Sell Out - as ($311 0u7)/死了都要卖

Is Malaysia losing its heart and soul to corporate capitalism? This hilarious musical has all the answers.


This is Yeo Joon Han’s first feature film and it is part musical (you are even expected to sing along to its karaoke-style subtitles at one point), part art-film, and part parody of the evils of capitalism and the pretensions of art. A self-absorbed Malaysian TV host, Rafflesia Pong, whose art-discussion programme is dying from lousy ratings, stumbles upon a golden opportunity when her latest interviewee, an ex-boyfriend, dies in front of the camera. It is perfect timing as she has to find a way to come up with the ultimate reality show, so as to outdo her American-accented, pan-Asian rival. Eric Tan is a mild-mannered, half-English corporate slave who labours to create the perfect Soyamaker Machine. But he is constantly assailed by unreasonable insults from his megalomaniacal CEO bosses (played with comic gusto by the hilariously poker-faced Kee Thuan Chye and Lim Teik Leong) because of his creativity and originality. One day, the dreamer in Eric steps out of the latter's physical body and the original Eric has to make a decision whether to assassinate this dreamer-part of himself or not. All of these unforgettably quirky characters operate in a place that is unmistakably Malaysia (or, shall we say, ‘Truly Asia’), its capitalistic aspects exaggerated to ridiculous proportions. Bangkok Post has described the irreverent, subversive, surrealistic and sharply satirical movie, which also features three main local languages - English, Malay and Cantonese - as “a spiky satire of the new Malaysia”.

Yeo Joon Han was a lawyer-turned-copywriter who gave up his well-paying job in 1999 to become a fulltime filmmaker. The 37-year-old Yeo who hails from Seremban made his first ever short film in 2001 on 35mm format before the advent of the Malaysian indie film scene, the project was eventually completed to become Adults Only, a film that was shortlisted for the 63rd Venice Film Festival, making him the first ever first-time Malaysian director to compete in the festival, even receiving a Special Mention. Sell Out! won the Young Cinema Award for Alternative Vision at the same prestigious festival in 2008.

Sell Out! is quirky, weird, rather strange. For the first 15 minutes, you’d be forgiven for wondering what is really going on, even though you find yourself laughing uncontrollably at the jokes. The film seems to take its own sweet time to find comfortable footing, but it really does let loose from the get-go.

Trailer deleted scene.

This is the most funniest 30sec trailer.

Peter Davis and Jerrica Lai - "You're not my type" music from the movie Sell Out!

Sounds not bad from my personal opinion.

(The last two clips I couldn't get it on youtube. I found these at facebook. Facebook still doesn't has the official function that allowing people to embed or download movie clips. So I googled it for solutions, and figured out mozilla firefox is able to do it. It just requires to do some add-on function, then you are allowed to do so.)

You can refer to the following instructions here. http://www.wikihow.com/Download-Facebook-Videos-Free)

Even though the film is largely in English with a small percentage of Cantonese, it’s a very Malaysian film which smartly addresses a lot of what Malaysians experience on a day-to-day basis:

a. silly phone calls from people who just don’t get it when you say “Wrong number” or “This person isn’t here”

b. unscrupulous doctors out to make a quick buck and will diagnose you with anything even when you’re not ill

c. the mentality that if she or he is Eurasian, she or he must be good at ... something

d. fights over taxis which can go to really ridiculous lengths

e. department store staff who are everywhere but don’t seem to be around the moment you need one

Even though it’s partly a musical where characters suddenly break into song, that aspect of the film is really self-aware of a musical’s potential of becoming unbearably silly or maudlin, and so it even pokes fun at musicals. And the songs are incredibly catchy. You really wonder how director Yeo Joon Han did it, writing, directing and producing the film, while also composing the songs.

Sell Out! is the anthem for the underappreciated, and the creative soul that is increasingly losing its way in our modern world.

Movie reviews and official website :
http://www.klue.com.my/articles/1472-Sell-Sell-Sell
http://www.amokfilms.com/blog/reviews.aspx
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=90206736070&h=OHrHt&u=LjMJW

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=74226554181&h=OhU4q&u=o7Mn1

I'm malaysian lah.