Book Review: Next (2006)

I think that it could be safely said that Michael Crichton was one of the most, if not the most, successful sci-fi writer today. The possibility of anything that he had wrote into his books were seemingly achievable and of course with that, the danger he proposed was therefore, a real threat. The fact that he had think that idea through, think that it might work, was one of his best traits, redeeming the quality of his story-telling which i personally would say, repetitive, and formulaic. One would only have to look for a film aptly named 'Jurassic Park' which spans three sequels in its wake. The idea of retracting the DNA from an amber that held the frozen mosquitos from the Jurassic (or any other -sic) era enabled the scientists in that film to actually gave a rebirth to creatures, great lizard creatures long lost. And granted, that even though in later findings the method described in the book (and in the film) was hopeful at best, a mere audience, a mere reader could be persuaded to agree that it was possible. That was what Crichton did at his best, mixing scientific dreams with action thrillers.

After several books that had touched many aspects in scientific (time-travel, genetics, medical hazards, manufactured error, microbiology, global warming), Michael Crichton's best was arguably reside in genetics (my personal favorite of his was 'The Lost World'), as evident in his latest work, Next.

After dealing and preaching with global warming (which in my opinion was merely a vessel to assert his PERSONAL opinion on a global warming issue) in his previous State of Fear, Michael Crichton again revisit his most comfortable science field, genetics, in Next. And it was a pleasant, fast book to read (compared to State of Fear, which i had often lost interest to continue reading after several chapters).

I won't reveal what was Next all about. All you needed to know was that in Next, Crichton proposed the possibility of manufactured genetics, altered genetics that could probably eliminate the undesirable traits in a given species (for instance, in human, they could eliminate the gene for an alcoholism), any undesirable traits, or to give a positive traits to a given species. Well, something like that.

The scientific aspect was nice, it surely give me a new something to think about, and it's always nice to had something new. As always. But it's not something entirely new. To a certain extent, i had read several articles of similar findings in Science magazine. And Crichton himself has admitted that for the most part NEXT is not really speculative fiction at all. However, i liked to point out how this book felt different with Crichton's previous books.

In Crichton's book, there were always an evil scientist, a good scientist, and ignorant commoner (but with good conscious, of course), thrown in some beautiful ladies, and a scientific topic to mull about, and there you have your Crichton's formula. The evil scientist, most of the time, dead. The good scientist took several chapters to do his hidden chore to counteract the evil scientist's deed, another several chapters to explain the things to the ignorant commoner, and yet another several chapters to battling out the evil scientist, often with physical labors. These characters, more often than not, immediately recognized as the book starts. In Next, these characters were present but mostly scattered throughout the pages, and only significantly identifiable when the book approaches the final act, at the final third of the book. The book also features many characters mainly from scientists, and attorneys that sometimes i need to flip back through the pages to refreshed my memory of a particular character.

All in all, if you are a fan of Crichton and has been disappointed by State of Fear (as i was), this book won't fail you. It's enjoyable read, and quite intriguing that once again, Crichton made us think of what would possibly happen when a technology gone a little bit too far.

My Rating: **1/2 / ****

Limbo

This site has gone in a limbo recently. Uh, i hate myself. For not keeping up with a commitment to update this site once in a week, at the very least. I'm still watching films, that was certain. And i just finished two books recently, The Children of Hurin from Christopher Tolkien, and Next from Michael Crichton. Both of which, unfortunately, doesn't live up to my expectations. Alas, i couldn't find anything to write about, or enough materials compiled from my tiny specks of gray matters that could well fit into an article that publish-able.

Well, it's a pressure on jobs, and a high-pursuit of dreams i'm in right now, which made me had to prioritized things. Anyway, i'm going to write something light in this post. It's about my favorite things. Yeah, if you'd think that it would be corny and waste of time, click away, because it is going to be corny. Anyway, you've been warned.

