Movie review - Borat

Hmmm, very rarely do I ever walk out of a movie thinking *omg, how on earth am I going to review this?!?!*. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is one movie that certainly takes the crown. So to make it easier, it has been suggested I write it in Borat-speak

Borat, reporter for Kazakhstan tv, take us to see people who live in Borat home village of Kuçzek and we see his hobbies table tennis, sunbathing and watch ladies make toilet. When Kazakhstan goverment tell Borat to to learn culture of greatest country in the world, U, S and A so can be used in Kazakhstan, Borat go to New York with producer Azamat Bagatov to make film. Here, we see Borat when he introduce in the traditional Kazakh way to ordinary american, learn how to make american joke, why american let woman who have brain like squirrel go to school, and after watching Baywatch, his trip to California to make Pamela Anderson his wife and take her vazhin.

(Ok, that was really hard so I'm reverting back to english.)

There's not much analysis I can give about the acting, plot, or script. The sight gags, absurdist humour, and gross-out factor is present from the beginning when Borat presents his home village, but everything is taken to another level in the US. All I can say is that it is truly admirable what Sacha Baron Cohen can and will do on camera - I can only say two words: Dallas, Texas. Baron Cohen's ability to stay in character is amazing! And it is also amazing what people will say and do in the guise of being polite (e.g. the Driving Instructor), when pushed to their limits (The Dinner Party), misguided 'kindness' (the Rodeo guy), or just because theyre stupid (the Fratboys). There are so many jaw-dropping, *omg, they did NOT say that !' moments...But that's not to say that the entire movie is ridiculing the US population. Although it is difficult to tell what scenes were staged and what are natural, there are several bits which show how small kindnesses can result in the most surprising things. Key moments are when Borat takes Luenell the prostitute on the town after the Dinner Party refuses to admit her, and when he approaches what appear to be menacing gathering of African-American teens on the street at night and they turn out to be quite funny.

Equal parts side-splittingly hilarious and unbelievably cringeworthy, Borat is good film. You see it. High five!
8/10

Bryn Terfel and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra

I've said before that I *heart* opera and when my brother and I found out that Bryn Terfel, considered the world's leading bass-baritone, would be coming here for a recital, we shot out and bought tickets!

We weren't allowed to take photos so here's a photo of the programme and Terfel's new CD of Mozart arias. Terfel sang Mozart's Cosi dunque tradasci'...aspri rimorsi atroci (Concert aria K432) and Io ti lascio, o cara, addio (Concert aria K245/621A) and Wagner's Wie todesahnung dammrung deckt die lande (Tannhauser) and Die frist is um...wie oft in meeres tiefsten schlund (The Flying Dutchman). Brilliant! For encore, the Melb. Welsh Men's Choir (gee, I didn't know there was one) were present and accompanied him on a welsh song (natch), and then he sang something in italian that involved him coming off the stage and hanging out flowers to women in the audience. It was really funny, especially since an old woman sitting behing me (we were in the back of the stalls) kept yelling out "COME HERE!!!"

But possible the real star(s) of the show were the orchestra itself. It's a youth orchestra consisting of members from around the world (although most of them come from the US) where the members are between the ages of 17 and 29. The pieces played were the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro (which I'll be seeing in a fortnight, yay!), the overture to The Flying Dutchman, selected pieces from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and as encore Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King, and a hungarian dance whose proper name eludes me now. It was just really...wow...and my hands were sore from all that clapping.

Next on the list of classical music to come, Sumi Jo next week! YAY!

Outrageous

I went to a wedding of some friends today and it was a nice ceremony, very sweet, except for one point that offended me so much that I must comment on it. (Relax, this is not something the bride and groom wrote, so I still extend my felicitations towards them.)

The person delivering the Address was talking about how sometimes one must sacrifice things for their partner. The groom is notable for playing World of Warcraft quite a bit and it was mentioned that perhaps he should sacrifice a bit of his time from playing that to listen to his wife as a sign of his love. Fair enough. The bride is a physiotherapist and it was said that should they be blessed with children, she may have to sacrifice her career as a sign of her love.

WHAT?!?!?!

I don't have a problem with stay at home mothers, that is not what I'm taking issue with. What offends me is the drawing of parallels between two hours of computer gaming versus a person's livelihood. I was just so flabberghasted that someone with a tertiary degree (I know cos I met the Addressor at uni) could actually come to this conclusion, and I know I wasn't the only one. All I can say is that good thing she's a health professional which is generally sympathetic to people who may not work in their fields for extended periods of time.

