Grey Areas

Last week, I introduced my son to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He's noticed my DVD box set sitting in one of our shelves and had curiously inspected the cover. Many times over the past couple of weeks, he asked if he could watch it. At first, I refused because I thought the scenes and some characters might frighten him (i.e., Ring Wraiths and Orcs), and I thought the plot is a little too complex for him to understand.

Of course, how can a mother possibly win against a very persistent five-year-old? And so we went ahead and watched, with many caveats from me, telling him not to blame me if he gets scared.

My son surprised me yet again. He absolutely LOVED the trilogy! Actually, it seems he enjoyed it more than he did the Harry Potter series (of which he suffered only through half of the first movie, and hasn't since asked to watch it again). He did get a bit nervous seeing some of the scary characters - evidenced by very sweaty hands and feet, hahaha - but he got over it easier than I expected him to. Of course, I was right in predicting that the story was a bit hard for him to understand, but, hey, we're talking about a five-year-old, remember? And to his credit, he did comprehend most parts of the movie, and is able to summarise portions of it when I reviewed him. It goes without saying that his understanding came after hitting Mommy with questions at the rate of one bazillion questions per minute.

Amongst his many questions was about the colour of the characters. I saw it as an opportunity to educate him about symbolism in movies and literature in general.

SON: Mommy, how come the Ring Wraiths are black?
MOMMY: Because they're evil, and in films and books, black is used to symbolise very bad things.
SON: (faraway look, meaning he's digesting the piece of information)
MOMMY: See, even the Orcs and Uruk-hai warriors are black. Because they're evil. And Gandalf, who's good, is white. LOTR shows us a lot of battles between good and evil, so it's like black versus white.
SON: (blinks) So black is bad and white is good...?
MOMMY: (self-assured smile) Yes, that's right!
SON: (frowns) Then how come Saruman is white?

Gandalf and Saruman (from theonering.net)

Ahh, to have a precocious child...!

I felt stupid watching this movie...

...because my mouth was hanging open the entire time! Just when I thought there weren't any good movies this year, the last few weeks of 2009 gave me something to remember. The last movie I watched with as much drooling intensity was The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I have no coherent thoughts to even begin a pseudo-movie review. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed myself immensely. So much so that halfway through the movie, I was already elbowing my husband and telling him I want to see it again. Hubby was very impressed with the CGI (he does CGIs, too, so it is obviously very hard to please him in that department). To call the animation "spectacular" might be a bit of an understatement. Stupendous would be more apt.

Film critics might have a thing or two to say about the storyline, that it's bordering on being patronisingly tree-hugging, but I'm not complaining. The movie's overall message was more powerful to me than what a good old disaster movie can muster. It's a bit predictable in some parts, but all things considered, it was engaging enough for me not to notice that it's about 2 1/2 hours long.

True to its press releases, Avatar does take you to a world beyond imagination. Just see it. I mean, if you've watched 2012 and you let this one slip by, someone ought to knock some sense into you ;)

A Question of Taste

I have to wonder these days if there's something wrong with my taste. A lot of people I know loved 2012, but as you have read here, I wasn't exactly thrilled about it.

Now, almost everyone is raving about the movie New Moon on their Facebook walls - either in eager, hip-writhing anticipation of watching, or in jubilation after being one of the first to catch it on-screen. Stephanie Meyer fans can rest easy, you have one less competition for seats here. I will not be queuing up for that movie anytime.

Don't get me wrong. I know the story of the Twilight series. In fact, I own the lot. So how do I explain owning the entire series when I'm not such a fan? Well, I finished the first book, and so I took it upon myself to go through all four books. After all, one must finish what one has started. Although some parts appealed to my long-forgotten teenage heart and reminded me how it felt like to have a really serious infatuation, I mostly suffered through the thick volumes. Especially New Moon. Bella is just too full of herself, and I am not about to apologise for that opinion.

I suppose the book version is okay, except that I am not the target market. Reading it did not feel any different from going through a copy of Goth-infused Sweet Valley High. It's too teenybopper. Which I guess would explain the brouhaha over Robert Pattison and his cohorts. (Imagine being hit by a car, trying to run away from frenzied teenagers - these rabidly "crush-ing" 16-year-olds will sooner drive RP to an untimely death, rather than succeed in having him kiss them)

Which leads me to another point. Why on God's green earth do people seem to think RP is perfect as Edward? So NOT! The book used glowing adjectives like beautiful, perfect, God-like, ethereal and all the wonderful superlatives you can come up with. Sadly, the screen version (I watched Twilight on DVD) falls oh-so-short of these heavenly attributes. RP looks like the classic vampire, which is a corpse. Awful acting, dead eyes. Oh dear, maybe that's why I thought he was perfect as Cedric Diggory. He died.

I expect an angry throng beating down my front door now, waiting to stone me to death. But, really, Brad Pitt is the closest thing to a perfect vampire if there ever was one. And Anne Rice will kick Stephanie Meyer's ass any day.

P.S. I am still contemplating whether I should post a question on my FB, as to why everyone is so excited about the gosh-darned movie. Then again, my Twilight fan-friends will probably try to talk me into watching it, and wax poetic over RP, so maybe it isn't such a wise thought...

2012: A Review

Note: This post contains some spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, please skip this review.

