Chatter Of The Squirrel

Movie: Running Scared

Holy crap… talk about a dirty and gritty mob movie!!

This is a good one. Lots of guns, blood, and exploding heads.

And it’s not gratuitious.

Didn’t expect there to be such a thing as artistic violence. But this is pretty close.

Nine years ago, I watched Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco at the theatres. It was horribly butchered by the Malaysian censorship board. Every time Al Pacino said “f*ck”, the film skipped a milli-second.

Since then, there was an emptiness that I never realised I had… Until it was filled by Running Scared.

Paul Walker, (Mr Fast & Furious, but more enviably the guy that rode Jessica Alba in Into The Blue), is a low level mob grunt. His boss’ son shot a couple of dirty cops, and hands him the gun to be disposed of. The gun ends up back in the street, and racks up plenty of mileage.

After that it’s a fun ride painting the town red.

The story and the action is gripping. The characters are nasty. Although without the powerful commentary of Brasco.

It’s a good watch. But don’t watch it on Malaysian theatres.

“One Nike gym bag: 60 bucks.
One Nokia cell phone: 100 bucks.
One ounce Semtex: 500 bucks.
Getting rid of a dirty cop: f*cking priceless!”

Movie: Lucky Number Slevin

Not a bad movie.

Lots of big names: Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, etc.

Very enjoyable script. Slevin was in the wrong apartment, at the wrong time, and was mistaken for a loser who owes a bookie $96,000. And there’s no way to get himself out of it… As if that wasn’t enough, the rival ganglord also picks him up for a $33,000 debt. Then the police picks him up too, curious why he’s been walking in and out of both mobster HQs.

“The first time somebody calls you a horse, you punch him on the nose.
The second time sombody calls you a horse, you call him a jerk.
But the third time somebody calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”

There are twists, of course, and if your eyes are sharp, you can catch what’s going on before the end of the movie. The director was generous with the clues. (Hint: watch for things like watches and rings etc…)

But there’s no need to think too hard. It’s just a fun story to watch. Good script, good actors, good directing.

And it’s cute how lucky Slevin somehow takes everything in stride, and still finds the time to fall in love. It’s taking happy-go-lucky to a state of Zen-hood.

By the way, ataraxia is a bogus ‘disorder’.

Book: Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

Plenty of time to catch up on some reading back in Sibu.

Managed to get hold of O.S.Card’s latest one-shot offering. This time a genre of fantasy, that I might describe as ‘urban fantasy’… Where magic happens in the streets of an urban city. Kinda like Megan Lindholm’s Wizard Of The Pigeons, Charles de Lint’s The Ivory And The Horn, or Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

It’s an interesting genre, where authors weave magic and mystery around aspects of city life that frequently goes unnoticed. All too often, there is the theme of homeless bag-men and bag-ladies as being practitioners of magic. Remember Mad Hattie in Sandman. And it’s usually a rather im-potent form of magic or illusions, not the fancy fireballs and magic missiles from D&D.

I can’t imagine there being much fandom for this genre. But it’s nice to read something less mainstream once in a while. Particularly enjoy Charles de Lint, but he’s not mainstream enough for me to get hold of his books easily, else I would have read more…

Magic Street also starts with a Bag-Man, who ‘be-witches’ an English professor into giving him a lift, and driving him back to his neighbourhood. The professor gets home to find his wife giving birth, although she wasn’t pregnant when he left home that morning. When the infant was delivered, unbreathing, the Bag-Man entered the room, took the stillborn, and put it into one of his plastic bags.

And with this sinister beginning, it segways into a story of an orphan boy growing up in a well to do black neighbourhood in LA. A boy who is influenced by magic in his life, and ultimately discovers his beginnings and his fate.

One of O.S.Card’s greatest strength is his characterization. He can paint a character so real that you feel that you’re living in his world, seeing everything with his eyes. And you inevitably form an emotional bond with the character. Like reading Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Card’s story ideas are wonderful also. I like his short stories best.

Magic Street started out wonderful as well… But somehow, towards the end…. I begin to feel like I’m reading Robert Heinlein, a prolific sci-fi writer whose stories always start out strong, but the finish always leaves you unsatisfied. Like fake Viagra that wears off mid-coitus… But in both authors, it is their skillful characterizations that made their books most enjoyable, so I kinda forgive them for their flaccid endings.

The protagonist is an abandoned child named Mack Street. He’s raised by Cecil, a boy that found Mack. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two main characters are named Mack and Ceese.

Mack grows up and meets Puck and Titania as the story builds towards a showdown with a force of great evil.

Pretty standard fantasy fare. But the characters are interesting.

“What fools these mortals be…”
—–Puck, A Midsummer Night’s Dream—–

AirAsia, LCC, Sibu

Just got back from a weekend in Sibu.

Used AirAsia to get the cheapest fare possible. I saved hundreds flying on a weekday, instead of the weekend. Only costs me 2 days’ work leave, rm60 for airfare and rm90 in airport taxes.

Flight was on Friday morning, 7am. Had to do a fair bit of research to find the most economical way there.

I used to have a strategy of parking at the Putrajaya ERL station, and take an rm6.40 train ride to KLIA. That won’t work this time around, since AirAsia moved to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in March.

The earliest train will leave from the Putrajaya ERL at 5:50, that gets me to KLIA at 6:10, and I still have to take a connecting bus from the Main Terminal to the LCCT. Although both terminals are using the same air-strip, just on opposite sides, but getting from point A to point B is not a straight line. It’s a 20km bus ride.

After further research around the net, I was convinced that there’s a feeder bus from the Salak Tinggi ERL straight to the LCCT, first bus at 5am. That’s what the AirAsia website said.

Downloaded GoogleEarth. Blew up the aerial shot of the Salak Tinggi ERL. Good. There’s a good open air carpark. And no sign of those parking barriers, so the parking is free.

Plan A: Park at Salak Tinggi. Take the bus to LCCT.

To be safe, I scanned the aerial view of the LCCT too. Measured its distance to the post office. It’s very near the post office where I went a few months back. There’s a clearing where I parked that time, and its walking distance to the LCCT from there.

That’s Plan B.

Worst case, Plan C, I can park at the LCCT carpark. The parking rate for a couple of days, will still be cheaper than 2 cab-fares to and from PJ.

Woke up at 3:30am on Fri morning, planned the route to Salak Tinggi with my GPS map, and left the house at 4am. The GPS map brought me via a rather _creative_ route… But it saved me more than rm10 in toll.

Waited more than half an hour at Salak Tinggi. The bus appears to be a myth. None of the workers at the station had ever seen such a bus. Scrap Plan A.

Found the clearing near the post office alright. But it’s been cordoned off. Scrap Plan B. I could still park along the road-side there as many are doing, but decided not to take the risk. It’ll be there for too many days.

Plan C, parked at the LCCT open air carpark. RM30 per 24hr period. Still not too bad. RM50 penalty for losing the parking chip token. ….hmmm….

Anyways, just barely made it to the check-in counter on time.

All this effort to drive to the airport? Cos I’ve an important date on Monday evening, right after I get back from Sibu. That’s why I needed my car waiting for me.

Wasn’t much to do in Sibu, except eat. And visit my 92yr old grandma. It’s good to see that she has recovered a fair bit of strength, and was coherent enough to ask me why have I not found myself a girl at my age…

I also sinned. Again…

Gremlins

As if I needed any more reminders of how ’special’ I am….

Penny Arcade goes and write a joke that I ‘get’…

Or this one, for that matters….