Skyfall (2012)

I'm not a James Bond fan, but I heard glowing reviews (Ebert's wasn't out yet at the time) and decided to catch it. And, on opening day even! Know why?

Annual leave, baby!

*overdue and kinda spoilerrific*

The plot is generally a departure from the usual Bond formula, as in there's no more world domination this time around. Rather, Bond's superior, M, faces an enemy from the past that's returned to haunt (and attack) her on a large scale, and of course, it's up to Bond to save the day.

I've not seen any of the Daniel Craig Bond movies (my last was Die Another Day), so I thought they'd done away with the stylized opening titles in favour of realism and more grit. I was pretty much blown away by the music videoopening titles. Usually the opening theme scenes reflect what's to come, but maybe I missed spotting that out during the movie.

Compared to most Bond movies where the focus is on Bond, women and gadgets, this one (thankfully) doesn't really focus that much on the women (which I guess adds glamour to espionage, but doesn't really serve much apart from eye candy). The only girl (Judi Dench is a woman) I could stand was Berenice Marlohe (who gets shot offscreen too soon); Naomie Harris doesn't seem to be able to walk properly, and this annoyed the stuffing out of me whenever she has a scene where she's not sitting or running or being stationary (and she has quite a bit of those). Forgive me for being nitpicky on something so minor, but she does have quite a few scenes of her own.

On the gadget side, things are still minimal and not as full-blown technological as the Brosnan Bond films, though I laughed when the new Q (played by Ben Whishaw) takes a dig at good ol' exploding pens.

["We don't really do those anymore."]

Though there's plenty of high-octane action to keep things going, the pacing of the story is a bit slow, as first we had to find out who and where the guy at the beginning was, then we had to find out who he was working for, then we had to find a person who could snitch the whereabouts of that first dude's employer.

*deep breath*

My point is, we don't even see or find out who the main villain is till the middle of the film. And after a brief exposition and a fairly-long escape attempt, we progress to the third act where you have a Scottish stand-off and the villain dies kind-of lamely.

[Yes, the movie is that long.]

Which is a shame, really, because the movie could do with more Javier Bardem. One of the things that make me love a movie is seeing an actor having a ton of fun with his onscreen character, and that kind of fun is usually infectious. Pulling off another bad hair day as the psychotic Raoul Silva, Bardem steals every scene he's in, though Revenge is a dish most often served.

I really don't mind the focus on development and backstory on the good guys (especially M), but you can't have an entertaining villain on film and then give him less than 50% of screen-time.

And on an EDITED final note: Skyfall itself is actually rather disappointing. You'd think that with a term like Skyfall it'd at least be a weapon of mass destruction, but no.

Overall, it's a good, entertaining film, but I'm still not seeing the big deal about it, nor do I feel that Dench deserves an(other) Oscar for Skyfall, despite her commendable turn as the cool and ruthless M, who's feeling the repercussions from her past actions.

Oh well, at least she's in this one for longer than 10 minutes.

[FYI, Dench won a Supporting Actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love.]

Read More......

Running and piling?

Just saw the trailer for World War Z, and for a brief excited moment I thought it wasn't pushed back at all, and would opening this year as planned.

[It's not.]

Considering this is a trailer for a zombie movie, there aren't really any close-ups of the zombies; only tons and tons of running, piling, most-likely-rabid people.

The movie looks good enough, though. Running zombies are just updated versions of the old, but for me, the walking, shambling ones are easier to outrun.

Anyway, below is the embedded vid. Enjoy!



Since it's based on a book, I guess I've something else to check out at the bookstore soon.

Read More......

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

I watched this movie in July. On opening weekend.

I think I delayed on this because, though I enjoyed it, it was rather 'meh' and I couldn't really get my thoughts together (which was kinda close to none). Admittedly, it wasn't as 'meh' as Avatar, but even I could summon words to describe how 'meh' I felt about Avatar at the time.

[Nowadays, 'meh' makes me speechless.]

*not too many spoilers*

This film is basically a biography of Abraham Lincoln, former US president, except it posits that important events in Lincoln's life were influenced by vampires.

Which in turn, led to cool axe-swinging, but I digress.

The main reason why I went to see this movie was because of Timur Bekmambetov, the guy who directed the awesome Day Watch (and the not-that-awesome Wanted), and you can see his chaotic style of action . And by 'chaotic', I don't mean it's messy or anything; it just brings about a sense of helter-skelter that's gorgeous to look at.

Watch Day Watch, and you'll see what I mean.

The pacing in the first half is relatively slow, even though it had the horse scene (which didn't do much for it), but I guess action buffs wouldn't be disappointed. The only action bit I enjoyed was the final scenes on top of the train, which had Lincoln fighting hordes of vampires back-to-back with his best friend, and only using an axe between the both of them.

[It was thrilling.]

Despite the pacing, involving vampires did make everything a lot more interesting. Who would've thought the Civil War was about vampires holding the Confederate South? That the slave trade was thriving because vampires needed food? Who'da thunk?

