Little Miss Sunshine

Oh little Miss Sunshine! The sweet and almost nostalgic film revolves around a dysfunctional American family. The family road trip to California started as the youngest member of the family becomes eligible for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.

Sheryl is an overworked mother of a teenage son and young daughter. Her husband Richard is an unsuccessful motivation speaker and life coach. Their son Dwayne has been on a 9-month vow of silence till he achieve his goal to be a pilot. The youngest Olive, is actively pursuing her beauty queen dream. Olive is closed to her grandfather who has been kicked out of retirement home due to his heroin addict.

The story begins with Sheryl picking up her suicidal brother who has recently lost this love, career and a chance to be a recognised scholar of French literature. Under the doctor's instruction, Sheryl is taking care of him to make sure he is ok. During dinner, the family receives a call that young Olive has obtained a chance to participate in Little Miss Sunshine pageant which takes place in 2 days time.

On a haste, the whole family takes on a road trip to Redondo Beach Hotel, California. It is an unforgettable road trip for the family in the bright yellow Volkswagen minibus. Each of them learns to come to term with reality while learning to understand and respect each other.

There is a lot of tolerant in a typical American family. This makes me wonder if such unconditional love be a cruelty instead. The adventure and unexpected twists have been a good entertainment for me. It is a decent film for a lazy afternoon.

Rating: 4 out of 5 fairy clouds. It is worth watching, not to mention that I bought the 2nd hand DVD at only just $6. Pretty worthwhile and enjoyable movie!

Persepolis

The French animation is graphic autobiography of Marjane Satrapi who retold her childhood in Iran through the revolution to her adolescent years.

The wide eye little nine year old Marjane is an outspoken, active and non-conformist at a young tender age. She witnesses the change of her hometown after the Shah is overturned as well as in increasing sacrilegious belief that a woman must be cover up in order not to tempt a man. (It just proves to show that man has no sense of self-control, isn't it? Just blame the woman, its such an easy excuse.)

One day, her parents decided to send her to Vienna to study as they worry that her rebellious nature might get her into trouble. Yet Marjane is lost in the newly found freedom and European culture. As she grows, you witness how she slowly rediscovers herself and finds her true identity, slowly moving out of the shadow of domination she has experienced from her hometown.

It is an amazing graphic animation. I'm quite surprised while at the same time touched by her childhood experiences. It is rather hard for me not to be judgemental of the religious belief of what the women has been put through in Iran. While providing me with greater understanding of what happened in Iran from the 70s to 90s, I learnt to sympathise with the Iranian women. I could only wish that more of them are like Marjane, learning to be themselves instead of being a shadowy existence to their man.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 fairy clouds. Its a must-watch movie. Extremely well done both in the storyboarding as well as the artistic animation. You can feel the real life hardship but with less intensity and harshness . Persepolis is a beautifully crafted by Marjane herself as she shared her story.

Marvelous Melaka!

All of us from the office travelled to Malacca for a short 2D1N vacation from 28-29 November 2008. We left Singapore early Friday morning to take bus 707 to our hospital's 14th anniversary dinner before returning home on Saturday evening. It was a fantastic and wonderful weekend.

We arrived at noon at Jonker Street for the famous famous famous, needless to say... CHENDOL! And Nonya assam laksa and Nonya Laksa at Jonker Dessert 88. The seamless heavenly matching of gula melaka sweetness with coconut milk and the companion of the pandan green jellies and red beans is simply... SEDAP!

Of course, being an extremely hungry bunch of people who has travelled far and beyond to Malacca, lunch did not end there. We headed for Lunch Part II, to the well-known and established Hoe Kee Chicken Ball Rice. The fishball sized rice ball is out-of-this-world. Its must-try dish for anyone who visit Malacca.

By the evening, we headed to the main highlight of the company-sponsored trip, Mahkota Medical Centre 14th anniversary dinner. I have to admit, our nurses are truly hot and talented. They have done such wonderful job in putting up dances and singing to entertain all colleagues and guests. Well done girls!

The next day is R&R for everyone. We started the day with the city tour to San Bao Shan at Bukit Cina, heritage tour, lunch and company sponsored shopping excursion. Sadly, our tour guide is really bad. We didn't even want to tip him at the end of the trip.

I feel that the best part of the city tour is the visit to Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum (also located near Jonker Street). The privately owned museum offers excellent and impressive cultural tour of the lives of the rich Peranakans. I love the Peranankan house architecture and culture. It has been such an eye opener! And its only 8 ringgit for the ticket to the museum. I would love to go there again.

Malacca trip isn't completed without a nice hot Peranankan meal. Thanks to the generousity of our boss, we had a sumptuous lunch at Aunty Lee. Yum yum... I'm still drooling thinking about the delicious fish and sambal chili and otah.

Overall it has been an extremely enjoyable trip with all my colleagues. Thanks for all the fun and booze and Pure Bar. I would love to make another leisure trip to Malacca to enjoy the culture and explore the little shops and pubs at Jonker Street again. And also thank you everyone for their sweet compliments. This if-you-don't-have-10-carat-diamond-to-show-your-sincerity-,-don't-come-near-me woman felt really flattered.

