Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

A sequel with a vengeance. It did all the horrible things you hope sequels never do, and did it with gusto too. Irrelevant (and often campy) details such as Mrs. Witwicky's loopy behaviour, Sam's maladjustedness, and the sexual awkwardness (or obsession) of adolescence, which, in the first movie were touches of humour, got blown entirely our of proportion in the second one. Campiness pretty much upstaged the noble autobot mission for half of this 150-minute long flick, followed by an interval of aaargh! aargh! aaargh! chased by deceptic---aargh! aargh! aargh! And then a long explosive battle scene when everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame, except for the autobots. The US army gets about half an hour, so does Optimus. The other bots just flash in and out of the scenes, unlike the first movie where there was at least some effort at drawing out the characters of the different bots.

I could rip the screenplay and storyline apart, but then it is a teen flick meant to ride on the wave of profits and hype generated by the first movie, so maybe it's not worth the effort, nor even fair to do so. I'll just say that it had something going for it, but flashy CGI cannot make up for the terrible pacing, in which each meaningful chunk of the plot deflates in an anticlimactic and prolonged joke of a scene, like Mrs. Witwicky's antics, or the twin robots' antics, or Witwicky's roomate's antics. Perhaps the team was aiming for the comic book's ability to pitch from slapstick comedy to rough talk, to noble ideals--mashing and bending genres. But it looked more as if, in putting together big, flashy and putatively emotional scenes, tastelessly decked out with innuendo and campiness, they lost artistic control of the overall effect.

There is truly nothing like a bad sense of rhythm to spoil what ought to have been at least an enjoyable movie. The beginning was a series of repeated episodes about the ridiculousness of Sam's family and the awkwardness of his first day at school, hyper-exaggerated by his actions under the influence of the Allspark (no, it's not a type of drug). The middle was generally a lot of running and screaming and things exploding left right and centre, followed by more running and screaming; it felt like a failed hybrid of horror and action. Even the climactic battle scene dragged on a little too long, despite being so fast-paced that one hardly knew who was who at times (which is all part of the fun, I feel, in this particular movie)--this mostly again the fault of random cut scenes to irrelevant jokes that dragged on for half a minute at a time. Hey, forget slow motion, there's nothing like campiness and weepiness in the middle of a big battle to impress upon the audience the all-important desire to focus on the fight. Yes, camera, let us see anything except that smart-talking soldier or hysterical college kid, please please, please.

Well, to admit, I only watch these movies because I admire CGI, and I think special effects artists who put so much work into their creations should get admired. Scripts and screenplays coming out of the US don't seem to hold much right now. All bowing to mass consumption, profit margins and the like. It's obvious when a screenplay rehashes to an audience what the writers/producers think the audience wants. You end up with an inchoate and contradictory piece, rather than a piece which says something, if not about the world, at least about itself.

The Reunion--2009

"So, what did you guys do in Seremban?" my dad asked.

I don't really know. Too many things, it would seem. Surprising that so much life could be squeezed into (or out of) just two days together. We visited the istana lama Seri Menanti. It's not very grand or elaborate, except for its mortise and tenon woodwork and wood-tiled roof. A very concise palace, with chambers that are just large enough to hold court. The balai berundang, where the king and his advisors would hold council, is scarcely the size of an average master bedroom. I was impressed. The irrational nationalist in me took this as evidence that the feudal system in the Minangkabau region was fairer than that in Europe, in that the royalty did not seem to draw massive profits at the expense of its people...but on second thought, it'd take far more rigorous digging to prove a hypothesis like that.



We also spent the evening talking about our lives, and what we've been through since the last time we saw each other (I mean saw each other and really talked, which was about two years ago). And gathering the threads of each person's story, I realise just how much growing up we've had to do in these past two years. Growing up in the sense that we've had to learn to deal with loss, with failure, doubt, and with current decisions and their future consequences. In a different sense, it's been a struggle to not become grown up, like the grown ups I never admired for being bitter and self-righteous and who seemed to always think they were right simply because it was unthinkable to be grown up and wrong at the same time. The toughest lesson I've had to learn this year is that God does walk with us through all the horrible things we go through. It's often easier to blame ourselves, blame others, or blame God and then decide that we have nothing to do with Him. It's much harder to blame God and deal with what comes out of that. Because it's a relationship that just won't go away. That's a very tough lesson, the kind that took Job and his buddies took about 40-odd chapters to learn.

At the end of my 42 chapters, will I be a hardened self-righteous cynic like Bildad, or a stupefied and awed Job? I do not want to live in the kind of grown up world where relationships mean nothing besides work done and salaries paid, something sold and something paid for at the supermarket with nothing more than a blink of the eye to mark the exchange. Society has developed, society has progressed, but to what end? This wasn't the world I ordered over ebay. I just woke up to it one morning. Alas, the world is not made to order. There're always grown ups to deal with. And the grown up inside us, who're the most insidious of all.
















I'm glad to be a child of God.
I don't think there's any other
way to stay a child in this world.

Culinary Adventures

After one month on low-budget cooking (i.e under $2 pax per meal), I switch to one month on an average student budget ($2-4 pax).

Lessons learnt during low-budget, high-speed, cooking over electric stoves:

1. Anything goes. Under $2 meals means buying the cheapest things available at the supermarket/market on that day.

2. If anything goes, then make sure your dinner buddies do not have high expectations, or cook western-style.

3. Why? It's pretty tough to cook western on a low budget here, because they derive their best taste from herbs ($2-4 a bottle), and the fact that dairy products like cream, butter and cheese are expensive here--unless you're content with fish and chips, or omelettes and potatoes. Chinese food, on the other hand, can taste pretty good from inexpensive things like soya sauce and oyster sauce, and of course there's always a huge amount of inexpensive processed stuff to choose from (fishballs, sotong balls, fishcakes, etc), while ham and sausages are considerably pricier.

3. In the spirit of anything goes: almost anything that's deep fried can be stir fried to save oil. This includes fish cakes, fishballs, but not won ton (unless you don't mind it being soggy). Anything with a flour coating should be deep fried or boiled in soup. Better yet, don't flour-coat at all. Stir fry. Even cornstarch and oyster sauce are not absolutely necessary for stir frying (if youre are really living on the margins of poverty, that is).

4. Rice can be cooked in the microwave (learnt this courtesy of a fellow budget chef) to minimize number of cooking implements needed (and save 70 dollars on a small rice cooker). It can also be cooked in a pot, as in the days before rice cookers, but requires more attention. Whether in microwave or pot, it is recommended to stir the rice up once it's three-quarters cooked (prevent a rice crust from forming in the pot and sogginess in bottom layer of container for microwaved rice).

5. If you don't have issues with a particular type of diet, then high carb and low protein meals are pretty cheap. Incidentally, that's a good diet for sports like floorball, which involves a lot of running over an extended period of time, so it suits me.

6. Pasta and tinned soup go very well together (unlike rice, pasta boils faster on the stove than in the microwave), for a quick alternative to instant noodles. One can of Campbell's tinned soup can make up to two or three such small meals.

7. Finally, leach unembarassedly off other cooking buddies (okay, I did exchange mushrooms for rice--I'm not that cheapskate).

Average budget:

I haven't really had time to cook on an average budget, except for two tries at chicken curry. The first try was low budget (with minimal spices) and it was rather tasteless. So went on to average budget instead, and got everything I needed for it, and used a different recipe. This time it was fragrant and tasty, though not very spicy. Likely the first time didn't turn out because I was a little nervous and didn't give the curry paste enough time to "pecah minyak."