You are browsing the archive for 2011 June.

← Previous Entries
Next Entries →

China DVD Movie Blitz: Part II

June 12, 2011 in Game Reviews, Reviews

Yes, there is a Part II.  For Part I, click here.

Here are the rest of the DVD movies I acquired in a recent trip to China.

Stone (2010)

Even though I didn’t know what it was about, I really wanted to watch this one when it came out at the cinemas, but I’m glad now that I caught it on DVD instead.

I thought it was going to be a smart, slick thriller, but Stone is essentially a character-driven drama about sexual politics featuring three sensational actors: Edward Norton, Robert De Niro and Milla Jovovich.

It’s a stylish film, an interesting film in many respects, but not exactly what I was expecting or hoping for.

3.25 stars out of 5

I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009)

It seems like the world still isn’t ready for a rom-com about a homosexual couple, because I had never heard of I Love You, Phillip Morris despite the fact that it features two big stars in Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor.

To be fair, apart from the intentionally full on gay jokes, Phillip Morris is not all that different from some of the other slightly farcical, somewhat strange/awkward (The Cable Guy comes to mind) comedies out there.

I did find certain parts quite funny, but there wasn’t anything apart from the unusual premise that made this film stand out.  And it did get a little tedious towards the end.

3 stars out of 5

 

Gulliver’s Travels (2010)

I’ve loved the story since I was a kid, and so I was kind of excited about the Jack Black version, even though to me Black is a bit of a hit and miss comedian.

Unfortunately, Gulliver’s Travels was pretty much all miss.  It had a great cast, including Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet and Billy Connolly, but the jokes were mostly infantile and unfunny.  A fair attempt at a modern retelling with updated pop culture references but even as a children’s film it missed the mark.

2 stars out of 5

 

Season of the Witch (2011)

 

If this film made it to the cinemas then it must have been pulled off pretty quickly, because even though I saw ‘coming soon’ posters months ago, I don’t ever recall seeing the film screening at cinemas.

After watching it, I can kind of understand why this film was a flop (or went straight to DVD).  On the other hand, there are far worse films making it to the cinemas.

This was a Middle-Ages fantasy film (which I usually like) with Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman as two warriors tasked with escorting a suspected witch to a monastery.  It started off okay but the middle section was a bit of a bore and the final part, as usual, fell apart.  A shame, because as uninspiring as it was, I thought there was some potential.

2 stars out of 5

 

And yes, there will be a Part III, though I haven’t watched them yet.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

Misty Trees by Nine Streams

June 11, 2011 in Best Of, China, Travel, Uncategorized

‘What the heck?’ I hear you say.

That’s what I said at first too.  Jiu Xi Yan Shu (direct translation: Misty Trees by Nine Streams) is one of the most beautiful places to visit in Hangzhou, but apparently not a lot of tourists know about it — or so we were told by our taxi driver.

To be honest, there’s not a lot there to do, but the sight of the thick trees surrounding a misty lake is a marvellous sight.  Reminded me of Crouching Tiger and the various Chinese martial arts films that followed it.  Definitely worth dropping by and taking a few snaps if you have a few minutes to spare.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.


Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

Movie Review: Super 8 (2011)

June 11, 2011 in Movie Reviews, Reviews

I was on a high after last week’s X-Men: First Class so I decided to check out the much-anticipated but somewhat mysterious Super 8, written and directed by JJ Abrams (Star Trek, Cloverfield and the TV shows Lost and Fringe) and produced by Steven Spielberg (no explanation necessary).

If I could sum up the film in one word it would be ‘Wow’.  The trailers of Super 8 show relatively little compared to the spoil-all trailers we tend to get these days, and thank goodness for that.  This is really a film where you should go in with as little knowledge as possible.

So I won’t say much about the plot except that it’s about a bunch of kids making a movie in 1979.  It’s a throwback (and I believe has been referred to as a ‘homage’) to those amazing Spielberg films of the 80s, such as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I just loved those films when I was growing up and it’s obvious from Super 8 that Abrams did too.  In the MTV age, they just don’t make movies like this anymore, and it’s a tremendous accomplishment to even attempt to recreate the nostalgia.

Like Spielberg before him, Abrams has created a marvellous motion picture experience with a clever premise, likable, relatable characters, thrilling action, top-notch special effects, awe-inspiring, memorable images, plenty of heart — and most of all — masterful storytelling.  I was hooked from the very first image, which I thought was pure genius.

The likability of the film makes it easy to overlook its shortcomings (and granted, there are a few), but Spielberg’s films weren’t exactly perfect either.  It remains to be seen whether decades from now Super 8 will be remembered in the same vein of those classic Spielberg films.  My guess is probably no, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year.  I would recommend parents taking their kids to check it out.  It’s the type of film that made me fall in love with movies in the first place.

5 stars out of 5!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

Hangzhou’s Qiantang River

June 10, 2011 in China, Travel

Qiantang River and the Qiantang River Bridge on a very calm day

I’m back with the China posts, and I promise this time I’ll keep up the momentum till the end!

After visiting Leifeng Pagoda, the driver took us around to have a quick look at Hangzhou’s famous Qiantang River.  To me, it looked like just a normal body of water, but Qiantang River is legendary in China for its amazing tides, leading to many myths and folk stories about it.

According to my research, Qiantang River has a unique gravitational pull, and combined with the bottleneck shape of the Hangzhou Bay, makes it easy for water to come in back difficult for it to go back out.

The tide really hits its stride once a year around the 15th-18th of the August, and millions of people flock to witness the thunderous 30-foot waves.  Apparently there is an annual ‘Tide-Watching Festival’, which has gone on for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Unfortunately, we didn’t go at the right time, but if the opportunity arose again, I would love to check out the waves.  I wonder if anyone has ever tried to surf them.

Tags: , , , , ,
No Comments »

Is there such a thing as over-editing?

June 9, 2011 in Novel, On Writing, Study

The last week or so I had been desperately trying to get my manuscript into shape (or at least the part of it that I had to prepare for submission).

I had already touched on how difficult it is to edit your own work in a previous post, but what I have realised lately is that there comes a time when you just don’t know whether further editing is beneficial or detrimental to your work anymore!

Of course, I’m not talking about copyediting — what I am referring to is more substantial edits and rewrites.

My supervisor had given me a number of high level suggestions to improve my work, which required a lot of thought, a bit of deletion and more addition.  So I went ahead and tried to implement the suggestions while also attempting to fix the narrative on a sentence by sentence level.  Of course, I was reading everything out (a huge help), though it did give me a sore throat by the end of the day.

Anyway, it got to a point where I had done perhaps 5, 8 or even 10 drafts of individual chapters, and to be honest I couldn’t tell if the newer versions were any better than the older ones.  I was afraid I had deleted quality stuff and added stuff that didn’t improve the story.  Just how do you know, when everything starts to look the same and all versions start blurring into one?

It was something I discussed in class the other day, and as it turned out, fear of over-editing was a common occurrence, even for experienced writers.  The recommendation was to put the work aside to sit for a while, go do something else, take your mind off it, and when you’re ready, come back to it and read it again with fresher eyes.  And if you are game, showing the different versions to friends for comment would also be very helpful.

The most important thing to remember, of course, is to keep track of all your different versions and don’t save or write over them so if an older version is indeed better or there are deletions you want to reinsert you’ll have access to them.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

← Previous Entries
Next Entries →

Bad Behavior has blocked 641 access attempts in the last 7 days.