Isn't the movies getting drearier?

Oh no, not another end of the world movie !. I was practically dragged to the cinema 'literally' at gunpoint..... well not really gunpoint per se but was dragged, begged and plead to follow my friends to the cinema to catch the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" starring Keanu Reeves. I supposed if it is not because of him I would not even give the movie a second consideration well maybe becuase of my friends persuasion also and the very fact that my presence there was free of charge and that I need not have to pay for my movie tickets.

As I sat through the movie, I was suddenly hit with the sudden realisation that the movies nowadays tends to be drearier and are about the end of the world. Hmmmmm now let me recapped, we have Armageddon (1998), Deep Impact (1998), The Day after Tomorrow (2004), War of the Worlds (2006) and I am Legend (2007) just to name a view. The genre of such movie seems to have caught the interest of many movie makers in Hollywood who had predicted the end of the world scenario in tandem with the scientific community predictions that the end of the world scenario may come sooner than many of us would thought it would be.

For those that have not watched the movie yet, The Day the Earth Stood Still is about yet another end of the world movie. For those that have not watched the movie yet and would not want to spoil the scene, I suggest that you stop reading now, but for if you want to save your money and spent it on something more worthwhile, then I suggest you carry reading and dont bother running to the cinema for it. Just wait for the release of the DVD and mind you do not even buy it, Just rent it so that after watching it in the comfort of your own home and time, you can return it back to the rental shop before the expiry of the rental period and swear to yourself never to rent such a movie again.

The movie is about how a group of aliens who had been on Earth for quite sometime now watching and observing us decided that humans are not worthwhile of continuing occupancy of Earth. Our continuing wars and constant parching of the earth made the aliens feel that it is time for the time of man to end and for earth to be cleansed. Fast forwading the movie an hour earlier nearing to the end, human civilisation was once agains spared, like any other disaster movie becaused of 'Love' where the aliend "Keanu Reeves' decided that human civilisation should be spared after falling in love with one of the heroin of the movie... so predictable. So as the story goes, human civilisation was yet again allowed to live on and flourished to do whaterver we are so good at doing. Things remain status quo.

The genre of this movie has a stark resemblance as with any other movies of its genre family. Earth is threatened, human civilisation was in the brink of extinction, human civilisation prevails and earth is spared and America emerges as the champions.... oops did I just say that. Though the storyline may be different however the movie is as predictable as the other movies that came before it.

And how has all the movies impacted us? Hmmmm I must say on a scale of 1 to 10 one being no implication and ten being an experience opener that changes our way of living, then I would say, that the scale is tipped closely to between 1 and 2. Apart from the entertainment value, I do not think that anyone that had caught the movie brought back anything meaningful from it. We still pollute the earth, we still go to war, we still scourge the earth in the name of industrialisation and modernisation. The only difference that the movies offers I would think that the scale of the disaster is getting worst thanks the computer animation.

If you felt utterly devastated after reading this, fret not as this year yet another move of the same genre will be in the cinema called 2010. The movie is again about the prediction of the end of the world based on the aryan's calendar. I cannot wait how the movie will turn out but one thing for certain it will revolve around the same plot, the same storyline and the same outcome. Earth will SURVIVE and human civilisation will prevail. Why Hollywood producers do not come out a movie where Earth is totally destroyed, human civilisation is wped out and the next prevailing species is monkey, i wonder. For god sake, get it done and over with. Least there is a closure.

Unexpected Hero !

Let us faced it... no matter how much you hate animation movies and the number of bad experiences that you had with past movies, watching Kung Fu Panda would change your perpective to a certain extend and relive your expectation of what an animation movie should be and could have been. Personally, after watching countless number of animation movies, I would surely place Kung Fu Panda as one of the movies that I would not mind watching again.

Critics would ask the timing that the movie is launched in the climax of the Beijing Olympic. There are some who said that the movie is a propaganda effort in promoting China and the game. But for me... who cares. I am not even bothered if the whole plot is being written by the Communist Party.

"There is no charge in awesomeness or attractiveness" that is the catch line that brought me to tears in laughter. The movie began with Po's dream of a battle that he fought with thousands of enemies. Po is a chubby panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his adoptive goose father. He dreams of becoming a kung fu master, however his dreams are impossibly hampered by his weight and clumsiness. Po's adoptive father had also hoped that he will take take over the noodle restaurant from him one day. The tortoise Master Oogway had a premonition that the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung , the former student of his own protégé, Red Panda Shifu, will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. Oogway then ordered a formal ceremony to choose the mighty Dragon Warrior who can defeat Tai Lung. Everyone assumes that one of the Furious Five — Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane— a quintet of supremely skilled martial artists trained by Shifu, will be chosen for this honor.

