Archive | March, 2010

Movie Review – Up in the Air – Overrated

Up in the Air

Ryan Bingham, is a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.

As I’ve mentioned before, around the time of the year when the Oscar nominations come out I like to try and watch as many of the nominated films as possible (like Hurt Locker & Avatar).

Another one of the list which seemed to be well received was Up in the Air starring George Clooney alongside Vera Farmiga.

It’s basically the story of Ryan Bingham, some people from his family and some people he meets along the way. Ryan Bingham is a man who travels a lot, hence the title of the movie..he lives his life ‘up in the air’.

And well that’s about it, nothing else much happens.

Clooney is looking older, but then again, he is 50 next year and well Vera Farmiga more than makes up for it by being slammin’ hawt.

George Clooney & Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air

He certainly looks better since he lost weight though and well in this film he’s once again just George Clooney being George Clooney. It get’s a little tiresome.

No doubt Jason Reitman is good, I really enjoyed Juno – but this movie…it was ok, enjoyable but very far from being great.

I found it very predictable, a little soppy and well what was the point really? Yah it’s another movie that explores the strenghts and weaknesses of human beings, somewhat of a character study.

But honestly? The characters aren’t that interesting and don’t really merit a study.

Honestly I find it massively overrated, I have no idea why it has 7.9 on IMDB and look fairly likely to enter the Top 250.

I’m not saying it’s a bad film, but I found it neither memorable nor particularly interesting.

Yah it’s worth a watch, but don’t expect much…because nothing really happens, and well the ‘things’ that did happen…I’d already guessed.

I give it an easy watching 6.5/10.

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Random Blog Post #1 – What A Week & My Birthday

This is gonna be an oldskool style blog post with some shitty pictures I uploaded to Twitpic from my phone and a load of random jabbering, so there you go.

Anyway I’ve been super busy lately, and well this week just topped it off by getting more and more crazy as the week went on.

On Wednesday had to go the doctor’s as my foot was just getting too painful, it’s been hurting for a while but I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought it might be a veruca or something similar, but it ended up being a submerged splinter or some kind of debris in my foot which had resulted in a pressure pad (which was very paintful).

Foot Pain

So I had to spend a good 45 minutes with Dr. Leong staring at my foot and digging a hole in it with scissors and a needle..the procedure wasn’t so bad but bloody hell the local anesthetic jab in the foot is one of the most painful things I’ve ever felt. It’s feeling much better now tho, just have to wear shoes with innersoles and try and get balanced pressure back on my foot.

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Kundasang War Memorial & Market – Sabah

As we were staying in Kundasang we had some time to look around, our first stop was the famous Kundasang War Memorial, which to quote:

Established in 1962, this was one of the first memorials to commemorate the brave Australian and British Prisoners of War who died in Sandakan and during the infamous death marches to Ranau during World War II. The memorial also remembers the people of North Borneo who risked their lives to help the POWs.

If you are interested to learn more about the marches you can read up on Wiki here: Sandakan Death Marches. Some pretty gruesome events with very few survivors, visiting the war memorial is a stark reminder of how cruel human beings can be to one another.

There are various flags around the place including British, Australian and Malaysian flags.

Australian & British Flags

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A Guide To Buying A House/Property In Malaysia – Getting Started

So, thinking about buying your own property? Be it a condo, department or landed property the main thing I’d say to you is start thinking about it as early as possible! I’ve been moving towards getting my own place for more than 2 years now including saving up, looking around, finding a suitable place, negotiating, getting all the legal things done, looking for contractors and so on.

But well, let’s start at the beginning.

The first choices you have to make are:

  • Landed or Condo/Apartment
  • New or Completed Property

Condo or Landed

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Movie Review – Avatar 3D – Visually Spectacular!

Avatar 3D

Strangely enough I actually watched the other big Oscar nominee (The Hurt Locker) before I watched Avatar.

I have been wanting to watch Avatar since it hit Malaysian cinemas in December last year, thankfully it’s still showing as it has become a phenomenal box office hit beating the records set by James Camerons last directorial movie (Titanic).

I finally got around to watching it last week, in 3D of course! And wow what an experience it was. And of course an absolute visual feast.

Avatar 3D

I loved the way 3D was used, it was in a gimmicky way or a cheesy way or the typical ‘things jumping out of the screen’ way which my first experience of 3D back when Nightmare on Elm Street had a 3D version.

The use of 3D in Avatar is a very subtle affair with things rarely coming far out of the screen, most of the time it’s just used to give extra depth to the scene and isolate the character in focus.

I did take the glasses off a few times to see how they did it, the character that was speaking or at the front looked like normal 2D then the rest of the screen was in some kind of funky 3D bokeh which made it seem further away.

It was masterfully done and really made the movie a very immersive experience. The details were awesome and well for the budget of the movie (close to $300 million USD) it looks fantastic.

The Na’vi were just spectacular, quite a masterpiece by James Cameron..but then he has been working on this movie since 1995!

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Jackie – The Semi Wild Orangutan From Kinabalu Park

So our guide let us know of a semi-wild Orangutan named Jackie that lived somewhere in Kinabalu park. Most of the time she stayed in the jungle, but she did enjoy human contact and came out now and then to see who was around.

Our guide was friendly with the people who stayed around the area that Jackie inhabited so he asked them to let him know when she came out, sure enough she did, they gave him a call and we headed on over.

First though he had to buy his secret stash, he knew what Jackie really loved..she snubbed bananas and all the other normal things but she has a real addiction for Betel Nut!

Although she’s comfortable around humans it’s still a little scary to know she’s strong enough to rip your arm clean out of its socket and beat you to death with the bloody stump…and well I can’t imagine that being very pleasant!

She seemed pretty chilled when we go there though, which was nice 🙂

Jackie The Organutan

Of course she was even happier when our guide busted out her version of crack, the betel nuts!

Jackie Loves Betel Nuts

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