Billy Brown: Interstellar + Ms Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

It was in the midst of the last few A Level papers that I caught Interstellar. I was initially extremely skeptical that a SCI-FI movie could deserve so much acclaim, because I don't personally prefer spacey science fiction movie or books. Honestly, I entered the cinema not really knowing what to expect (because I only watched half of its trailer lol), other than the fact that it IS supposedly a good movie.

ON A SIDE NOTE can we just take a moment to aesthetically appreciate Anne Hathaway?? I spent a large part of the movie admiring how her features complimented her hair and I swear she is the only person with sharp enough features who can pull off a short boring haircut???

According to my friend, the film is very characteristic of Christopher Nolan, with its dense concepts like time distortions, relativity in space, dimensions, parallel existences etc all pertaining to space travel and stuff. I have to confess I have yet to watch Inception (yes omg ikr) so I was abit unprepared for the barrage of abstract concepts Nolan would throw at the audience. Plus, the similar-looking space crafts and all the jargons on space travel in the film confused me abit.

I'm also surprised that they did not further develop this film into a 3D one, because all the computer generated landscapes and surroundings seemed really suitable for a 3D film. But then again, people might actually get migraines from all the flashing lights in some scenes.

I find the story plot rather amazing, with just a good balance of emotional tear-jerking scenes. I find it funny that it was only 1 hour into the movie, I think, when the film had its saddest scene, the one when Matthew McConaughey bursting into tears upon seeing his daughter all grown-up. The soundtrack by THE Hans Zimmer also gave me goosebumps throughout the movie

I never liked sci-fi movies and books because they're hardly realistic and logical. I didn't like the fact that there were two semi-sentient robots in the film that are completely capable of perception and speech and move about in such an odd manner. The entire scene when Cooper was ejected into blackhole and had to signal to his then-daughter in this continuous bookshelf dimension also seemed preposterous and way too incomprehensible to me. But then again, given my lack of understanding of time warps in space and "what on earth is a blackhole?", I can't delineate what is fiction from non-fiction in this movie.

Also, the ending where time travelling Cooper finally met up with his elderly daughter bore abit of resemblance to the ending of THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, a book by Audrey Niff -something which I have toiled over 2 years ago and subsequently swore to never revisit again (because it's so lousy and stupid - you're telling me a man that disappears, and appears back again in his BIRTHDAY SUIT, during his work as a public librarian can hold on to his job?!). It kinda reminded me of the book and in fact, I think the whole time-travelling and meeting a person thing is abit cliched so I didn't particularly enjoy the ending.

Overall it's pretty much an amazing movie.

During the A Levels period, I also read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Like the news and media were raving about it quite a long ago, and I decided to give it a go.

The book surprisingly features bland, unexciting writing, like a first-person narrative from from a 10 year old. Fine, it may be a teen fiction but I don't remember John Green's writing in Looking for Alaska (the next book I'd burn after The Time Traveler's Wife) being THAT boring.

The pictures throughout the book indeed piqued my interest, because they are quite creepy. According to Wikipedia, the photos were supposedly procured to be made in to a PICTURE book, but now look what you've done, trying to weave all these pictures into a story plot by writing a narrative to fit these photos, instead of the other way round. I thought the incorporation of some photos were completely uncalled for, like the below 2 masked boys. Like ok, so Jacob met these two masked creepy boys, SO? It was extremely disappointing to realise that some photos did not make any contribution to the plot. They were completely unjustified and just mere photos.

There was this astonishing inaccuracy in the writing as well, when of all of a sudden, the name 'Billy' was mentioned, with no prior references or any appearance of a Billy in the story.

I find the entire concept of being in a 'Loop' (basically a time-void safe haven for 'the peculiars'), and the cat and mouse game of the monsters and the children quite promising for a YA fiction, but the brainless narrative just ruined its chances and made me skim the pages abit too frequently. It was quite a let down. I won't be touching its sequel lol

Cycling at East Coast Park! Played Cards Against Humanity and caught Pee Mak at KY's house