Favorite actresses:
Rachel McAdams - I first laid eyes on her on that stupid waste-of-time comedy (as was ANY comedy that billed Rob Schneider as its lead role. Sorry, The Animal fans, it's true), The Hot Chick. Her sheer resemblance with an Alias star, Jennifer Garner, immediately captured my attention at the time. And though she appears briefly at the film, she quickly become a sight for sore eyes and longing for more. A couple of years later, she appears in a film, one of very few film features Lindsay Lohan that at least NOT below average, Mean Girls. And again, she was a sight for sore eyes. But of course, an actress with an outward beauty was often offered only roles that show off her outward qualities. Take Jessica Alba for an instance, who wouldn't fall for her? Well, at least i fell head over heel with that coppery skin, slim and tight waist, and downcast eyes of her that could melt any guy's knees. Mine, at least. Rachel McAdams however, was on a right track to prove that she was a versatile actress. After Mean Girls, she appears in a drama, The Notebook, and another comedy, Wedding Crashes, and finally, a thriller, Red Eye, which contrary to popular beliefs, i held as one of better thriller that i could watch for the second time without wincing (with Cillian Murphy, my another favorite actor). She's still has a lot to prove, but i'm more than willing to wait to find out.

Another names that become my favorites over the years, Cate Blanchett, and Kate Winslet, whose films i'm always eager to watch despite the buzzes, or the absence of it, that circles around the film. Nicole Kidman was another, but it's been four years since Dogville the last time i saw her stellar performance. She was too prolific.

My guiltiest pleasure lays on Anna Faris an actress really closely associated with Scary Movie franchise, and a perfect, a really perfect living proof of a stereotyped 'stupid-blonde'. I couldn't see her in a serious role, nor i would like to. Another guilty pleasure of mine was Julia Stiles. But unlike Anna, whose my pleasure lay on her stupid looks, Julia had more capability in acting department and her portfolio shows exactly just that. She was 18 in Wicked when she fall in love with her own father, and grows that love into obsession, a maniacal suicidal obsession. It's a fun B-movie to watch, and it was actually enjoyable. She was again, appears in Bourne trilogy which final instalment due this August.

I was planned to wrote another about male actors. But, if it took me a good portion of my day to write about girls, it's therefore in my very best interest to not to write about men, well, at least for the time being.

Book Review: World War Z (2006)

The World War III won't be fought between nations, nor be fought between pacts. The World War III won't be fought using nuclear weapons, or state-of-the-art military equipments. The World War III was the war when human being fought for their dear extinction survival. The World War III was the war where human fought against human, where living human fought against the living dead. The World War III was the World War Z.

Ten years after the World War Z that has taken almost 1 billions (some sources say that the dead tolls was higher) lives, Max Brooks travel around the world to do an interview with the survivors of the war, prominent figures that most has been the key persons to human retaliation against the undead.

Surely, everyone who has been exposed to the world of entertainment knows about Zombies, the living dead. The events of World War Z that depicted in this book, were of course, as its name already implied, World War Z(ombie) deal with the Zombies. And it's a freakingly a fun book to read. I had only read one other book about zombie, Stephen King's Cell. And if Cell had a great opening that quickly loses its steam halfway to the end, World War Z manages to keep the book interesting during the final end.

This book is written in a manner of interview's manuscript that recorded the event that leads to World War Z and some years afterwards. The book is opened with an interview with Doctor Kwang Jingshu of People's Republic of China that recounted his experience to find the earliest case of Zombie's outbreak (Patient Zero) in the Chinese rural area. From there, the interviews went on to various parts of the world (the interviews were conducted ten years after the War declared over) with various prominent key figures recounting the event chronogically.

The book consists of many intertwined stories that crosses many genres and touches many popular references. For instance, the Chinese sub-marine story could easily fit into a sci-fi story. As well as the young Japanese adventure which easily recongnized the cyberpunk culture. It also touches some of the heavier subjects such as religions (my favourite one was when the Russian priest went outside his home with a rifle and a bible), environmentalists ('Fuck it. Say it to the whales') and philosopy. The problem of a story that consists of several other little stories were of course evident and unavoidable here, as well. Some of the story could be bored, but some of them, most, would stand out. I, personally liked the story of a Russian military dicipline (it was awesome), the New York's celebrity hideout and the beginning of the end at Hope City.

I can't praise this book enough. Released on September 2006, the Paramount Pictures has bought the right to this book, and Brad Pitt's Plan B Production would be the one to produce the film based on this book scheduled to release on 2008.

For those of you who claimed to love Zombies, grab this book, it won't disappoint, and while at it, also get yourself Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide (2003). It could prove handy when there's a Zombie outbreak in your neighborhood. Seriously.

