Saturday, June 29, 2013

of Movies Watched and Things Done With Family

Hello guys, I don't really have any interesting story to share. So I just thought I would write 1 or 2 lines about the movies I had watched since I came back from Japan. Maybe I should start with the movies I watched on my flight back to Singapore. I started with an Indonesian movie, Test Pack: You're My Baby. ANA is most probably the only airline I had been so far which has an Indonesian movie in their selection. I thought the movie wasn't amazing. Kinda disappointed that ANA didn't choose a more meaningful movie than this lightweight one. Very typical Indonesian, which means there's over the top acting, unnecessary plot, and they tried to cram way too much drama and comedy. I was very surprised that Acha Septriasa got a best actress award in Indonesian Film Festival for her role in this movie. It made me feel that the rest of the nominees did really badly which I feel is unlikely. I'm sure there would be some who had meatier role than what she had. Then I watched the Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen comedy, The Guilt Trip. I thought Barbra Streisand was great in it. Then the documentary, Herb and Dorothy, about Herbert and Dorothy Vogel and I'm glad that I watched this. It's fascinating and it's great to get to know the story of one of perhaps the most important art collectors there are. There's a sequel to this and I do hope I'll get the chance to watch it too.

So now, let me begin with the list of the movies I watched since I came back. I watched all of them alone (anti social mode on high), except for 2 movies.

Iron Man 3 - Love Robert Downey Jr. as always. Didn't think the movie was exceptionally great. Smelled something fishy about Ben Kingsley's character even before the revelation.

The Great Gatsby - Didn't like the story. I found it to be rather stupid and I know I shouldn't say that for such an important literature. I'm just too skeptical with love. I thought the pictures in the movie were beautiful though. I guess I love the cinematography.

Furious 6 - Watched it with la Gioia. I'm never a fan of the Fast & Furious movies. I'm not sure if I have watched 1 in its entirety. This one made me roll my eyes many times. The only reason I chose to watch this was because there's an Indonesian actor, Joe Taslim, playing one of the bad guy. I'm darn nationalistic. He actually had quite a few lines, so good for him.

The Hangover Part III - This one is not even funny. It's more like a drama with some crazy things in it. So many people died that it's quite a shocker when you're expecting just full blown funny craziness.

After Earth - I don't think Jaden Smith did well here. Maybe also because of the story. There's inconsistency. His character was eager to make his father proud and yet when he really had to step it up, he was quick to whimper and showed fear. At the very least, his character should pretend to be tougher. Will Smith was great. He didn't have to move much in most parts of the movie, but he still commanded such a presence on the screen.

Now You See Me - I love this movie though I would have loved it if the movie had deal with the magicians more than the policeman. At the centre of it all, this movie does not actually tell the story of the magicians. Love the haircut of Jesse Eisenberg and James Franco's lil brother wasn't bad too. I'm glad his character didn't really die :P

Man of Steel - Watched this with some people. Wow, such a heavy movie. Borderline boring. I wasn't interested in it actually, but it was more of a group consensus. I have to say that they really picked handsome men to be Superman. Unfortunately that doesn't mean the movie is going to do well. Henry Cavill is perhaps rather too hairy, but he's really handsome and he has such perfect teeth :P

World War Z - I actually kinda like the movie but there's one bit that makes it so hard for me to really love the movie. It's the part where Brad Pitt's character didn't die in the plane crash. Seriously?!? Didn't the plane split into half in a big explosion. When the only survivors are the 2 important characters, that's just so annoying. At the very least, they shouldn't make the crash to look that bad and have some other survivors. The movie did give me some thrill when I could figure out key points of the movie before they actually happened.

So that's that. Last week was of course the terrible haze week. Been living here for 13 years and I never felt the haze to be that bad. I actually wore a mask a few times!!! As much as it was chokingly bad, I did think of the people who live in the villages or towns near the burning plantations. How on earth do they survive it all? How do they breathe? It's actually pretty sad for them. So anyway one of my aunt and cousin were here last week. Met them exactly last Saturday. The cousin was interested in the architecture of the National Museum of Singapore and wanted to visit it. I wasn't interested at all. Thank God, it's free admission for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents. Otherwise it's S$10. The exhibition was about Singapore and I wasn't that interested. Then we went to Gardens by the Bay. I like taking people here, hmm perhaps because I can go in for free with my membership. I'm thinking if I should renew my membership. Anyway, there was the Flight of Fancy display. It wasn't that amazing. Sometime the flower dome can be so captivating, but sometime it can be so ordinary. Ordinary for me perhaps who've been there a few times. For my aunt and cousin, it was really awesome. They like it and I'm glad they did. I decided to just take my point and shoot camera and I realized how I cannot really work that camera at all. The results were not amazing. Here are some pictures. It seems that blogger now allows setting the size of the pictures, I'm not sure why that didn't happen earlier and they resized my pictures into smaller versions. So anyway, I'm putting the smaller versions as well to be consistent with the rest.

The blue balloon in the Cloud Forest Dome.


The red airplane in Flower Dome. Very cute.


The teddy bears pilots.


I love flower bed :)

So anyway, July is coming soon and that means Ramadhan is also coming soon and before you know it it's time for Lebaran in August when my parents are going to come. It's weird to talk about lebaran when people haven't even started fasting yet :P Mom actually texted to say that we should go to Legoland when they're here. I don't think we will because I don't want to brave the immigration queue which I foresee is going to be very long. I feel rather sad and guilty about turning her down. However they've done that to me thousands of times right, especially when I was little. So it's not a big deal? Anyway, hope all will be great when they're here. I told a few people about my parents coming. One particular one was so into herself that she didn't say oh it's great and so on. Sigh. Sometime I don't think people realize that I spend a lot of time in Singapore that I barely see my parents and when I do, people should just pause and realize what it really means for me and be glad about it. Well there will always be many self centered people out there. I'm gonna stop now. Hope you guys have marvelous days ahead! Buonanotte.

:) eKa @ 10:10:00 PM •