Reviewing The Raid: Redemption

The Raid doesn't start with a bang, it started with usual buildup towards the inevitable violence, but when the things started, you can't take your eyes off it, and it continues to rolled over you over and over again like a mean ashpalt roller machine. The plot is quite simple: A squad of SWAT team prepares a Raid on a building owned by a drug lord, it also serves on a hideout for dangerous criminals and terorrists, then fate goes batshit crazy (triggered by n R-rated scene that will probably created the spin-off, The Raid: Lost Generation), long story short the SWAT's raid become a fight for survival, a journey full of carnage and beautiful violence.

 This is the very first picture on google search, the sole reason I posted it

 

What's the good? The Raid has only one strong point: The fights, every single fight scenes in this movie is beautifully executed, unpredictable, and well-choregraphed, whether it's one-one-one, two-on-one, or even a mass fight involving several people at once, the solo fights by Iko Uwais are the highlighted events from the movie, the fights scene will came at you full-powered, it didn't build up, it didn't take long, they're fast fast and straight in your face street fighting with every assortment of lethal tools including the building's concrete walls itself, it's brutal and adrenaline surging, it's not shiny like the Matrix or flowing like Ong Bak, it's goddamned bleak as hell where every wrong enemy moves are exploited and often resulted in quick death or a grotesque scene.

The Lethality level of fight is strengthened by the scene's ambience, like the light, camera positioning, and sounds. My God, the sounds of the fight is uniquely satisfying for my ears, whether it's a knuckle's, a swinging sword, or just a guttural sounds of a severed neck artery and so on. The sounds itself is so connected with the fight, the sound of a knuckle that broke's a rib is different from a knuckle that didn't, you can tell the fight is coming to an end when the punches or kickes become so erratic you won't even blink due the fear you'll lose the next frame. The lighting helps a lot, the camera positioning are good and the CG helps a lot (most of the bloods are animated but didn't feel too phony).

 

 The body count caused by the right guy's moustache is also satisfying

Despite the great fighting scenes, there are also some fight scene that didn't exceed the expectation, the fight on the drugs lab are so lame it didn't get the usual applause from the audience, it feels like a filler and so anticlimactic, the story is predictable and the movie is ended with another anticlimactic event, the actor are decent but none too groundbreaking, Ray Sahetapy provide a good one at the beginning but also too comical. Iko Uwais doesn't speak much but he's just about so-so, Donny Alamsyah is better (too bad he didn't get too much fighting scenes), special credits to Yayan Ruhiyan for his moustache and hair.... err no, it's because his crazy moves strengthen his Mad Dog character, all others are mediocre, but as I said before the story doesn't matter, it's a martial art movie and it live it's hype.

The one thing that noticed by me is the amount of dark humour scattered at this movie, I watched this movie with it's original language and laughed my ass hard when that Eastern Indonesian speaks with his dialect in a scene, no offense but their dialect never quite grew in my ear, I noticed the amount of serious dialogue and the... I don't know... 'funny' dialogues amounted the same, were they intended by the director? Could be, but it helps release the tension after or before the fight, IMO it's probably there in purpose to made the audience didn't fall asleep on the in-between-fight scenes, I personally want to see how's the subtitled version looks like on these scenes, hope it helps them feel the humours.

I recalled his real name is Alfred or something: 

Well Al, believe me, you're my new fave cameo ever

Final Verdict: It's awesome, and I KEEP WANTING MORE, GODDAMIT THIS MOVIE IS TOO SHORT!!! I don't care about the story but how should I? The movie already makes me want to spar with my friends so I guess it's quite influencing, let me gives this beautiful piece of art an 8.8

The Two Raids

It's funny how things can quickly change on the Internet, first of all by now if you type The Raid on google, the topmost is a link to the IMDB database of an Indonesian movie called The Raid (Redemption), an international award-winning movie from director Gareth Evans, and also my topmost must see movie when it hits the theater