Jack

After being here for six months to learn english, Jack is returning to Korea. And here he is looking happy. Good luck!

U2's With or Without You, covered by Hikari Utada

After being inspired by Pooey's U2 entry, I was surfing youtube to find something to listen to while doing some typing.
And I came across this.

I'm not sure if I really like it or not (I feel like she's holding back on the screaming parts, other times I think its a bit whiney), but I will admit that it gives me a prickling feeling. Thoughts?

NOT HAPPY, SMEE!!!

Smee is taking away my oldest play-buddy, Poosy! Poosy is going to London to hang out with Smee for the next two years.

Well I have something to say about that!!!

Leave some space on the floor so I can sleep over :P

The Story of Stingy

Pooey compared her blogging output to mine and was much displeased with my Daggy entry. So I'm writing something else to please her.

This here is a little toy I keep on my desk, on the best piece of carpentry EVER, my homemade monitor/speaker shelf.
We call him Stingy. Stingy believe it or not has a somewhat interesting backstory.

Originally starting life as one of those Happy Meal toys that comes in little plastic bags on which kids to whom Happy Meals are marketed can choke on, Stingy used to belong to Loveable Kitty herself, Roxy. I'm not sure how long Stingy lived with Roxy, but in 2004 when Rox decided to move to SF for work, she could not bear to make herself pack up her house. Which was where I came into the story. I believe that after a dinner at Hard Rock Cafe celebrating the closure of Roxy's time in Melb., she invited me, Takyn and Roy back to her place to help her clean out.

And clean I did! Although I did nearly make her break out in tears at the thought that my whirlwind was *throwing her life out*, we did manage to get quite a few rooms packed up and found a good deal of money that Roxy had secreted in various parts of her house and then forgotten. We also found a lot of little knick-knacks and toys that we were told to welcome ourselves to. Stingy here caught my attention on several points.
1) His weird little face - do stingrays actually look like that?
2) His weirdness in general - why were Maccas handing out stingray toys? There are far more cuter animals out there.
3) The fact that he vibrates. No smutty jokes here, please. If you see in this photo: there's a little ring coming out of Stingy's back. When you pull then release the ring, he vibrates! A vibrating stingray just struck me as so weird that I had to add it to my pack-rat collection, something to which Roxy happily acquiesced.

So there we go, the story of how I acquired Stingy.

Daggy?

I am known to have a somewhat eclectic taste in music. I don't have an ipod (might wait to see if I can get one for free from a conference or chem company!) but the playlist on my computer ranges from Dance/House to Merseyside to Opera to Cantopop. I like to play music while doing work (usually if I'm on a microscope) but as my machine started to belt out Elton John's I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues, someone who is probably a good...20? years older than me screamed out "Ohmigod!!! You ARE NOT playing Elton John! HOW CAN YOU PLAY THAT?!" I clicked next and it landed on Phil Collins, to which I got "Not Phil Collins!! How old are you?!?" I think I then landed at RnB and all I heard then was a heartfelt sigh.

Later I got an email requesting either jazz or The Beatles for the next time I'm there.

Real Data!

This one is for the real science geeks out there:
I have been working all year to get an image similar to this. This is a photo of a whole mounted retina taken by a con-focal microscope using a water-immersion lens. It shows astrocytes (the spidery looking cells) loaded with a calcium dye. And the great thing is that you can clearly see their processes extending to the blood vessels! But even better, when we put some potassium chloride (a stimulant) into the buffer, the cells changed their brightness!!! That indicates that intracellular levels of calcium increases within astrocytes in response to stimulation, a finding that has been found by others! Now all I have to do is figure out what that means...

But regardless, a big step forward.

Under the Coverslip 2006

I've been going increasingly crazy for the last few months trying to do experiments while at the same time organising the UCS2006 competition. This all came to a head on Monday when it opened and Tuesday when I had to deal with the wash up. All in all, despite the huge stress and the fact that the committee (of two - me and Ash) had about two months to organise it when in the past it took a larger group who started begging for money from about April, I think we did a-ok.

