Mrs Boo - 30 Lifer Crisis

I loved the Korean movie “Il Mare” - who cared whether it was illogical or not? Come on people, it was a fantasy romance! I thought the entire story was well told with a few loopholes, but really who was counting? It was romantic and whimsical, with a number of touching moments that had me reach for my hanky, and voila! It satisfied the die-hard romantic floozy in me.

Imagine my exhilaration when it was announced that my beloved Keanu would be starring in the Hollywood remake of “Il Mare”. How perfect could it get? Ok, and Sandra Bullock would be starring opposite him, which I don’t really care. I haven’t seen him since his last vehicle, “Constantine” (drool), and I was sooooooo excited to watch him again. Never mind that the reviews lambasted the movie, and even it they rate the show zero, I would still go to watch him. Wild horses could not drag me away.

So Mr Boo drooled through half the movie, unfortunately (or fortunately!), not over Keanu, but he fell asleep. To give him credit, we watched a late show and he had been up very early. Keanu still looked very yummy considering he has already hit the big 4-0. Admittedly he looked older than he did in Speed or Matrix, like, oh, previously he looked 25 and now he looked 30. But well, I digress. Honestly, I never understood those critics who always slammed Keanu for his wooden acting. I mean, hallo?! not that he was given a lot of opportunity to emote in more than half of his movies, which required him to look cool and devastatingly handsome (and I am soooo not complaining). But in the Lake House, I think Keanu did really well. The scene where he realised that his father loved him and broke down after his father’s death was moving. The parts when he was with Sandra Bullock and he couldn’t tell her who he was - you could see and feel his frustration and pain. Give that man an Oscar!

Oh I almost forgot - the plot: A couple who lived two years apart in the same Lake House gets somewhat connected by a time-machine mailbox and started corresponding across time and fell in love as a result. The themes are all about human connection and waiting, waiting for the right person, and waiting for the right time. The Lake House is quite faithful to its original, except for the ending, which was actually more logical and better than “Il Mare”. However, “Il Mare” has a whimisical air which the Lake House could not quite re-create. In addition, Sandra Bullock, while she is good in the show, is not Jung Ji-Hyun. Still Keanu and Sandra work up quite a good chemistry, and all in all, I like the adaptation! So go see it!

Rating: 3.5 boos out of 5! (and 10 for Keanu!)

Ghostly readers who have been following my blog will know that I have an unusually large proportion of close gay mates to straight friends. After all the media hoo-ha about how wonderful Brokeback Mountain is, what a ground-breaking movie and how it reflects gay love in the most accurate light, blah, blah - well, I have got to watch it don’t I?

Strangely, despite being surrounded by smoochy icky lovey dovey gay couples, and having tried to imagine them having sex (I do have a fertile imagination, and it is quite fascinating after hearing but not seeing it) - I must confess that I felt trepidation prior to watching the movie because I was not too sure how I would react to it. Hearing and imagining two men doing “it” is one thing - but watching it happening on the big screen?! A bit cringing. Am I as liberal as I thought? Am I being disloyal to my gay friends for feeling disgusted at gay sex?!

I dragged Mr Boo to watch the movie of course, who appeared less edgy than I did (perhaps..?). So there we have it, two extremely cute men, Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake G (can’t spell his name) as Jack Twist - seemingly heterosexual with none of the limp wristed gestures associated with the pink community, humping together in the scenic mountains. The first sex scene was rather graphic, but thankfully not ponographic - I was uncomfortable but not as cringey as I thought I would have felt. Unfortunately, I could not say so for the rest of the audience - you could hear nervous male laughter (probably from the straight Asian men - Mr Boo was respectfully quiet) and titters everytime the cowboys do a cow poke or kiss passionately. Asian audience are still not as exposed to homosexuality as the West I guess, and therefore do not know how to react to this seemingly “natural” (depending on the perspective) love story.

Having gotten past the “two men having sex” hurdle, I was concentrating on the story and acting to see if it merited all the accolades that it has won since it came out. It was a bit slow-moving for me, but then again I was watching at the end of a long day at work so tiredness was a factor in marring my enjoyment of the movie. Both the male leads were excellent though - Heath Ledger in particular as the taciturn Ennis, and you could feel his physical pain of bottling up his true emotions. Credit to both men for making the love story as “natural” as it could be. The supporting female leads also gave as good as they got, despite the minimal screen-time they have.

It was a good story about pain and loss and regret, but nothing that we haven’t seen before in straight love setting. And probably because I am not gay, I felt emotionally detached from the movie. There were apparently reviewers who came out crying, but I was still dry-eyed in the end, which was quite amazing in view that I shed an abundance of tears over even crap Korean dramas.

Rating: 3.5 boos out of 5

Amazing, I actually made time to go watch a movie with Mr Boo last night - almost a good one month after my last movie (which was equivalent to donkey years ago), propelled by the desire to do some normal activity, and the fact that we had free movie tickets and the show was ending its run…….