But now let's get back in time, seven months ago when you type the same words the topmost could be an MMORPG documentary called The Raid, which atrracts me because at that time I was on the beginning of my journey to the larger world of MMO beyond my local servers, so I watched it and yeah it's a good documentary, I wrote a review about it ....and because of the hype of Redemption I might as well post it side to side


The Raid

(This is a review I wrote about nine months ago, after watching The Raid which was premiered on gamebreaker.tv on August 6th 2011)

Several months ago I made a 'revolutionary' approach on my own Lineage 2 experience, installed RaidCall, fixed my sucky sound card driver so I can talk to my clan members, and head dive into 'clan first' raidcalled fortress battle (one of the fastest FB ever), that once set my brain on fire and drunk with experience, well I always thought it'll progress from there, I dreamed of my first true 'Raidcalled' Raid

.......unfortunately it never happened............ but hey, here's a story about some guys on different game which it happens :))

 The Raid basically is a short World of Warcraft documentary about how MMORPG raiders 'life' in game, when it was announced a year ago I was immediately pulled out topics about MMORPG community, to be honest the plan of The Raid itself was one of the things that gotten me into World of Warcraft (beside warlocks and yeah I'm a fanboy) :D

 The Raid followed raid progress of raid guild 'Months Behind' on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion as they progressed on their own Ice Crown Citadel Raid up to the Lich King, the movies tarted up by defining the 'MMORPG' genre, and some of its jargons like: 'dungeons', 'avatar' and 'Raid', interspeded by cutscenes of the raid progress itself, and the men (and women) behind the avatars of Months Behind and their own reason of playing and ultimately: raiding

 One of the strong points of The Raid that it covered almost the vital aspect of MMORPG but the downside is the movie wasn't build up quickly, if you're not a gamer (and also not digging the first rant about 'Achievements and guilds') the first minute you treated into a cutscene of Lord Marrowgar (first boss of Icecrown Citadel) yelling: BOOOOOONNEE STTTOOORRRMMM!!! and followed by the whole guild members talking about their reason to raid you'll quickly feel out of space and say like 'huh'? but after 15 minutes the raid progressed and the conversation is also leveled as there are more and more interaction between guild members and then you'll start thinking along the lines: "Yeah these guys are weirdos, but they're kinda cool" of course when you're not into computer games and MMORPG specifically you'll push the stop button.

...and then Garrosh and Darnell will tag team you

 The stigmas of MMORPG players are always the hottest topics on every MMO documentary, The Raid wasn't my first MMORPG documentary, before it came out I watched at least two independent documentaries (which alas I can't remember their names), and the stigmas always the same: computer gamers a.k.a nerds is the one playing games 24/7 on their home basement and live their life IN the game. There's no denying it that some of them DID it but NOT everyone, One of the finer point of The Raid that it brings these people involved into the spotlight without being judgmental about their REAL life, being a gamer is fine, socially acceptable is fine too but that's not the point here because we all knew games will always be games and beside, your parents won't understand why you collect stamps :))

 Guild dramas also got their own portion here, picturized by Sindragosa and Putricide boss mechanics which can lead to brief dispute on party members, I personally like the analogy here, it kinda reminds me when I was once my first heroic Tol'vir where everyone got ZERO experience about the fight and after several wipes people start leaving, but in the end we downed the boss (I was dead and didn't get credited... sad). The conflict get a nice resolved result where everyone gained their morale back, and face the last boss: The Lich King himself

Ice to meet you

 My conclusion is: The movie is short, yes, it contains issues that has been on topic for several years, yes, worst of: It will appeal gamers quickly but baffles non gamers but The Raid made a different approach: It's specialized and not generalized. It's a story about a guild, about the people in it, about their motivation, reason, connection, friendship, and group achievement, the last minutes of the movie is probably the highlight of everything The Raid is all about, the personal satisfaction, and at that moment: you're a hero