Cast: John Cusack – Jackson Curtis

Amanda Peet – Kate Curtis (Jackson’s ex-wife)

Danny Glover – US President Thomas Wilson

Thandie Newton – Laura Wilson (Presidential daughter)

Chiwetel Ejiofor – Dr. Adrian Helmsley

My husband and I were expecting a crowded theatre when we decided to watch last Saturday. A combination of CGI and disaster is a sure-fire crowd-drawer, after all. Sure enough, the only good seats left were for the 11:50pm showing, and so we snapped it up before someone else “out-booked” us.

Turns out it was a blessing in disguise, because at least our son was snoring happily by the time we snuck out for our movie date (otherwise, I would have been too guilty to leave him behind). Good thing the mall is a short five-minute walk from our place. We even had time for a toffee nut frapuccino before the movie started. But I digress.

First off, 2012 does not exactly have a stellar cast. Cusack will forever remind me of Some Kind of Wonderful, and I was half-expecting him to say, “My future looks good on you.” The point is, he should’ve stuck to being an 80s matinee idol, and I find him totally ineffective in his role. He was still John, not Jackson.

I was also a bit disappointed with how under-utilised some of the actors were. Glover is a good actor, but he seemed to have been reduced to nothing more than a simpering, old, fatalistic politician (not that there was anything he could’ve done about the disasters, anyway). But they could have at least made him a bit more inspiring or awesome. James Earl Jones managed to be even more dignified using just his voice in The Lion King.

Peet was the mother of two kids, and she acted like a terrified mother, which I guess is fine. Any mom would be panic-stricken with the degree of disaster all around. I was sitting in the moviehouse and Peet’s eyes found mirrors in mine. When you watch a movie that claims to be based on something that has a fraction of scientific basis behind it, of course you’d be scared. So maybe the way I felt while watching her was not out of her spectacular thespian abilities, but out of a real maternal fear I had. As for Newton, well, let’s just say she looked good behind the wheel of a TT Coupe in Mission Impossible 2. That’s about it.

The story was poorly written. For a two-and-a-half hour movie, it left a lot of blanks. If you happen to be one of those who have never heard of the ancient Mayan prophecy and the hypotheses (and hype) everyone is attaching to it, you’d probably be baffled why you are looking at such images of destruction. The writers never bothered to squeeze in a decent explanation on the theory, apart from mentioning them in passing. It is strange that the vehicle they chose to kind of explain the Mayan prophecy was a loony guy.

150 minutes of talk-time and you’d think they would have room for that. Maybe they should have edited out some of the useless melodrama. Case in point: a father (a minor character) wanted to say goodbye to his estranged son, and just as the guy picked up the phone and was within 2 seconds of responding, the earth swallowed him whole while his father listened in horror. Was it really that important? I also felt that ALL the sequences involving the cruise ship could have been edited out and it wouldn’t be an issue. I guess they just wanted a touch of Titanic, even if it’s non-essential.

Most of the action sequences felt too contrived. Outrunning a volcanic eruption? Indeed. The loony guy’s scene at the peak of Yellowstone was far too stretched. Escaping a violent earthquake on a limo, when the rest of the city was swallowed up, is simply unbelievable. Plus, being able to take off on a plane just when you run out of runway is too much good luck, especially when the entire planet is having a really bad day.

Personally, the only saving grace were the rare moments of comedic relief, the heartwrenching scenes with children, and those who could not be saved because they couldn’t afford a billion Euros for a seat on the Ark (even if one of them happens to be the ONE who discovered the cataclysmic truth). It shoves in your face just how materialistic the world is, and that the government (particularly the US, in this case) is just one big conspiracy.

Overall, 2012 is a disaster mega-fest that combines the horror of The Day After Tomorrow, Dante’s Peak and Poseidon that falls flat in terms of my expectations. You’ll be riveted by computer-generated tsunamis and earthquakes, but that’s about it. Your only motivations for seeing this movie would be, 1) you’ll be the only one who hasn’t seen it if you don’t, and 2) animation-heavy movies just don’t look as nice on your 42-inch flat screen.

The verdict: 2 out of 5 popcorns. To paraphrase the tagline: you were warned.

The moral lesson: real estate investments in Africa would be a very wise idea. Oh, and Bentleys are really, really cool cars.

Being Effie White

It's a shame to admit it, but I've only seen "Dreamgirls" today.

I'm not a huge fan of musicals. I don't hate them, but I don't like them that much, either. They don't exactly land on my priority list when I decide what movies to watch. Case in point: I have not seen a single installment in the "High School Musical" series. So sue me.

I have to admit that the recent tragedy in Jennifer Hudson's life was what lured me to watch "Dreamgirls". Does it sound too morbid? Not to me. I figured, hey, I keep seeing this girl on the news these days, I've seen her perform and be eliminated on "American Idol" (which, by the way, I still feel is an injustice) and I watched her accept her Oscar for this flick, so why not watch the movie?

Happily, I was not disappointed. Jennifer Hudson's big voice is already a given, but she breathed so much life into Effie White. Her character is fascinating.

We've all been an Effie White at some point in our lives.

In my case, when I look back on my past, I can recall those times when people took credit for what was the product of my hard work. Oh, I had lots of those. I remember moments when I've felt betrayed. They took the form and shape of "friends", co-workers, lovers, even family members. I also think I did my share of standing up to those who would love to see me fail, to lock horns and fight for my principles in the face of overwhelming bias and personal discrimination.

And even when you've faced several heartaches and heartbreaks, it doesn't make it any easier to deal with them. It still feels as shitty as the first time.

It's hard not to pity yourself during those moments. But, like Effie, it's up to us whether we choose to languish in the mire of depression, or use our big voices to be heard.

And WIN.

What was your Effie White moment?