Movies Seen On The Plane

Patrick Movies, Travel

On the way to London, flying BA, we had the great on demand entertainment system. It broke down on the flight back and ended up with multi-channels of entertainment instead of the on demand system. I still had a great opportunity to see a few movies. Read the short reviews below:

Surf’s Up
An animation film involving rather overly cutesy Penguin characters that are into surfing. Stepping out of the rather repetitive and trite format of animation movies, the behind-the-scenes format involving the perspective of the camera crew and some very funny interview sessions made it much more refreshing. It’s a light hearted tale that’s easy to watch and expect a few chuckles but not any laugh out loud moments. TheKua.Com Rating : 7 out of 10

Withnail & I
Recommended to me by one of my friends, this cult film portrays two struggling actors set at the end of the 1960s and living in Camden town trying to live their life and a quick get away to the country. Though stated as a “comedy” in the movie guide, I felt the seriousness (even for English comedy) was sometimes a little bit much. I found it an interesting insight into life during that period and found it entirely believable as well. I wouldn’t recommend this movie and though I didn’t enjoy it that much whilst watching it, I can see its appeal to some audiences. If anything, it’s interesting to see places like Camden Town, and Regents Park (at the end of the movie) used throughout the movie. TheKua.Com Rating: 5 out of 10

Knocked Up
A recent comedy movie featuring the girl I knew from Roswell. It tells the story of a one-night stand turning into an accidental pregnancy with all the ups and downs that go alongside. It features some awkward moments and I became a little bit bored with the all too common jokes. TheKua.Com Rating: 3 out of 10.

The Ex
A black comedy featuring Scrubs’ star Zach Braff about a New York couple moving back to Ohio and how they deal with raising a new baby, starting a new job and dealing with old relationships. There’s some very cringe-worthy moments, with plenty of things going wrong. Described well as a combination between The Office and Meet The Parents, this movie is made more worthwhile with the addition of those small Zach Braff moments. TheKua.Com Rating: 7 out of 10.

He Was A Quiet Man
Tables turn as a quiet office worked with intent to kill ends up as a hero after shooting a worker who ends up killing others first. He ends up taking care of one of the only survivors of the office shooting – someone that is the only person he cares about. Suddenly he is more popular than he’s ever been and doesn’t know how to deal with it. It’s certainly a different role for Christian Slater to play and an intriguing movie with plenty of internal dialogue to boot. TheKua.Com Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Bestival 2007

Patrick Entertainment, Music, UK Life

British festivals typically mean lots of music, lots of camping and of course, generally lots of rain. Considering how “summery” the last few months had been, I was a little worried that this last weekend was going to be washed out because I was going along to Bestival 2007. We were all banking on good weather, taking Friday off to drive down to the three-day festival and Monday to have a bit more of a leisurely pace back to London.

Bestival

It turned out that we had fantastic festival weather, and the entire Bestival experience was thoroughly enjoyable. Music highlights had to be The Chemical Brothers who put on their typically awesome act accompanied by a spectacular light show, the ever energetic The Gossip and then The Foals, a new Indie band who put out a great set in the BBC Introducing. On the disappointing side, The Beastie Boys who I’d seen perform a brilliant set back at Big Day Out, managed to cause the crowd to thin out quite well during their Saturday night set. We also caught the end of Carl Craig’s rather dull and low key set which didn’t seem to match the energetic mood everyone was in at 4 in the morning.

Although there were plenty of music acts, many of them were I didn’t rate on the “must see” list. The upside is that there wasn’t as much pressure to go to all the stages, and I could indulge in the company of other festival goers, chill out in the sun and just generally meander throughout the rest of the festival. There’s plenty of alternative entertainment, including glitter wrestling, an inflatable castle with almost hourly marriage services (Ben and Polly’s one on Sunday was a stunner), a burlesque tea tent, a comedy tent and just plenty of places to lounge around and soak up the atmosphere.

Another big draw card, quite unique to this festival is it’s fancy dress theme. Even though it’s based on a poem, all of it is optional, and so here’s what I went as. It was amazing at how much some people really got into their costumes, with many of them hand crafted to superb detail, especially those that co-ordinated an entire group costume.

It was a great taste of what British festivals should be like when it’s not raining and full of mud and could definitely go back another year.

Singapore Chilli Crab Festival

Patrick Entertainment, Food, UK Life

Chinese LanternThis weekend the Truman Brewery played host to the Tiger beer sponsored Signapore Chilli Crab Festival. What looks like a yearly event, this one celebrates one of the Singaporean most famous dishes with a small amount of entertainment and food available for purchase. We turned up at about 4 in the afternoon, which was probably much too late with a line extending all the way out of the Truman Brewery, around the corner down Brick Lane and what looked like a couple of blocks (and that was just for the food).

At some point even later in the afternoon, they stopped people joining the food queue as they had apparently run out of food for the day. All of the food looked like it was sponsored by a restaurant in Bayswater called Kiasu and apparently you could order the crab there instead. Although Tiger sponsored the event and had set up a number of stalls serving their beer, I was surprised to find that their “special” of 4 beers at £12 was so expensively priced.

