KL Day 1 - Three Movies and a Grand Prix

Yup, I'm back to Malaysia for some MVI project work, and you know what that means - 3-in-a-row in-flight movies. First movie I watched is Shrek the Third. Nothing special in here - same cast, same voice actors with the addition of Arthur, Merlin, and a few fairy-tale villains. The story continues from Shrek 2. With King Harold of Far, Far Away on his deathbed, Shrek is next in line for the throne. Feeling out of place, Shrek sets out with his pals Donkey and Puss in Boots to look for Arthur, who is the next heir. In the meantime, Prince Charming rounds up the villains at the pub and they mount an attack on the castle and managed to take the whole kingdom. Shrek and company arrive at the city and defeat Prince Charming. Arthur decides to take on the management of the kingdom. Shrek and Fiona go back to the swamp and have lots of ogre babies, and they live happily ever after.

I was up for a foreign movie next, and I chose a Japanese film called Gegege no Kitaro. Had I known it was based on a manga series I would've skipped it. Live-action adaptation of manga characters rarely work, and this proved to be the case. The movie is about a bunch of yokai ghosts, who are sympathetic to humans, headed by Kitaro. Being a Japanese film, even the ghost spirits are outrageous and over-to-top. Kitaro is portrayed by this cool dude with silver hair. When fighting, his hair turns spiny and shoots out like arrows. Kitaro's Dad is this single naked eyeball with two legs. (Go figure.) We also have Neko Musume (translated as Cat Girl), who has a crush on Kitaro. She looks normal enough, but turns into a cat-like monster when angry. There are a few other characters, like the walking-wall Nurikabe, the flying-cloth Ittan Momen, the sand-throwing hag Sunakake Babaa, the old-man Konaki Jijii, etc. I would've mentioned a little about the plot here, but it's so forgettable I can't remember any of it.

Next is legal thriller Fracture starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling as the main characters. Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, a calculating aeronautical structural engineer, who shoots his cheating wife point-blank in cold blood. Gosling plays Willy Beachum, a hotshot public prosecutor who takes on the supposedly open-and-shut case. Crawford has his perfect crime all planned out and manages to have the case dismissed due to lack of evidence. Beachum and his team managed to find a gun inside the house, but all the bullets are in the chamber and the gun has never been fired. After some thinking, Beachum figures out that Crawford must have switched guns with the negotiator when the police first came into the house. That's the reason they never found the weapon. What the cops should've done is trace the clean gun and check who the owner was. It's also strange that the negotiator never bothered to check his gun all this time. Anyway, after the trial, Crawford authorized the doctors to take away his wife's breathing tubes, effectively killing her and completing his unfinished business. Beachum figured out that Crawford did a switch. With the incriminating bullet from the victim's head, Beachum starts another case against Crawford. Crawford was hoping that double jeopardy will save him, but as Beachum pointed out, the first case was for attempted murder. This time, it's for murder. No such thing as a perfect crime.

Back at the hotel, I spent the night watching the Turkish Grand Prix. Massa's Ferrari started from pole position and led the race all the way till the end. Teammate Raikkonen jumped McLaren's Hamilton off the grid to take second place. Due to a late tire puncture, Hamilton had to settle for 5th place.