Zone Pro Site

                                          

                                                     Zone Pro Site

Chan Hsiao Wan is the shy daughter of the late legendary Master Fly Spirit. On her way through train, she met a gourmet doctor named Yeh Ru Hai, as she traveled back to Ai-Fong at her restaurant to get away from the mafia. The Step-Mother named Ai-Fong is a fish saleswoman, and now owner of her husband’s restaurant, but trying to save it, because she lost a bet and business to Master Fly Spirit’s apprentice, Tsai. One day, she was commissioned to do catering for a wedding, but she doesn’t know how to make their specific food, so Wan insist to cook instead. Problem is she doesn’t have a plan and her dad’s cookbook she lost to a bum, so she called the Gourmet Doctor, as he as Hai coincidentally came and make great dishes, so great it became Ai-Fong’s specialty for her restaurant. Luckily, Hai knows some help to cook, as he brings up Hsia aka the Master Tiger Nose. They meet Master Tiger Nose, and tried his famous Fried Rice Noodle. They love the Fried Rice Noodle so much; they cooked it for catering a business meeting. The head of the business meet had an Anton Ego flashback (Ratatooie) after eating the Fried Rice Noodle; he suggested them to enter the National Catering Contest, and to win one million dollars. Ai-Fong spots Master Ghost Head, he tried the special, but didn’t like it as he became a threat, even as Tsai’s secret weapon. Wan’s being trained by Master Ghost Head as his taster, since the Master lost his sense of taste. Wan enters the National Catering Contest in her altered father’s chef uniform, and help of the same mafias, and an expected help. They entered the final round, but desperately needs certain ingredient to win. Will Wan’s team win the contest and million dollars to the mafia, and will the mafia drop the charge since they’re in the team?

Wan has a cute personality & appealing style, and it’s rare to have female starring fictional character to be a chef (except to Queen Latifah in Last Holiday to an extent.), despite she rarely cook compare to her step-mom, Hai, and the mafia. Majority of cooking films usually stars males mostly to follow the father’s footstep. This can be done right in films such as Julie & Julia, Food Wars (not to be confused with Restaurant Wars), and Sweeny Todd, as there’s bad example such as Fighting Foodon, and just about any reality food shows that has 95% of the interviewers and 5% actual cooking. Interesting how she doesn’t want to be a chef at first, but family traditions was in jeopardy, and she need to overcome her fear of failure to her father and fish. Hai’s a good gourmet doctor and cook. Surprisingly there’s such a thing as a Gourmet Doctor, it’s definitely refreshing than the food critics you see identically in Chopped. It’s strange that he’s cooking food opposing to Wan in the contest, but he’s a free-range doctor anyone can hire him.  The foods made in the film are very impressive, and how they’re made that I would like to try them at a nearby Tai restaurant. The film does need trimming down for how long the film is being 2 hours and twenty minutes. Probably cut some of the side characters’ scenes short, while they’re entertaining and useful, we probably don’t need moments of mugging and poker games. The mafia are probably the funniest mafias I seen in films lately, since majority of mafia are usually the boring part in any films as hand-me-downs of Godfather or Goodfellas or Fat Tony from the Simpsons. Some of the comedies are quick to the point visually that it’s funny such as the father coming out of his grave.

Overall, Zone Pro Site is a fun, delectable, and sweet kind of film we do need from the bitter dramas that’s gone oversaturated.   

                                                  

                                                    In Love We Trust (2007)

In Beijing, China, a home investor named Mei Zhu has a 5 year old daughter named Hehe, who’s being sick from cancer and has 2-3 years left to live if she doesn’t have a bone marrow transplant. She needed her ex-husband, Xiao Lu to help their daughter by any means. They tried using donating their blood, but neither is a match to save. Their only option is to be together to mate to have another kid, so they can have a matching blood from the umbilical cord to save their child. However, both Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu have their spouse, and Xiao Lu doesn’t want to cheat on his current wife, Dong Fan (actual name of a person, not a pokemon). Dong Fan was furious from Xiao Lu’s choice until she sees Hehe, and realized how important she is. Mei Zhu’s current husband, Xie Huaicai instantly accepts the condition being with Xiao Lu in order to mate to save the daughter she devoted her life to. So Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu are going through trial and errors to see if they can make another kid in order to save their present kid.

This has the combination problem as another film, the supposedly child focus in Dragon Inn that would be stronger and suspenseful, but instead we focus on the couple to have less suspense. With that said, the couples in In Love We Trust are probably more engaging than Dragon Inn’s couple. They don’t distract away from the story, as they are the core of the story. Despite Hehe barely appeared in the film, thus we couldn’t be as emotionally connected to her whether she lived or died. There’s rarely a film that stars the dying child without focusing the parent(s) or friend(s), as proven with Secret of Nimh, Christmas Carol, Balto, Halloween Tree, and to name a few. Even there was a film that has the story of the dying star child, it’ll mostly show he/ she will be fine at the end, unless they did die as we’ll tear up from how much we knew the child and invested we got. The closest film I know is Hayao Miyazaki’s Grave of the Firefly.    

If this film was fueled by emotions, this movie would be sad in theory. There’s rarely a film that made me sad to tears. There are plenty of films to give different range of emotion. There’s comedy to mostly make laughter, action to mostly make amazement, horror to rarely scare (and Tim Burton’s Mars Attack), a bad film that has horrible visuals and relies on annoyance lead to anger, and a predictably, repetitive, gray, unemotional, wooden, and slow film lead boredom. Sadly, this film is somewhere at the ladder. If this film didn’t spend too long with their slow scenes that goes nowhere. Most of the characters are having around 1 to 3 expression. Mei Zhu has the most expression of sadness, joy, and anger, which understands that her daughter’s sick, but happy to see she’s getting better, and mad that Xiao Lu isn’t trying with the sex. The Spouse has two with happy and sad, while Xiao Lu is mostly stoic. Romance by all variety (boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy meets boy, girl meet girl, and adult version) is the least interested genre, since they’re mostly the same with them meeting, dating, breaking, or reconnecting, and often get together or apart at the end. It’s no secret that I’m mostly alone in life, not really a romantic cocky kind of man, and has some love to family, pets, and characters in certain films. In Love We Trust has good intention to have a couple to get back together in order to save a child, but with pacing issues and disconnection, this is one love and trust to pass.