 Many cynic will said: why the hell made movies about this? It's about a bunch of nerds playing videogames and recording themselves with webcams, I will just said to them in my 'personal' reference: Haters will hate :))


The Raid: Redemption preview

EDIT: I forgot to reveal one single vital thing, I only know about The Raid: Redemption when someone on gamebreaker.TV comment page asked if it's the move from the Sundance festival (or something along that line) I googled it and found out a movie from my country which apparently very good at staying under my radar
 
Anyway, now take a look at this trailer, 

now worship it :D

Two years ago Gareth Evans made a low budget Indonesian martial arts movie called 'Merantau' a story about a justicar country bumpkin that travels to town in search of a job but ended up rescuing a girl and her brother from the clutches of a human-trafficking Triad, sporting a martial arts theme equivalent to a B-Grade Hollywood movie at that time doesn't help Merantau on my local theater (which contains more sucky movies), I even didn't paid attention to it at first, watching it once when a TV station runs it and...

It.. was... AWESOME

The story are predictable but being a martial arts movie the choreographed martial arts is over the top, the main star Iko Uwais is a pencak silat practicioner and he fluidly moving in front of camera as a natural, it somewhat reminds me of Ong Bak (another martial arts title from Thailand) but not exactly the same, Merantau runs in a medium pace but somewhat dragged at the climax, the movie itself was good but disregard some of the few common things (i.e. not one cop was seen) but it's all for the sake of good adrenaline-pumping fights and I'm down with that

Apparently Merantau is only the first story of a trilogy martial arts movie by Evans, the second is called "Serbuan Maut" a.k.a The Raid, i really have no idea why seven months later it become The Raid: Redemption, coincidence with The Raid documentary? /shrug but anyways moving on, apparently Evans learned from his previous mistakes about releasing local martial arts movie to local audience, instead he slapped this movie in front of Sundance 2011 audience and every other movie festival audience since them, the results? The movie won awards from Berlin and Toronto film festival and now released officially on US theaters (and the rest of the world) after Sony Picture Classic bought the distribution

The movie itself gained a solid rating of 8.3 on IMDB (March 2012), so yeah it automatically made it to my must see movies, hopefully, it'll be worth the hype

Socially Acceptable

Yesterday, Massively's Karen Bryan posted an article about revisiting anonimity on MMO games, she started about Blizzard's RealID fiasco that happens about two years ago, you can read the entirety of the scene here, followed by some news that old players from an Everquest server started a new Facebook group for their server, apparently even when people wants to retain their anonimity in the Internet, some of them are willing to remove their veil

On the second part of the post Karen addressed some of the issues regarding MMOs isn't socially accepted yet, and yes I think this hits the mark, if I want to work on some of the local company I won't be putting "MMO gaming" on my hobby list, I probably will go through with reading and music since I'm adept at some literature and have background formal study about music, but not MMO gaming --or even gaming. The consequences when you removing the veil on these overly sensitive field is that someone will use them against you, I'm gonna take Karen's example further: In this case imagine a big company, full of continuous rivalry and you are one of the middle management system and played a blood elf female healer, suddenly one time there's a facebook plug-in that allowed you to post your character progression and you forgot just to share it to some of your close friends and instead put it to everyone's page, the next morning your office will be buzzed with gossips about your female avatar, and some of the old head will even questioned your sexuality, you rival just found a new weapon and since people prejudiced a lot something as trivial as playing an MMO game become a big deal and the next is you probably lose your job because someone assured some of the big head that he's better at doing yur job just because he's not spending majority of time choosing armor for female pixel avatars. In my case I only put MMO as my general facebook profile because I don't work on a public company, my friend are already knew my hobbies and I don't give a particular care about Facebook, new friends or people might be a little bit taken aback though (more on part 2)

Someone (I can't remember who) once said: there's no anonimity on the internet nowadays so deal with it, it's not entirely true though, the anonimity on internet is the greatest blessing for some people (fully described in Gabe's pic :D) it allowed you to become almost everything, troll on a heated debate, caring person on a motivational forum, even an androgynous enigma on a dating site, you can even BE multiple persons at once!!! But everything become useless in front of the indisputable fact that when you posted your real name (or even nickname) on the world wide web you might as well lost some or even all of your anonimity.

