Sweet of sound / War of the Worlds

Exams have ended. How sweet that sounded, and officially a huge burden has been removed - at least, there’s about 3-4 months to go till the big day. Big exams. Big expectations. Big everything.

Fuck it. :p I’m gonna roll on some studying from now onwards, now I can concentrate on the one big thing SPM and rid myself of worries on school examinations because they’re mainly stupid. For instance, if you refer to past year questions of History, about 3-4 topics aren’t included AT ALL, but appeared in our exams. So yeah.

Watched War of the Worlds today with Heng, Jess, Justine, Andy, Suet, GL, Edmund..don’t think I missed out anyone. Arrived sharp at 8pm (which was already late as the movie commenced at that time), and halfway sitting through the introduction (I HATE missing out any parts of the movie, intro or not, but this can’t be helped) I had to go to the toilet to remove my contact lenses and put on my glasses (thank God I thought of bringing ‘em). I could only see bright lights, a whirl of blur and whatnot when wearing the contacts, and this problem seems to only occur at night. AT NIGHT. Meh, sounds like a for-old-people-only disease >_>

The following text onwards will contain spoilers to the movie, so if you have yet to watch this great show, and dislike spoilers as immense as I do, don’t read on. >_>

The entire movie is a perfect little sci-fi piece, awesome special effects (Andy told me that apparently this movie will have NO special effects), and great acting by actors Tom Cruise and msot notably, 11 year-old Dakota Fanning. Man.

The movie provokes our emotions a lot, lots of suspenseful scenes (that’s when the music ceased completely), and it actually lets you feel for the characters on-screen. I feared for both Ray and Rachael (incidentally, Andy’s sis’s name I just realised), and was pissed with Robbie’s foolish actions that I interjected loudly to Andy who was conveniently sitting beside me to listen to my gibberish, “What a fucking moron.”

I guess the few parts that completely overwhelmed me with a sense of speechless amazement are that of destruction. Come on, how often do you see places wiped out in an instant, huge rubbles toppling down, churches eradicated, humans obliterated and wiped out instantly? I was stunned by The Day After Tomorrow before, and this movie feels the same. Exuding the Spielberg-ness from the core of the movie, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg ARE the perfect pair.

Movies of any sort make me go deep in reflection, and recently the news about NASA wanting to smash a coffee table-sized item into a comet to reveal the secrets of life, and about scientists releasing tons of telescopes and other complicated devices I couldn’t remember their names - to see if there’s other intelligent life out there.

The only drawback of this perfect sci-fi is its anti-climatic ending. After all the huge suspense built up, it dissipated with the aliens’ sudden death. THAT’S IT!? I’ve read this classic novel years ago, so I imagined Spielberg’s probably following suit, but with his prowess in the film industry, I DEMAND IT TO BE EXTENDED! Let the suspense slowly die away, instead of ending it just like that after tons of scenes of utter annihiliation and running away.

It also struck me how stupidly selfish humans can be, each trying to get Ray’s stolen car as it’s the only car functioning. To the point of killing each other, and reminds me of the excellent manga Monster.

And another point, how come ALL aliens are depicted as weird-looking creatures with either an extra limb or missing one, silly tentacles and the like? I imagined them (if there be one, I believe there are) to be human-like, or maybe super-intelligent microorganisms. Makes you ponder, eh?

Am also exceedingly glad that the Cameron Highlands plan is proceeding now, after the initial shock of having to cancel the whole thing because of insufficient players - people backing out and no forms and all. And the thing is, I’ll have to participate in the football match now, and I fervently hope my lack of skills won’t bring the whole damn team down.