Movie | Ady's Blog

Break A Leg

One fine day, I accidentally switched to the movie Outsourced on HBO. I decided to see what’s it about. It was a fine movie about real outsourcing situations in India and it was quite fun.

I really enjoyed the last scene at the airport when the American manager is sending off the Indian manager he recommended to China.

American: Break a leg!

(Indian manager looks confused)

American: (smiling) It means good luck.

Indian: Oh! Then I hope both of your legs get broken!

This is what my team mates in the States was concerned about when I told them we used to watch Cheers during our childhood. They asked, what about the language? They don’t mean English but captions or phrases like this.

Well, it’s what makes the world colorful 🙂

Rambo 4: Bloody Movie

After getting some art supplies in One Utama yesterday, we decided to watch a movie. Since Rambo 4 is now showing, we decided to take a look especially because the last Rambo movie were released about 20 years ago.

As a child, I’ve watched all of the Rambo movies and liked each of them. They always depict a tactical and strategical soldier who has been trained to be a deadly weapon in the jungle. As far as my brain can recall, I always remember Rambo were always involved in Asia wars or conflict (in contrary to high tech wars between all the developed countries).

Rambo 4 Rambo 4… not to say that I don’t like it but I feel that the technological advancement in the film industry has actually influenced this movie a lot. All the gory details are included, as the film maker tries to enhance the dramatic effect of high powered weapons.

Human flesh are splattered everywhere, people are cut in half, blown by mines, limbs cut using machetes, heads blown by handguns (and sniper gun). The cruelty depicted is real, and is necessary to make viewers understand the real situation in Myanmar at that time. However when high powered weapons are involved (.50 caliber truck mounted guns, the sniper gun) you’ll see body parts flying around and a lot of red colors used!

When I saw what the army is doing to the people I wondered, “what’s wrong with this army????”. But when I saw Rambo shoot the driver of the truck with the .50 cal gun until he became a hamburger I can’t help it to wonder, “what’s wrong with Rambo???”. In this movie he is a mindless soldier who I guess is effected by all the battles he have been in the past.

All in all – it’s a good movie to unwind yourself, and not to have to think so much. It lacks a proper plot but the action is there. However if I am a parent, I would be extra careful not to let any copy of this movie (in form of CD/DVD/downloaded) falls into my child’s hands. It’s simply too shocking and violent!

Potret Mistik

Tonight while doing some coding work, I turned on the TV and the satellite decoder was tuned to Astro Kirana. Since it is an old movie that I have never watched before, I decided to go along just to see what it is all about. As a matter of fact, I started writing this post at the last moment of the movie.

The movie is titled “Potret Mistik”, a production by Metrowealth Movies production and directed by A. Razak Mohaideen.

It is one of the dumbest movie that I have ever watched, and I am thankful I didn’t go watch it at the cinemas when it was released in 2005. The movie is filled with dumb and repetitive dialogs, and the chasing scenes are really dull and not exciting. What I am looking for is the thrill and suspense on what will appear in the next screen, not an old schizophrenic maid who chases people with a butcher knife. I mean, come on… the artist who were chased is a strong guy and he can at any time run faster than the old lady. It’s a different thing if you can really feel his fear, though. Most of the time in the movie, I was laughing and didn’t really see the point. I didn’t know what the director wanted me to feel – sorry? scared? amused?

I am one of the supporters of the Malaysian movie industry but these type of movie really make me think twice before booking another ticket for a Malaysian movie. Of course, I like all of the movies made by Yasmin Ahmad. I am starting to feel that my better half is right for not wanting to go along with me when I wanted to watch a Malaysian movie.

Among other movies that I still haven’t watch:

Waris Jari Hantu
Jangan Pandang Belakang

What about you? What do you think of Malaysian movies in general?

Die Hard 4.0

Warning: might contain spoilers.

There are so many movies being released and I can’t get to them all. I watched Die Hard 4.0 last Saturday after 5 calls to the GSC Movie Reservation lines.

Die Hard 4.0 is one of the best installment from the Die Hard movie series. If you have watched the previous 3 like me, you can actually detect certain changes in style and maturity to the movie. The character of John McClane does seems to be more matured and you can see now he’s an old guy with a teenager daughter. However it is good to know that the bad-ass character and all the things he is willing to do is still preserved in this movie. The only McClane family member in this movie is Lucy, and his wife Holly did not appear. Like her mom, Lucy also refuses to use the last name McClane and used Gennero – until being saved, of course.

The final moment with the villain when he shot himself to let the bullet to go through is the best moment of the movie. That is what I think, anyway. As someone who likes aircraft technologies (and afraid to board them) it is cool to see the F35 which can hover like a Harrier. It is almost ridiculous however for a guy to stay alive after being bombarded and shot by a fighter jet. The multi million dollar jet finally crashed and the pilot ejected.