Taking it one step further out

Let's take on the social media, Zuckerberg himself said he'll make a website that will connect everyone in the world and by connecting it means pouring much information on yourself that has something in common on someone else, in my country Facebook probably become some of the (not so) new hype, since it connects people easily and can be accessed via little gadgets like smartphones, but apparently people here are not so well versed on Facebook which has become more complex than 4 years ago. Let me tell you a story, some times ago I met a particular person, and I added her on my friend list, the twisted thing is I added her with just her real name, give or takes a few letters in and out and voila I found her, I did this on my pocket Facebook right in front of her in just a matter of minutes, normal people would actually asked for her email adresses but since I'm not exactly normal and 'socially accepted'(and I might have some brief superiority complex outburst) I probably did something that is so repulsive and might scared (or probably disgusted) her, I don't know since I never talked about it and we're not actually 'close friends'(no pun intended) this is an example of the power of a Facebook tool called friend finder. Facebook even have something called the subscribe button which probably more like 'stalking' button. Hell I even stalked WOW general discussion for years before I truly subscribing, that's why I'm not even remotely surprised I met so much much MUCH jerks on troll heroics before the Dragon Soul Heroic somehow fixed it

Social Media: Yes it's good to for keeping in touch with friends and families, I always considered my old Lineage 2 Clan as a second family, even when we bickers A LOT I think one thing that keeps us 'close' is because we are all an avid Facebook user and MMO gamers, on the other hand I have many people on my friend list which I probably won't poke or even talked to for the rest of my life just because the only thing we have in common is we share the same high school or something like that, it'll probably come in handy when we want to started a reunion but I can't see anything beyond that, I think the bigger question is: Am I socially accepted just because I'm adept at using social media and have good and useful comments on someone else's thread? We probably have to define the term 'socially accepted' first 'the field' and then we define social skills and the division of real world versus (real) virtual world, and in the end we'll debating about the terms 'friends' and 'families' or even 'feelings' and there's where everything become complicated like the real world =)) =)) =))

Gundam AGE: Second Look (with half closed eyes)

--WARNING--
This post contains spoiler, in fact the whole thing in this post is a spoiler about Gundam Age, so you've been warned, go ahead at your own risk or you might want to visit this awesome website :D

Just a little reminder

So
...
Gundam Age
...
Arc Two

Well, the UE has new name, they called Vegans (or Vagans since we already knew vegetarians everywhere won't be appreciated their way of life slapped on aliens) but let's just call them V, like those aliens from the discontinued serial. Long story short apparently these V guy were once part of the Mars establishment project (which is failed) and abandoned by earth so in their rage they apparently developed superhuman abilities and capable of building mean killing machines, sent them into good guys colonies and destroying them, so yeah, they're probably communists

they also developed a bad sense of fashion

On the last episode of arc one we knew these V guy want to take over the Earth for some reason (there must be a reason right?) and apparently one of them is gone ballistic and kidnapped the "least screen time girl" Yurin (which Flit is head over heel for her), put her on a mobile suit and force her to attack the good guys, the battle ended with predictable scene

pretty close to this, but with blood, 

lots of blood....

After that Flit, which apparently embraced the dark side (and woke his own superhuman abilities, making him a Sith Lord) began his crusade to eradicate all Vagan from the universe, unfortunately we didn't got to see Flit on his Hallelujah type rampage because apparently the story 30 years later is more interesting, Flit now has a son with the most screen time girl (forgot her name, Flit probably too, but they also said the cure of lost love is bedding the nearest available girl, or something) and since he's also a genius and capable of Gundam-ing he become the head honcho of human's military, and apparently he once again failed to mass produced Gundams because I really have no idea if he's busy or so smart that he could make a bunch of V exploded on their own, but don't worry there are plenty of pretty-colored Genoace now, and who dares question a Sith Lord?

