47 Ronin (2013)

[My last movie (and post, due to my lateness) for the year! Because I've decided not to spend 18 bucks on The Hobbit. Also, have I mentioned 'late'?]

*spoilers! But if you already know the original story, then there's no point to the warning, then.*

This film is based on the true Japanese story of 47 samurai left leaderless after their lord was forced to commit ritual suicide (seppuku - but according to our local subtitler it's sepupuku, which is Malay for 'my cousin') for assaulting a court official. The ronin (the term for samurais without masters) then enact revenge on the official (apparently he was a massive douche) to restore their lord's honour, and in turn, were obliged to commit seppuku themselves as they had been forbidden by the emperor to retaliate in the first place.

What could've been a film similar to 300 minus the fantastical elephants and Persian ninjas and, well, grounded in realism, is instead turned into a film with fantastical monks, sorcery and no ninjas. And with every Hollywood movie revolving around Asians or Asian culture, affirmative action is in place and you have the obligatory white guy in the film.

Surprisingly, given the (misleading) trailer and Keanu Reeves's top billing, he's technically only a minor character in the film, even though the focus is on him with all those unnecessary close-ups and he's there to counter the baddie's witchcraft subplot. That said, Keanu's presence unfortunately pulls focus from Oishi, the real main character of the film, played by Hiroyuki Sanada. He's the one driving the avenging, gathering all other ronin, and he was the one who busted Keanu out of Singaporethe Dutch settlements. Without him, Keanu would still be cage-fighting mutants for the rest of his days. Oishi is also the one who chases down and has the final fight with villain Lord Kira (rightfully so) and this, to the movie's credit, is not shared with Keanu even after he gains acceptance from the ronin.

With these liberties with the plot (romance is minor, which is good), I was quite pleased with the direction that the film took, even though the plot also seems to have forgotten that it was sorcery that led Lord Asano to his (wrongful) death in the first place (Kira has a witch in employ), and that the ronin are in fact justified in seeking revenge against Lord Kira. It's rather refreshing to watch a movie where the sole white guy doesn't get any special treatment at all, from being utterly mistreated and bullied in the beginning, till the end where there's no reprieve for him from seppuku.

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike Keanu; it's just that I'm rather sick of movies getting the white-guy treatment (or, nowadays, it's the yellow-guy treatment but that's already a rant) in order to pull audience numbers. I don't get why Hollywood thinks that films with Caucasians sell more than films with people of other races (*cough* The Last Airbender *cough*). I don't get why they can't just have 47 Ronin without Keanu (again, I don't dislike Keanu); I mean, they already have a practically-full Japanese cast; why not just make the whole thing in Japanese and market it as a foreign movie instead.

That said, I'm glad that the movie doesn't alternate/break into Japanese at all, which would be wrong (like in The Wolverine, where in one scene two Japanese people were speaking to each other in English.)

Maybe it's Christmas, but I'm not really hating this movie as much as everyone is. 'Tis the season, I guess.

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If I were a Sin...

...I think I'd be Gluttony. I mean, I'd be more like Gluttony than any of the other six Sins.

[Anger and Envy would tie at a close second.]

The past week or so, I've been stuffing my face, partly because of work stress and partly because it's Christmas and I don't feel festive and joyful enough if I don't stuff my face.

In continuing with the binge-eating, today I had two lunches.

And that was made possible by going to two restaurants.

[Three, if you count Nando's, that we walked out from. They were out of chips and wedges, and I really wanted my Nando's dubble-potato fix on account of Christmas lunch, when they first ran out of chips.]

We went to Dome for their fish and chips, and when it came, the fish was browner than KFC chicken. Since they couldn't exactly give us a new one (the waiter said it will still be as brown), and that same waiter said he only heard one order of fish and chips (instead of two, which is weird to us because he did bring over two sets of cutlery), we accepted the dish by virtue that it was already sent to us, and I shared it with my mom to tide her over till we could go to Xuan Xin for her lunch.

Meal Numero Duo was in Xuan Xin (fourth floor), and we ordered the salted fish fried rice (I can't recall the exact name, but it's the one that I order every single time because I quite love it) and shared it between us. We also ordered the siew mai (I don't know what this is in English) from the dim sum (ditto) menu, but presentation-wise it was awful. The whole thing looked overcooked, and the meat part looked like it kind-of merged with the wrapping which then melted or something. The only upside is that you could actually taste pork, because other siew mais I've tried tasted like fishball-type things.

To cap it all off, after we reached home, I napped. Thus ends my Saturday.

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Debenhams is having a sale!

And today there's an additional 10% off up-to-50% discounted items!! (if you bring the newspaper cutting)

Sadly, all the dresses I wanted were out of size-12s :( So I settled for the only dress that I don't look like a wrapped pork chop in, which is a size-10 incidentally, and is a bit on the short side.