Not that Night Watch was boring or anything, but I was yawning non-stop and trying not to fall asleep, which just shows you how bloody tired I am every day. In any case, I made through the almost two hour movie without sliding into oblivion, so that was a good thing, I guess.

Night Watch is the first of a horror-cum-fantasy trilogy about the balance between the “Others” in the city of Moscow, gifted, magical humans who have to choose between the good (aka “Night Watch”) and evil (aka “Day Watch”). Both sides know of the prophecy that one day there will come a “Great Other”, so powerful that he would tip the fragile balance between the two sides, and obviously both sides want him to come onto their side. Night Watch is the story of a man, Anton, through an encounter with a witch (evil Other) to try to get his girlfriend to return to his side and unsuccessfully get her to miscarry what he thought is another man’s child, became an Other. While he chose the good side, he continued to feel guilt over his mistakes, and horror over his new gifts which he needed to use to patrol errant Evil “Others”. To cut a long story short, what he had encountered was an elaborate plot by “Day Watch” to get his (Anton’s) son, still a 12-year-old, and the “Great Other”, to convert to the forces of Evil….. (i.e. please stay tuned for next installments - Day Watch and Dusk Watch).

The movie is very much like a Matrix, sans the computer mumbo-jumbo, and a modern day Lord of the Rings ie fight between the good and the evil. The pace is quite tight, the effects good and convincing, the “hero” Anton, not good looking but carries the movie quite effectively. Despite all this, Night Watch lacks something, an “oompf” that would make this a special movie - one could not help but feel that we have watched something similar before.

Perhaps we have become too jaded. It is like the slate of horror movies that followed the mind-boggling The Ring (the Japanese one, not American version), and nothing, nothing ever came close to the original, and while there are still scares, nothing could dethrone The Ring from the pedestal.

Still, Night Watch is a pretty good movie. Pity I was too tired to truly enjoy it……

Rating: 3.5 boos out of 5

Ok I must admit it: I have NEVER read this book by Roald Dahl during my salad days. I was more into Enid Blyton books then, you see. Nevertheless, prior to the release of this movie, I went to the book store to flip through the story quickly, so I knew what the story was about and also the ending.

So, unless you are like me living in some tribe in Timbuktu, I guess I don’t need to tell you what the story is all about, which is in a nutshell - poor boy realises his dream and visits biggest chocolate factory in town, and won the big prize in the end which is voila! the chocolate factory itself!!!

Before I go any further, let us get the modern day comparisons out of the way. Yes, Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka is creepily like Michael Jackson, except with a flawless nose. I LOVE Depp in the “Pirates of the Carribean”, but he is just SO creepy (as opposed to being just eccentric) that I think he really spoils the movie (an unfortuante thing since he is really actually a very cute actor). Thankfully, Depp did not really look at the little boys (including Charlie) in a pedophilic manner, otherwise I would have screamed and run out of the cinema.

To me, the movie is a story of two halves (very much like a soccer game). The first half, talking about Charlie (Freddie Highmore, such a revelation!) and his dirt poor but oh so close family, really pulls my heartstrings. 5 boos goes out to the cast of grandpas and grandmas stuck in one bed, the loving parents and sensible Charlie. Now this Freddie boy, he has eliminated all the ghosts of all the recent horrendous, overacting children, from Joel Haley (Sixth Sense) to Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds), and I am not including child actor of them all, Macauley Culkin (eewww). That sincere light shining from his blue eyes, the lack of pretense, gosh I wish the whole damn movie was about him, I could look at him act all day (gosh, now I am beginning to sound pedophilic myself!!).

But the minute the movie shifted its focus from Charlie and his family to the tour of the chocolate factory aka Neverland, led by Michael oops, Willy Wonka, the story fell apart, and it is just a series of gags and special effects, including the Oompa-Loompas (which were quite cute at first but lost effect after awhile). Even the ending, which deviated from the original, and talking about Wonka’s estranged relationship with his dentist father, seemed too bloody draggy. And so the movie sputtered out for me.

Rating: 3 boos out of 5 (give me Charlie and stuff the chocolate factory!!)

Something rare happened after this movie. Mr Boo and I actually launched into a post-movie discourse to discuss and dissect the “morals” of the story - which in a nutshell is “Man playing God to no good end”. Mr Boo and I seldom have deep discussions like this (I mean, why talk when we have other better things to do? ) - so I normally reserve my “deep and soulful” discussions with close girlfriends.

“The Island” is one of the few movies out there which actually successfully combined blockbuster action with thought-provoking questions (unlike say, Spielberg’s draggy “AI” which tried to be too intellectual and made everyone fell asleep). This is important especially to audience like Mr Boo, who has little patience in arty-farty bullshit, and loves action and war battles.

