What’s Up, District 9?

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Posted on 26th August 2009 by Subby in General

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We went to catch both Up and District 9 some time ago. I loved both movies and despite the difference in tone, I believe they have some similarity, aside from the obvious fact that both use CG. More than that later.

Up

[Official Up] [Up @ RT] [Up @ IMDB]

up

I think most people catch the gist of what Up is about from the colourful trailers. What they didn’t reveal was the back-story of Carl, who has probably become everyone’s favourite grumpy old man.

Like:

Story. Some animated features focus too much of the graphics. In Up, the CG is merely a tool to bring out the main star, the story.

Partly Cloud. Up was preceded by a short film in typical Pixar style. Make sure your theatre screens it!

Don’t like:

Squirrels. Everyone hates squirrels.

Trivia:

Russell is Pixar’s first Japanese/Asian-American character voiced by an Asian-American actor, Jordan Nagai.

The villain Charles Muntz is named after Charles Mintz, the Universal Pictures executive who in 1928 stole Walt Disney’s production rights to his highly-successful “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoon series. This led Walt Disney to create Mickey Mouse, who soon eclipsed Oswald in popularity.

District 9

[Official District 9] [District 9 @ RT] [District 9 @ IMDB]

district 9

There’s very little known about the film even through the trailers except that an alien craft stopped above Johannesburg, there’s gonna be aliens and explosions. So I shan’t spoil it too much for whoever hasn’t watched it. Note that the movie is rated M18 though, even though it seems the one airing here has been cut, so expect your fair share of gore and language.

Like:

Fresh format. As seen in the trailers, District 9 starts off like a documentary or news broadcast. It’s probably scare more people if aired on TV then War of the Worlds back then.

Right amount of CG. I read this comment on a forum thread and have to agree with it. My lecturer said “The best CG is when you can’t tell it’s CG,” and this stands true in District 9. All the aliens in the movie are pure CG and their interaction with the surrounding looks really believable. No offence to Cameron’s fans but in comparison, Avatar’s trailer looks like a CG tech demo.

Dislike:

Gibs. There are excessive scenes with gore! Who am I kidding? I like the gore.

Trivia:

Star Sharlto Copley had not acted before and had no intention of pursuing an acting career. He stumbled into the leading role as Neill Blomkamp placed him on-camera during the short film.

All the shacks in District 9 were actual shacks that exists in a section of Johannesburg which were to be evacuated and the residents moved to better government housing, paralleling the events in the film. Also paralleling, the residents had not actually been moved out before filming began. The only shack that was created solely for filming was Christopher Johnson’s shack.

Sharlto Copley ad-libbed all his lines.

So what’s the similarity in both movies that I mentioned? It’s the same thing that I find lacking in recent media and that is character development. In both movies, we follow the protagonist and watch how they evolve through the movie. Through their encounters and changes, we start to believe in them. I think it beats being introduced to a hero who just blazes through the entire movie and leave feeling empty after 90 minutes in the theatre.

Movies to look out for:

  1. Coraline
  2. 9

The reports of Transformers 2’s suckiness may have been greatly exaggerated

3 comments

Posted on 25th June 2009 by Subby in General

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Bumblebee versus Some Decepticon

Bumblebee versus Some Decepticon

It has giant robots, weapons, explosions and women. Surely most people would be satisfied with this. Somehow Revenge of the Fallen has only obtained 22% freshness at Rotten Tomatoes. If anyone goes into the theatre expecting a thought-provoking plot, witty lines, deep characters and artistic cinematography, then I’d say they’re watching the wrong genre of movies. All the reviews (even the one which said the movie was bad) agreed that the special effects were awesome, so just kick back and enjoy things blowing apart and robots beating each other down.

Not that my opinion means anything but I’d give the movie:

7 / 10 Sand-sucking Gorilla-Constructicon

Sand-sucking Gorilla-Constructibot

PS: One thing I don’t understand though, won’t it make more sense to slow-mo the robots fighting instead of Megan Fox running? Sarcasm from me? Maybe.

Passengers

6 comments

Posted on 18th January 2009 by Subby in General

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We caught Passengers last Friday, well I believe it’s one of those films where Anne Hathaway starts moving away from her kiddy innocent roles. It an interesting film, not high rated (pretty poorly received actually) and definitely doesn’t fit the “thriller” genre the theatres gave it.

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I feel like removing categories totally and converting all of them to tags, it’s too hard to fit and chunk stuff into categories now.

Spring cleaning the room reminds me why I only do it once a year. Dust (in places you won’t expect there to be), aches and mysterious wounds.

I think it’s also about time to come up with a list things I want for my birthday (which nobody but I will buy for myself). A new mouse is definitely in the list. The double-clicking by itself crap is driving me crazy and definitely lowering productivity. So it’s buying a new mouse or prying it open to try to clean it or rectify the problem and possibly mucking it up and then buying a new mouse.

Hellboy muse

1 comment

Posted on 14th July 2008 by Dumdum in General

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Just watched the telecast of “Hellboy” on chl 5. It ended off with:

“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don’t think so. It’s the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them. ”

Behind all the fighting, heroism and special effects, I feel that this movie brings across an important message about the judgement of character. It is a fact that we judge the people we encounter; to say otherwise would be a lie. Be it a derogatory whisper in the back of our minds about a person’s skin colour or whether the sides of our eyes wrinkle when we laugh at a joke by someone, we unvoluntarily form words to describe that person. The sad fact is that most people judge a person by his physical appearance, something that is inherited and difficult to change.