I really wanted this dress:

The only sizes available are 10, 14 and 18. 10 is too tight, and 14 is visibly loose in the top half (but fits nicely 'round the bum).

Granted, even after discount it's not cheap (original price MYR400+), which still brings it up to MYR200-ish. I snapped the above picture from the Debenhams website, and over there it's only retailing at GBP36.00 (after discount!). Argh for bloody exchange rates!!

I should really cut back on the buffets and generally, eating.

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Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Less eggnog-chugging, more peace and goodwill to all mankind!

Plus, Debenhams has a sale tomorrow so I'm really, really excited!

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The Hobbit: A Chrome Experiment.

Tying in with the release of the second Hobbit movie (The Desolation of Smaug), Google has actually come up with what they call "A Chrome Experiment" where you can explore Middle Earth just from your Chrome browser.

I discovered it when I went on Google last week (yes, the post is old) and there it was, just an unassuming link on the Google page. Here it is: http://middle-earth.thehobbit.com/

Zooming into the worldmap, it gives you locations from the film (I believe; because I haven't seen it yet), and clicking on each location gives you more details including mini character bios and mini-games. The mini-games relate to whatever it is that happens on film (the Dol Guldur segment was bloody creepy because the smoke monster Necromancer always got me early in the game).

This is where Sherlock Smaug lives.

It's a pretty neat piece of marketing. The only thing is, it's a massive bitch to load if your internet connection is S-L-O-W. Like how mine is.

[Short post today. And yes, I've run out of things to blog about for the moment.]

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In Dreams - 2013 Edition.

[Fairly oldie, but goodie. And by 'goodie', I mean post-worthy. Though mostly oldie leftovers from posts half-finished.]

I have really weird, super-vivid dreams, sometimes, especially if I happen to stuff my face with a lot of food right before I go to sleep. I meant to keep a dream journal of sorts (and I kept record of some from '07/'08), but I've not had many interesting dreams recently. Hints about life, mayhaps?

Sigh.

Although last night, I did dream that this tenant in my building had a copy of my house and car keys, because I'd asked him to park my car once, and I'd given him the whole set and not just the car key.

In five minutes, he managed to make duplicates.

Aside from being daft that way, what's odd is that our parking garage isn't big enough to need a valet, and the fact that I never ever use a valet, because I don't trust other people with both my car and the keys.

And the dream's not finished yet. As he sauntered off to his usual spot near the front of the elevator (there are chairs and a table for the supervisor), I ran up to him and snatched the key copies back from him.

Then I woke up.

I know what you're thinking, and no, that dream doesn't fall under my usual definition of 'interesting', but yeah, I'll have to settle for that for now.

Another: I once dreamt that the two back teeth on the right side of my mouth were stuck together, top and bottom. They were so stuck, that when I tried to pry them open (not with a crowbar or anything like that, though), they fell out.

So I had four glued-together teeth, sitting in the palm of my hand. There ends anecdote.

Due to lack of blogging material, I'm going to pull some rabbits from the deep recesses of some very old draft posts and also my subconscious, and put them in type. Here goes, from mild to not-so-mild (some five years back, I had some pretty far-out but disturbing dreams):

1. When I was really, really small, I dreamt that I was in a restaurant (H&H! In Petaling Jaya, I think) and then I ran to the toilet, pulled my pants down, squatted, and literally peed myself awake.
2. Commuting. My mom and I were on holiday, and we had to switch buses and trains, while lugging our luggage. Also, there was a freeway in the middle of an ocean, and we went back and forth on that. Can't recall why.
3. Toilet Dreams: Take #2. I'd finished pooping, so I wiped, and attempted to flush, because the flush broke, and the toilet overflowed with chicken wing-shaped poop and I panicked because I knew my mom would kill me. 
4. A far more enjoyable second sequel to The Mummy compared to the actual crap that came out. It was set in Egypt, like it should, and it brought the whole gang back, including Ardeth Bay, and also Imhotep, except that he was an unwilling participant this time around (because in the first sequel, Anucksunamun dumped him and he sacrificed himself).
5. Labyrinth-ian hotel corridors, but not so much maze-like as it is honeycombed. It was a fairly confusing dream, and there was only one floor and one door.
6. Zombie apocalypse! Had it in 2012, which is the right year, if there is ever right year for apocalypses. (I got this from an unposted post about dreams in 2012). We're in this huge barn, high ceilings and all, and the Sheriff (don't ask, don't know) was poking around some wooden crates when one of them falls on her head. She dies, is zombified, and when she gets up, she has this massive gaping head-wound. She approaches us, and for some reason I had this water hose (the firefighting variety) and we turned it on and aimed it at her wound. In real-life logic, this wouldn't work, but hitting her head-wound kept her back. But after a while, the water started becoming clear again (it was red because of her blood), and using the hose didn't work anymore as she was slowly (but surely!) coming for us. We turned and ran, shotgun (don't know where that came from) in hand, and we were on a verandah, and the SWAT guys (also don't know) were swarming the place. And one of us, who looked a bit like Kenan Thompson back when he was fat, started freaking out and flailing about with a firearm of his own and they shot him. That got us to putting down our weapons and holding our hands up, but then I turned around and the sheriff was right behind me and...

