At World's End
Monday, May 28, 2007
Usually I would have to think of a humourous title for my post which matches it or at least attempt to capture its main gist, but I suppose in this case, lame movie titles perhaps more than fulfill the requirements.
As an unspoken rule, I usually try to avoid watching painfully lousy flops, especially on the big screen, but since I promised Aless (and then later Ben) to accompany them on this excruciating experience and since I usually uphold my word, I spent both money and time on this horrifying sequel to the first two Pirates of the Carribean flicks. Not that the money thing was a big deal, even though I am in a great need to tighten my belt, considering my current "unemployed" status. In fact, the time thing was a more crucial factor to consider.
As I was watching
At World's End, I was trying to decide which was worse: watching Will Ferrell in
Blades of Glory skate about in a skintight leotard and make typical American jokes in his usual screwball comedy offering or watching Johnny Depp exhaust his "savvy-licious" pirate jokes complete with unsatisfactory acting performances from the rest of the cast in sharp juxtaposition to the superb animation and set, which altogether failed to impress? Needless to say, the vote was unanimous for Ferrell's standup comedy performances, which I fondly remember in
The Producers. That I could even contemplate watching
Blades of Glory is probably the first of my attempts to break the ice in my love-hate relationship with Hollywood.
Obviously I have a lot of comments on the poor fare
At World's End was offering for its fans, not that I am one, although I am a mediocre fan of Depp and I did enjoy the first film. Despite the brilliant computer graphics (no doubt already honed and perfected during the first two films) and the supposedly star-studded cast (complete with eye candy and even a competent actor like Depp), the only (and main) thing missing from the film was plot. Read: A lack of plot for Hollywood films equals to suicide, or rather homicide for their viewers hur hur.
As a rule, I try to avoid checking my phone while in the movie-watching process, since it is no doubt distracting and I'm usually too engrossed in the film anyway to bother. Yet, this time round, I was furiously checking my phone for both the time and messages/calls while secretly hoping for a tiny distraction from the eyesore of a film. In fact, I was even tempted (more than once mind you) to walk out of the theatre and a fully packed one at that. Of course, I couldn't even believe (while watching) that such a flop could stretch to almost three hours. Usually flops were short and could at least generate a few laughs, even if they had no meaning or were not worthy of a second viewing.
What was worse was that people were fighting for a seat to watch such a flop e.g. they probably had over 20 screenings of this film on the same day and 99% full or something. Of course, nothing can contend with my disgust for having sat through 3 hours of such nonsense, by which condition I now vaguely resemble these people. Nothing beats the association with people who sat through those agonising 3 hours and came out of it thinking the movie was "cool". Let me remind you again that I was not one of them.
To give Aless some credit, she was cringing during the entire movie, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Now now, I'm not being sarcastic. Her contact lenses were giving her trouble in the left eye, which made her cringe continuously even before the movie had started. Of course, the fact that the movie failed to impress gave her the excuse to go on frequent toilet trips.
At the end, I was just waiting for the credits to start rolling, at which, needless to say, I jumped out of my seat and headed straight for the exit. Actually I was also hoping against hope that, for the sakes of their fans and their cast and crew, there won't be any hints of any more sequels, not that I would actually watch it, (in fact, come to think of it, I don't think I've even watched the second film) just that I would prefer not to be bombarded by the rabid publicity (TV, radio, posters, merchandise) or the paranoia of crazy fans fighting to watch it in the first weekend.
If I could offer some plausibly sound advice to the filmmakers of the Pirates movies, it would be this:
"At World's End" is an ominously significant title. Kindly let it remain as that.
3:28 pm
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Nerdy Pursuits
Sunday, May 20, 2007
This week was all about nerdy pursuits, or bookish fantasies to be exact.
On Monday, I went down to school to collect some stuff and passed by the co-op (er it's the NUS bookshop, if you didn't already know). But of course, me being me, I didn't exactly just pass by, I went right in and stopped short at a big (well maybe it wasn't so big after all on hindsight) red sign and felt arrested by the word "sale" in black bold letters.