While the Five demonstrate their skills at the ceremony, Po finds himself late for the ceremony and locked outside the palace square. As a last-ditch attempt to get in, he makes a chair out of fireworks, which sends him flying into the center of the arena and landed right infront of the old master. Inspired by this sudden appearance, the old master designates Po the Dragon Warrior to everyone's shock. Despite Po's protests and Shifu's pleas to reconsider, Oogway stands by his decision.

Revolted at having Po under his tutelage, Shifu attempts to make him quit by berating and humiliating him. The Five similarly dismiss Po as a worthless interloper. Although he becomes aware of Shifu's true intentions and is deeply hurt by his heroes' disdain for him, Po endures their abuse willingly for the dream to become something more than the failure he thinks he is. Master Oogway, still certain that Po is the right choice, gives him sage advice to believe in himself.

Eventually, Po endears himself to the Five with his tenacity, good cooking, and corny sense of humor.
In the Valley of Peace, Oogway passes away, his final wish that Shifu train Po. However, upon learning of Tai Lung's return, and realizing that he has to face Tai Lung, Po attempts to flee. Shifu stops the panda and promises to train him if he is truly destined to be the Dragon Warrior. When Po confesses his deep self-loathing due to his obesity and his belief that he may never be a match for Tai Lung, Shifu is at a loss for a solution. After a long night of pondering, Shifu discovers the following morning that Po is capable of impressive physical feats when motivated by food. Realizing that he has found the right focus for the panda, Shifu leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons properly. Po excels in his training with food as a motivation and swiftly becomes a skilled combatant.
Shifu decides Po is ready to face the villian and gives him the sacred Dragon Scroll, which promises great power to the possessor. When Po opens it, he finds nothing but a blank reflective surface. Stricken with despair at the scroll's apparent worthlessness, Shifu orders his students to lead the villagers to safety while he stays to delay Tai Lung from pursuing them for as long as he can.

As Po helped the vi;;agers in the evacuation, he met his father who tries to cheer him up by telling him the secret ingredient of the family's noodle soup: nothing. He explained that things become special, because people believe them to be special. Realizing that this truth is the very point of the Dragon Scroll, Po rushes off to help Shifu. At this time, Tai Lung attacks Shifu for the dragon scroll but was angered when he realised that the Scroll is gone. But he before can kill his former mentor, Po arrives to challenge him. Although Tai Lung scoffs at Po's abilities, the ensuing fight proves Po to be a formidable opponent.

Po tries to explain the wisdom of the scroll to Tai Lung, but the frustrated Tai Lung tries to subdue Po with his nerve strikes. The attack proves useless on the panda, as his nerves are difficult to find due to his body fat. Emboldened, Po counter-attacks with an improvised combat style that takes advantage of his girth to absorb and deflect the force from Tai Lung's attacks back at him. In the end, Po uses the Wuxi Finger Hold on Tai Lung (which he claims to have "figured out" on his own), and destroys him with a devastating explosion that ripples through the valley.

The Five return to the valley to investigate the cause of the explosion and find a slightly dazed but triumphant Po. Impressed at Po's victory, Tigress leads the Five to acknowledge the panda as a Kung Fu master. The villagers follow suit and hail Po as a hero. Po remembers that his teacher is wounded, and rushes back to Shifu, who is now finally at peace. At first, he appears to be dead, but it turns out that he is only resting after such a trying battle.

Through out the movie it is filled with catchy lines and humour that will not fail to tickle the funny bones in your body. At the end of the day, the moral of the story is, .........................it pays to be fat. So why bother to keep fit then.

The one word of wisdom that struck me deep and still lingers deep in my thoughts after watching the movie was what Master Oogway said to Shifu when the latter was lamenting that it is impossible to train Po. He said "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is the the Future whilst today is a Gift that is why it is called the Present" How true such spoken word is. In life we are so worried with the past that it paralysed us from what we could do and we are so engrossed with the future that we have forgotten what the now and here presents to us.

Sex...... I Just Couldn't Get It

I have just completed the final episode of the 6th seasons of Sex & the City. The series marathon started about two weeks ago when I managed to land myself on the complete 6 season series box. I realised that I am like 4 years behind with the final episode aired in 2004 resulting in thousands of upscale urban women grieving. But I supposed that it is better late than never.

Finishing the final episode in the 6th season where Carrie Bradshaw reunite with Mr Big, finally for god sake, I am forced to wonder what is the whole episodes all about. Apart from the raunchy sex scenes that seems to dominate one episode after another, I couldn't seems to fathom what the phenomena behind the whole show is all about that makes woman rush back home from work ignoring their boyfriend calls and pleas to meet or their husband's needs for attention. I supposed the only two group of people that would rush back to catch the show are the ladies and the gays who would love to see the sculptured and good to be true models.

