Cloud Nine

Things aren't always as they say.

Dreams aren't always as far away.

To see further, we must climb. 

Climb higher and we will touch the sky!

The Sentinels are really intimidating

The one thought that is still wandering in my mind after watching Days of Future Past is the Sentinels. They are really scary. In X-men cartoon series, they are just a bunch of metal shells, easily defeated. The only way they can beat X-men in the cartoon is by out-numbering X-men ten to one. But in this movie, they are almost unbeatable. One sentinel can take on three or more mutants. Plus there are thousands and thousands of them. There is simply no way X-men can defeat them face on.

When you have an antagonist that is so powerful for the hero, the urgency of the events is immediately heightened. When I was watching the movie, the tension was so high that I was on the edge of my seat most of the time. I can really feel that if X-men don't succeed, the world is then doomed.

Simply put, Days of Future Past is awesome. It is my favorite film so far in 2014, even better than the Winter Soldier. It is a dark toned superhero movie, mix in with an adequate amount of good jokes. Considering the number of characters in this film, the story is well written to give every character an equal weight to shine, something which is difficult to achieve. A good exemple of a successful film with a lot of characters that I can think of is the Avengers. 

I can't help myself but to compare it with Avengers. In a world where I have to choose only one of them, I would choose Days of Future Past. I grew up with X-men film trilogy, I even used to watch the X-men cartoon series. On the other hand, I only knew about the Avengers in the recent years. Days of the Future Past makes X-men awesome again. Of course I would root for X-men over the Avengers.

There is so much emotion in it too. Time traveling isn't a new premise in a movie, but it is the great acting performance by all the actors that makes this movie stand out. The scene where the young and old Professor X meet, the conversation is so damn moving, so damn relatable, that I almost bawl.

In the end, all and all is to say that Days of Future Past is very well done. If you only have money to watch one movie within this month, skip Godzilla, don't watch Spiderman, watch this. I know this is a bold statement. Godzilla is good and the special effects probably make Godzilla worth watching in cinema. But from the stand point of storyline, the thing I value the most in a movie, Days of Future Past is way better. 

A movie without end credit scene is not a Marvel movie. No exception this time. The scene is quite important though as it reveals the next major villain. And for the first time I do know about this villain. I still remember him vividly when I first saw him in the cartoon series. It took X-men a few episodes to take him down. He is ancient, he is powerful. He is the Apocalypse!

  

  

To Kill a Mockingbird movie review

Watching the review from John Green's Crash Course literature, only then I knew that To Kill a Mockingbird was adapted into film, and it was an award-winning film too! It was one of the top contender for Oscar year 1963, together with Lawrence of Arabia. I watched it and it was indeed very good.

Still a black and white film, as a modern day audience, I was expecting it to be a slow film. Surprisingly, it isn't. It is very well-paced. The cast is great, all the characters are portrayed just like what I imagine, except may be Bob Ewell. I imagine him to be more ugly, more drunk, and more filthy. 

It is very faithful to the book. Some scenes from the book are cut off but they don't bother me that much. I even think those cut-off scenes are very well selected, making the storyline more compact and more focus on Tom Robinson's case. Don't get me wrong, those cut-off scenes such as Cal bringing Jem and Scott to nigger church and the story of Mrs Dubose are very interesting. But choices have to be made in a 2 hour film, and choosing to focus on Tom Robinson's case is the right call. 

One interesting thing I notice is the setting. Maycomb seems larger in my imagination than in the film. The true size of Maycomb could be just like the one in the film. But in the book, reading from the point of view of a little girl, and I guess everything always seems larger when we were little. At least it is true from what I remember. When I was little, I felt like my home was my whole world, and Malaysia was as huge as the universe. Only when I opened the Atlas world map that I realized my tininess.  

   

To Kill a Mockingbird review

A heart warming experience! Perfectly capture a young girl's view on the world around her. This is certainly a book that can bring a smile to you. It just reminds me so much of my own childhood. I was overwhelmed by nostalgia after I had finished the book. 

It was a very famous book and I knew about it for quite some time. Before this book, I was quite suffocated by the sheer professionalism of Norbert Elias in The Civlilizing Process. It was so detailed that until now, I am still only midway through The Civilizing Process since I started it about 3 months ago. "I need a break!", I thought. And so To Kill a Mockingbird came into my mind. All I needed was an easy reading, and it gave me just that.

As I said, it is easy to read, the storyline is chronolgical and straight forward. For me, it is about a young girl learning about the society she lives in, learning about the subtlety of good and evil, the grey zone in between black and white (literally and figuratively). It is also about the relationship between a father and his daugther, Atticus and Scout in this case. 

Many things in this book resonate with me, and I think they probably would resonate with many other people too. While growing up, we all kinda have neighbours similar to the book, such as the creepy neighbour like the Radleys, the filthy one like the Ewells, the poor one like the Cunninghams, etc.. I like how Harper Lee pictured the interactions between these families, they are so down to earth and so close to us. I also like those little misconceptions Jem and Scout formed of Boo Radley and their fear of the Radleys. Just like Scout and Jem, we feared of many things when we were small and innocent, feared of things that to us nowadays seem like non sense.   

My favorite character has to be Atticus. He is a good father, the hero of the story, the ultimate good guy. His advices and teachings for Scout throughout the book are the gold and can be summed up by a word : empathy, as Atticus said to Scout,

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. 

About my favorite scene, it got to be the scene where Scout basically single handedly stopped the mob from hurting Tom Robinson. Scout didn't know about it, but it is very clear that, not Atticus, not Jem, not Dill, but Scout stopped the mob. If Atticus was the knight protecting Tom that night, then Scout must be the angel. It was a very high tension scene, a powerful scene. It was at the brink of violence, but the angel appeared in time and save the day. 