Although entertainment lacked any real bite (we caught a small glimpse of a Chinese magician and a lone Chinese Dragon dance) and we did not end up tasting their famous crab, we still had a pretty nice time enjoying the last vestiges of summer. Here’s the small number of photos from the day.

Transformers The Movie

Patrick Movies, UK Life

Let’s get one thing out the way first – when you have a movie based on a cartoon and series of kids figurines you should really know what to expect. With this in mind, I actually really enjoyed it. After hearing some reviews from Julie and Gareth at work, I ended up seeing it with one of my flatmates yesterday.

The movie synopsis is simple and does not deviate too far from the cartoon – alien robots from another planet drop onto Earth in seek of an ultimate power source. One group, the Deceptacons, wants to use it to transform the Earth into a semblance of their former planet, while the other group, the Autobots, want to find this power source before the other group does to prevent Earth’s destruction. The robots and, like most movies in this genre, the fate of the world depends on a single item possessed by your typical less-than-popular nervous kid who also just so happens to form a bond with one of the Autobot transformers.

Remembering this genre of movie, you have to suspend your beliefs in many parts of the movie such as the attitudes of the Sector 7 guys, the sharpshooting of the Secretary of Defense, the focus of the Australian systems analyst (not to mention her “hacker friend”), and the amazingly perfect shot from the soldier on the sliding motorcycle scene at the end.

What it loses points on, the movie makes up with lots of action scenes, plenty of humour and enough reminiscent moments without being excessively cheesy. Some highlights for me included the wiping away the dust to reveal the Autobot icon, Bumblebee taking on the form of the new racer, and Optimus Prime using his sword to take out one of the Deceptacons.

I won’t admit the movie may not appeal to many people though I at least found it very entertaining and a surprisingly long movie at that.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

Keane at the O2

Patrick Music, UK Life

KeaneOn Saturday night I ended up at The O2 to see British band Keane perform. It was my first time at the O2 and is easily the strangest venue I’ve been to, looking like it was part shopping centre, part convention centre and stadium merged into one. It’s got plenty of restaurants with the only probably being you have to join a queue of at least twenty to thirty people for every single restaurant to get a table. Inside the venue doesn’t seem as big even though it apparently can hold up to 23 000 people. It certainly doesn’t seem as big as Earl’s Court of Wembley Arena. It probably helps that the first of the three layers of seating start next to standing and the stage is very accessible to everyone.

Keane are really great performers and often called upon the crowd to get even more involved at many times. The lead singer would often tell a little story before a few of the stories, sometimes drawing a little bit of haggling from the audience who just wanted to listen to the music. Our standing tickets ended up being perfect for this performance since there was a second stage right in the midst of the standing crowd and Keane performed a number of their softer songs from it.

To finish the night off, the band ended their half hour encore with a bang, with what almost looked like an endless stream of confetti blown into the rafters. Overally a fantastic

Oxegen 2007

Patrick Music, Travel, UK Life

What: Oxegen, rock music festival
When: July 7 – July 8, 2007
Where: Punchestown Racecourse, Ireland

Highlights
Muse rocking OxegenI enjoyed Saturday’s line-up the most with an amazing set by Muse finishing at 2am and a stunning light show. A very modest Snow Patrol also performed a very enjoyable set just before them. Pigeon Detective’s lead singer made quite a show when asked to have mud thrown at him and a never-ending supply streamed towards him throughout their entire set.

Other bands we managed to see on Saturday included The Rumblestripes, The View, The Maccabees, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Gossip, The Fratellis, Kings of Leon, and Maximo Park.

I found Sunday’s headliners, The Killers, slightly disappointing with a relatively quiet performance and regretfully missed an amazing light show by Daft Punk on the other stage. Highlights of Sunday must go to the Klaxons who performed a much heavier than expected set and the energetic bouncing Scotsman, Calvin Harris. Thankfully we got around to seeing all the people we wanted to see, even if it was in very small doses including Razorlight, Babyshambles, Arcade Fire, The Kooks, Bloc Party, CSS, James Morrison, The Thrills, Jason Mraz, Unklejam and Bright Eyes.

I particularly appreciated the food options available that went much further than your typical burger and chips with stalls serving food such as hog roast rolls, falafels, fresh salads, crepes, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, paella and Italian food though most meals cost between €7-€10

Lowlights
Shoe PileI went completely unprepared bringing only a pair of old trainers only to swap them very quickly for some new wellies. It didn’t seem like I was the only one at least. Thankfully my raincoat kept the rest of me relatively dry for the most part. By Sunday almost everywhere you stepped was at least ankle-deep pools of mud or muddy water. Getting back to Dublin on Sunday night post-festival almost ended up in disaster when the organised Dublin bus system completely broke down and people started stampeding their way onto any available bus. I’m amazed no one got crushed.

Overall it was still quite a great experience, as tiring and exhausting and as dirty as it got. Plenty worth it for the number of bands we got to see and the fun and friendly atmosphere. See the rest of the photos that turned out here.

Enough H2O at Oxegen

Patrick Music, Travel, UK Life

Festivals over here mean something plenty different to the ones back home. Chances are you’ll skip the sweltering heat to be replaced by lots of rain and what follows… plenty of mud. After just getting back from Ireland (about half an hour ago), to attend Oxegen I assure you we were in no short supply of all that brown stuff. More to come in a day or two.