My Rating: *** / **** - A fun, and light book to read

Indonesian Movie Awards 2007

You know that i had to write about this Indonesian Movie Awards. First of all, what was this? This award was created by the biggest private TV station in Indonesia in what i think the idea was coming up during the wake of dissatisfied public against the recent disastrous award that is Festival Film Indonesia. Some producers sees the opportunity in the event which sparked and spiced with some of high profiled Actors and Directors actually give back their Citra's statuette as a protest, that maybe by creating another film festival – allegedly named Indonesian Movie Awards – would probably rob the status quo as the biggest and the most important film festival in Indonesia. The question is of course, did it work?

Presentation. This has been the biggest and un-ignorable failure of this pretentious award ceremony. It felt empty, monotonous, and kinda forced. The award ceremony apparently took the theme of classics were the star attendants (the youngling snoob actors, of course. I dont see Slamet Rahardjo, Jajang C. Noer, or Didi Petet wearing more than a suit and a simple elegant dress) dressed copying the royal family. European royal family. I dont know about the rest of you, but i dont like the theme at all. It was unoriginal, half-hearted, and failed to hit the spot. I prefer Rachel Maryam's outfit which was a casual one piece dress than umm.. Titi Kamal's royal-like gown.

In the world where quite literally, everything that happened in the side of this other world could be heard and seen right this instant at the other side of the world, it's rather hard to find an originality in creativity products that tried to entertain. Take the issue of plagiarism in our television network's sinetron. That's old news. But check this one out, i just recently counted how many Dream Theater's song that has been used as a TV program's soundtrack. Panic Attack, Take the Time, and The Spirit Carries On to name a few. And i am more than willing to bet that none of these TV programs had a license to play the song. In my point of view, quite visibly, Indonesian Movie Awards based its presentation concept to the Academy Awards. And, based on what i've seen on TV, that whereas Academy Awards ceremony produced a bright, over-to-top, luxurious grandeur, the Indoneisan Movie Awards felt bland, quiet, and lame. Even though that you really had to count that Academy Awards has been around for 76 years, and this year was Indonesian Movie Awards' first.

To give it a fair measure, the nominees weren't that bad. It seems that the jury has learned form the last year's debacle of Festival Film Indonesia. They had your standard festival's categories, you know, best actor, best actress, best soundtrack, best film, and so forth. But, they also had MTV's style categories, such as best new comer, best soundtrack, best couple and some silly categories such as best singing actor? What was that? To add an insult to injury, we've also had two awards given to some of the major categories. Best, whereas the winner decided by some jury, and Favorite, whereas the winner was chosen by audience's SMS. You got to give it a hand to the producers, they still wanted as much as profit as they could get. I would personally bet that this Indonesian Movie Award won't last long, three years would be my best bet. As soon as the producers realized that they flushed the money down the drain, there'd be no more of this show.

Let's go to the winner. For me, the interesting part of any award ceremony, the real meat of the show, was to hear each and everyone thank-you list from the winner. However, the winner attendance rate was quite low in this show. Kinaryosih, the winner in at least three categories , she couldn't attend the show. Nicholas Saputra was also absent. So was Albert Faxdawer, the winner in one category. Titi Kamal attended the show only because she was also had a responsibility to deliver one of the award category. And after her second win (shared with Kinaryosih as best and favorite couple), we'd wish that she won't show up for the rest of the night. Well, that was not the case unfortunately. And so was Cornelia Agatha. She was one of the actress to deliver one of the category's nominations. Agus Ringgo, the winner of the most favourite new actor showed up just because he was the host (one of four). Also the host slash winner, was Nirina Zubir. One question, how did she got nominated anyway? In short, there's nothing spectacular, nothing that resembles thinking out-of-the-box attidute. All was down by the rules written unofficially in a book called 'How to Make a Boring Award Show'.

To give it one plus point, the video that accompanies each award presentation, that even often ran too long, contains some hillarious shots by Aming. Ironically, the best of these shots were made when Aming crossdressed as a female.

All in all, i'm actually glad that there was actually another Indonesian Film Festival. As with everything else, i've always firmly believed that a quality of something could always be improved when there's a competition. And who knows, maybe with the presence of this award, Film Festival Indonesia would tried to improved its quality in order to reclaim the throne. Because that even though i percieved the award in such a negative attitude, it still beats the last year's FFI by a mile.

Anyway, where was “Realita, Cinta dan Rock 'N Roll”? I loved that film. It certainly better than “Mirror”.

