twilight didn't place high on my list of movies to watch and i actually was rather adverse to catching it. for some reason or another, i didn't get started on reading stephanie meyers' books so there wasn't any motivation for me to pay $24 bucks (i sponsored le brother and le cousin) just to sit in the theater with teenage girls swooning over robert pattinson's portrayal of a vampire. that was until i found out that kristen steward would be playing the female lead. her small but powerful role in the indie flick into the wild was certainly memorable and i was looking forward to seeing more of her.

overall, the movie was a-okay. with a focus on action scenes and intense staring between the two leads, it was no doubt made for the younger and mtv-oriented generation with the attention span of a housefly. as expected, story development was rather weak and the cheesy scripts had me squirming at times. i mean, seriously, "You're like a drug to me. Like my own personal brand of heroine?"

been wanting to watch cape no 7 (海角七号) ever since it broke box office records in taiwan, surpassing ticket sales set by the mother of all films, titanic. jl, who had watched it via unmentionable means, strongly advised me against watching this show as the show didn't make sense at all but i kept thinking that so many taiwanese can't be wrong. thank god i didn't listen to her for i'd really have missed out on a good film.

the storyline can be a little hard to explain so here's an exerpt from moviexclusive.com, an excellent local movie review site with great giveaways.

"Aga left Hengchun for Taipei in the hope of becoming the singer in a band. After ten years of hard work, he returns home, his dream unfulfilled, and soon gets a job at the local post office. Tomoko is a Japanese model going down in popularity who is just asked to put together a local warm-up band for an upcoming Japanese super star beach concert to be held in Hengchun. However, recruiting the band members proves to be difficult a task as the search for the famous seven samurai. Still, seven ordinary Hengchun residents end up forming the band.

One day, Aga receives a parcel from Japan not meant for him – in fact, it was to have been delivered at Cape No.7., an address that doesn’t exist anymore… But even though he cannot find the address, Aga doesn’t return the parcel to Japan. Rather, he opens it to find love letters written some 60 years ago by a Japanese teacher and addressed to a Taiwanese girl he was deeply in love with, but had to leave behind Taiwan.

During the process of putting the band together, Aga and Tomoko are constantly at odds with each other, but thanks to the love letters, their conflict-ridden relationship slowly turns into love.

And even though they eventually find the lady the parcel was meant for, it seems that Aga and Tomoko are destined to follow the same footsteps as the girl and the teacher in their own love story… Tomoko must now decide whether she will stay together with Aga or go back to Japan alone"

in short, cape no 7 is a love story and it isn't ashamed of being so. i really got feeling that the production team was just trying to tell a story and they really managed to tell the tale well. not only did i understood what the movie was all about, i felt the sincerity behind it as well. in short, i was touched. and not just by the story, but also by a stellar ensemble of relatively unknown actors, the picturesque island of heng-chun and excellent music throughout.

had it not been the fact that i was wedged between my mom and bro, it was a forgone conclusion that i would have bawled my eyes out when the film reached its climax. music was heavily featured in the finale but in addition to that, i was rooting for a love story that not just had heart but manages to be uplifting in the weird times that we live in today.

Labels: Life, Movies, Musings