Luckily by then, I woke up.

If this post isn't too TL;DR for you, you may also like this, this and (a pretty short) this from '07 and '08.

Happy Throwback Friday!

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So Very British Problems.

[Twice in one night! Wooo!]

Found this gem of a Twitter user from Tom Hiddleston's page some time ago. I'm experiencing an onset of Anglophilia recently, which is rather evident from the fact that I was only in England for a cumulative 24 hours (including sleeping) but still thought that London was the highlight of my entire trip.

[I saw so many British things I was able to identify! As in, recognise pop culture things and know whatever it is they are.]

Coupled with my exposure to British film, TV and books (plus my current craze with English actors) growing up, London is certainly a place I'd like to visit again, albeit for far more hours this time around.

So without further ado, since I have/had a lot of time on my hands tonight (eagle-eyes will spot that I went all the way back to January 2013 for tweets), here are some very-British problems that I can identify with:

Entering into mild panic if unable to pick the correct amount of change from your hand within three seconds
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) November 12, 2013

And then people in the back start tsk-ing and tapping their toes...

Saying hello to a friend in the supermarket, then creeping around like a burglar to avoid seeing them again
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) November 8, 2013

This is unfortunately me. I'm so awkward around people, I skip the 'hello' and jump right to 'creeping'.

Pretending to write down a number on an imaginary pad with an imaginary pen when you're on the phone and have neither
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) October 28, 2013

This is slightly a problem; I either find the pen or I find the paper. Never both.

Watching with quiet sorrow as you receive a different haircut to the one you requested
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) October 9, 2013

I am quiet because I don't do righteous indignation well.

Noticing somebody smiling at you and wondering what on earth must be wrong with your face
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) June 26, 2013

Exactly! And they're always smiling at someone behind me.

The terror of these words: "And then later I'll ask everyone to stand up and present their ideas to the room"
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) January 15, 2013

To the last, I don't have to be standing to be terrified.

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Ode to my (old) sunglassies.

[Today's post is brought to you by 2008. Yes, it's that behind schedule. It's also a departure from my usual wordy ones, as there are photo-bombs. And by 'photo-bomb', I mean, bombing this post with photos, and not that other extremely fun thing.]

When I was in Melbourne, I lost my China-bought sunglasses (the damndest thing is that I still don't know how I lost them). I was thinking of only buying a new pair when I returned to Malaysia (due to the currency exchange), but with that late autumn came super-bright sunshine, and my eyes really couldn't take it any more.

[And before you think it, no, it wasn't an excuse to buy me a pair of sunnies from Aussies.]

So I traipsed down to Chadstone (which, in itself, is an achievement on its own because I rarely venture far from where I lived), and I bought myself a pair of Tommy Hilfiger sunglasses.

Yes, that's right. Tommy. Fricken'. Hilfiger.

And the best part was, it had a 30% discount!! Usually I only ever get 10% discounts (because the higher-discounted items all looked shitty to me). Bought them for AUD70, with a rate of 2.5. Not too shabby, eh?

Anyway, these pictures were taken in 2008, and please bear with my pathetic attempts at artsy shots:

If you're wondering what's net 200g, it's Red Rock Deli's Sweet Thai Chili chips. 

Spot the UHU! On the left (also yellow) is PVA glue. Neil Buchanan used it all the time.

Devondale UHT milk. Bought them in packs of six. 

Yes, I'm relatively messy. Being a working adult hasn't changed things one bit.

Last one!

The sad thing is, these sunnies are currently out of commission. I had them hooked onto my collar when getting off the bus on our Italy trip, and they fell off and broke :(

So we officially got to sunnie-hunting in Italy, because the sun was rather bright at the time and I figured, since bloody everyone was splurging on branded goods, why not I? And for far more practical reasons than theirs, too, because everyone else was trying to out-buy each other.

Long story short, we had a sojourn to Switzerland when I spotted sunglasses from Karl Lagerfeld so I totesboughtthemtheend. For the record, the Lagerfeld sunnies was the only branded item I bought on that trip.

My sunnies are in the car and my camera isn't, so I'll post photos of them laterz.

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