another great local movie that does us proud - "881" :)

i first saw the trailers of royston tan's "881" movie on the big screen while watching the recent "harry potter and the order of the phoenix". the movie officially opened on 9 august, singapore's national day, and i finally went to watch it at the cinema with mum this evening - really enjoyed it! recommended!

for some reasons, not many of my friends seem to support local-made movies, quite a pity. my family, on the contrary, is a big fan of local-produced chinese movies. we've watched most of jack neo's movies at the cinema ("i not stupid", "i not stupid 2" being our favourites). we really like the "singaporeaness" of the local-made films.

back to "881" - the movie is named "881" because the 3 numbers sound like "papaya" in mandarin/hokkien. this film's about a pair of young singers called "the papaya sisters", with their story set against the background of the 7th lunar month (hungry ghost festival) "getai" - literally "song-stage" - a very unique cultural scene of singapore.

i love the vibrancy, colours, loud costumes, dramatic perfomances (sometimes cheesy) and strong local-flavours of this movie - easily one of the most entertaining movies i've watched this year. most notably, i LOVE the music - aka the hokkien songs - performed throughout the show, all of them! (some very touching pieces) in fact, i enjoyed the music so much, i'm gonna buy the movie soundtrack when it's released - that'll be my first hokkien music CD ;) i thought my colleague described this movie perfectly, when she called it a "hokkien musical"... i couldn't have found a better description for that :)

if you haven't seen the movie trailer, check it out here:


links:
- zhao wei films
- royston-tan.blogspot.com
- funkie monkies blog