Film Review: Spider-Man 3 (2007)

All those hype and quite for naught. Or probably that i had so much expectation that after seeing the final result, i was agree with Tobey Maguire's initial response after attending the official screening in Tokyo several weeks ago that Spider-Man 3 was in fact a merely so-so. However, i would like to pull this one a little further that i thought even with Venom's marvelous presence on this third instalment of the franchise, this one fell a rather far behind the other two.

Spider-Man 3, in my view, could clearly separated into three parts. Pre-Venom (the real Venom, the Eddie Brock's Venom), Venom, and after Venom. The Venom part is excellent. The other two were boring.

I never liked Peter Parker or Spider-Man. I never had a real connection with Peter Parker. Sure, he is a rigid, uncertain, and not-so-confident young fella, but with certain gift that he more often than not consider as a curse as well. For some, for many, that made him more human than any other superhero that ever gazes presence on the comic book pages. Quite probably, ironically, that's what made me loses connection to him. However, on the previous two instalment, Tobey Maguire could deliver and believable as Peter Parker / Spider-Man. Something that i don't fell anew in this film.

Continuing his latest adventure, Spider-Man encounters several old nemesis (Goblin Junior, and his-own-uncertain-feeling) and couple new ones (Sandman and Venom). Sadly, these encounters were largely, mostly attributed to coincidences. There's no real threat in these encounters. They're simplified and ultimately, negligible.

The film ran long, two and a half hours, but, even if it had more than sufficient feature-length, i still felt that the film was in a hurried pace, especially in the beginning. There were too many to introduces, too much to tell, and too little time. Thus, there's no real emotion sparked between me and the characters. I felt like flipping through a comic page, scanning the bubbles without really reading it. Ironically, at the after Venom part, the film dragged its way trough the exit with quite a few lame scenes and lame scripts that i kept my eyes rolled up in exasperation.

All in all, i must see the other two instalment before i could verify my comment, but i think it's safe to say that action wise, this film was a ok, story wise, this film felt like one of those 80's comic with all those silly story line and lame dialogue. Oh, and there was this scene when Spider-Man flew before the waving flag that filled the entire screen. I was the only one who laughed out loud in the theater at the scene. And i tell you, that was an instantaneous laugh and that scene really made my opinion firm that this film was nothing but a joke. I really do hope that there wouldn't be number 4. Oh, this franchise has hit a new low.

My Rating: *1/2 / ****, and i'm being generous.

Film Review: Sunshine (2007)

It's already become a habit that whenever i sit during a film, a template of reviews unfold within my head, and evolved as the film progresses. My initial response to Sunshine during the first act was that the film had a huge potential to satisfy. With Cillian Murphy whom had stellar resume in my book, i'm almost certain that the film will be at least enjoyable. Well, that was my initial response during the first act.

It turns out that the film quickly loses its steam halfway, and really really dragging during the final act. It's almost painful to watch. It seems that Danny Boyle had lost his confidence in delivering the prominent internal conflict between his actors and decides to throw one particular bad guy that had this 'slasher-flick' stamped all over his figure.

Sometimes in a future, the Sun, our only Sun loses its core and gradually dying and left us on Earth into a prolonged winter. A crew of eight, probably brightest scientists on Earth went into the sun to deliver a bomb to iginite Sun's core thus created a newly born star. The crew went aboard Icarus II. Now, if there's a II then there should be I. Fact is, Icarus I went AWOL during a similar mission seven years prior.

Like i said, the first act was beautiful and promises a thrilling experience, that i could almost ignore several factual errors and enjoy the first act. However, my satisfaction meter went quickly straight down to the bottom of the well when the second act approaches. The factual errors weren't so negligible anymore, and there's one single factual error that disturbed me a lot and ruined the whole experience. While trying not to spoil anything, the single factual error that had disturbed me had to do with supposedly the most accurate, reliable, and crucial key to the whole mission. The computer.

Regarding this issue, if i wanted to made a comparison of what's work and what's not, i would like to compares the computer's malfunction in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the similar case in Sunshine. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL's malfunction was due to its logical circuit wanted to ensure the success of a mission whatever the cost. In Sunshine, however, Icarus' malfunction was an entirely writer's error (most likely deliberate) and it left me felt cheated afterwards. And in my opinion, there's nothing worse than cheating your audience.

That's ruined the whole third act. I don't have to mention that most of third act consists of an overly-dramatic sequences, almost preachy, and real pain to watch.

My Rating: * / ****