Watched Spielberg’s War of the Worlds with Ling today and though I liked it a lot, it was, film-wise, one traumatic experience for me. Forget the little bits of exposition they had to furnish concerning Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier’s household mismanagement problems. Forget the slightly cheesy-by-modern-day-standards explanation on how the alien lifeforms landed on (or rather into) Earth. If one were expecting an alien-invasion movie similar to, say, Independence Day, one might be sorely disappointed, because there were no Earthian heroes with the talents or the technology to defeat the mighty giant armoured machines. The film was instead one grand statement about the fragility of Man and his ugly nature when the desperation to survive supersedes morality.

This is one film that was based on a late-1800s novel by H.G. Wells, with a famous radio series in the 1930s by Orson Welles that sent people who believed the invasion real into panic. It would have been a horror tale more for the imagination than a visual exercise if not for the advances of cinematic technology.

Subjects: Film, Television & Anime 映像

Mood: Raves and Rants

Tags: cinema, H.G. Wells, Minority Report, Orson Welles, pelicans, PKD, science fiction, Steven Spielberg

Something I’ve been seeing at the Isetan supermarket every Wednesday when I go for my regular Japanese class: whenever customers with 1-2 items make their way to the payment counters, they seem to immediately head towards the only express counter in the supermart, despite the obviously long queue, even though the regular payment counters are free. This is a society where we’re so anal about ‘obeying’ signs that we don’t seem to use our eyes and heads to judge anymore.

Subjects: General

Mood: Discoveries & Relevations

Tags: Isetan, Japanese