Above: Picture of 40 year old Flit Asuno,
taken a second before the cameraman got force choked

Story of Asemu so far: A mobile suit maniac, saved a girl (yes he'll have kids with her in a few years), and best friend of a V spy Zeheart Gallette, and a new Gundam Pilot, it's nepotism all over again, damn. Well after Zeheart reveal his own agenda they ended up fighting each other, apparently Zeheart have some sort of excess of superhuman abilities (dubbed: emo) so he's forced to wear a glasses just to look cool and Bandai can sell more of them. Asemu on the other hand have zero superhuman thingie because apparently her girlfriend hasn't been killed yet

...or he's probably Luke Skywalker

Well, watching Gundam sort of removed my writer's block, somehow... 

My prediction: The last Battle will be a staring contest

Singing and Dancing Throughout Time

For me, music is a delicate thing, if something fits in my ear it'll stay in my brain for days, the sole reason I only listened to J-music while keep an open eye of good pieces from the Western and others, apparently it's been months and I haven't heard any single new tune that made me hum, so in desperate in a new (or perhaps old) sounds I turn to youtube (instead of playing WOW), apparently I discovered a few things:

No, not this one, I already know Darth Vader is a member of NKOTB

I started with my old relationship, when I was young the TV constantly streamed with animes so needless to say I grow with it, that's why at my early age I always think that the opening of Saint Seiya is the best song in the world.

"Yep"

and 20 something years later....

Apparently rock star don't live fast & die young,

they haunt you for the rest of your life

The singer still exists and the anime/manga are being remade or sequeled, or spin-off-ed, Japanese are die hard =))

Macross

This used to be a separate writing, but I included this because there's a relation, and because they're animes that breathed good songs and story. Started at 1982 the original series tells a story about a giant spaceship colony called Macross which hurled into uncharted space by some unknown stuff and tried desperately to get back home, inside this spaceship the people started again to live their daily life, it's a slice-of-life soap opera sprinkled with war action and giant robots, running close to 100 50 episode, and also intertwined with musical numbers sang by Linn Minmay

There is a God

Minmay (voiced by actress Mari Ijima) quickly gained momentum that started the franchise, Macross get a retelling OVA (which contains new song and the original ones) and Ijima herself become instant celebrity, 

Probably one of the best song I ever heard, and no I'm not joking

Apparently the franchise are plummeted down when the true sequel Macross 7 experimented with the sound of Slow/Glam Rock and set the fictious Fire Bomber Band as the next star, the story is completely scrapped although it was once set into the wandering space cowboy plus mariachi theme , changing the true spacefighter robots into giant speaker carrier that shoots lights and sound instead rockets and lasers, the pilots themself equipped with mock musical instruments used to 'shoot', as cheesy as it can be there is one memorable song

Please don't try this concept again, MBS

The franchise get back to it's feet when the next sequel Macross Frontier get it right, included two songstress, Sheryl Nome (voiced by singer May'n) and newcomer artist Ranka Lee (voiced by set-to-be-idol Megumi Nakajima), the unique thing is May'n song are R&B stuffs while Nakajima sang Easy Listening ones, the songs are decent, the duets are good, the story is not groundbreaking but still enjoyable, like all Macross Franchise Frontier also got a retelling OAV which in my opinion contains more action, better storyline, and smoother animation, especially when the show scene of the singers, it's also the first Macross that used CGI to animate combat scenes, the opening song also sang by already famous anime singer Maaya Sakamoto

Catchy, catchy tunes (otaku mode on)

Folder

I stumbled across Folder when rummaging on anime songs and have nostalgic reunion with Dream, apparently my clicking ability brought me into the girl/boyband territory from the late 90s era, one of them is Folder, although they never sang a song that became an anime song, but I'll get back to it later, here they are on 1999

Yep, they're S Club 7 clone, but this song damn catches my ears (yes, it was a song by two brats but hey, I'm at the same age as them at that time, okay maybe a few years older) also this song reminds me of the R&B fusion genre from the late 90s Japan, most of them are dorama songs though, sang by famous Japanese  singer like Ken Hirai

Okay, let's get back to Folder, here they are one year later, 2000

Whoa!

