Caught National Treasure: Book of Secrets at Bugis with Joyce (pinklittlefigure) after dinner at Sinma live Seafood at Geylang Lor 3.

An exciting, action packed movie in which Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage) looks to discover the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and clear his family name, by uncovering the mystery within the 18 pages missing from assassin John Wilkes Booth’s diary. There’s also a touch of ‘Indiana Jones’ in the movie nearer to the end (I won’t say what it is) to keep up with the suspense.

I learn a few things in the movie, for e.g. even though I know it is a gift from France, I did not know that there is a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris. I also learn the origins of the Resolute Desks and they are a pair, with one located in the Buckingham Palace, and another in the White House.

To some, these might be trivial to some but it’s things I never knew and I always like movies that are a little educational, though of course I am not suggesting that the ‘history’ presented in the Hollywood movies as truth. As always, anyone should always view the history context in Hollywood movies with a pinch of salt, and should never use them as their source of historical knowledge.

Anyway, I didn’t quite like the ending (because I liked Ed Harris). I would say the prequel is better because it has more originality. However, it’s still an exciting movie to watch. The pace of the story keeps you glued to the chair, though I would have wished for a better ending and for the story to be a little longer.

One of the waitress in Glamor spilled 1/4 of the balance of our bottle of Wokka Saki and as a ‘punishment’ we got her to treat us to a steamboat dinner at 天下第一涮 in Geylang on Wednesday evening. (Wokka Saki is a wonderful drink… I ever downed half a bottle of that stuff in a night and no hangover the next day.)

After the dinner, we took her out to a movie at Orchard Cineleisure. She got to choose the show and she wanted to watch… Alvin and the Chipmunks.

For the sake of the ignorant, Alvin and the Chipmunks is based on a cartoon series about a music group of chipmunks comprised of mischievous group leader Alvin; tall and quiet Simon; and chubby, impressionable Theodore.

The story is about how the Chipmunks were uprooted from their natural home, end up in the company of songwriter Dave (whose songs ‘no people will sing’) and then rose to fame as a up-and-coming pop group.

It’s definitely a kids show and there were lots of laughter ringing in the cinema hall, and there were some parts that makes me wonder if it is a real reflection of the lives of pop stars. The part where the tired chipmunks were given ice blended coffee with whip cream and caramel makes me wonder if some pop singers are into drugs because their schedule so tires them out and their unscrupulous managers offered it to them to keep their tired bodies going. It also made me a little more forgiving to singers caught lip syncing, since well, what the hell can you do if your voice is blown to hell and you have a concert coming up that night? To cancel the show would mean losing a lot of money…

Thus, even though it is a kid movie, my thoughts wandered to who are ‘killing’ or ‘ruining’ these singers, treating them as the money tree and try to shake as much of it out of them before the soil get so loose that the tree collapsed as the roots could hold to the ground no more.

But hey, don’t make my usual wild thinking make you think the show is not funny. It’s still a kids show and it’s still pretty damn good animation with an acceptable storyline. Just don’t expect too much out of this of course, because it definitely isn’t going to be Oscar material.

The exciting part begins when when Muskin’s birth mother came looking for him at the children’s home. (Muskin is Vanya’s friend). Gripped by the guilt of abandoning her own child, Muskin’s mother later committed suicide at the railway station (not shown in the movie) upon learning that Muskin has already been adopted. Since then, Vanya was inspired to look for his own birth mother as he didn’t want the same tragedy to happen.

Vanya learns how to read – in 2 months – to understand the file that holds the information he needs to find her. He then embarks on his quest to find his mother – and encounters the perils of the real world in post-Soviet Union Russia.

I liked this movie a lot, and the story reminded me about another I watched several years back, also about children who ran away so they can return to their real family.

What is a Rabbit-Proof Fence? From what I understand, it is a fence in Australia, made to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests out of Western Australian pastoral areas. However, this movie is not a story about the fence itself, but how the fence guided 3 Aborigine girls back to their mother and their rightful home from the small depot of Jigalong which sits on the edge of the Gibson Desert and 1,200 miles from home.

Historical background: In 1931, AO Neville, the area’s Chief Protector of Aborigines, believes the Aboriginal race is dying out and the answer to the ‘colored problem’ is to breed out the Aboriginal race. To achieve this he has ruled that children of mixed marriages cannot marry full-blooded Aborigines. Settlements are set up across the state and ‘half-caste’ children are removed from their families and prepared for their ‘new life in white society’ as domestic servants and laborers.* Neville orders the removal of Molly, Gracie, and Daisy and relocated them to a grim settlement in Jigalong.

The harsh conditions which the girls are subjected to shocked Molly, and she convinces Daisy and Gracie to run away with her to return home. They do so by using the Rabbit-Proof fence as a guide on a grueling three month journey home. Of course, once discovered missing, the authorities wouldn’t let them off so easily. They hired Moodoo, a master tracker to track them and bring them back.

I remembered this movie because of the similarity between it and ‘The Italian’. While the journey taken by the Russian boy was shorter, like the girls, he also had to elude people who are on his trail and attempting to stop him from reaching his objective.

“Not everyone can be an artist, but an artist can come from anywhere.”

That is perhaps one of the most inspiring things I have heard in my life, and well, that was a part of the animation Ratatouille.

An animation about knowing who you are, doing what you believe in, and not letting things stand in your way. And sometimes I wonder, just how many of us started off full of passion, and end up discouraged along the way by people and events that we give up our dreams – myself included.

It doesn’t matter what you are, who you are born as. You should never give up in what you believed in. You should never believe that because ‘this is what you are born as’, then there will be no way to become what you want to be.

The above is what is told in the story of Ratatouille, in the form of the rat – Remy.

From Toy Story to Bugs Life, to Monster Iinc, and to Finding Nemo, once again, Pixar has done it with a captivating and inspiring story. I recommend that you watch it with an open heart.

Caught the third installment of the Bourne series at GV Plaza yesterday, and I must say I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the previous two. It has always been my opinion that this should have been what James Bond movies should have been and the latest Bond movie by Daniel Craig was probably the only one that came the closest. (Doesn’t matter no one liked him as Bond.)

There was a minor disturbance before the movie started. After the Ratatouille ‘Protect IP’ clip was shown, someone in the crowd muttered ‘Fxxk Odex’. Since I was only a few seats away from whoever that was, I replied ‘I agree’ and there was some muffled laughter from some audiences in the vicinity. Stephen Sing and Odex have very successfully made themselves the most hated in Singapore. (More on Odex in a coming post!)