I’ve been using the title “A Playful Misconception, A Childhood’s Dream” for my blog for more than a decade now, and the meaning and concept behind it have diminished to a point where they are no longer recognisable by myself.

Perhaps I’ve really grown up now? A sad thought and I hope not but changes are changes.

I’ve been wanting to change it for a while now but nothing profound ever came to me – because that’s just me, I like the profound. But since I have found nothing in the profound, perhaps it’s the simplicity that I should look for.

And thinking about it and seeing as what this page recently has represented – and how I’ve opened up another blog on Google’s Bloggers – I think the title “Eyes On The Silver Screen” is more apt… for now.

And me being me, I like to choose a date that’s aesthetically pleasing. So on this day of 11.10.11.;and after a decade of playful misconceptions, a new age is born.

There are so many more sites out there that offer even more flexibility together with user-friendly ease of access, and currently Posterous.com seems to be more satisfactory and enjoyable; though I recently just found SquareSpace.com and it looked very interesting but have yet to check it out thoroughly.

Anyway, this page will not be up for too long as ThinkBrunei.com will not be renewed.

If anyone’s looking, I’ll be at http://delgoh.com (or http://delgoh.posterous.com)

(imdb.com)

I didn’t expect much and I didn’t get much. So all in all, I guess it was alright.

One thing that should have up my expectation was the cast. We’ve got legendary Robert De Niro, Clive Owen, Jason Statham and the lovely Yvonne Strahovsky. This would have been automatically cemented a hit. But it wasn’t.

However, best acting came from Dominic Purcell because he almost stole the show. The movie did feel like another Jason Statham movie since he had the most screen time but it wasn’t. Owen was there to balance things off. He chased Statham as much as he did onscreen as he did to push each other to drive the story.

But the script was just mediocre at best. Some scenes had lines that seemed forced and some just dragged on and on. So in this case, I think the director wasn’t capable enough to make the movie more interesting.

Sure, the action scenes were aplenty but it never got the audience engaged enough.

One thing I did wonder was why they couldn’t have cast actors that came from the same origin as their characters. Why not get a proper Australian instead of Strahovsky? Or a British for Purcell? Rather than succumbing the audience to fake and unconvincing accents.

Merely two minutes in and I knew I had the wrong expectation going into this movie. But little did I know, I was going in to watch the worst movie of the year.

Legends of the White Snake, the Green Snake or whatever colour snake there is always fascinated me when I was young. I’ve read or heard stories and have always found them mystical and fantastical.

And the legend was the only thing that this movie had going for it as it shamelessly rode on past success while desecrating it at the same time. The director didn’t have enough budget to work with so the editor was doing most of the work. And when there were any CGI involved, it looked like this movie was made in the early 90′s.

All these became painfully obvious in the first ten minutes as Jet Li battled a supposedly beautiful demon played by Vivian Hsu. But because of all the shortcomings, she looked weird and silly.

The acting was atrocious. Perhaps only Jet Li managed to look decent enough while spewing lines that never really meant too much.

And as the movie progressed, everything kept becoming worse. Nothing made sense. There were just too much editing going on.

Until the very end, I couldn’t even stomach what the love birds were saying to each other than I just walked out five minutes before the movie ended – or at least I hope it was only five minutes left, I really couldn’t see any point in dragging it any longer.

Everything about this movie was juvenile. I can’t believe Jet Li was involved. And Charlene Choi, once again has proven me right. She has only one dimension of acting ability. And it probably isn’t even acting.

(imdb.com)

Making vampire movies these days can be considered tricky. You don’t want to fall into the Twilight zone and you have Let Me In to contend with.

But Fright Night seemed to have balanced everything out very nicely, and very much enjoyable I might add.

Anton Yelchin was a believable highschool student, unlike Taylor Lautner’s downfall in Abduction. And he handled his role superbly. I’m becoming quite a fan of his.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse still reminded me of Kick-Ass but in the best way possible because he had another similar great turn in this supporting role even if it might have been type-cast for him. David Tennant provided humourous entertainment, and Imogen Poots and Toni Collette rounded up the cast nicely.

And I was completely surprised, as well as at myself for recognising Lisa Loeb playing Mintz-Plasse’s mother, but only for one scene.