What makes us shun people who are very different from us is “fear” and “lack of knowledge”. The monsters portrayed in the movie are equipped with the capabilities to kill people and thus, injected fear into the general population but that doesn’t mean they do not have the faculty to make wise choices. It is therefore very important not to judge and dismiss a person too quickly.

Speaking of which, this reminds me about a recent conversation I heard about a guy that have high physical expectations where is comes to choosing a partner in life. I’ve heard many times the first few things men say when asked about the type of girls they go for. It will go something like long hair, big eyes…blah blah blah before intelligence for example. Sometimes even the last bit of inner beauty is not even included in their list. What then are they offering in return? If only they judged themselves first.

Definition of “Threesome”

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Posted on 13th April 2008 by Subby in General

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Maya Hayes: What’s a threesome?
Will Hayes: It’s a game, that adults play sometimes… When they’re bored.
Maya Hayes: …Whatever.

Just caught ‘Definitely, Maybe‘. Maybe Jo’d write some write something about it.

Review on “The leap years”

5 comments

Posted on 11th March 2008 by Dumdum in General

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We caught “the leap years” yesterday. I was thrilled about it since it’s Singapore’s first english romantic movie and the trailer looked good.

It was a good first attempt at penetrating the english movie industry. The storyline was good (kudos to Dr Catherine Lim) and the quotes from the movie and musings of Li-Ann still resounds in my head. Yeah, I want to buy the book.

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HD LOTR

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Posted on 9th January 2008 by Subby in General

[Lord of the Rings HD vs. DVD Screen Captures: Get Ready to Buy a Blu-ray Player]

I bought the extended boxset but the HD shots are awesome…. AHH..

Creativity and Passion…

2 comments

Posted on 29th December 2007 by Subby in General

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I just happen to chance upon this movie, Accepted, on HBO while channel surfing during dinner. I finished watching the rest of the show and here I quote you one of the last scenes which I feel rather thought-provoking:

Bartleby Gaines: Nah, I’m not going to answer your question, ’cause you guys have already made up your minds. I’m an expert in rejection, and I can see it on your faces. And it’s too bad that you judge us by the way we look and not by who we are. Just because you want us to be more like them when the truth is we’re not like them. And I am damn proud of that fact. I mean, Harmon College and their – and their 100 years of tradition. But tradition of what? Of hazing kids and humiliating anyone who’s a bit different? Of putting so much pressure on kids they turn into these – these stress freaks and caffeine addicts.
Dean Van Horne: Your phony school demeans real colleges everywhere!
Bartleby Gaines: Why? Why can’t we both exist? Huh? You can have your grades, and your rules and your structure and your ivory towers, and then we’ll do things our way. Why do we have to conform to what you want?
Dean Van Horne: Your curriculum is a joke, and you, sir, are a criminal.
Bartleby Gaines: You know what? You’re a criminal. ‘Cause you rob these kids of their creativity and their passion. That’s the real crime! Well, what about you parents? Did -did the system really work out for you? Did it teach you to follow your heart, or to just play it safe, roll over? What about you guys? Did you always want to be school administrators? Dr. Alexander, was that your dream? Or maybe no, maybe you wanted to be a poet. Maybe you wanted to be a magician or an artist. Maybe you just wanted to travel the world. Look, I – I – I – I lied to you. I lied to all of you, and I’m sorry. Dad, especially to you. But out of that desperation, something happened that was so amazing. Life was full of possibilities. A – and isn’t that what you ultimately want for us? As parents, I mean, is – is that, is possibilities. Well, we came here today to ask for your approval, and something just occurred to me. I don’t give a shit. Who cares about your approval? We don’t need your approval to tell us that what we did was real. ‘Cause there are so few truths in this world, that when you see one, you just know it. And I know that it is a truth that real learning took place at South Harmon. Whether you like it or not, it did. ‘Cause you don’t need teachers or classrooms or – or fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with a desire to better themselves, and we got that by the shit at South Harmon. So you can go ahead, sign your forms, reject us and shoot us down, and do whatever you gotta do. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Because we’ll never stop learning, and we’ll never stop growing, and we’ll never forget the ideals what were instilled in us at our place. ‘Cause we are SHIT heads now, and we’ll be SHIT heads forever and nothing you say can do or stamp can take that away from us! So go!

Apparently, it was in our theatres but I never got the chance to watch it. I wanna watch it from start to end, if anyone knows how I can get my hands on a copy, please let me know!

The Simpsons movie

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Posted on 4th August 2007 by Dumdum in General

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Marge: …how did the pig tracks get on the ceiling?

Homer holding pig:

Spiderpig, spiderpig, does whatever a spiderpig does

Can he swing from a web?

No he can’t, he’s a pig

Look out…he is a spiderpig

Subby: I found the vid!

Meet the Robinsons

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Posted on 11th March 2007 by Dumdum in General

I wanna watch this! The dino is so cute!

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