Month: September 2017

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

Okay, so this fantasy movie has to do with World War II and displaced children, but all resemblance to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe ends there, because Tim Burton went and made it creepy. Or maybe the book was already creepy, and the movie is just true to the source material. I guess I was hoping for something more like Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters from The X-Men.

I am not sure just how creepy the movie was or wasn’t, because the plane landed and I didn’t see the whole thing. None of the subsequent planes had it in the catalog! I’m curious to see the end, but I’m not in any particular rush.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children/id1151555161

Mohenjo Daro (2016)

I had never heard of this ancient city, which is a real place, an archaeological site in what is now Pakistan. Since the movie is about a real place about which little is known, there’s a disclaimer reminding viewers that the movie makers made use of artistic license—they’re just telling an interesting story about the place, not trying to tell the true history of it.

“This film does not support or promote any specific interpretations of the Origin, Character or Decline of the Ancient Indus Civilization. Archaeologists and Historians have many different opinions and interpretations that remain to be confirmed through further studies. The Sindhu script is still undeciphered and no one knows the names of the cities at that time. So we have used the popular name – Mohenjo Daro!”

The sets and costumes were interesting, but the plot seemed forced. The country-boy hero has a secret destiny, goes off to the city, falls in love with the princess/priestess, discovers his true identity, saves the day, blah blah blah. There was a lot of telling rather than showing.

“2hr 6min: In 2016 BC, a farmer travels to Mohenjo Daro to trade. Whilst there he soon falls in love, however she is due to marry the city’s ruler’s son. (This is a Hindi film shown with English subtitles and has been edited for content)”

The Boss Baby (2017)

I was expecting a terrible comedy, but this Dreamworks cartoon explores some emotional family themes and has a fantasy premise that is inventive yet strangely logical: the corporation in charge of sending babies to Earth is concerned that humans are starting to prefer puppies to babies, so they send down the Boss Baby as an undercover agent, with the result that the baby’s older brother gets jealous, discovers that the Boss Baby isn’t really a baby, and then has to help save the world from indifference to newborns.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-boss-baby/id1216954198

La La Land (2016)

Hollywood has made yet another movie about Hollywood! It’s also about compromises, almosts, and might-have-beens; strangely, this Hollywood movie doesn’t quite have a happy Hollywood ending. Worth watching unless you’re one of those people who can’t abide musicals.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/la-la-land/id1179249419

Your Name (2016)

How many body-swapping movies have you seen?

I’ve seen…

  • Freaky Friday (1976) – mother/daughter
  • Big (1988) – boy/older self
  • Freaky Friday (2003) – mother/daughter
  • 13 Going on 30 (2004) – girl/older self
  • Just Follow Law (2007) – male/female co-workers

…but there are lots more I’d never even heard of.

This one’s different. It made a ton of money and earned praise from critics. I’d say it’s worth watching even if you’re not a teen or an anime fan. The story is deeply emotional and surprisingly complex.

 

SIN > NRT > ATL

My trip to visit my parents in Atlanta looked like this, more or less. It took me over 24 hours to get there.

I watched two movies on the way from Singapore to Tokyo and another two and a half on the way from Tokyo to Atlanta.

I made the map using http://myflightbook.com.

Changi Airport is very pretty, and always trying (sometimes successfully) to beat Incheon for the title of Best Airport Anywhere.
This terminal at Narita has undergone renovation, and the origami store I remember from a previous visit is gone. The bookstore, however, remains.
I hope this Narita shop never closes! The stuff it sells is more varied than the stuff at a typical airport souvenir shop.

Chinese and Japanese Gardens

When we visited the gardens in February, we arrived too late in the day to climb to the top of the Chinese pagoda or even set foot in the Japanese Gardens. This time, we arrived earlier.

See below for 29 photos. My favorite is the spiral one pointing up towards the top of the inside of the pagoda.

Continue reading Chinese and Japanese Gardens

Zero-inflection plurals do not include cucumber.

This package of Japanese Kyuri from Malaysia says:

Rich in nutrients, Cucumber are excellent in salads, sandwiches, stir-fry and sushi.

Here, the fact that the singular is being treated like a plural makes it sound as if cucumbers are exotic animals like bison or buffalo.

Recently, though I don’t have a photo, I saw a sign in front of some model planes (in the Tin Tin shop strangely located on Pagoda St in Chinatown) that was advertising “aircrafts for sale”. Ack. No.

For a variety of historical reasons, English has many kinds of nouns that are annoyingly difficult to pluralize, and Wikipedia helpfully lists them.

Interestingly, the cucumber package shows ‘salads’, ‘sandwiches’, ‘stir-fry’, and ‘sushi’ all in the correct form, even though ‘salad’ requires an ‘s’, ‘sandwich’ requires ‘es’, and ‘stir-fry’ and ‘sushi’ are uncountable.

Why, then, was it so hard to give ‘cucumber’ its plural ‘s’?

And why is it capitalized?!