The Hunger Games, Finale: Mockingjay - Part 2

The much awaited finale of the popular series. Is this worth the ticket price or 2 hours 15 minutes of your time?

Like the tense action and loud explosions in this series conclusion, yes.

The movie follows closely to the plot in the book. But even if you have read the books or someone has already spoilt it for you, its still quite cool to see in motion picture the CGIs are pretty damn cool. The sewers action is expectedly shaky. It serves as “characters trimming” for the story but you can just close your eyes or even have a quick toilet run if you decide to skim-view through it. But in my opinion, its worth watching on the silver screen but catching up on with the previous movies may be necessary especially if you are not a BIG fan of the series.

For me, having read the books about 2 years ago, it was to see the plots in motion. Also, to see how the director and producers gracefully edit Philip Seymour Hoffman’s parts in this movie. His absence is definitely palpable in the 2nd half of the movie but I think they have done a pretty good job, overall.

On a related note, GV Gold Class seats are better than Cathay Platinum ones, on the fact that the seats in Gold Class can recline more. But the partitions in Cathay Platinum make it hard to definitely say which is better.

Spoiler alert

I watch movies and TV shows, over and over again. Especially the good ones. (duh)

I know I am not the special few because otherwise the DVD format would have died much earlier. People won’t bother buying videos to not play them again.

But I play them perhaps a little too often. For example, I like the How I Met Your Mother series and I watch most of the seasons again at least once a month, while doing mundane stuffs. I can almost remember how the episodes will run and even what will the next lines be even before they played through my DVD player. And this is just one example. I have no problems sinking 2 hours of a Friday just to play a movie I have already played on Monday.

I can even replay those movies with a twist ending and not feel like the movie have been spoilt. The inner movie buff will even began screaming (silently), “Get out! The bad guy is coming!” even though I already know this dude will be so dead in about 3 minutes later.

So, what’s the fun?

The details.

I love looking out for the details. Did the director already throw in some hints to the twist of the ending? How will each actor deliver the lines? Did she really deserve that Oscar/Emmy?

And I think this is why people study history and dissects each event for analysis. Some of us are retrospective people. And replaying movies is fun.

Reminders

People need reminders because 1) we can get too crowded in our lives that we forget the important details, and 2) we can get too carried away doing something, from why we did it in the first place.

The CHC case had been sensational news. Not just because the modern society is now tired of religion especially one that can be considered so self-centered claiming that only through Jesus Christ, one can even be considered for afterlife in heaven. The amount of money involved in the crime is astronomical even by today’s standards. People are furious at how some of these religious based organisations and societies abused their authority and used this “public" resource for personal gains.

It is always a thin line cutting across a huge grey surface. But I am not writing on whether I agree with the prosecution or the defense or even the general public views on them. This is a personal take on the whole circus, and the people involved.

Quick context; I attended CHC for a few years in the late 90s and at some point, I have been in close contact with a couple of the plaintiffs, and got to know some of them at a somewhat personal level. I was able to see them in action on a personal level.

This does not qualify me as a good judgement of their characters but my perspective of them certainly influenced my decisions in relations to my religious beliefs then and even now on this post.

I have never fully agreed in spirit on what CHC stood and pushed for. I struggled with this for quite a while and even wondered if I would ever make a good Christian. I did mostly what was taught and even committed myself to some of the activities and ministries as organised by the church. While I would not say I have been greatly blessed spiritually, I had learnt much.

I soaked up all the sermons and bible studies, and I enjoyed the social and communion with the people whom are all banded together in name of Christ, and nothing else. The person who made all that happened? Kong Hee.

 

If you were like me who attended CHC during the late 90s, you would see that Kong Hee had the zeal and tenacity that was so contagious. I was infected. I enjoyed the sermons he preached on Sundays so much that it did not matter that the services ran for 2 - 3 hours. I remember one Sunday, the service ran so much into overtime that staff of the venue we were in were very angry because they had a wedding reception to prepare for. I would imagine them (and the wedding couple) would have been one of the first haters of the church.

Then it got weird. By the end of 1999 and even in the early 2000s, things start to drift, and my spirit was bleeding. I wanted out. So my free spirit led me into the wilderness and that was the last I have heard Kong Hee, at least in person. You can always listen to his sermons online.

Fast forward 10+ years, he is in the news, for the wrong reasons. Just these past few weeks, he was convicted and sentenced to 8 years in prison.

I am not here to rejoice and gloat in the fact that I got out of the church way before things got out of hand. I am not here to tell the 10,000 members of the church that they have been brainwashed. I am here to say that a man I had certain amount of respect for had been convicted in our court of law, and I am praying for him.

This conviction does not diminish the fact that he founded a church from which so many lives were touched in a positive way. So many people have come to know Christ through the church even if the foundation of it all may be a bit debatable. I can confidently say that I have been blessed in a lot of ways through this man. I believe that whatever was done in the past 10 years, had perhaps been because man got distracted, by the shineys of the material world. And man now needs reminders.

