you tried Chang
Light, it is less heady and less likely to give you pillocks.
Dear Hillary,
My friends reckon I’m bonkers, but I have met the sweetest girl in a local bar
in Jomtien. She makes me feels special every time I go in, which is daily these
days, she will drop what she’s doing and come and sit by me, even if she’s been
chatting to other customers. She’s hard working and I’m thinking very strongly
about buying her out of the bar and letting her move in. I’ve never been like
this before, she is something special. The friends all say that she’s just like
all the others I’ve had and a gold digger as well. Surely some of the bar girls
are different?
Unsure from USA
Dear Unsure from USA,
Are some of the bar girls different? I can help you here, no problem, Petal.
What you have to do in these situations is to apply the British Standard (BS)
Duck Test and you will get your immediate answer. The test implies that a person
can figure out the true nature of an unknown subject by observing this subject’s
readily identifiable traits. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments
that something is not what it appears to be. It is a form of inductive
reasoning, and has a 99.9 percent accuracy. The Duck Test goes like this: “If a
bird looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it
probably is a duck.” Happy Duck hunting!
Dear Hillary,
I am a young chap, single and considered to be not bad looking, so I’ve got a
few girlfriends, if you know what I mean. My problem comes from one of the girls
I have met recently. She rang me at work the other day and asked if I could come
over and see her at the new bar she was working in. I did remember her from the
previous bar where she used to work, but I was embarrassed as I could be
overheard by my workmates when I was talking to her, and they were all laughing
at me, so I just kind of fobbed her off. How can I tell her it isn’t a good idea
to ring me at work in a crowded office? Any suggestions?
Wilson
Dear Wilson,
This is no problem at all, Petal, other than the fact that you have engineered
your own problem here. It’s quite simple, if you don’t want a girl to ring you
at work, then don’t give her your business card, silly! If you feel the need to
chat her up on the phone just give her your mobile and tell her what hours to
ring you between. The girl isn’t silly, she’ll comply. But will you? That’s the
question.
Dear Hillary,
You are often telling people that they should learn Thai if they are living here
for some time. I agree with you, but it’s not that easy. I have retired here,
but at my age (76), I find it very difficult to learn a new language at my time
in life. Is there any quick way of doing this, or do you have any special tips
for people trying to learn this Thai language? I tried going to a language
school, but I failed there as they were going to fast for me at my age.
Jim
Dear Jim,
Jim, it is a problem I know, but if you are retired and not working, then there
is one way which is a quicker (but none of them are easy) way to learn. It’s
called Total Immersion and Hillary’s language teacher friends all tell me it is
the quickest. This method is used in Europe by the top language schools and you
have to be billeted with a family that does not speak your language, only the
language you are wanting to learn. What you have to do is go and stay in a
village up country in a little local hotel and put yourself into the situation
that you have to speak Thai or starve! I am told that in six weeks you will have
picked up reasonable Thai and you are on your way to complete mastery of the
tongue. You will also probably have picked up a small language teacher. Lots of
luck and “Chok dii, Kha”.
Learn to Live to Learn: with Andrew Watson
The art of teaching
The art of teaching in schools can be summed up quite simply: it
is to teach students to teach themselves - to teach students to
teach themselves how to live, how to work, how to direct their
lives, how to shoulder responsibility and so forth. On the road
to educational epiphany, we have to learn how much we can leave
to the students and how much we need to intervene to keep the
balance. If, however, we have not helped them on their journey
to becoming “fully human” then however glittering their
achievements, we have failed them.
Prince Charles, a sage observer of society, said as much in
2004: “Surely the time has come to escape from an almost
adolescent obsession with being ‘modern’ - the product perhaps
of a 20th century ‘teenage crisis’? - and, instead, to be more
concerned about being ‘human’!” Be human? What does it mean, to
“be human”? I asked Chris Wright, a leading figure in national
and international education.
“If when our young people leave our schools they are able to
stand being alone; if they can understand that pleasure and
happiness are offshoots of activity and service to others and
are not ends in themselves; if they can look at themselves in
the mirror at 2 o’clock in the morning and not be frightened by
what they see; if they listen respectfully to the views of
others yet be willing to pursue their own search for truth and
justice; if they can begin to exercise compassion for those who
do not belong to their own group; if they have begun to reflect
deeply on the meaning of life and the central religious
questions and their alternatives.”
What are the characteristics of maturity, the characteristics of
having grown up as a human being? Perhaps as Archbishop Rowan
Williams put it, as adults we might expect to be aware of
emotion but not enslaved by it? We might expect to be someone
who believes that change is possible in their own lives and the
lives of those around them. Someone who is aware of fallibility
and mortality, who recognises that they cannot be right about
everything and that they won’t live forever. Someone sensitive
to the cost of the choices they make, for themselves and for the
people around them. Someone who is not afraid of difference, who
is not threatened by difference. Someone, perhaps, who is aware
of being answerable to something more than just a cultural
consensus - someone whose values, choices, priorities are shaped
by something other than just “majority votes”.
