Aliens, Apes, Beatings, Boredom and Brainy

“Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty human!” Is what my keyboard would say if it actually could. Seriously, I abuse this thing.

But just like gravy, it’s on to the meat and potatoes.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I know, I know. What kind of self-confessed geek (or nerd, I’ll let the audience decide) waits this long to watch this film? Well, I did. So there. Go eat some humble pie already.

The film managed to do what so many others of its ilk seem incapable of doing, which is something that may come as a shock to some of you, and that is be a darn good film.

Prequels/sequels/requels/reboots/kittens – whatever you want to call them, they never seem to be quite as good as the originals. Rise of the Planet of the Apes not only manages to be on par with the classic, but reinvigorated the franchise at the same time. And who wouldn’t want to watch a film named Planeta dos Macacos: A Origem? (If you were seeing it in Brazil, that is)

So much about this film was handled right. The story, the characters and the running time. To me, that’s already three ticks in the Film – You’re Doing It Right boxes. At no point were we subjected to anything on screen that was useless – everything had its place and purpose in the grand scheme of things. That said, they took some liberties with time jumps and wrote around them accordingly, but that’s me nitpicking at best. In-jokes for all those fans of the originals were placed nicely. Weta Digital outdid themselves yet again, showing the rest of the world how special effects and animals should actually look.

I should explain why I put emphasis on actually – you see, I remember watching a film called The Day After Tomorrow – another entry in the Roland Emmerich ‘holyfucknuggetstheworldisending’ series and at one point some CGI wolves managed to navigate icy stairs like it was no problem whatsoever. This troubled me.

Admittedly, I should not be questioning the cognitive ability of the animal kingdom after viewing the film I just did, and I will be the first human to lay down arms when our animals decide to rise against us (Let’s face it, folks, we’ve had a good run). But when you see things being done right and an amazing level of finer details – behavioural traits, psychological responses – being accounted for, you just have to tip your cap.

If you have not seen this film, I highly recommend it.

Attack the Block

This film came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. Take a group of UK teenagers whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to generally get up to no good and cause mischief. Drop said teenagers into a crisis situation, like say, an alien invasion and you get Attack the Block.

Based on my description, you may very well feel like writing this film off – I urge you not to. Joe Cornish’s feature-length film directing debut is good stuff. Joe also wrote the film. Having worked with Edgar Wright (serving as executive producer on Attack the Block) on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I didn’t really need to be convinced to at least give this film a shot. I’m glad that I did.

These teenagers, whose life revolve around their commission housing flats, suddenly find themselves in a situation where it’s kill-or-be-killed and decide that they ain’t gonna put up with no shit from no aliens.

The dialog is great in this film. Nick Frost shows up every so often. The alien design is interesting. Overall, it’s just a very entertaining film. The middle act suffers a little bit, but outside of that, I find it quite hard to point out glaring faults.

Merantau

An Indonesian action film starring new martial arts talent Iko Uwais. Some great fight choreography and really well-thought out action sequences. The story doesn’t really hold back either, pitting an naive young man against some of the evils of the world he also (unknowingly) inhabits, namely prostitution and human trafficking. Well worth checking out if you enjoy international action films.

Iko Uwais will also star in an upcoming action film, The Raid (trailer here), which has been getting rave reviews since its first screening at the Toronto Film Festival. It looks very brutal, so don’t watch the trailer unless that kind of thing interests you.

That’s enough about movies…for now.

Boredom

Once I arrived home from my daily slog at uni, I found myself bored. This should be categorically impossible – I have a backlog of movies, video games, books and graphic novels that I don’t see to be able to find time to even start working my way through, yet here I was, sitting around… Bored.

I also could have been studying or writing the assignment that’s due next Thursday (Can I get a ‘hell yeah’ for self-reminders in blog posts?), but no, I was bored.

So what’d I do?

Made ramen, of course.

Not that I’ve ever made ramen before.

Not that I even had a clue on how to make ramen.

Cooking myself lunch to cure boredom. What have I become?

Why have I just written so many single line points?

I guess you’ll never know.

Anyhow, once I decided that 1/2 tablespoon of red curry paste and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (maybe a pinch or two of salt) was sufficient to create a soup base, I boiled some water, fried some tofu, threw some veggies in with the soup broth (carrots, snow peas, bean shoots, mushroom and broccoli) and then let some udon noodles sit in boiling water for a bit. How effing simple was that? Too simple, but also ended up being quite delicious. Further incarnations of ramen shall follow, no doubt.

I’m thinking I should start my very own cooking show called “If Paul Can’t Cook, You Can Cook For Him!” in which I try to mimic someone else’s recipe after seeing them make it once. I don’t get to make any notes, I just have to try and remember everything and recreate the same dish I just consumed. This way, I get fed as long as the show lasts and the person who cooked for me gets an approximately similar dish to what they gave me. Let’s face it, half the reason reality TV works is because we want to see spectacular levels of failure, no? I figure it’s about high time I cash in on this.

Brainy

Seriously, I don’t understand this last point. A student from one of my classes at uni yesterday saw me and said, “Hey, it’s the brainy guy. Seriously, dude, you’re smart. You know what’s going on.”

How fucking misinformed can one person be? I did almost respond with, “I think you mean relatively brainy.” But not only would my veiled insult probably not have been perceived, it would have made me seem like an arrogant C-U-Next-Tuesday.

It’s something I’ve never wanted to admit or accept, that I have some level of intellectual capacity that is above average. I don’t see it. I would like to think that if it did exist, I’d be doing something with it to help better this world.

Or maybe I just can’t take a compliment.

Also, in closing, the first person to comment on this post will be the official 100th comment! I shall throw you a party in a castle* with a three-storey cake** to celebrate the fact!

*Subject to availability of a castle – at no expense incurred by me.
**Subject to availability of a castle in which a three-storey cake could fit – at no expense incurred by me.