The following is spoilery, but Tom kinda chose to die. Tom knew and everybody in the book knew very well that there was no winning, no way out. It wasn't the warden who killed Tom, the society killed Tom. What struck me wasn't his death itself but the inevitability of his death.

Tom was a dead man the minute when Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and sceamed.

It is a tragedy of racism. I wonder it could have very well been a romantic story in between Tom and Mayella if it happens in modern day.

It is a sin to kill a mockingbird, as mockingbird does no harm to us. They are innocent and they need our protection. Although bad things happened and will happen again, but we must have faith in humanity, as Scout and Atticus did at the end.

Scout : ...Atticus, he was real nice...
Atticus : Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

   

The first few hours in India

Come to think about it, it was really dangerous and ballsy of what I did. 

Three in the morning, my mom and I were in a plane from Colombo to Mumbai and it just arrived in Chhatrapati Shivaji airport. You can call me adventurous or stupid, but I had decided not to book an accommodation before arrival. Our plan was to find a good spot in the airport, stay through the night and search for a place to stay in downtown Mumbai only the next morning. So we wandered around searching for a nice corner where we could just lie down and sleep. From my experience, all the nice facilities of airport are in the departure hall, and so departure hall was our obvious choice. 

But then I realized, there was no way to go there from the arrival hall from inside the airport. We went outside and the rain started pouring, and there were tonnes of tonnes of local Indians outside who I was not sure what were they doing there. Probably waiting for the arriving people or waiting for their planes. Anyway, we found a staircase, took it and went up to the entrance of the departure hall.

First thing I noticed : tight security. Many soldiers with rifles at the entrance. We acted casual and tried to get in. Apparently, one needed to show his flight ticket to get in. Being the only outsiders at that moment, we were not that difficult to be spotted and immediately we were stopped. I tried hard to explain the situation, even beg them, but they refused regardless. We then went back to the arrival hall, not as many soldiers but the same, they just won't let us in!

I panicked. It was four something in the morning, there was still a few hours before dawn. We had no way to get inside and I didn't want to stay outside the airport either, considering the rain and the crowd. Plus we already had had a long day transitting in KLIA and Colombo airport, we were exhausted. The only option left was to head to a nearby hotel. Hilton signboard was within sight, but I didn't feel like spending so much within just the first few hours into our trip while we still had a few weeks to go with our limited budget. Luckily, I had a backup plan. I had copied down a few cheaper hotels' names and addresses situated downtown Mumbai beforehand. So, we hopped into a taxi, heading to downtown.

As soon as we hit the road, the rain was tamed down quite a bit, from downpour to drizzling. As expected, the road infrastructure was quite poor. Not very well lit, lacking of lane markings and uneven paved surface making the taxi ride quite bumpy sometimes. But the lacking of streetlights was my major concern as darkness makes everything scarier. It is a common sense not to get around in dark places at night, and now I had to go against my common sense. Our safety could be in jeopardy anytime. Our alertness was in all time high.

I saw Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station and I knew that we had arrived in the very centre of Mumbai. In our taxi, we headed to the first hotel on my list. Leaving my mom and our bags in the taxi while I get down to ask. Full! Then we headed for the second one. Full! The third one : Full too! The fourth? Door closed and no one replied the door! My list ran out! What should I do?!

Then we went back to the third one to ask for any other hotels nearby. The receptionist showed me a not so good looking hotel not far away. I rang the bell and kept praying : please answer the door and please be a vacant room. A few minutes later, I heard some sound and then someone in sarong with a sleepy face came to the door. And guess what, there still was a room left! It cost 1700 rupees, but I simply didn't care anymore. I paid the taxi driver and we moved into our room. Too much alertness and it became paranoia, I even used our backpacks to block the door after I locked our room, just to make sure that we were really safe. We were so tired that we fell asleep as soon as we lay down on bed.

That was a long long night...





















 

The least dumb tv reality show

Considering the lack of money and lack of interest to travel to any nearby places, again I am not going anywhere this holiday. Probably getting bored, I just watched the entire season one of the Amazing Race. Since I was young, I always think that it is an awesome concept and I always dream of participating in this race and travel around the world. 

There is one saying about tv reality show : watching reality show can make audiences dumb. I don't know many tv reality shows but in my opinion, Amazing Race is the least dumb of all. Of course, I won't deny the fact that there are some exaggerations, for the sake of making the show seemingly as exciting as possible. But I think that most of the emotions in the show are genuine. Travel for a long time, sleep deprivation, and constantly have to do stuffs out of one's comfort zone can be really unnerving. Contestants can lose their temper easily and thus causing quarrels. 

Sometimes, we may even see contestants argue over something which doesn't even make sense at all. But I think it is perfectly normal. The race is forcing contestants out of their comfort zone. Only out the comfort zone that we reveal our true selves. And that is why travel together for a long time is a good way to discover each other's true colours. 

Not so much now but I used to travel a lot. From my experience, travelling in a group without a guide or a leader and everybody will have their own opinion. Some want to do this, some want otherwise, eventually someone has to yield. If nobody yield, conflit becomes inevitable. Either the group is able to go on with a plan but the opposing side rest unsatisfied, or the group is split and everybody does whatever he wants. 

Either way, I don't think splitting the group is a good idea. Once the group is split, it has the tendency to split again and again whenever there are different opinions. The group will become more and more divided, thus losing the point of travelling in a group at the beginning.