Hur hur. So that left me scurrying around the cramped area, quickly feasting on what kind of books were on sale. And mind you, these books were old new, new no doubt in terms of having not been used before, and old meaning the pages were definitely yellowed, like those books you put in the sun for too long and you realise at the end of some time that they have acquired a nasty old-ish yellow look. Nevertheless that didn't stop me. I mean, the books were like dirt cheap, and by that I mean the prices ranged from 1 buck to perhaps 10 bucks, but the average was around 3 to 5 bucks.
Oh the pain of not having a truck to hoard all of them and carry them safely back into my own nice brown bookshelves!
Anyway I stood there for what seemed like hours (er which I probably did and wouldn't be surprised LOL), no doubt attracting stares from the cashier at the comics counter adjacent to my precious stash of old new books. And finally, I emerged, rather triumphantly if I may add, with 4 nice fat books (3 sci-fi fiction and 1 non-fiction) totalling a *gasp* grand total of 15 bucks. I never thought I would be this good at saving money.
(Obviously, if you've managed to read until here and haven't already realised yet, I'm telling you this so you can have a go charging at those books as well)
Of course, I won't be able to keep this enthusiasm to myself for long, I mean, I had to resist the urge to like call a million other people whom I thought might be interested in the sci-fi books that I was picking up. Until I realised that maybe they would be too busy doing more important things like having jobs and studying than getting excited about buying books on sale.
So this is what happened on Friday, when I revisited the co-op: I nudged Mandy in the direction of the big red "sale" sign and of course, needless to say, she went bonkers. An example would be like: "Oh my God!" to the first book and then the addiction began, which proceeded with the obsessive flipping of every single book in the stash. And after that one round of flipping, there was a second and a third and a... well you get the gist right, I mean, do I have to go on spelling the numbers? Ok and after all that flipping, there was of course the selection. And by selection, I mean selecting the books that we would actually buy from a stack of books that we thought we could potentially buy LOL.
Nerdy pursuits generally are not just expensive, they are also physical hard labour you know. After this round of selection, there is what I call the "finer selection", in which we pick the nicest, most decent-looking paperback from the whole stack of nearly identical books bearing the same title. After this is the purchasing bit but of course, you never know when nerdy pursuits can become circular in nature. After all, just waiting for your friend to finish choosing can be a great tendency for your roving eyes to wander over to another book or books.
And so, Mandy managed to procure 3 fiction novels for a mere 11 bucks. She practically looked like she had won a prize or something.
Now we have come to the last of the nerdy pursuits: how else to end the week but with storewide discounts at a major leading bookstore like Kinokuniya? Yup, needless to say, I went in sniffing around the books. Oh for the love of their new-ish scent! Each time I go in there during a sale, I will emerge with a few books at hand and another few thousand to go on my mental list of "wanted books," with of course the frustration at my poor little purse not only because it was already bleeding red from the purchase, but more so because there just wasn't enough for "that other special book I've always wanted to get" (which of course is neverending, if you get the drift).
Nonetheless, I surfaced from the numerous books and rows of bookshelves victorious (again! Ah-ha!), having gotten 5 various books for 50 bucks. Even though it burnt a hole in my pocket, I was never more ready to part with my money. Nope, I'm not a fool, not even close. Books can't feed me physically but at least it can feed my soul.
Yes, I am proud of my bookish fantasies. Every time I saved some, albeit sometimes puny, amount of money, I would feel on top of the world, sometimes like I had conquered the world even, just a little short of punching my fist in the air and shouting "YES!!" In fact, I would even venture to boast about my purchases, like others do about discounts on clothes, except probably not everybody will understand this obsession when it comes to books. Like: "you mean that boring little rectangular thing with 500 odd pages that just goes on and on without any hints of pictures in them?" *Nods fervently with conviction*
My reply to such things?
"I would like to devour them as fast as I can so there will be time for other books."
11:22 pm
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Celebrity who?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Stole this from
Sexy's blog hur hur (obviously
not her photo
duh)
10:43 pm
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In which she plans to exorcise the evil green phlegm baddies...
Thursday, May 10, 2007
No wonder people hate being sick. Not only does your entire immune system break down, your usual rational stable mind disintegrates as well to give way to unwanted depressed emotions. It's even worse than PMS. Or is PMS worse?