A lot of people are rejoicing in the news of their conviction and sentences. I am not. But I know that a jail term is but only a mark in the brief life on earth. It does not matter if people sees him as a man wearing prison garbs with a black mark across his face. What matters is God sees him as someone worthy enough to be called, again.

If that is what it takes to turn your attention back to God again, God will do it, as a reminder.

2 more weeks ...

... before the 2nd attempt at Class 2B TP test. How do I feel? Somewhat rusty but not yet excited. Nothing an RC won't fix.

26th November session 3.

Singing Christmas

The year end holiday is upon us and it means the streets will be buzzing with lights, sales and more lights. And I am not even talking about Deepavali aka Diwali aka The Festival of Lights. I am talking about Christmas.

I look forward to this time of the year because

1) Wedding Anniversary. We are 9 years going into 10. We celebrated in various ways with one year going to a gun range in Lim Chu Kang to shoot at clays. But its mostly ....

2) Oversea Vacations. And this year, we are starting our 10th year celebration with Krabi. Going to be chockfull of fun activities and food, and possibly a baby-sitting detail towards the end. Should be fun!

3) Of course we can't forget that this holiday celebrates the birth of Christ. And I especially like this part of the year because the Christmas themed songs are my favourite.

And I am only allowed to play them without judgement (from the wife) during this period. Happy Diwali, Merry Christmas and to a fulfilling New Year!

"My Life, for Aiur!"

It has been said that Blizzard can probably make good animated movies, and I agree. All the trailers and sequences they have produced for their games had been mouth-watering to say the least, including the latest Starcraft 2 launch trailer.

In my opinion, even if you don't play all the features from the game, just the cinematics alone are almost worth the money. 

But this is just my opinion. Can't wait for the launch for the final episode and see how the story turns out.

Quantified Life

We are constantly surrounded by statistics. 

<social media platform> now has 1 billion users. <new movie> grossed $1 milllion in its first week. I have walked/ran for a total of 1 hour today!

I bought a Misfit Shine in August 2015. Its about S$100 (including shipping) if bought online and about S$30 more in retail stores.

So has it been useful at what it does? 

1) Yes. It does give a good measure of how active I have been in the day and the sleep tracking works fairly well. But only the sleep at nights. The naps during the day are often not tracked, for some algo reason.

2) No. The reason why humans are collecting data on our daily activity is so that we can learn to react accordingly to the statistics. For probably most people, if their tracker tells them that they still have some ways to go before reaching their goals, they will try to meet it by perhaps doing some walking/running before the day ends. But I haven't quite have the luxury of doing that. Knee injury, work schedules and more critically, laziness all kept me from getting my huge ass up and walk off the delicious burger I had earlier.

But now that the knee is almost recovered, I think I will be hitting the goals more often than I have so far. Now I just need some device to jolt my ass off my seat.

The Ghost Writer, Blu-Ray

Yesterday, I dropped in in Funan DigitaLife Mall to kill off sometime and to just browse at tech stuffs and toys. One of my favourite shop in the mall, Laserflair was having a sale. The sale felt like a closing down sale.

It is sad to know that audio and video entertainment in disc formats are no longer popular and is putting such companies out of business. But I guess we have to move with the times but this post is not about that. Its about one of the movies I bought in blu-ray format, The Ghost Writer.

I caught this a couple of years ago on cable while I was some holiday and I remember liking the movie. Could not resist picking it up for cheap.

Classified as a political thriller, this movie is about a writer tasked with continuing with the biography of a politician, after his predecessor died, from what seemed like suicide. The writer accepted task but discovered some secrets surrounding this politician and his political career.

The movie is somewhat darkish but the pace is good and mood is definitely there. When you are finally done with the movie, it won’t feel like 2 hours have gone. All the actors did a brilliant job. 

If there is anything negative, it would be having to listen to Kim Catrall in an English accent. Dont get me wrong though, her delivery was not bad at all. In fact, she is convincing enough. But having seen her in Sex in the City, its hard to picture her with an English accent, even if Wiki stated her as an English-Canadian. 

Bridge of Spies

This movie is as dramatic thrilling as the title sounds. While it is not Bourne or Bond type of spy movies, it is still captivating enough even though it is based on true events.

The synopsis of the movie and the events can easily be found off wikipedia. What is in my opinion the best parts of the movie are how the historical events were portrayed and the actors, especially Tom Hanks.

Of course I would not know for sure if the political context and or if the scenes of Germany are accurate. But I am sure they are, for at least 80%, and they certainly set the tone and mood for the movie.

I think the best part was watching how the protagonist got his way by standing firm on his principles and not bowing down to popular opinions. And of course how he got what he wanted.

Spoilers: The ending is a happy, feel good one.

This movie is long though. Better get comfortable. We did. In Cathay Platinum fashion.