There were some problems - not getting the official go-ahead from the Uni until September, getting a fraction of funding compared to previous years, completely blowing our budget, getting a phone call at 8:30am from the person who was giving the Opening address saying he didn't know he was giving the address and could I give him some dot points, etc. etc. - somebody told me that knowing the chaos that went on in the time preceding the opening made the exhibition more successful in his opinion. (Personally, I would have liked to have budgeted for more wine at the opening.) After receiving all entries on Friday 10th, Ash and I spent Monday morning furiously getting the images ready for the judging at 10am, and with Fowler at 3pm furiously getting them ready for exhibition. Or at least I was furious - damn Ash was pretty calm! And despite all my fears: no one would enter, no one would turn up, too many people would turn up, not enough food or wine, it was all good. We had 40 entries (although some got disqualified for various reasons), a good number of people turned up, all the food was eaten barring some nuts and dip...I still think we needed more wine.

And so here are some photos from this afternoon when Ash, Adey and I went to take it all down:
The exhibition space.
The first and third winning entries.
The popular image winner - it wasn't just my favourite! Mmmmm, donuts....

Adey giving his entry the thumbs up.

The view from the lectern where I did my welcoming and MC duties. Sure, it looks ok now, but I had to fortify myself with a glass before and after talking!

I mistakenly thought that since the big stuff was on Monday, Tuesday would be calm enough for me and Erica to do some experiments (more on this another time!), but I instead spent the day dealing with the media unit of the uni about publicity of the event and publication of the images in between exps. But everything went awesomely. So yeah.

Start getting your entries for UCS 2007 ready now!

Movie Review - The Departed

A remake of the 2002 HK supersmash, Infernal Affairs (Mou Gaan Dou/Wu Jian Dao) Martin Scorsese's The Departed is good....but not as good as the original in my opinion. Spoilers abound here - I tried to do the white-out edit but then half my review and analysis was just white.

Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a cop in the Massachusetts State Police. A former altar boy, he's good at what he does, with a flawless record. He was also groomed from youth by leading Boston gangster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) to be his mole within the police force. On the other side is Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) who joins the force to atone for his petty criminal family. With his criminal links, task force leaders Queenan and Dignan (Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, respectively) decide to send Costigan to work as a mole in the Boston Underworld, with the hopes of taking down Costello. Queenan and Dignan are the only two within the force who knows that Costigan is really a cop. Costello's gang steals some microprocessors and attempt to sell them to the Triads. Queenan's group attempts to use this as a point to bust Costello. Sullivan alerts Costello to the goings on. Costigan still manages to get the location of the sale to Queenan. Either way, the cops and the gangsters both realise that their groups have been infiltrated and it becomes a race to see who will squirrel out whom first.

Apart from the obvious differences, The Departed very closely follows Infernal Affairs - so much so that many of the memorable lines from the first one are replicated in the second. So, do I think it's the masterpiece some critics have been hailing it? Quite frankly, no. It's a good movie - well scripted, generally well acted, well shot, but there's something which holds it back. I've thought about this and did a bit of reading of other peoples' opinions before deciding what it was. The problem with The Departed is the pacing and the depiction of key scenes, and thematic exploration.

Infernal Affairs is a 90 minute movie. The Departed goes for 152 minutes. That speaks for itself. While the characters of Sullivan, Costigan and Costello are more fleshed out than they were in the HK version (that was done in the prequel Infernal Affairs II), the first hour where they analysed each character goes for too long, too slowly. The key scene where Dignan throws Costigan's background in his face before stating that as the exact reason as to why he's the perfect undercover candidate simply goes for so long that it loses its punch factor. The HK reason as to why Shaun Yue/Tony Leung goes undercover? Cos he's a smart guy.

It wasn't until the second half of the movie when the plot more closely followed Infernal Affairs and eveything became more tense did I begin to enjoy the movie more but even then, I couldn't help comparing the new depiction to the old. The extending of scenes to emphasise what's going on happens several times and each time, I couldn't help thinking that HK did it better. For example the Superintendent Wong dies after being thrown off a building. In the HK version, all you see is the person slamming into a car top. It's quick, loud, and unbelievably stunning to the audience and to the people on the crowded street who see it happen. In the US version, we see Queenan falling slowly (kinda like the Falling Man), before landing in a deserted alley at Costigan's feet. Sure, it's still shocking, but the true horror of the event I felt is lessened by drawing it out and changing the environment.

A number of the key themes that made Infernal Affairs much more than an ordinary good vs bad movie in my opinion are not as well emphasised in The Departed. In particular...

1) The Paternalistic relationship between the mains and loyalty. Sullivan's codename for Costello is Dad, but when the time comes, Sullivan disregards it to cover his ass. The equivalent characters of Costigan and Queenan in Infernal Affairs have a genuine personal concern for each other, as seen where SP Wong gives Yan a birthday present. The death of SP Wong is terrible for Yan, not just as the last person to know his real identity, but also the loss of a trusted friend and fatherfigure. This is is not done well in The Departed.

