Tomb Raider (2001)

To me, this movie was always “that famous one about the hot female character from some video game I’ve never played because (a) I’m not a guy and (b) I prefer games where I get to make colored shapes disappear.” Even after I went to Cambodia and poked around in the tree-covered fallen temple famous for having been in the movie, I didn’t really much care whether I ever saw Tomb Raider or not.

Now that I’ve seen it, I understand what all the fuss was about: this movie launched Angelina Jolie’s career. The character is awesome, and the stunts are awesome, and Angelina Jolie is awesome for playing the character and doing the stunts.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/lara-croft-tomb-raider/id211293149

Nevertheless, the whole thing felt like an expensive, lame joke. I think I enjoyed Prince of Persia more. The movie I was most reminded of was the lopsided 2017 China/India project Kung Fu Yoga, in which Jackie Chan unleashes his inner Indiana Jones.

I live in Southeast Asia and have been to Cambodia multiple times because Angkor Wat is the awesomest UNESCO heritage site in the region. See below for more of my thoughts on the movie’s setting.

Continue reading Tomb Raider (2001)

Cars 3 (2017)

I was wondering what the core idea would be for this movie. Cars 2 took the racers around the world. Where would Lightning McQueen go next? What was bigger and better?

The moviemakers obviously had a very different idea. They didn’t go bigger and better, they went deeper. The second sequel to Cars is about the passage of time and the passing of the torch; it’s about generations past and future, and the changing roles we play in our lives.

The settings include a gorgeous montage of roadside scenery across the US, plus nostalgic vignettes of a fictional sleepy town thought to be located somewhere in the Carolina mountains.

It was sad, it was happy, it was very American… and it was good.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/cars-3/id1242569993

English Is Not Easy by Luci Gutierrez

If you are looking for an illustrated, sexually explicit, New York–themed guide to learning English as a second language, look no further than English Is Not Easy.

The pages include generous amounts of whitespace, the lettering is varied and attractive, and the examples and red-and-black illustrations are… memorable.

When and Why I Read English Is Not Easy

This book was a gift.

Genre: non-fiction (language/reference)
Date started / date finished:  29-Aug-17 to 30-Aug-17
Length: 335 pages
ISBN: 9788494140945
Originally published in: 2013/2017
Amazon link: English Is Not Easy

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Though the work could easily be seen as depressing, it didn’t frustrate me because the author doesn’t make readers stand by and watch as oblivious characters miscommunicate, misunderstand, lie, and betray their dreams time and time again. To be sure, the characters make all sorts of mistakes, but they also think about, talk about, and learn from them, which seems like a reasonable thing to expect characters (and people) to do.

If ultimately the characters fail, it is not because they kept doing the same thing again and again. The novel is also not a story of a series of lessons learned over the course of a wandering life, each new theory overthrowing the last, as in the novel Siddhartha, which I was momentarily worried Jude the Obscure would resemble. Jude moves from place to place, but the story doesn’t start over every time he does; he keeps running into the same people and returning to the same places.

I enjoyed reading the book because there’s no substitute for a good old 19th-century novel when it comes to the variety and precision of words used (epicene, suasion, quondam, bifurcation, adventitious, ashlaring, lambent).

The content of the novel was (and remains) controversial for its treatment of sensitive social themes (social class class, education, marriage, and religion). Jude says, “Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us”, but he might as well have said a hundred and fifty.

When and why I read Jude the Obscure

This book was chosen by Rachel of the Hungry Hundred Book Club for September 2017.

Genre: fiction (literature & classics)
Date started / date finished: 20-Aug-17 to 29-Aug-17
Length: 323 pages
Originally published in: 1895
Amazon link: Jude the Obscure
Gutenberg link: Jude the Obscure 

Related books

Last year I read the Mayor of Casterbridge. In 1999 I read Far from the Madding Crowd. I still haven’t read the other two famous ones.

Also related?

Tomorrowland (2015)

I think the vagueness of the looming disaster that the protagonists have to avert prevents the movie from being a great one, but there’s lots to delight the imagination in Tomorrowland, and the underlying message, the glorification of hope and creativity, is one I can get behind.

I don’t know who this retro-futuristic dys/utopian sci-fi/fantasy family mystery/thriller nostalgic road adventure movie was made for, because it’s got admirable protagonists in three different age groups, and that’s not the only thing that makes it a bit strange. Whatever else it may be, however it might be said to fail, it’s definitely original.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tomorrowland/id990865721

Below are some notes on what I thought the message of the movie was as well as a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Tomorrowland (2015)

The Pagemaster by Jordan Horowitz

Not having seen the movie recently, I can’t say whether, as an adult, I think the novelization is better or worse than the movie itself.

The Pagemaster—that is, both the book and the movie whose story it recapitulates—has a beginning, a series of events, and an ending, but it’s too slight to really feel like a proper narrative. Yes, the main character learns a lesson in the course of the adventure, but the beginning is so unsubtle that you already know exactly what the ending is going to be like. Watching the character get there is just tedious because he has no goal other than getting home safely; he only learns his lesson because the plot requires him to.

Maybe I’d be nostalgic for the story if I’d seen the movie as a kid, when the lack of subtlety would perhaps not have bothered me, and the whole adventure would perhaps have seemed more exciting.

As it is, I am willing to forgive much because the movie glorifies reading, but there are other movies that do that better! The one that comes to mind is The Neverending Story, in which a frightened boy gets himself into a magic adventure by means of a book. The characters and their story are much more dramatic, much more memorable.

The movie The Pagemaster is like The Phantom Tollbooth in that a boy who desperately needs fixing goes on a magical adventure as a cartoon and then returns, fixed, to the real world. It is unlike the Phantom Tollbooth in that it lacks any kind of charm.

You see a pattern, right? The Phantom Tollbooth and the Neverending Story were both successful novels before they were screenplays. The movie tie-in book of The Pagemaster is not a novel, it’s a novelization. I guess I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

When and Why I Read The Pagemaster

Sometimes I buy movie-tie-in books for movies I have.

Genre: fiction (fantasy)
Date started / date finished:  25-Aug-17 to 26-Aug-17
Length: 75 pages
ISBN: 0590202448
Originally published in: 1994
Amazon link: The Pagemaster

Dispose your unwanted items

This sign in the Kent Vale lift says:

SPRING CLEANING
Residents can dispose
their unwanted items at
3 locations from
9AM – 5PM

It should say “dispose of” for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere.

Also, the number 3 should probably be spelled out.

The sign avoids saying “between… to” though! Wait, no it doesn’t.

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.