In “Formation: Who’s bringing up our children?” (2005)
Archbishop Williams poses challenging questions which travel
directly to the heart of the art of teaching. “What,” he asks,
“if we live in a climate where our emotions are indulged but
never educated? That is to say where we never take a thoughtful
perspective on how we feel, that brings in other people and
their needs. What if we live in an environment where apathy and
cynicism are the default positions for most people on issues of
public concern? What if our environment is short on dialogue and
learning and self-questioning? What if it is characterised by a
fear and a denial of human limitations, by a fundamentalist
belief in the possibility of technology in solving our problems
for example? By the constant bracketing or postponing of the
recognition that we have limits and that we are going to die.
What if our environment is passive to the culture of the global
market, simply receiving that constant streams of messages which
flow out from producers and marketers?”
In a world characterised by a widening disparity between rich
and poor, not only nationally but transnationally, where a cult
of immediacy creates, allows and encourages immediate
gratification, it takes a tremendous personal effort to
concentrate on something other than the ‘self’. It is no
coincidence, I suggest, that the ‘self’ has become subliminally
branded, ruthlessly and sometimes cynically targeted by
advertising agencies who promise in their platitudinous jargon,
to ‘make you better,’ to ‘make you thinner’ and even ‘make you a
leader’ in a globe where ‘nothing is impossible’. Websites extol
empowerment of the individual, rather than the community.
Thus it is no surprise when periodically, news media is filled
with tales and data charting the latest stage of the
fragmentation of family values, traditional values and the
erosion of cultural values. It is as if there is a great desire
somewhere, to homogenise the world into a sea of self-seeking
individuals.
Are we just consumers, where shopping malls are the new temples
and spiritual sustenance is sought via the wallet, where
difference is subsumed into blandness? Are we on destined to
become nothing more than market manufactured identiclones?
It is a scary thought that having refused to adapt to our
environment, we have adapted our environment to suit a lowest
common denominator, characterised by intense boredom and an
addiction to novelty. Or characterised by an obsessive
romanticising of victim status, and a lack of empathy?
What, Archbishop Williams asks, “if it is characterised by
secularism, that is to say by an approach to the world which is
tone deaf about the sacred and the mysterious?”
Then perhaps, we should insist at the very least, that in and
beyond the classroom, in the restaurants, the bars, the home,
wherever we are, that opinions are substantiated and justified?
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe and
he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and
he’ll have to touch it to be sure. What does this suggest about
the way different types of knowledge are justified?
Socrates compares the art of teaching to the role of a midwife
(Adler, 2008), giving new life (but not delivering) to the mind
and spirit, as students develop for themselves, new ideas,
knowledge and understanding. Teaching is quintessentially a
humble art. I rejoice in the fundamental truth that, “We are all
each others’ students just as we are each others’ teachers.” The
teacher neither manufactures knowledge as a product, nor fills
passive, empty vessels. It is the learner, not the teacher, who
is the active producer of knowledge and ideas (ibid).
Next week: Multiculturalism versus identity
DOC ENGLISH Teaching your kids how to learn English:
How to encourage your children to become good listeners
 Welcome
back to the regular column for parents teaching their kids English at
home. This week we discuss how to encourage your children to become good
listeners.
Your kids probably spend more time using their listening skills than any
other kind of skill and just like any other skill, listening takes a lot
of practice. When we want our children to learn English, we want them to
be ‘active listeners’. We want them to listen for specific information
and to make judgments, to anticipate what we are going to say next and
how to react. When children are learning, listening becomes an active
process that has three basic steps.
1. The first step is hearing. In this context, hearing means ‘listening
enough to catch what the speaker is saying’. It’s important to get your
children to sit still and face you, whilst maintaining eye contact while
you are talking. This is so that they will be better able to hear and
understand what you are saying. If you use gesture and facial
expressions, these will aid understanding. Remove distractions such as
TV, siblings, etc., when you are teaching active listening.
2. The next step is understanding. After hearing, children need time to
interpret what they have heard in order to understand it. They may
interpret what you have said in many different ways. If your child looks
puzzled, you can try repeating the information a couple of times. Don’t
raise your tone of voice or get frustrated if they don’t get it the
first time around. It won’t aid understanding and may increase anxiety.
Instead, you could emphasise key words in the sentence (by changing the
tone of your voice), or stress the syllables in the word that is not
understood. Keep a smile on your face while you are talking, all the
time encouraging your child to listen and comprehend.
3. After understanding, your child needs to make sense of what they have
heard. OK, so they understand what you have said, but in what context?
What can they do with this information? After you are sure your child
has understood what you have said, give them time to think about whether
it makes sense. Your child will need to draw on background knowledge to
put this information into a wider context. You could ask questions to
ensure they know what to do with the information.
Tips for Teaching Active Listening
* Encourage your child to write down key words whilst they listen. These
will help them make sense of what they have heard later.
* Encourage your child to ask questions if they don’t understand, or to
repeat what you have said in their own words to ensure they have
understood.
