The Chinese get all the best holidays.
I mean, the seventh month to the Chinese is like a whole month of Halloween! Granted, it’s the spooky old Irish-style Halloween, where the unquiet dead can rise and afflict the living unless you’re up every night chanting and burning incense… Okay, I guess that’s not entirely cool. Especially if the incense-burning doesn’t work, and the dead are still pissed. It’s Ghost Month (2007)!
(Posting early so I can get out of town. Happy pre-Turkey Day, my fellow turkey worshippers!)
Nathan Shumate is the proprietor of Cold Fusion Video Reviews.« It’s a kingdom of two. And one them’s your mother.
Comments
Comment from El Santo
Time: November 21, 2007, 2:51 pm
“February 30”
Okay, I’ll bite. What exactly is supposed to be so spooky about a day that never comes?
Comment from John Doe
Time: November 21, 2007, 6:07 pm
One thing I didn’t get from the review is a sense of why the ghosts are so active in this one particular household. Or is that info some kind of spoiler?
Month of the Ghosts sounds like a good idea for me, but maybe you ought to take a breather after October.
Comment from Zack Handlen
Time: November 22, 2007, 10:06 pm
“Okay, I’ll bite. What exactly is supposed to be so spooky about a day that never comes?”
Maybe it’s like a Leap Leap Year? Pynchon could’ve got something cool out of hte idea, I know that much.
Comment from Braineater
Time: November 22, 2007, 10:18 pm
What’s scary about it is that you get killed in an accident… and then you wake up, and you’re Anthony Wong. Yikes!
(Though I have to admit, it’s fun seeing Anthony Wong playing a normal guy trapped in the identity of an Anthony Wong character.)
Comment from PCachu
Time: November 23, 2007, 9:03 am
February 30th? Maybe it’s a Lovecraftian approach. You know, The Day That Must Not Be.
Comment from Blake Matthews
Time: November 23, 2007, 11:49 am
February 30 must fall in the year in which has 13 months.
Simpsons (Treehouse of Horror) “It was the 13th hour of the 13th day of the 13th month…” “Wow, these Smarch winters are…”
Comment from Nathan Shumate
Time: November 23, 2007, 5:20 pm
John: Yeah, that’s kind of bound up with the missing maid and Miss Wu’s departed brother. Of course, the revelation of all of that is in the last fifteen minutes, so I had to be coy.
Comment from HP
Time: November 24, 2007, 4:12 pm
Do you suppose Draven has seen Kelvin Tong’s The Maid (2005)?
Comment from Braineater
Time: November 24, 2007, 5:12 pm
HP — It sounds from Nathan’s description like he should have seen it, even if he hadn’t. Some of the lapses noted in the review were handled pretty well in Tong’s film, I thought.
Comment from HP
Time: November 24, 2007, 7:25 pm
Well, if Draven hadn’t seen Tong’s film, that’s a pretty major string of coincidences with regard to the plot. Unless we’re witnessing the spontaneous birth of the “non-Chinese maid employed by Chinese family during Hungry Ghost Month unwittingly sets in motion paranormal events and reveals dark family secrets” genre.
Comment from Nathan Shumate
Time: November 24, 2007, 7:29 pm
Well, some of that is a pretty obvious tack to fulfill storytelling requirements. As most viewers aren’t going to be Chinese, you’re going to want a Western outsider as the viewpoint character, acting as proxy for the audience in discovering the custom and the spooky goings-on related to it. And if those goings-on relate to a family secret, then you’re going to need your outsider to have intimate access to the household and family. A domestic employee fits the bill perfectly.
Comment from Braineater
Time: November 21, 2007, 2:39 pm
Oh! “Ghost Month” is the title. For a minute there, I thought you were inaugurating another roundtable subject.
Wellson Chin in Hong Kong did a whole series of movies based on nearly every spooky date in the Chinese calendar: July 14, July 13: Dragon Granny, April 4, February 30 (!), and The Third Full Moon.