Oscars 2007

Well the Oscars have been handed out. As usual, the results are mixed feelings all over, not to mention it's always unsettling that rather obscure movies end up being nominated to contend for the statues.

Nominees for Best Picture were:
The Departed - $131.5m
The Queen - $51.3m
Little Miss Sunshine - $59.7m
Babel - $33.2m
Letters From Iwo Jima - $11.8m

Next to the titles are their Cumulative Gross as of last weekend. Only The Departed crossed the $100m mark. The other movies have the nominations to thank for a fair part of their box office total but yet didn't make that much money.

I'm fairly happy The Departed won the Oscar for Best Picture as it's most likely to be the only one out of the 5 nominees that I'll bother to watch.

By the time 2006's Oscar ceremony came along, I had watched only Crash and it's still the only one of the 5 nominees that I have watched. Fairly safe to say that I won't be watching the rest.


About the other Oscars handed out:
- I'm glad The Departed won an Oscar for Best Director for Martin Scorsese. It was about time.

- In the Best Actress category, I had hoped Meryl Streep would win the Oscar for her icy queen role in The Devil Wears Prada. But instead it went to Helen Mirren for The Queen, once again a movie with rather limited appeal.

- Not entirely displeased to see Forest Whitaker take the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in The Last King Of Scotland. I don't like Leo DiCaprio much, he still looks too much like a small boy to be taken seriously. And I didn't like Will Smith taking on that boring role in The Pursuit Of Happyness and meddling to put his own son in the movie.

- I'm happy that Pan's Labyrinth won a few Oscars but it's a travesty that it didn't win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. At one point, Pan's Labyrinth was a reasonably serious contender to be nominated for Best Picture!! But it was shut out of that category and now it's lost the Best Foreign Language Film award to some half-assed movie from Germany.

- Throughout the Award season, I have been mystified as to how people rate Dreamgirls and its cast so highly. While Eddie Murphy didn't end up with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (I wonder whether his Norbit roles cost him), I'm mad to see that Jennifer Hudson won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The woman is a singer struggling to make a name for herself and was asked to play a singer struggling to make a name for herself. Not exactly the hardest role, was it? They could have put any young black singer in the role and she'd have done as good a job of it. Hopefully she'll catch the curse of the Oscars and end up being forgotten.

- I'm not happy to see how movies that are essentially musicals are increasingly a feature at the Oscars. I think Moulin Rouge startedthis all. Then there was Ray. Last year, we got served Walk The Line and the Best Actress award went undeservedly to Reese Witherspoon. And this year, the hype was all about Dreamgirls. I don't like the genre and certainly wouldn't mind seeing less of these movies being made.

Britney Spears madness

Will Britney Spears become the next Anna Nicole Smith? On her current streak, you sure wouldn't bet against it. Looking back at her past romances with Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline, it's easy to believe she's not right in the head. But since officially booting out Federline, she's been going all out to push it over that beyond-a-doubt line.

The partying with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and the passing out in public - supposedly from fatigue but then again, heavy boozing tends to bring on fatigue in a major way - have all been documented.

But this story about her checking into a rehab centre only to check out the very next day and then taking Lex Luthor's hairdo on us has left even her biggest fans pretty puzzled.


Meant to post all this last week when the bald story first broke but I went back to Singapore over Chinese New Year and spent all my time watching Smallville's Season 3 and 24's Season 4.

Anyway since then, she has checked into rehab again. And I guess her publicists are pulling in favours from all over the press because I saw at least 2 articles saying how checking back into rehab is turning the wind in Britney's favour. Just how does someone get the wind turned in her favour a few days after shaving her head and essentially putting herself back in a mental institution for the rich? Celebrities eh?

Beyonce on Cover of 2007 SI Swimsuit

OK here's some quirky news.

No, I'm not talking about Beyonce making the cover of the 2007 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit although that is in itself pretty farfetched. I guess they wanted to appeal to the black demographic.

The first quirky bit is that, well, apparently Beyonce's dad, who's also her manager, refused to watch her pose in bikinis. I'd thought he should be used to it by now. Why would he refuse to see her in this bikini when she's in the same state of undress (and sometimes worse) for her promo pics or at her appearances? Or does this mean he never attends her music video recordings or other photo shoots?

The second strange bit is that in the same article, Beyonce claims that she is "a really shy person". Sure she is. She's shy in the same way George Bush is clever.

Netflix Canada

Was doing some research on this because my brother-in-law is moving to Montreal in a month. Basically, Canada doesn't have Netflix but has a few websites providing very similar services.

Most offer 2-week trials, which are a great way of evaluating their service.


The biggest one seems to be zip.ca. They have 6 membership plans catering to all types of movie watchers. Monthly fees range from $10.95 for the 1 DVD Plan to $49.95 for the 8 DVD Plan. And they have this rather neat feature called ZipRefill that can help people increase the number of rentals they receive each month.


A few others are:
1. Canflix.com
They offer movies in DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray format, and even games for XBox, XBox360, PS2, PS3, GameCube and Wii.

Monthly fees are $21.95 for 3 discs out, $24.95 for 4 discs out, $29.95 for 5 discs out and $36.95 for 6 discs out. For the couch potatoes, they also have an 8-disc plan at $49.95 and a 10-disc plan at $54.95.

2. DVDHype.com.
Monthly fee of $25. Customers get 3, 4 or 5 DVDs out depending on their location.

3. DVDFlix.ca.
Fees start from $19.99 a month for 3 DVDs out and go up to $29.99 for 5 DVDs out and $39.99 for 7 DVDs out.