* Make sure you give your full attention to your child when conducting a
conversation in English. Don’t use too much ‘meta language’ and use
natural speech as much as possible.
* Extend the length (time limit) of listening exercises each time in
order to extend your child’s limit of concentration. You can also speed
up your speech each time to encourage your child to listen harder.
You can find listening tasks designed to improve listening skills online
at:
http://www.esl-lab.com/ (all ages)
http://englishenglish.com/listening_skills.htm (teens to adult)
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/ (listen and respond to news in
simplified English)
http://www.edict.com.hk/Diagnostic/listening.htm (carry out a listening
test - teens to adult)
That’s all for this week mums and dads. If you want more information on
teaching your children at home you can email me at: docenglish
[email protected] Enjoy spending time with your kids.
Let’s go to the movies:
by Mark Gernpy
Now playing in Pattaya
Hellboy II: The Golden Army: US Action/Fantasy – Again
directed by Guillermo del Toro and again starring Ron Perlman as
Hellboy, this again presents a dark and difficult fantasy world full of
fantastical creatures determined to prove the Lovecraftian premise that
he who destroys the earth does the universe a favor.
Red Cliff Part 1: China Action/Adventure – This $80-million film,
directed by John Woo – the most expensive film ever produced in Asia –
has been plagued by difficulties from the outset, including the walk-out
by two stars and a storm that wrecked an outdoor set. And on June 9, a
stunt went wrong killing a stuntman and injuring six others. Red Cliff
will be released in two parts in Asia, with the second part scheduled
for December 15; in the US and Europe the two parts will be combined and
shortened. Depicts events in third century China, as the Han Dynasty is
facing its death, and the emperor raises a million-man army against two
kingdoms that are hopelessly outmatched. Starring Tony Leung.
Hancock: US Action/Comedy – There’s no doubt about it: Will Smith
has a lot of charisma for a majority of moviegoers, including me. Here
he plays an unsympathetic character, and has to work to gain our good
will. Reviewers have widely diverse views on this one. I was only
minimally amused. Smith here plays a different kind of superhero: edgy,
conflicted, sarcastic, and misunderstood. He gets the job done and saves
countless lives, but he also seems to leave an awful lot of collateral
damage as well. The people of Los Angeles have had enough.
And so did studio executives according to reports, who after seeing the
original cut immediately ordered big changes and several scenes reshot,
because the hero was such a drunk - and downbeat, disreputable, and even
disgusting. His costume seems to be stolen off the back of a homeless
person, and the film starts with Hancock waking up on the sidewalk,
reeking of alcohol, and then leaping into the sky to save someone,
destroying everything in sight in the process.
The result of all the frantic last-minute editing and newly shot scenes
is a mess, frankly, but a mess with much to enjoy for fans of Will
Smith. Also starring Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman. Not
kid-friendly: There’s a lot of bad language, some graphic violence, and
more. Mixed or average reviews. The opening weekend records looked very
good because they cheated and counted not only Thursday to Sunday as the
weekend, but Wednesday as well!
Wanted: US Action/Thriller – If you think you’ve seen it all in
violent and bloody action films, you haven’t yet seen this one: it
raises the bar to a whole new level! Visually I think it’s fascinating –
there are scenes which I really could not believe I was seeing – and I
would say it’s about as exciting as a movie can get. This is a
fast-paced thrill ride, with a dazzling mix of state-of-the-art visual
effects, adrenaline-fuelled action sequences, and nail-biting terror.
A young man (the very versatile actor James McAvoy) discovers his father
is an assassin, and when his father is murdered, the son is recruited
into his father’s organization and trained by a strangely-hypnotic man
(Morgan Freemen) to follow in his dad’s footsteps, and in the process is
transformed from a drone into a dark avenger. Also starring Angelina
Jolie and Terence Stamp. Rated R in the US (and richly deserved) for
strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language, and some
sexuality. Generally favorable reviews.
Friendship: Thai Comedy/Romance – With Mario Maurer (of Love of
Siam fame) and Apinya Sakuljaroensuk (of Ploy fame), in a high-school
romance. I was less than enchanted – it seemed to me unrelated to the
real life of people, either young or mature, and somewhat amateurish in
writing, acting, and directing. But fans of Thai romances may well take
to the unrealistic happenings between the two likeable leads.
Kung Fu Panda: US Animation/Comedy – Pure fun! And I laughed a
lot. An animated comedy set in the legendary world of ancient China,
about a lazy panda who must somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to
save his valley from a villainous snow leopard. A take-off of recent
Kung Fu films, full of irreverent invention and dazzling animation.
Generally favorable reviews.
Scheduled for Jul 17
The Dark Knight: US Action/ Crime/ Drama/ Thriller – The
first Batman movie without “Batman” in the title. I’m looking forward to
this; the previews and photos I have seen of Heath Ledger in the role of
the Joker show clearly the amazingly intense insanity he brought to this
role. I’m convinced it caused his death. The role, as he played it, was
so disturbing to him that he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax – so started
taking pills, the overuse of which, most people think, led to his death
by drug overdose.
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