But what surprised the most was Colin Farrell’s brilliant performance as a vampire. He kicked the Twilight chaps to shame! He was tough, magnetic and scary all at the same time.

And another huge asset to this movie was director Craig Gillespie who knew how to work the camera and set the mood. He knew how to build suspense and get the audience’s adrenalin going (unlike Abduction again which I keep comparing to only because I just watched it yesterday. It just goes to show what works and what doesn’t).

One thing missing though, was how all the happenings and destruction didn’t seem to affect the rest of the community and everything was all too contained. Other than that, this was completely enjoyable and avoided the trite, useless scaring techniques.

(imdb.com)

Mr. Lautner, why is it that you can’t stay away from love triangles and teenage agst?

The biggest mistake this movie made was to film Taylor Lautner like a hearthrob, alienating any heterosexual male who opted to step into this movie. No doubt there’s no denying his appeal over the other sex, but when this movie made it all about him, that’s where it tanked the most.

Director John Singleton has a panache for style especially when it comes to leading men in movies. But I thought this was over done.

While the movie had a good storyline with great supporting cast that were more interesting than the two leads – such as Sigourney Weavers, Maria Bello, Alfred Molina and Jason Isaacs; Lautner seemed to have been pushed to the forefront because of how the camera was forced to love him.

Too many scenes involved Lautner posing and even more of him in close-up shots (like a bad version of M. Night’s movies). There was even one with his silhoutte just simply putting on a jacket, and then I cringed further into my seat.

There was also a good base for action and suspense, but somehow Singleton couldn’t bring out any genuine effects and had to rely a lot on camera action and background soundtrack. And again, loopholes were everywhere but fortunately nothing too jarring.

But while Lautner and Lily Collins had enough chemistry onscreen, I thought Lautner was a miscast. He looked too old to be a highschool student, moreso with his incredible physique (and I say this with pure manly appreciation).

The movie would probably have fared much better with a different lead, one that didn’t have to be related with Twilight in any way.

(imdb.com)

It started off promising not to be bad. Then it was at a slow pace. Then there was a massive loophole, so massive that I don’t know how anyone could let this slide. The ending wasn’t too bad though.

James Caan and Vera Farmiga probably were the best things about this movie. Even with the somewhat uninteresting dialogue, they both kept it up and delivered.

Keeanu Reeves wasn’t great or very effective in his role. Especially the part when he somehow was the next best choice for a lead role in a play when his character never acted before. He came off a little off and unconvincing.

But the biggest loophole as mentioned earlier was how Caan’s character managed to get rid of the lead of that play. He was in prisoned most of his life and suddenly he seemed to have some sort of connection to pull the stunt off. It’s mind boggling.

A heist movie usually is sexy and slick. This was neither. Ergo, not very exciting nor entertaining.

(imdb.com)

When the main character who is also the hero is stupid, then everyone else around him has to be even more stupid in order for a hero movie to work.

I just realised watching stupidity after stupidity unfold onscreen that it must be so difficult to write a stupid character as the hero of the movie. And even worse was that the other actors all had to act in characters that were more stupid than the main character.

And since Johnny English was that stupid, the most stupid character in this movie was his new sidekick, played by Daniel Kaluuya. Otherwise English could never have been the hero of the story.

For the first time I can appreciate how difficult a movie this must be to produce.

I have actualy forgtten what Rowan Atkinson was all about. I recently saw moments of an episode of Mr. Bean on the plane flying back from Singapore. And when I watched this movie, every movement and expresion Johnny English made, reminded me so much of Mr. Bean. Atkinson apparently still fell back onto what was familiar, and what a disappointment that was.

But what I couldn’t stand was how stupid the whole thing was. There have been many stupid movies before. And none of them had to sink this low to garner laughs. Some were actually fantastic and brilliant like Tropic Thunder or the recent Horrible Bosses.

I really don’t see the need to throw out all, and I do mean all in this case, logic out the window. I felt like I had to dumb down myself if I were to enjoy this movie to its fullest. And that would have been just stupid on my part.

Needless to say, I wasn’t laughing when the whole cinema erupted in guffaws. And I was trying to stifle my laughter when the whole cinema was queit.