2) Dual Identities. Two opposites playing a role that is their exact opposite. Costigan/Yan and Sullivan/Ming have been working for years (10+) to establish how good they are at their respective jobs to the point that they begin to question who they really are. In comparison, while going on drug busts and solving a few murders suddenly qualifies Sullivan to head the internal investigation/anti-corruption group, it only takes Costigan A FEW MONTHS before Costello suddenly trusts him with his life. In the HK movie, it is not clear cut whether each character is fully *good* or *bad* and their internal struggle is obvious. In the US, while Costigan is clearly *good* but capable of *bad*, but he was breaking up after only a year compared to Yan's DECADE. Likewise, Ming turns on Sam because he wants to erase his past to become a good person, but Sullivan turns on Costello to cover his ass upon hearing that he's a long-time FBI informant and because he's tired of Costello's demands.

3)Redemption. Both Yan and Ming attempt to get themselves out of their personal hells. Yan is *good* and does well in undercover because he is good, but the longer he poses as *bad* the more he loses himself to *bad* and tries to redeem himself by taking down the biggest fish in the criminal world and thus releasing him from undercover work. Ming, a puppet of the big fish, realises that he is more than what he has been assigned, and tries to release himself by killing Sam and painting himself forever as a hero in the eyes of his colleagues. While the title of The Departed alludes to Purgatory, again, rarely do we see this as the motivation for a character's actions. Costigan never wanted to go undercover and tries to take down Costello so he can become a normal citizen (not even a cop). Sullivan does whatever Costello wants until he realises that he's not as indispensible as he thought.

Despite all my criticism, I'm not saying The Departed is a bad movie. It's not. All the performances are pretty top notch, Leonardo DiCaprio is particularly impressive, but I must say a word about Jack Nicholson. I can understand that once you reach a certain level within the criminal world and considering the moles you've planted in the police force, you probably wouldn't care about what you look like or how you act. That's understandable. But Jack Nicholson plays Costello as one of the most decrepitly dishevelled and crazy weird guys ever. While I can understand that his minions may fear him due to his erratic behaviour, considering the things he demands of said minions, I wouldn't really want to be putting my livelihood within his hands. I don't know if its the genius performance some people say...I mean, it's something but...I dunno. Especially compared to Eric Tsang's slimy, calculating, and intelligent Sam. One of the great scenes showcasing Sam is the drug bust/cross - when confirmed that the drugs he's buying are good, Sam's your chubby buffoon, but the instant he's realises there's a mole in his organisation he's coldly fearsome and you recognise how this guy could hold a criminal organisation.

The Departed is an good movie, but given the taut storyline and thematic complexity of the movie upon it was based, it suffers in comparison. I saw it with Poosy who really hated this movie and is of the opinion that if she saw the remake first, she would not see the original first because it was so unenjoyable for her. I'm the opposite. I think if I had not seen Infernal Affairs and enjoyed it so much, I probably would have liked The Departed more.

The Departed - 6.5-7/10, Infernal Affairs - 8/10

UPDATE - An update on this review is found here

Pirates and Emperors

I'm not going to comment on the political implications of this clip (for that you should read the book by Noam Chomsky), but the song is really catchy! I've been singing it for a while!



*Well there are...pirates and emperors but they're really the same thing!....*

ACB goes to the races!

Ahhh.....one of the great things about late October/early November is the arrival of warm weather and the Spring Racing Carnival. Of course, one of the great tragedies of late October/early November is that exams and final papers are also due, cancelling out the likelihood of a bunch of geeks attending the races. Well, as post-grads and employees, we're no longer subject to end-of-semester exams, so ACB went off to celebrate! Unfortunately Cup Day is not a uni holiday so we all had to be here on Tuesday...but Ash, Fowler, Kathryn, Lydia, Cam, Marta, Krijn, Krijn's friend with an unpronouncable name, and myself shifted the plans to Oaks Day!

I can't believe I didn't take a photo of the whole group.

Marta, Lydia and myself

Fowler and Cam

Kathryn, Ash, friend + Krijn getting into the spirit

The weather was fantastic, the atmosphere electric, food was good (heaps of it), and the alcohol flowed freely. So here we are, celebrating the races!

Walking under the famed roses

Our view of the track from our picnic spot - go you little horse!