4. DVD-Rental.ca
Fees range from $22.99 a month for 3 DVDs out to $34.96 for 6 DVDs out. Interestingly, they also offer packages for DVD Movies or PS2/XBox Games at $19.99 for 2 Movies/Games out and $24.99 for 3 Movies/Games out.

5. Starflix.com
For the occasional movie watcher, they offer monthly packages of $9.99 for 1 DVD out but limited to a total of 2 DVDs per month and $14.95 for 2 DVDs out, limited to a total of 4 DVDs a month. Other packages are $24.95 for 3 DVDs out, $28.95 for 4 DVDs out and $34.96 for 5 DVDs out.

6. DVDsToYourDoor.com.
Fees start from $14.99 a month.
Update: Site seems to be dead.
Gives the message: No web site is configured at this address.

Bullet Train to KL

Nice little article from TODAYonline.com below about a proposed bullet train between Singapore and KL.

I wonder whether the liberalisation of air links between Singapore and Malaysia will hurt this project. The planes will probably start flying to KL by the end of this year while this bullet train will take a few years to materialise.

But I'm hoping the bullet train still comes through. I much prefer simple fares with no added taxes for security, airport handling and everything else they can come up with. And this will be more convenient than the planes because the passengers will get dropped much closer to the City Centre. KLIA rocks but it's still about an hour away from the action.

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The people behind the operating systems of the North-East and Circle MRT lines want to be the driving force behind the proposed bullet train rail linking Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Mr Philippe Mellier, president of Alstom Transport, said yesterday his company was "very interested" in developing the bullet train, which would cut normal rail travel time from the current seven hours or so to just 90 minutes. He pointed to Alstom's experience in the Asia Pacific region — which includes building Korea's KTX high-speed train connecting Seoul and Pusan — as an advantage for the French company.

"We are by far the biggest manufacturer of high-speed trains in the world," Mr Mellier said.
"We know the region, we know the requirements and we have experience in exporting our technology far from home."

Alstom Transport occupies the No 2 market position in urban rail transport and has an annual turnover of €5.1 billion ($10.2 billion). A consortium led by Malaysian company YTL Corp is the only party that has presented a proposal for a bullet train service between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Preliminary studies showed the US$2.3-billion ($3.5-billion) project is feasible but the Malaysian government has not made any decision. Last month, Singapore's Transport Minister Raymond Lim indicated he was open to the proposal if it benefits both countries.

Mr Mellier, who was here for a Metro workshop, said conditions are "ideal" for the construction of a high-speed rail system between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Millions of people live in and could commute between the two cities, he said, envisioning a train that would travel at about 350kmh — giving air travel a run for its money.

Asked about Singapore's public transport, Mr Mellier suggested building a tram system around Orchard Road and the Central Business District. Though it would involve a bigger start-up investment, he said, a tram system could carry three times the capacity of buses while conserving a quarter of the energy.

Liberalisation of Air Links with Malaysia

Interesting article from channelnewsasia.com below.

I'm still not too hot about budget airlines. It annoys me that I can almost never get the super discounted fares whenever I do a search. And even when I do get something reasonably close to the lowest of the low, the various added taxes usually end up dwarfing the fares and the whole thing doesn't look like such a good deal after all.

That said, when the budget airlines start flying to the promised destinations in Malaysia, I'll be there again clicking on their websites. My baby car will still be driving me to KL but maybe the budget airlines can bring me to Langkawi, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu. Now if only the hotels offered cheaper rates too ...

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Budget carriers based in Singapore are eagerly awaiting the liberalisation of air links with Malaysia now that the two countries have agreed, in principle, to open up the current aviation agreement.

Though details of the proposed liberalisation have yet to be announced, budget carriers are already eyeing certain destinations in Malaysia.

Budget carriers, like Tiger Airways and Jetstar, see the opening up of the aviation playing field as a positive step in the right direction.

Flying from Singapore into Malaysian cities would mean a huge boost not just in tourism, but also in business links.

Chong Phit Lian, CEO, Jetstar Asia Airways, said: "Once it's opened up, it'll open a lot more visitation, that's for sure. What you used to think twice to do, you'll do it faster and you'll probably invite more relatives and friends to visit you in Singapore. There'll be a great surge in interest for family, friends and for short holidays. If you do a rough estimate based on capacity, it will probably be two or three times more."

Under a 34-year-old agreement, national carriers from both sides have monopolised the Singapore-KL route, with more than 200 flights a week.

And with budget carriers entering the scene, it will create a very competitive environment in terms of ticket prices.

Besides Peninsular Malaysia, destinations further north and into East Malaysia could become more attractive to travellers.

"If it opens up and we're given a chance to choose, we definitely would like to go to KL, Ipoh, Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and beyond, typically. We're also working out with Malaysian travel agencies to understand their needs and if there's a demand. If we can serve the market, we'll definitely consider those routes," said Ms Chong.

Tony Davis, CEO, Tiger Airways, said: "Ultimately, the consumers will decide how big the market becomes. There's a big increase in passenger services when we enter the market. We expect that to happen in Malaysia. The market is important to us. It's close to Singapore and it suits our model of high frequency services. With a budget terminal here, we can offer low fares. There'll be a lot of demand."

No matter where the destinations are going to be, two things are certain – budget carriers said it would be cheaper to fly to Malaysia from Singapore and there would be more options for travellers.

Firewall Down

blogger.com and blogspot.com have been accessible from here in Shanghai for a while now. In the beginning I had thought it was just a temporary hole in the Great Firewall of China but this looks a permanent thing now. Well, as close to permanent as it can get here in China.

With this and the fact that I will most likely be moving back to Singapore in a few months, I will restart posting here, while also posting the same stuff at my blog/forum at cabspace.com.