Partay Time November 10, 2006

Well the title could actually apply to any date following the horrendous Extension One HSC Maths exam but it seems applicable to today’s entry too. Now that Chemistry finished today, I only have one more exam left and unlike Chemistry, the studying for Extension Japanese requires much less effort and stress. As much as Chemistry wouldn’t count for me, I still stressed a tad with the loads of notes I felt that I should study for, but now I feel free as a bird – a feeling which will undoubtedly be furthered by my official completion of the HSC next Wednesday.

After the exam today Wayne & I took a bus down to QVB with Vaishali, Hum and Pooja. We went and had laksa for lunch at the Malaysian place down there and met up with Ken and Shin. The girl who served us looked a lot like Emy? Afterwards we headed off to watch “The Departed” reviewed here, and ran into Venus. Due to timing issues the NSGs left us for shopping and we ended up running into another group of them inside the cinemas. Haven’t seen a movie in ages and a film spanning almost 3 hours was quite hectic admittedly, but good. Trip home was terrible…or rather, the process of waiting for the trip home. My 6:02 bus came at 6:35 because there was a traffic jam…AT the bus stops? I still don’t know what caused it but all the buses were stuck on the same street for half an hour almost. Terrible end to a perfectly good day out. I pre-empt average studying on the weekend and much fun once Monday arrives.

The Departed November 10, 2006

Personally, I’ve been removed from the film release loop recently due to the HSC and have basically not been up-to-date with all the anticipated movies of late 2006. Having said that, rumours of “The Departed”, directed by Martin Scorsese, as a Hollywood adaptation of my personal HK favourite, “Infernal Affairs”, had been floating around since the middle of last year. The original, directed by Andrew Lau and released in 2002 was an amazing piece of work, though the same cannot be said about the two subsequent sequels. “The Departed” adapts the trilogy into one film spanning almost 3 hours. Although it had the odd boring bits, it did meet my expectation of a brilliant film.

I’ve never been a big fan of Matt Damon and even less of a fan of Leonardo De Caprio (glued image of his Titanic debut with slick gelled-back hair – ugh) but both did good jobs in their roles – nice and natural, though Leo could have lost the beard…a tad outta character I thought. Best actor would’ve been Jack Nicholson – he’s a guy who can really pull off that villan act – followed closely by psychiatrist Vera Farmiga. First time I’ve seen her on the silver screen but definitely wouldn’t mind seeing her later roles.

It’s been too long since I watched the original trilogy so I can’t pinpoint any discrepancies but I did follow the movie quite easily so it wouldn’t have strayed to far away from the plot. It started off fairly boring but the midsection took off rapidly, if not a tad too fast as a result of cramming a trilogy into one film, and finished with an unexpected (oh-so-nihilistic!) climax. The light hearted humour left a good impression, especially any of the witty comments courtesy of Nicholson. For some it may be just a little on the gory and violent side of things, but it was a really enjoyable way to kick start my unofficial end of the HSC. Not much of a review but I’ll get better at this as I go along hopefully.

“Lies. Betrayal. Sacrifice. How far will you take it?”