Celebrating Miss Finland's glorious victory!
Our food + bottles!

More photos are can be viewed at
http://mallymoodlespics.shutterfly.com
(password = 12345)

It was a friendly crowd - Marta made friends with a bunch of people nearer to the fence and they gave us betting tips...that didn't work. Oh well. A great day was had by all, and like our two fellow revellers here,bring on the next batch of celebrations!

Gambling pays off!

In celebration of the day where everyone gambles, I put $2 on three different horses.

And one of them came second.

So it paid off!

YAY!

Laundry run

For some reason, I thought this was going to be an alcohol-free, restful weekend where I'd get a lot of writing done. It hasn't quite turned out that way.

Despite the core group of ACB drinkers being generally absent and me staying at my desk until 7pm (Ash and Kitchener can vouch for that!), I still managed to go drinking with Cam and co. on Friday night followed by dinner at Stonegrill, all subsidised by him (Thanks man!). After being woken up at the ungodly hour of 10am on Saturday by some damn Jehovah's Witnesses, I bummed around the house before heading out to meet the Undergrad Sci crew for dinner. Despite swearing that I would leave for home at midnight and actually drawing a map of some bars located on the southern end of the grid that don't have a Saturday night covercharge...I still ended up taking the group on a bar tour and rocking home at 2:30am. With only one Bloody Mary to fortify myself! Given my drinky/punchy rep, I'm quite proud of that last fact!

And so today I've managed to do three loads of laundry, hence the title of the post. Yay!

LoveCake

Pardon my lack of entries, I've been stuck between a mixture of working too much or sleeping too early. Well today was a momentous day in the Hons year - Defence of Thesis Day! ACB run theirs a little different to how mine was run last year. Path gave everyone 15 mins talking time plus 5 mins for questions and they were spread over two days. ACB gave everyone only 10 mins talking time, and all 20 (?) students were crammed into one day! Defences started at 9am sharp with Marlene, and ended at 3:30pm with Marina. I don't know if it actually ended at 3:30...I just assume it didn't.

Anyway, I was late to the seminar and ran into Devil's Childe James and somehow we decided I was going to make a cake for us all to eat/celebrate on Friday. But it couldn't be just any old cake, it had to be my chocolate cake or as Childe calls it, the LoveCake. There's nothing particularly special about the LoveCake. It's just an ordinary chocolate cake in my opinion, but Childe says that when he eats it, he can feel the love I put in when I cook it. O-kay...

Anyway, just for anyone who wants to know what LoveCake tastes like, here's the recipe.

Cake
125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
1 egg, beaten
1.5 cups SR flour
3 tbs cocoa (I use Cadbury Bournville)
1 cup cold water

Pre-heat a fan-forced oven to 170 degrees celsius.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the beaten egg, vanilla, and water to the sugar mixture and mix in. Try to make the lumps as small as possible, but it won't form a smooth paste.
Sift in the flour and cocoa straight onto the sugar mixture, alternately stirring until the mixture resembles a smooth brown paste.
Pour the mixture into a cake tin - I use a 20cm springform tin. This produces a cake that's about 5cm high after baking. Also, because the mixture is quite wet, I recommend covering the bottom of springform tins with foil to stop the mixture from seeping out.
Bake for 1 hour, cake is ready when a skewer comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 30 mins, then cool on a wire rack.

When eaten warm straight out of the oven (as I have done), it tastes a bit like chocolate pudding. But since most people don't do that, after experimenting with various icing recipes, I've found that this chocolate frosting one works best with the cake. There's plently of frosting left over so if you want to be careful, make only 2/3 of the mix.

Frosting mixture
3 tbs cocoa powder
3 tbs hot water
125g butter at room temperature
250g icing sugar

Dissolve the cocoa powder into the hot water, stirring it to make a smooth paste.
Cream the butter into the cocoa mixture.
Cream the icing sugar into the cocoa/butter mixture until completely smooth.
Apply to cake when the cake is cool.
Garnish with strawberries for a brown/red colour and sour/sweet flavour contrast.

Since this is a frosting mixture, it doesn't set hard so you might want to store it for a little while in the fridge. Also, because the cakes are only about 5-10cm thick, I experimented once with making this a dual-layer cake with cream centre and a setting icing (i.e. one that went hard). It worked well (getting the icing all over it was a bitch though) but it was REALLY rich. I mean everyone still ate it and said it was good, but I sure felt sick after one slice!

So there you go. The recipe for my LoveCake. Eat it well and feel the love!