{"id":17397,"date":"2012-08-22T06:46:39","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T22:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=17397"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:37:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:37:37","slug":"movie-revisits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2012\/08\/22\/movie-revisits\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Revisits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the fortnight while the Olympics was in season, most evenings were spent in front of the living room TV. Not that I was consciously watching what was going on-screen, but I like having background audio while I\u2019m working away on my notebook. It\u2019s a habit that I picked up during the three odd years I spent in Perth. The television was on around 18 hours a day (that\u2019s how I got to finish all those entire 7 season TV series in days) while I was working on my thesis.<\/p>\n

With the Olympics over, I\u2019ve started re-watching a bunch of films on Blu-ray. I\u2019ve blogged about several of them here before already, but I often still acquire new reflections on these movie revisits. The bunch included:<\/p>\n

Blood Diamond<\/em><\/strong>; the 2006 film about the conflict diamond trade, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. I didn\u2019t think much of the film when I first watched it years ago, but the revisit affirmed why Hounsou was heaped with nominations for acting awards for his supporting role as a father seeking rescue of his young son who is press-ganged then brain-washed into the violent rebel factions in Sierra Leone civil war. The film doesn\u2019t flinch from representing on-screen serious controversies, and these include mass murder of innocents and child militia executing prisoners. The film can be a little draggy at spots running at nearly 2.5 hours, and Jennifer Connelly has a supporting role which sees her all doe-eyed but otherwise doesn\u2019t have much else to do, and the last 10 minutes feel somewhat preachy. Still, well worth a watch if you enjoy thrillers.<\/p>\n

The Watchmen<\/em><\/strong>: re-watched the butt-hurting more than 3 hours Director\u2019s Cut of the film in a single siting. I\u2019ve blogged about the theatrical edition of the film here<\/a>, and the extended edition fleshes out numerous bits from the comic book with Rorschach benefiting the most off the additional time. I think director Zack Snyder did a great job condensing the very complicated graphic novel into a manageable size, but it still remains somewhat thick for viewers unfamiliar with the novel, given its large cast of super-hero characters spread across several generations. Most of the cast do alright, but Jackie Earle Haley\u2019s Rorschach remains the real stand-out. He gets the best line in the film too.=)<\/p>\n

Up in the Air<\/strong><\/em>: Also blogged here<\/a> before too. I enjoyed this comedy-drama from two years ago, and found myself paying even more attention to its subtleties in the Blu-ray revisit. There are spots of the film that reminds me of Luc Besson’s L\u00e9on: The Professional, especially with regards to Ryan Bingham (George Clooney)’s love for predictable routines and having to reconcile it with love interest Alex (Vera Farmiga) and his young upstart colleague companion Natalie (Anna Kendrick). One of the major themes of the film – that of corporate-level downsizing and the reactions and sentiments from those getting fired – remain thought-provoking for me, eliciting memories of the companies I worked for pre-Millennium who went through the Asian Financial Crisis and saw retrenchment. Has a heart-wrenching ending that even surprised Ling (“So sad”… and she sniffed).<\/p>\n

\"\"
How many times we’ve also sat this like waiting for our ride.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More film re-visitation snippets to follow in the coming weeks.=)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the fortnight while the Olympics was in season, most evenings were spent in front of the living room TV. Not that I was consciously watching what was going on-screen, but I like having background audio while I\u2019m working away<\/p>\n

Read More Movie Revisits<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/blog-movie-revisits-01.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}