Movie night - yay!

[estepheia]

I finally managed to go to the movies again. Everybody told me to stay the hell away from the badness and plothole-ness that is Start Trek Nemesis, so I did and went to see a stupid little post-holocaust flic in which dragons overran the earth. I have no clue what the film is called in English.

Not a memorable piece of film, but since I didn't expect a lot I was actually very pleasantly entertained. Ok, there was plenty of posturing, but the actors were pleasantly cast against expectation. I liked. But then I always liked Mad Max and the first half of Waterworld.

Oh, and they played a nice song during the end credits by someone called Mad at Gravity. *rushes off to Kazaa*

I now know why I am sometimes disappointed by Buffy episodes: My expectations are just too high.

Comments

English Title

[dramagirl42.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you saw "Reign of Fire." If it had a hairy Christian Bale that's the right title. :)

Re: English Title

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's the one. It also had a beardy Matthew McConaughty (sp?) and a hairy and beardy Alexander Siddig (aka DS9's intrepid doctor Bashir). :-)

Life, the Universe and Everything (part 1)

[(Anonymous)]

I could have warned you to stay away from it. It was so bad that I even did not deem it worth mentioning during an online chat. But that's the kind of movie I usually get to see here in Bangkok. Mostly mindless, plotless, pointless and (add any other ...ness of your own) movies made in Hollywood are shown here. Apart from the domestic ones, which tend to be either set in one of the many historic wars againt the Burmese or featuring a transsexual volleyball team (I am exaggerating of course - but just ever so slightly :-). Interesting, i.e. appealing to the higher intellect, movies usually are screened for two days in the afternoon at some obscure theater without any newspaper advertisement (at least in the local English language daily I read (maybe I should give the other one a try, but I doubt that it will be better in this regard. I guess it is no wonder that nobody goes to see them and in consequence that not more good movies are shown here :-( TIT (This Is Thailand, as the saying goes). I only find out about quality pictures being shown at all because of the review in the local English language newspaper two weeks later. I only recently found a website (www.movieseer.com)featuring an online movie program of all cinemas in Thailand and Malaysia. That's how I know that interesting moviews are shown for two days in the afternoon.

Don't ask how genuinely pissed I was when reading the review about a recent concert by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra under the baton of legendary French film music composer Maurice Jarre as part of last month's Bangkok Film Festival. Why not bring a preview instead? Why just inform in advance about the festival's movie program and the broad variety of Danish, Swedish, French, German and what-not art moviews shown instead of the much more interesting (at least for me) by-program? These things just make my point why I never subscribed to a daily when I was still living in Berlin. But just to rely on CNN (too US) and BBC World Service (too English) as the sole source of daily news might be too single-sided; apart from the fact that they do not cover local news. And I would not want to miss Thai local news. Nothing is as funny as current politics and politicians in Thailand. In a bad sense, but you simply have to laugh about it (or you would have to weep, but I rather take it on the humorous side) - the antics of Thai politicians are just too childish and silly to be taken seriously by anybody with a background of Western education). One example: Thailand is one of the most corrupt countries in world. So whenever there is an election, votes are bought and any other kind of unlawful activities are conducted to secure a post as a regional governor, in the senate, or any other elected body. So what happens if you get caught and convicted of cheating? Well, the election in the affected province will be unnulled for one thing. But apart from that not very much. Offenders get a slap on the wrist, and that's it. They even can run in the re-election. Some convicted cheaters even are on the election committee now that looks out for fraudulant behavior of candidates. TIT.

Life, the Universe and Everything (part 2)

[(Anonymous)]

Coming back to CNN. Did anybody watch the hours and hours of repeating the same lines over and over again ad nauseam without any information content whatsover about the Columbia disaster? Well, yes, it's a tragedy, but come on, that happened to just seven people on a high-risk mission knowing what the dangers were. I guess that more Americans die each weekend, because of the absense of proper weapon-control laws. Yes, every American has the right to bear fire arms, that's in the US constitution, but it definitely does not mean that this right must be exercised without any registration or backgroud check-up. But I am drifting off. Coming back to the Columbia. NASA want's to make us believe that 22 years is no age for a space shuttle? Come on guys. That's several years beyond the point when any airline is thinking about replacing an aged commercial airliner. In my eyes the accident is no real surprise. Such a thing was prone to happen sooner or later. The only consequence can be to give NASA the money the rightfully deserve and to start developing a second generation shuttle to replace the old one asap. After 25 years that is high time.

Apropos Space Shuttle. Anybody seen the trailer to the movie "The Core"? Seems to be a disaster movie with the amazingly unbelievable pretext that it could be possible to stop the Earth's core from rotating and that the rotating core protects Earth from space radiations. The mind boggles. The movie seems then to show how mankind jumpstarts the planet's core to start rotating again. Well, could be an entertaining movie, but the story line as taken from the trailer is certainly way dumber than anything I have come across in recent years. And it's not a B picture. Looks like A budget, but D storyline, which is a combination that is found way too often in Hollywood productions. Anyway, the trailer featured a landing space shuttle "Enterprise". I wonder how the movie makers will explain that in the movie. The "Enterprise" was used on some test flights only but was never designed for any space missions.

But I am starting to ramble, so I better stop.

Cheers from Bangkok