So, the boys left the group because of their changing voices (puberty sucks) and the girls has.... well...grown :P this is the second opening of anime One Piece, a flagship anime/manga title from Jump and Toei, Folder become Folder 5, apparently they dance better now, and now I know where Suzumiya Haruhi's dance is from

I have two additional songs for my mp3 player now, yay, happy happy me, after some browsing I also found some dance group AAA's songs are decent enough to enter my collection, anyway Folder 5 was disbanded like 6 years ago and their members pursued solo career, one of them even starred on some famous movie like Death Note, but their solo singles are nothing good enough to enter my ears

Reverse S Club 7 (in all aspects, including quality of songs)

AKB48

Well now, I was once promised myself never venture into deep otaku territory but I'm already knee deep within girl/boyband swamp, might as well checked out the latest ones, so I hold onto my nose and dive. This one is a major stuff, AKB48 (formed 2006, but I just found out about them last year, silly me) was short from Akihabara 48, sporting tagline: "Idols you can meet" (yes, otaku things, watch your step), they performed dance and sing act in a theater every day on Akihabara region, their total members exceeded the number 48, almost close like 157 teenage girl!! But they're the top selling Japanese artist last year on their region, here's one of their hit single:

Apparently I now hummed it.... damn you Akihabara

AKB48 wasn't the first, there are already similar group called Morning Musume (formed 1998) which held the record for the japan's highest record seller on girl group, they swapped members every year (a method which also embraced by AKB48), I never followed them since at that time rock band such as L'arc en Ciel, Luna sea, and Glay grew in me, and at that teen angst moments, who needs a bunch of dancing pre-teen girl? >:)), Morning Musume and AKB48 also toured and performed on Anime Expo held on US or Europe

Anywaaaaaaay, who wants to see another one from my regional area? HERE THEY ARE!!!

THEY'RE INVADING!!

Apparently AKB48 chooses Jakarta as their sister girlband city, dubbed JKT48, the reason of it... is... I don't know, people in here knows nothing about good songs and the culture is different, I might put their song in my mp3 player but I'm not glorifying them or anything like that, they sang decent song and probably practiced that choreography like hell, but it become a question, who're they targeting here? I probably knew the answer, but apparently it's so out of this world (or this country) that it's probably not true

Well, come what may, at least I have some new/old songs, time to research some more catchy tunes tonight (yep, it's WOW maintenance night)

Hello, Instrument

UPDATE: MAX

Okay, this probably the most exciting discovery: MAX is a Japanese four member vocal group, they excel in voice's quality and sang upbeat tempo song, eurobeat, and some speed techno things, they're also has different image from other Idol Group, more mature theme. Apparently they're once the rival of Morning Musume in term of selling singles.

Max's song ranged from their initial R&B to upbeat ballad, most of them are not my kind but this one is awesome

The song called Issho Ni, I don't know why it can be so appealing in my ear, some secret organization could brainwash me or something, but it's good stuff, it's so different from other MAX's song (you can browse the rest of them on Youtube) and the music brings a sense of smoothness, I personally liked that brief acoustic guitar at the end.

Max has one more ballad song, this one is not as impacting as Issho Ni, it's called Spring Rain, but it's still good enough to enter my collection, it has the same upbeat element from the thing that made Issho Ni good but the execution of vocals are not quite good as the other, oh yeah, the PV is good to watch too

With MAX's song I concluded my search for skipped tunes and j-music from groups between early 90s and now, it's been a wondrous and colorful journey

(Now, back to LFR, dammit Gurthalak Y U NO DROP!!!)