The ending was surprisingly poignant. Lincoln's vampire mentor offers him immortality, telling him that the both of them could go through history and kill vampires and make the world safer for it. Lincoln refuses the offer, saying that a man's actions instead make him immortal, and leaves for that fateful evening at the theatre.

It shows us that even in historical fiction, you can't change history.

Read More......

Feeling a bit more euphoric than usual...

But I'm still out of words, so I still can't finish posts that I've started. Sigh.

I'm sorry that the majority of my posts nowadays seem to revolve around how down in the dumps I am, and how I'm unable to finish my posts, bla bla freakin' bla.

Well, I'm on leave tomorrow, I have a semi-long weekend, and I am feeling the uplift (for the record, I don't know whether that's a proper word), so Imma try to get one or two posts out by this weekend.

Happy Thursday Night, y'all!

Read More......

'Awesome'...

...is usually used in a positive context, e.g.,

"Despite the bitchin', The Avengers is probably one of the most awesome(st) movies of all time."

However, the root word for 'awesome' is 'awe', and with that, well, just because you feel awed at something, doesn't necessarily mean that that something is a good thing.

[You get my thing?]

Case in point: your house is dangerously close to being overrun by zombies.

Since we're approaching December 2012, I do apologise for the reminder on the apocalypse, but I've been playing Plants and Zombies for a while now, and am loving every minute of it.

Back to the English lesson, nobody in their right mind (ha!) would use 'awesome' to describe this situation. Not even if you were a zombie, because then you'd be stuck outside with your fellow undead and, on the presumption that the human is home alone, there's only one brain to be had by all and sundry.

But if we use 'awesome' to describe the zombies en masse (there's really a lot of them outside your house), to describe their formidable numbers... we wouldn't be wrong.

That's the downside of 'awesome'. Size matters.

Now, the best (or, rather, awesome) thing about this word is that it can also describe a host of other things about our situation:

...like how your door's made of awesomely-strong oak, thus currently stagnating any zombie progress into your humble abode.

...the awesome house your awesome door is attached to; your house hasn't caved in yet despite all (if not most) of the undead within a 50-mile radius banging on your house walls.

[Or goodness knows what else it is they're doing to your house walls.]

...the fact that the apocalypse is already upon us and the Internet still works, making it an awesomely useless luxury.

...and finally, like you, dear awesome reader, who, in this hypothetical end-of-the-world situation, is still looking at this post.

[Thank you very much!]

Though I must say, I am pretty awesome myself for putting out a post at this time, what with all the zombies roaming about.


Last overuse of the word, I promise.

Read More......

Just finished the A Memory Of Light prologue.

And wow.

Simply. Wow.

In my earlier post about the titbits released, I mentioned that there was nothing much to shout about.

But the full prologue, a super-duper long one divided into many parts (Talmanes's POV alone has four-five parts, I think), just blew me away.

Detouring a bit, I'm re-reading Towers of Midnight and The Gathering Storm for comparison's sake, because I found Towers oddly inconsistent in writing style, which distracted me from the main story at hand. Maybe I'm just being anal about this.

[And yes, 'anal' can be worked into regular conversation without it being dirty.]

Despite the filleropening on Jarid Sarand, the prologue jumps straight into the events that ended the last book (Towers). It's very, very fast-paced, moving from Talmanes trying to halt the Trolloc invasion of Andor, to Slayer (a character I'm very interested in) having a meeting in a town within the Blight. We also get to see the Forsaken (always interesting stuff), and plus, somebody got bloody promoted!!

I'll just leave it at that; my jaw dropped.

And the flow is much better, this time around. Granted, things move a lot quicker than they normally would, but reading this feels like Jordan again. Well done, Brandon Sanderson.

Very well done.

Although I'm kinda not digging you at the moment, because you made Talmanes die really slowly. And you're giving me hope that he will survive the entire thing, because even Masema had a death that was better-written than this.

[I wanna see Talmanes laugh more!]

Cannot flippin' wait for January 8, 2013. Hope the majority of us are not part of the undead by then.

Read More......

I feel quite alone sometimes.

Sure, I still have my mom.

But I feel very isolated, very far removed from other non-familial people occasionally.

Like now, fr'instance.

I mean, okay, I may be a bit anti-social, but not to the extent where I blatantly insult them or pointedly ignore them or anything like that. I think I'm still generally nice to peoples, and I make it a point to scrunch my face upsmile whenever eye contact's made.

I don't exactly know what I'm doing wrong, apart from being a bit introverted. It's not that I don't talk to people.

And sometimes when people walk by my place (they're not looking for me, by the way) I do stare at my laptop, but I've seen other people do it. It's called FOCUSSING ON WORK.

If from the upper corners of my eyes I see them look down at me, then I'll look up and smile back. Half the time when I do initiate the look up, they're not looking back at me either, so I can't see what the big deal is.

Sigh. Off-topic, I'm on leave today and I had to spend two hours (at home) staring at payroll, and just this evening, another two hours in office to take an overseas call.

This week really could be better :S

Read More......