Very Late Movie Review

I just watched "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" on DVD.

It was a movie that I had waited so long to watch at the cinema, but by the time it reached Malaysian shores I had so many business trips in Kerteh that I missed it. Fortunately I managed to get the DVD, but finding the time to watch it was another thing. It is a well-known fact that the only DVD's allowed to play in my house are either Barney, Disney cartoons or BBC's Planet series.

Today I managed to convince Nuaim to let my play it by enticing him with the Spanish Armada.

"Pirate ships?" he asked.

"Sort of."

Hardly 10 seconds into the movie he started pestering me for the the pirate ships. The sight of one dashing pirate in the form of Walter Raleigh wasn't enough for him. He gave up and started building his own pirate ship with Duplo blocks.

What I love about the movie? The costumes, the set and Cate Blanchett.

What I hated about it? Everything else.

Well, not quite HATE. But the movie felt like a very long drawn out history lesson, with too many slow-mo scenes that had no real effect on me. Clive Owen wore the same look throughout (in fact he looks the same in almost every movie), Geoffrey Rush looked bored, and there was greater chemistry between Elizabeth and her lady-in-waiting than with Raleigh (was that intentional?). There was so much more to tell about Elizabeth's Golden Age. If you don't believe me, go watch 'Black Adder'.

Deepavali Dishy Dude

As part of the Deepavali specials, TV2 aired the Hindi movie Don this afternoon. I was curious to see it as there was so much hype when the movie was released last year. There were Celcom XPax promotional posters in every magazine and newspaper, featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra ( another former Miss World-turned-actress but not as ethereally gorgeous as Aishwarya Rai) , Arjun Rampal and Kareena Kapoor. It turned out almost the whole movie was filmed in Malaysia, and even featured Petronas Twin Towers and its skybridge!

I had missed the first ten minutes, and by the time I switched on the TV, Kareena Kapoor's character was about one minute away from her death at the hands of Don. What, you got your picture on the promo poster just for the sake of 5 minutes' appearance in the movie?! Turns out her character and the beauty queen's are sisters, so the latter goes off to seek revenge by infiltrating the bad guys. She does this by rolling over (rather clumsily, I might add) a black Waja driven by Don's sidekicks and pointing a gun at their heads. The first thing that came to my mind was, "Hang on a minute, isn't that Shamser Sidhu?" Well, later on Tony Eusoff, Shaharuddin Thamby and even Tengku Azura joined the party, although without any dialogue whatsoever. Oh, Tengku Azura did get to scream when her character (a nightclub waitress) got shot by a policeman (duh? I'll explain later) but the others were merely filling in the blanks.

Anyway, the movie was a very slick and stylish remake of a 70's movie starring Amitabh Bachchan. I don't know how much of the plot actually differed - I've never seen the original, so I wouldn't be able to compare really. Basically SRK plays big baddie Don, an Indian drug lord who's relocated his operations to Malaysia. Somehow the police honcho, De Silva, nabs the crook and decides to place a Don impostor to retrieve information about his operations. So in goes simpleton Vijay, playacting as Don. Only by the end of the movie, you realise that it never was Vijay but Don himself impersonating Vijay impersonating Don. And that police honcho De Silva is also an impersonator. In truth he is rival baddie Vardhan who wishes to conquer Don's share of the market. And of course there was Priyanka Chopra's character who's also pretending she's a baddie in order to kill the big baddie, but gradually falls in love with him when she realises he's actually goody-goody Vijay, but at the end he reveals himself to be the real baddie and she's missed her chance. Confusing, no?

What I really enjoyed about the movie, though, was this eye candy. His acting's not bad either.

Oscar winners

An American dreamer, a weathered old man and two British monarchs swept acting honours at this year's Academy Awards.

Long live the Queen!

Just because I rock doesn't mean I'm made of stone

I watched 'Me, Myself and Irene' on Astro recently, and somehow that line stuck. For those not in the know, the movie was about a really nice guy, Charlie, who has been suppressing all his anger until it manifests itself into a second personality called Hank who thinks he's really cool but isn't (the line is his). It's one of Jim Carrey's less successful movies, I think, and the above line is about the only really memorable thing about the movie. But I'm writing it here just so that I don't forget it.