Yes, another cycle of the Chinese Zodiac Horoscopes begins. After saying goodbye to Brother Piggie, we welcome Mickey and Remy to the year of 2008.
Who says that CNY must be noisy and placed yourself at the crowded places? Wouldn't it be lovely if you could have some peace and tranquility to reflect your deeds done in the previous year, and at the same time, share the good time with your loved ones?
I did. I had a ice cream session with my family on first day of CNY, and the ice cream was really lovely.
Sometimes, simplicity is hard to get, but if you really want it, it will come to you.
And not forgetting that watching a movie in Singapore during CNY is dreadful, since S'poreans are left with no place for fun except movies and arcades and selected exhibitions. So, it is not surprising to see long queues at cineplexs, with sold out shows every hour.
If you get sold out shows for blockbusters, be prepared to see a full house if you are watching a old/non-mainstream movies in smaller halls. And this has been the case for Gone Baby Gone at GV Vivocity and This Film is Not Yet Rated at The Picturehouse.
Gone Baby Gone is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, where he adapts Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name into an Oscar nominated drama. Amazingly, being an actor who acted in pretty bad shows, he did amazingly well when it comes to directing a movie. It's not easy to maintain the atmosphere and the feel of the story from print to screen, since Clint Eastwood had brought us the heart wrenching Mystic River (which was sad to say, it lost to LOTR: Return of the King for Best Picture in Oscars 2004.) in 2004. When i know that Lehane's Gone has been made into a movie, i set my expectations to a certain level, so that i know i get something really good. And Affleck did not failed my expectations. In fact, many critics were amazed with his performance in the film, that mades it as one of the best in 2007.
Here, you got Casey Affleck (ben's brother) as the leading role of Patrick, a PI who investigates the case of a missing 6 year old girl from his neighbourhood. He and his partner Angie (Michelle Monanghan) began their investigation, which eventually leads to a conflict between both, and they solved the case at the price of their relationship. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris delivered their role as a captain and detective who do not welcome them for the investigation. But as the couple goes deep into the case, they discovered some facts about the missing girl: the girl's mother steals a sum of money from the drug lord, the drug dealers steps in and works with some guys to get the money and the girl, a paedophile who kidnaps a boy, and in the end, another missing case.
This Film is Not Yet Rated, on the other hand, is a documentary directed by Kirby Dick, on looking into the film rating systems in US and from the documentary, he come out with the following conclusion:
Sex is not OK, violence is OK.
Homosexual sex gets a NC-17 rating while straight sex gets an R.
Woman with fake breast made of silicon gets PG13 to R rating, while showing a private part of a women gets an NC17.
So long as you made a shooting spree scenes without blood splatting out, your movie gets a PG13. If blood spills, its R.
You might not see what you get in a movie theatre if a film is rated.
A group of uncles and aunties mades up the film raters in MPAA. (Motion Pictures Association of America) While raters works for 3- maximum 4 years, there are some who work for more than 5 years. And most of these rater's kids are adults.
The Penal Board for MPAA consists of CEO of Hollywood's biggest movie players, so in some way, blockbusters gets the advantage of being protected by them, compared to small indpendent film companies.
So the next time when you see Johnny Depp slices the throat of his male customers at his barbershop, you will know who are the ones who do not want kids to see Depp as Sweeny Todd. The group of uncles and aunties would like the kids to see Depp as Willy Wonka instead.
The uncles and aunties said: Don't eat the meat pies. Have chocolates instead. But isn't chocolates fattening?
Some food for thought.