While I would normally enjoy anything that promises explicit sex scenes and female nudity, Sex and the City is too much of a girly talk to sit through just for a chance to see 52 year old Kim Cattrall who played Samantha Jones naked. I almost dropped of my seat when I realised how old she is. Damn..... all ladies out there must get hold of her plastic surgeon address. I can just imagine how many yards of skin has been removed to make it tight or plucky.

I was googling Kim Cattrall on the World Wide Web and was flabbergasted when I realised that she had ever acted in one of my all time favourite movie, Star Trek - The Undiscovered Country. Thank god that she was fully clothed in the movie. I am glad that she is not in anytime soon ever going to appear in any of Star Trek movies, I dare not imagine what will happen if both the two fan bases were to collide, the result itself will cause the cosmos to collapse.

However, despite my criticism about the movie, I must admit that there are heart warming and lightening moments in the series. The backbone of the show was the eternal human dilemmas the four friends faced: the fear of commitment versus a ticking biological clock; the difference between being cherished and being consumed; the tension between pleasure and sacrifice. The characters struggle with whether worldly success had any meaning without Mr. Right. Even as true love eluded them, they provided each other the support needed to keep going— celebrated each other's love interests and sexual exploits and consoled each other through serial humiliations, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, and loneliness.

The centuries old questions, Is it true that you're nobody until somebody loves you? Can women have sex like men? Can we be happy alone? seems central in the development of the whole plot. In pursuit of the answers the four characters changed sexual partners as often as I changed my underwear and disposed them off as easily as, hmmmm wait I was just about to say my underwear too, but I dont. Every relationship that the characters went through distant themselves from the emotional and economic securities and every failed relationship ended up the most convenient form of self-help, Shopping. A pair of shoes will soothed hurt feeling, broken heart could be mend by a handbag, powerlessness by a dress and the disappointment of love was replaced by the joy of Gucci. It is a society where everything is consumable.

But as we must, the characters in Sex and the City eventually had to deal with aging, babies that cannot be postponed any longer, illness, and death. For the characters to ring true, they had to face the questions that being human creates. And nothing else makes us more human than our decaying and aging bodies.

Albeit much that has been said, I am still as confused as I was with what the series is trying to portray, Heck it is not that I am saying that Sex and the City is a bad show, it was created by a gay guy for god sake, so how bad can it be?

The Movie that Was Not

I have been to many movies which I end sleeping through the show instead of making my money worth its while. The last time that I slept through a movie sound asleep not knowing what happened was watching Elektra. I only remembered waking up mid way through the show and seeing the Jennifer Garner doing the most mind bobbling mid-air leg spread which every one in the right sense would know that it is impossible. As soon as she completes the mid-air split, my brain quickly switches off to the end of the show. I supposed the only thing that I enjoyed about the movie was her red latex jumpsuit.... what's up with that dude. I can only imagine what she had to go through putting it on and taking it off. :-) Well at least if I am there watching her taking it off it will be a treat of a lifetime.

I was extremely disappointed watching Indiana Jones after all the hype about the show, I am forced to realised that Harrison Ford is just getting too old. I like many others have reached a movie buff conclusion that it is simply impossible to top an iconic, legendary film or series. The original can't be beat, and is next to impossible to match. Doesn't matter who directs, stars, the effects, etc - can't be done. Crystal Skull simply let us down on the simple stuff. I seriously, faithfully and eagerly wanted to love the movie - but I was disappointed.

George Lucas and the other old guy 'Steven Spielberg' (Sorry dude I forgot your name for an instance and had to google it" had said that they were all waiting for the "right" script to make another Indy film - that sounded good. But it appears that wasn't really true. I have to assume they all just decided the timing was "right" and it would be fun to get the old group together to do a flick - because the script was poor. The movie is more like an attempt at what an Indiana Jones adventure SHOULD look like - but with no real substance. A series of Indiana like dangerous situations and exploits strung together loosely with some attempts at humor thrown in. But no clear beginning to end plot. No disaster to avert, no one to rescue. Nothing in particular to root for... The actors seemed a bit uncomfortable to me - even Harrison Ford himself.

What I couldn't fathom was how they have decided to throw in Spiderman or George the Jungle scene into the show by having Shia Lebouf (who played Indy's unknown son) to rope from trees to trees with a herd of monkeys (least I think it is). And the best of all, by sheer unknown forces in the universe the monkeys all decided to help and knows who to pounce on. If only the world is that perfect.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed seeing Indy again, but my hope that I'd be wanting to go again didn't pan out. It's worth only one visit - and that just to see some Indiana Jones LIKE adventures - in a story that doesn't make much sense.

And what with the UFO thingy... think Georgie should stick SCI FI to Star Wars instead.