“The Island”’s success can also be credited to its two main leads - Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. They are no Brad and Angelina, but there is plenty of chemistry between the two leads (kissing and love making scenes, though short, are fairly explosive). Although Scarlett is not asked to do much acting, except run around and look pretty, she somehow manages t0 convey a certain amount of levity to the movie’s tone as opposed to being a cursory “to be rescued” bimbo. Ewan, that sly dog - I think I may be falling in love with that man. He is not the handsomest man around, but there is this innate playfulness and depth around him that you cannot help but be attracted. And he plays his character, Lincoln Six-Echo, very, very well indeed. A thinking woman’s man, if there is such a thing.

The story works for me because it is very realistic. Although the settings are futuristic, they are not over the top futuristic, until it seems cut off from our current world. Already there is on-going stem cells research, and scientists have successfully cloned animals. So the possibility of cloning humans as insurance policies to sponsors (i.e. us) to harvest their organs, or to carry babies, is not at all difficult to swallow. Even now, without the existence of clones, the rich are buying organs via syndicates who buy them from the poor (legally or forcefully). What is stopping these people from cloning themselves and having their clones killed after they serve their purpose?! Is the act of self preservation stronger than our moral code?

Interesting questions - all of which Mr Boo and I have gone through - without any conclusions.

Rating: 4 out of 5 boos

This is another from print-to-screen comic book series from famed Marvel.

To the uninitiated (like myself), who have only heard of the “Men” aka Batman, Spiderman and Superman - the Fantastic Four sounds like something written by Enid Blyton - you know “The Famous Five”, “The Adventous Four” and other fours and fives. However, unlike in the Blyton stories where the fours or fives are kiddie detectives, the Fantastic Four of the movie are reluctant superheroes blessed with interesting superpowers after a cosmic cloud blasted their DNA into smithereens.

Despite the relative unknown cast and director, thankfully the movie rating does not deserve the “F”. Nevertheless, it is true blue “B” grade entertainment that nobody minds watching. And the “B” standing for:

- Brainless chessy entertainment (leave your brain at the door please)
- Big bangs and explosions that burst the eardrums and overwhelm your braincells
- Beautiful bods embodied by Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) and Johnny Storm (the laugh a minute himbo Chris Evans)
- Bombastic science - movie trying to convince viewers they do have some brains, the hogwash coming mostly from Mr Fantastic
- Brave heart - what truly makes this movie have somewhat a “soul” is The Thing aka Ben Grimm, who is truly the heart of the movie for his stirring, emotion packed performance.

Rating: 3 boos of 5 (really, only if you don’t want to think at all at the end of a hard day at work.)

As I watched this movie, the fact that Tom Cruise is a Scientology freak is never far from my mind. I kept thinking to myself - how much of this bulls**t does he really believe in?? And as I watched him running, panting, and crying onscreen, I was also wondering why he went hopping mad over one Katie Holmes - so really, my mind was only half on that show throughout.

Then again, one only needs half a brain to watch this movie. There are some disturbing images - those tripod alien thingies sucking human blood and spewing all over the devastated land - like mechanical versions of (huge) vampires. Also the much talked about references to the 9-11 disaster and the recent Asian tsunami. But nothing beats the screaming child actor (forgot her name) who was Tom’s daughter. Her various screams throughout the movie jolted me serveral times out of my reverie that I wanted to murder her. In fact, she was so irritating that I wished Tom had murdered her instead of the wacko militia man, played by Susan Sarandon’s hubby (forgot his name too).

The abrupt and strange ending left half the cinema scratching their heads. This was so unlike all other alien movies - there was no brilliant human plan to defeat the invaders (like Independence Day), and Tom never lifted a finger to fight them (except in self defence) - and spent the movie perpetually on the run, and the aliens basically self-destructed after sucking our blood (that was what Morgan Freeman was trying to say, at the end). It was anti-climatic, to say the least.

And Tom does not help the movie by looking older, and less glamourous than his Top Gun self.

Rating: 3 boos out of 5

Brad oh Brad - why did you waste 4 (or is it 5?) years staying married to Jennifer Aniston?? You and Angelina are a match MADE IN HEAVEN. Much as I love you, or rather because I love you - I wish you both well. You were meant to be, and I trust your sex life will be as great as what I have seen onscreen (10 times a week?? - MEOW). Someone, get me my husband, please!!! (pant, pant).

And Angelina, why did you bother with those really ugly husbands of yours before? Especially that psychotic Billy Bob - with such God gifted looks, you were meant for Brad and no one else. You remind me of a close friend, who used to go out with guys who look like mass murderers and end up really regretting her choices. Maybe now you will stop fighting against fate and end up happily with Brad, and together with Maddox (and that Baby you are rumoured to be carrying) will make one happy family.

Umm - the movie??? Oh right - well WHO CARES? Hey if you want a proper review - go read the New York Times or something!

P.S. To the older, and sexually incompetent folks - this is better than Viagra.

Rating: 10/5 (incinerating!!) Boos for Chemistry, 3/5 for plot