Avenue Q

Avenue Q is the latest adult puppet show to hit town (by that I meant Singapore). The puppety musical begins with the arrival of Princeton who has just graduated with a BA in English and makes his decision to move to Avenue Q in New York.

Princeton gets to know a couple of new friends who are staying near his apartment. There is THE Gary Coleman who is the superintendent of the apartment, Kate Monster a cute kindergarten teacher assistance, Trekkie an Internet porn addict, Rod a Republican investment banker (and closet gay), Brian an out-of-job comedy and his fiancee Christmas Eve. Together, Princeton and his new found friends set on a little life journey together as they discover about love, jobs, money and purpose of life.

Overall it is a rather entertaining musical. I would rather love it to be more provocative, oops! I meant more thought provoking. For one, there can be more adult contents without being overly crude. The amount of adult contents is rather meek by my standards. Perhaps it has been tamed to avoid public disapproval. Who knows.

I have enjoyed the musical this evening. The scene of Princeton and Kate has been the most memorable and funny. Yet in general, the musical isn't as daring as I expected it to be, especially when it is compared to say Rent which has definitely pushed the limit of taboo topic (of gay) beyond the big screen and Broadway. I expected the same from Avenue Q but I have assumed wrongly. Nevertheless, it is still a decent piece of musical.

Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea

The latest 2008 animation from Studio Ghibli, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is directed by the fame filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. And yes, I'm a big big fan of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's work!

The animation tells the story of a naughty little fish who runs away from home to explore the bigger world of the sea. Taking a ride from the jellyfish, the little fish drifts close to the human world and is rescued by a 5 year old old Sosuke, who befriends her and names her Ponyo. Ponyo falls for Sosuke and makes to choice to become a human.

The story is a little similar to The Little Mermaid, except Ponyo has a much easier time, as well as the true love and friendship of Sosuke who accepts her in her true form. It is a rather cute and fun little movie, allowing you to delve into the world of the fantasy and underwater world.

Rating: 4 out of 5 fairy clouds. This is a nice family movie as well as for the young at heart. Good weekend movie to watch when you have nothing else plan.

Burn After Reading

This is a story of nothing at all. It's a mish-mash of confusion, secrecy and jumping to conclusion.

The plot starts with Osbourne Cox, a CIA analyst, who resigns from this job. He forms a new goal in life, and starts a memoir of his work with the bureau. His wife, Katie, immediately seeks the help of a lawyer to proceed with a secret divorce case and made a copy of important information off Osbourne's computer onto a CD.

Making matter worse, this CD is misplaced and accidentally lands in Hardbodies Gym. Chad is a typical brainless instructor while his colleague, Linda is obsessed in wanting to undergo plastic surgery to improve her look which she hope will in turn increase her chances of seeking a soul mate. Both decided to blackmail Osbourne thinking that CD contains top CIA information. When the blackmailing fails, they presented the CD to the Russian Embassy.

Making matter worse, Harry who has been sleeping with Katie, also begins to date Linda. While he was at Katie's house one day, Chad happens to have broken into the house hoping to steal more information off Osbourne's computer. Unfortunately he gets killed by Harry.

At this point Harry's paranoid has gotten worse. He started to attack a guy whom he has been watching and observing him for a while. He then discovers that his wife has arranged with a legal firm to file for divorce with Harry.

Complicated plot and sub-plots but pieces of the puzzles eventually falls neatly into one another at the end of the movie. There are many good actors this film, which makes it rather entertaining. But the real story is really no story at all. It is just plainly a lot of misunderstanding and guessing of are these people really up to. Each of them have their own agenda, and at the end, no one really wins from this twisted adventure except for Linda, who got CIA to fund her plastic surgery at the end of the day.

Rating: 3 out of 5 fairy clouds. I expected more from this movie, thinking that the crew is a group of cool and excellent actors. But it has failed to amaze me mostly.

Red Cliff

I never say no to free movie... at least most of the time. This afternoon I watched Red Cliff (Part I). The blockbuster movie is the latest of John Woo's film. It is a rather ambitious movie as it tried to emulate the grandiosity of Lord of the Ring, in terms of CGI animation.

The story of the Three Kingdom is fascinating as there is already a well developed depth and personality to each of the key character in the original story. The movie has an easy job of just adopting and scripting the important scenes to make the complete movie. However, I feel that the director focused too much on the costumes and martial arts effect, which I do agree that it is rather excellent. You can feel the war and you can feel the characters while watching the movie.

Though it is an entertaining movie, I'm disappointed with the animation. It is just too reelistic, failing to demonstrated the real natural beauty of those supposed landscape. A bad CGI animation is still capable of destroying a good movie, which is what I feel towards Red Cliff.

Only one complain, I understand many feel that Tony Leung has a sexy appeal. But please spare me and try not to overdo on the seduction scene between him and Lin Chi Ling. I felt rather turn-off by two intimate scenes between these 2 actors as it is simply nothing more than just a brainless teaser that doesn't add any value to the movie.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 fairy cloud. A decent movie to watch if you are a fan of the Three Kingdom. Otherwise, nothing much to miss about this film. There are many other more well-done films like The Last Emperor which has wonderfully weaved art and film-making into one solid end product.