The thing is, you'll feel extremely vulnerable and susceptible to attacks (in any forms) on yourself. Even your ego takes a step back and let your pessimistic emotions take over, in which you wallow in self-pity and self-disgust. As if your inability to exert yourself physically isn't derogatory enough, your emotions have to become unstable enough to affect everyone around you. At least PMS only affects the latter, unless of course you have menstrual cramps.
Ugh. I hate falling sick. Especially when I'm coughing my lungs and wheezing so badly I think I can understand at least half of what asthmatic patients feel when they can't get to sleep because they keep coughing the whole night. Sometimes it gets so bad i.e. coughing fit that I feel like tearing my chest or throat open and exorcise all the evil green phlegm baddies.
Of course then I realise that I only have myself to blame for not taking proper care of my body and letting them attack my immune system. But still. I hope they die a terrible death and never hope to multiply and attach themselves parasitically to my trachea again. Sore throats are the worst because they affect my speech, or worse, the fact that I'm unable to churn tunes at all.
Ok so here's the plan.
Although I try my best to spit my way (literally) out of this mess, I can't help noticing that their regenerative powers allow them to reproduce as quickly (or even more quickly) than my expulsion of their predecessors. Grrr.. remember this cartoon series we used to watch when we were younger? (I think it was called "Inside your Body" or something) The evil green phlegm baddies were depicted as short ugly fat green gnomes with menacing smiles on their faces carrying a devilish weapon, while the white blood cells were portrayed as tall muscular white soldiers in uniforms armed with weapons to fight back. The outcome of the battle depended on the population on each side, although I must say the number of green baddies was neverending. Lol. I used to love that cartoon when I was younger.
Oh well, I still have the external anti-bodies from medicine heh, except I can't remember what they looked like in the cartoon. Probably similar to the white blood cells ha. So you guys, please help me cheer the white guys on ya?
9:51 pm
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Graduate loh!
Sunday, May 06, 2007
I fear for times like these - not knowing what to do with your life, where life is going to take you... decisions, decisions and more decisions. It was like this during the window between secondary school and junior college. It was also like this in the long corridor between junior college and university. And as you get older, the decisions you make will indefinitely affect you for the rest of your life. Like er, "what are you going to do?"
And even though I bravely display my status at the top of the post, I still can't believe it's over already. In fact, I still answer "soon la" to the question "have you graduated already?" I mean, okay technically convocation is two months away but exams are over already so officially but unofficially I've graduated (yikes, feels so weird to type it in). I know the rest of my peers are thinking: "yay, graduate loh!" so they probably think it's nonsensical mourning for the end of student life.
It's probably more of a love-hate relationship for me. I grumble (or rather, grumble-d, sheesh this is damn weird) so much about studying but actually I like learning new things all the time. But then I also dislike being forced to learn certain things I'm not interested in and then I complain about it. Afterwhich I start to realise that I like procrastinating about it, so then I love hating it and at the same time, I hate loving it and subjecting myself to it all over again.
And when I get out of it and am able to look at it from a critical (hopefully objective) point of view, I realise that I'm addicted to the whole love-hate relationship thing with studying, which is highly disturbing of course. Like a workaholic who doesn't know he is one until he actually retires and catches himself attracted to the same thing he was repelled by years ago.
I feel exactly like that.
After my last paper, I practically stopped all reading for a few days, only to find myself reading all sorts of signs and posters and analytically evaluating them for the sake of evaluating them. Not that I don't already do that on a daily basis, just that I've only started to realise how obsessed I am with reading. And everytime I watch a film/drama/visual images out of leisure, I find myself using technical terms to describe them without knowing I do, until of course people who don't understand me ask.
So now my problem is that, my brain is still not used to slacking around so it's not learning how to rest. I still haven't learnt to sleep peacefully without thinking of random unrelated things despite it being
after the exams. But then I also fear that it will turn to mush pretty soon (which it probably will if I continue existing in limbo), so I get worried but then I don't do anything about it so I end up making myself more worried about not doing anything.
And so I concluded that I'm definitely psychotic in these aspects. Maybe I should learn not to think so much and be easily satisfied with my lot, so please you guys, install some bimbo-ness into me sometimes. Come to think of it, it's probably a good lifesaving skill or something hur hur.
11:24 pm
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