Did anyone notice the 4.0 number instead of 4? That is definitely related to the nature of issue in this movie – which is IT where a bunch of hacker headed by an ex-Government specialist attacked the whole country’s infrastructure to make his point that the security level is just not strong enough. One interesting thing is that when all of the western power grids are down, Warlock was able to get online with no problems at all. How does he connect to the Internet? Does his generator (or any alternative power supply he uses) also supplied power for the miles and miles of cabling? Bear in mind that at that moment the satellites were all taken down as well. I have to know how he did that as my home area have power failures almost once a month taking the phone lines down along!

There are many heart-pumping moments in this movie such as the patrol car that rammed to a helicopter, the SUV falling down the elevator shaft killing the bad girl played by Maggie Q, and many others.

For some, however this movie is just a movie with no sentimental values. For those who has been following all of the Die Hard movies, this movie is definitely must watch and very satisfying.

How do you like Die Hard 4.0?

Transformers The Movie 2

Warning: Might contain spoilers.

I skipped my weekly swimming exercise yesterday and went out to Summit Parade to watch Transformers. We thought that the cinemas will not be full as it is a week day but we were wrong and ended up taking the first line of seat in the THX hall. Luckily in the THX hall the screen is a couple of meters away and we can still watch it with a bit of neck pain. Oh well.

As a guy who grew up watching Transformers cartoons this is indeed a very well made movie, and everything is exactly as it was except that they have to make it more realistic. The details on the robots are amazing and meticulously crafted, even all the rust and damages are clearly displayed. What I like the most is that the characters of the robots – exactly as I remembered them. The leadership of Optimus Prime, the coolness of Bumblebee, the rage of Megatron and the bad attitude of Starscream.

And the voice of Optimus Prime at the beginning of the movie is hard to miss. Any Transformers fan will know that deep voice:

Before time began, there was… the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them… with life. That is how our race was born. For a time we had lived in harmony, but like all great power, some wanted it for good… others, evil. And so, began the war. A war that ravages our planet until it was consumed by death. And the cube was lost to the far reaches of space. We step in across the galaxy hoping to find it and rebuild our home. Searching every star. Every world. And just when all hopes seem lost; message of a new discovery took us to an unknown planet called… Earth. But we were already too late.

It’s too bad however that Bumblebee is a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro instead of the original Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, I like him more as a Camaro but I still like to think of him as a Beetle and a tad disappointed by this change. At the starting of the movie however you can see that Bumblebee parked beside a yellow Beetle but trashed it to make sure that Sam will buy him 😉 At first, I was disappointed to see the rusty old Camaro but when he changed inside the tunnel my jaw was open with much awe. Bumblebee used to be cute, but now he looks sturdy but he still have his cool.

Here’s a photo of the old Bumblebee as a Beetle that I found in the Internet:

Bumblebee Beetle

The overall movie quality is very good, but the battles seems to be quite speedy for me to follow. A lot of details are missing because of the high speed battle between the robots. However this is normal for a movie with huge bots like this and I still I love it a lot.

Do you know that this movie is not the first Transformers movie? In 1986 Transformers The Movie was released but it was an animation. I didn’t remember watching it since I was a little kid at that time and cinemas is not common during those days.

Thanks to Michael Bay for producing a good movie like this. Transformers have surely brought back a lot of memories…

Live Free or Die Hard

As a long time Bruce Willis fan (you’ll know if you see my gravatar and IM avatars), I was thrilled when Azidin told me that a new Die Hard movie is going to be released this year. It is going to be the 4th installment to the Die Hard series, being the 4th.

I have never expected that Die Hard 4 would be made, since I read somewhere that Willis said there will be no more sequel.

It’s planned to be aired in 28 June 2007 in Malaysia. This is one of the movie that I will make pre-booking to watch.

IMDB entry: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Casino Royale

As mentioned earlier I went to watch Casino Royale earlier tonight. The movie is alright, but can be better.

What I like:

The starting montage is indeed suitable and gives me the feel that this is a Bond movie.
Bond’s weakness is as usual – women.
No SPECTRE – frankly I’m tired of that shit, plus Blofeld.

What I don’t like:

The theme song is less catchy than the previous movies.
The fights are too barbaric and too real.
Bond is too serious, emotionless most of the times except when he was with Vesper in the shower.
The crook was killed to easily, and not by Bond.
Where’s Q?
Where’s the fully equiped Aston Martin?

My wife seems to think that I watch too much of the older movies and she actually enjoyed the new one more.

I’ll add up the list if I find anything else I left out. 😉

Movie Time!

It’s movie time again after months being away from the cinemas. After being worked so hard and having no time for entertainment, I think I deserve a couple of hours for a movie. We are going to watch the not-so-new-anymore Casino Royale tonight! Made a reservation on TGV online for tonight. Never realized that the ticket price has increased to RM11.00? Or is the price only for online reservations? Never mind… as long the system works fine, I am happy.

One thing to warn you people out there is that TGV Online seating allocation applet crashed my Firefox and I had to start over with Internet Explorer. Maybe it’s only my computer, then again maybe not!