Wednesday, May 05, 2004
There are times you think that having a long weekend isn't worth the weird empty longing anxiety you get the night before going back to work. Human nature is as such that we're all creatures of sloth. So here I am, grudgingly, back at work after an amazing 5-day vacation. Not only that, I had to be up at 4am this morning to catch a flight here, and i'll be catching a flight back tomorrow night. Anyways, funny how little rest you get on vacations; it's been a flurry of activity trying to squeeze every last ounce of fun into 120 hours. I think I'm going to need another vacation to get over this one. This year, E and I started our vacation earlier, not because we had the foresight and any sort of proper planning, nope, nothing like that. In fact, we called-in late to the resort and they didn't have any available rooms over the weekend. As a result, we had to start our vacation on Friday and leave by Saturday. Fine and well. And it turned out to be to our advantage as we realised on our drive back that the opposite 3-lane highway heading to the vacation spot we were departing from was jammed like rush hour in Bangkok with no traffic cops and broken traffic lights. It looked like one long car park all the way from the city center to the vacation spot.. and that's a good 200km or so.
E and I also managed to catch a couple of movies over the weekend; Hellboy (renamed to the very much impotent sounding Super Sapiens for local release) and Secret Window. Hellboy in a word; sucked. It looked really expensive as with most Hollywood churned-out crap, but every scene in that movie came up looking arbitrary. Pointlessly expensive. It's like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but with just a tad more focus. And that's really not saying much.
Secret Window on the other hand started out really nicely, no doubt with much help from Depp's brilliant portrayal of a quirky mystery writer in the midst of a messy divorce from his manipulative bitch of a wife. He gets accused by some hillbilly hick (Turturro) who shows up at his doorstep saying that he stole his story. That's the basic premise of this Stephen King adaptation. The end is, however sadly, predictable. Half way through the movie, as Depp falls deeper into his insanity and Turturro ups the ante in his campaign of terror, you're hoping that the writers wouldn't go down the same beaten path you expect. No luck on this one. Not only did the writers take the same road, they didnt even bother to kick up any dust. 'F' for effort here. But given how the movie started out and for all it's flaws, this is still a passable movie. Watch it if only for Depp's character.
On a totally separate issue, I've been mulling over whether I should get a nice spiffy leather case and a retractable sync and charge cable for my ipaq. Estimated damage: only RM100.00. I've been doing fine without either for the past year, and I'm wondering whether I'd really find them useful. Hmmm... the mulling continues.
E and I also managed to catch a couple of movies over the weekend; Hellboy (renamed to the very much impotent sounding Super Sapiens for local release) and Secret Window. Hellboy in a word; sucked. It looked really expensive as with most Hollywood churned-out crap, but every scene in that movie came up looking arbitrary. Pointlessly expensive. It's like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but with just a tad more focus. And that's really not saying much.
Secret Window on the other hand started out really nicely, no doubt with much help from Depp's brilliant portrayal of a quirky mystery writer in the midst of a messy divorce from his manipulative bitch of a wife. He gets accused by some hillbilly hick (Turturro) who shows up at his doorstep saying that he stole his story. That's the basic premise of this Stephen King adaptation. The end is, however sadly, predictable. Half way through the movie, as Depp falls deeper into his insanity and Turturro ups the ante in his campaign of terror, you're hoping that the writers wouldn't go down the same beaten path you expect. No luck on this one. Not only did the writers take the same road, they didnt even bother to kick up any dust. 'F' for effort here. But given how the movie started out and for all it's flaws, this is still a passable movie. Watch it if only for Depp's character.
On a totally separate issue, I've been mulling over whether I should get a nice spiffy leather case and a retractable sync and charge cable for my ipaq. Estimated damage: only RM100.00. I've been doing fine without either for the past year, and I'm wondering whether I'd really find them useful. Hmmm... the mulling continues.
