Year: 2017

Baby Driver (2017)

Previously, my husband and I saw part of Baby Driver in the theatre, but the equipment broke and we didn’t see the end.

My predictions for what would happen were pretty far off! Already a strange movie, Baby Driver just kept getting stranger. I’m so glad we managed to return to the theatre to see the ending, and I’m glad we chose to see it in the first place. It was interesting and different. (Now I really want to see Ant-Man because it’s by the same director.)

See below for ways I was wrong or right, the things I noticed the second time around, the beat sheet for the end of the movie, and a list of interesting movie-related articles.

Watch on Amazon

Continue reading Baby Driver (2017)

NUS E-Resource Discovery Day Book Sale 2017

I bought 16 books at the annual NUS E-Resource Discovery Day Book Sale today. The paperbacks were SG$1 and the hardcovers were SG$2. There were eight or ten tables, including some Chinese books and Japanese manga.

The book I’m most excited about in this batch is the one about Singlish (top left), called New Englishes: The Case of Singapore, published by NUS Press in 1988.

The runner up is the vintage hardcover titled An Introduction to the Study of Education, published in the US in 1951. The binding, the weight of the paper and the oddly familiar, comforting typography make it a distinctly pleasing physical object regardless of whatever it happens to say.

  • New Englishes, by Joseph Foley
  • An Introduction to the Study of Education, by George Willard Frasier
  • A Parent’s Guide to Children’s Reading, by Nancy Larrick
  • Tell Me Why?, by Octopus Publishing Group
  • Organization Development (6th Edition), by Wendell L. French and Cecil H. Bell, Jr.
  • Talking with Kids, by Alison Mulvaney
  • Megacreativity, by Andrei G. Aleinikov
  • The Chinese, by David Bonavia
  • The Pagemaster, by Jordan Horowitz
  • Arthurian Romances, by Chretien de Troyes
  • The Language Web, by Jean Aitchison
  • Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy, by Edited by Norbert Schmitt and Michael McCarthy
  • Getting the Best from People, by Martha I. Finney
  • Hiring the Best, by Cathy Fyock
  • Syntax of Scientific English, by Lee Kok Cheong
  • Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Edition)

Lift Display Panel Notice

From the Office of Housing Services, the folks that brought you the critically acclaimed “Bicycle Clearance Exercise Notice“, comes another exciting announcement!

Apparently, residents of Kent Vale Block I can look forward to at least four more months of not having working screens in the elevators to tell us what floor we’re on. Sigh.

The sign maker missed out (left out) the word “any” in “Sorry for any inconvenience caused.” Whoever it was gets full marks for using “subject to” correctly, though. And for using the noun form “inconvenience” and not the adjective, as in “Apologies for any inconvenient caused,” which I have also seen.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

The Leopard is the Gone with Wind of Sicily in that it documents the melancholy and ruinous effects on one character of drastic, unstoppable political and cultural changes in the surrounding area, changes that destroy the leisurely life of the landed aristocracy by both war and commerce.

I found the general sweep of the novel hard to appreciate because the author doesn’t describe or explain the historical context so much as suggest it. I did enjoy the style of writing, and greatly appreciated the wry humor, especially a sequence related to the priest Father Pirrone (see below).

I found these analyses useful:

Shmoop: The Leopard
Schmoop notes include plot summary, character descriptions, and explanations of themes, symbols, etc.

New York Times: Lampedusa’s The Leopard, fifty years on
The article notes that some have interpreted the novel as a defense of the aristocracy while others have seen it as a critique of the aristocracy.

See below for what stood out, as well as when and why I read the book.

Continue reading The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Baby Driver (or not)

Modern technology is great, right? For a while now it’s been the case that when you go to a movie theater, they don’t have to change projectors and load film reels during screenings because all the film has been spliced together and plays through one projector.

Screenings in Singapore, the ones that aren’t IMAX or 3D, all seem to bear the label “Digital”, so one assumes that perhaps in most cases, there’s no film at all. Maybe that upsets traditionalists, and maybe there are some things about analog films that are better than digital films, and connoisseurs will prefer to make pilgrimages to theatres that stick to older-style projectors, but on the whole I assume digital screenings are an improvement.

My assumption was tested when my husband and I went to watch a digital screening of Baby Driver. Somewhere maybe two-thirds of the way through, we lost the picture. The audio continued, but all we could see were some colorful, unmoving shapes and stripes on the screen. The few of us in the small theater seemed to wake as if from a dream, and started looking around awkwardly.

Someone was found to complain to, the audio and screen were shut off, hasty, vague explanations were made, people passed the time on their mobile phones. They never managed to get the movie going again. We agreed to accept movie ticket vouchers and come back another day.

Below is a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. I’ve included my predictions for what I think happens in the last third of the movie, which I didn’t see (or read about online).

Watch on Amazon

Continue reading Baby Driver (or not)

In Time (2011)

Do you like puns? And sci-fi? Okay, then maybe you can forgive this movie for starring Justin Timberlake and having only a vague plot, because it has an interesting premise and lots of clever dialog.

The premise is that someone has figured out how to stop everyone from aging when they hit age 25, and after that, time really is money: the poor are even more susceptible to dying early than they are in the real world, while the rich can effectively live forever. You buy things by transferring time from your wrist to someone else’s, or to a machine. Your account balance is shown in green glowing numbers on your arm, and every second, well, counts.

Enter our working-class protagonist, who gets a lucky break and then goes all Robin Hood. As you might expect, he and his girlfriend try to take down the system. They face off against an enforcer played by Cillian Murphy, who is beyond creepy in Batman Begins and presumably also in Red Eye, which I didn’t see.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/in-time/id476869088

Looking for some actual good science-fiction? Try Gattaca. Same director, better result. Both movies have nifty retro-futuristic cars and important ocean scenes.

Lucky Joint Construction truck

The company is called “Lucky Joint Construction Private Limited”, and it appears to be a well-established construction company. Their website, which is decent, is located at www.luckyjoint.com.sg.

Clearly “joint” has different primary meanings for different people. I don’t think this business name would go over very well in the US.

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

About a year ago, I re-watched the Disney cartoon Beauty and the Beast. Watching the live-action/CGI remake, I felt gratified to notice some changes that improved the story. IMO, not all the changes were good, but overall I thought it was a success. In fact it was a phenomenal commercial success, though sadly it’s still listed below Frozen.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/beauty-and-the-beast-2017/id1212678379

See below for more opinions. Beware of SPOILERS.

Continue reading Beauty and the Beast (2017)