A fun day, especially for C

Again, WOW! Another week has passed me by so quickly! The activities at school are finally coming to an end with this week being the last week of school before we break for six weeks. Today, C is off on her field trip to a chocolate factory and ceramic art place.

Yesterday, E and I attended C's school annual Speech Day & Concert. We didn't stay right up to the end as towards the finale, they were giving out prizes to the older kids. As it was almost time for lunch, we decided to head to Mid Valley Megamall which was about 10 minutes' drive from the concert venue. We hoped to get tickets to our much-awaited Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn as we didn't manage to make any online bookings.

After parking our car, we headed straight for the cinema and luckily, there was hardly any queue as the peak lunch hour crowd had yet to appear. We got tickets for the 3D version for the 2.10pm show. We then headed to lunch and dropped by MPH bookstore as we had some extra time before the movie.

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg, is a movie adaptation of the popular comic series by Georges Prosper Remi, better known by the pen name Hergé,a Belgian comics writer and artist.

Tintin comics have been one of my favourites during my childhood days when I used to borrow them from the school library and friends to read. I doubt I ever managed to finish reading all the comics in the series as such books were not so readily available in smalltown Melaka back then in the 70s and 80s. Now you can find the individual comic books in hardcover and paperback, and also the 3-in-1 hardcover collection in major bookstores in the city. And thanks to YouTube, I can also catch up on the stories in cartoon version for free without having to buy the books or DVD. There are quite a lot of episodes lasting between 20 to over 40 minutes uploaded by some YouTube members who are obviously Tintin fans too.

Here's the episode for Secret of the Unicorn.



C has also been enjoying Tintin for some time now as I had bought a few of the comics for her when they were on sale, and she gets the rest from her school library and friends. One classmate even gave her Tintin and The Land of Black Gold last month as a birthday present!

So the three of us thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Since it was a weekday and at an odd hour, the theatre wasn't full house. The pros to that was we didn't have to get caught in any crowds queuing to get our 3D glasses and to enter and find out seats. We had chosen a short row and had the whole row to ourselves. The cons to a less-than-half full theatre was that the aircon got very cold with less body heat to 'share'. Luckily C had her jacket on and I had brought my pashmina and we ended up huddled together under it.

The movie is entertaining, especially if you're familiar with the characters like Tintin, his wire-haired fox terrier Snowy, Captain Haddock and the Thomson and Thompson twins. However, the storyline is not entirely true to Herge's version. For example, in the movie, Tintin met Captain Haddock for the first time on the latter's ship, but in the actual comic, it was in the Crab with the Golden Claws episode that they met. And the bad guy (like many movies, there must be at least one!), Mr Sakharine, was not a descendant of the pirate Red Rackham and did not live in the Haddock family mansion Marlinspike Hall. Captain Haddock did not regain ownership of the mansion in Secret of the Unicorn. It was in the episode of Red Rackham's Treasure that Professor Calculus bought back the mansion for Captain Haddock if I'm not mistaken. Also, there was no Madame Castafiore in Herge's Secret of the Unicorn. Okay, I guess it's enough for now lest I reveal any spoilers!

I've to go hang out laundry now.

P.S. I Love You

Cecelia Ahern's books have been hitting the bestseller's list for some time now so on my recent trip to the bookstore I decided to take a closer look at them. Her books have caught my attention for some time already but I was not sure if that genre was something I really wanted to read.

Her debut novel, however, has been made into a movie starring Hilary Swank with Gerard Butler (and Harry Connick Jr.), and it's stories like these (those that have been made into movies) that pique my interest. I would not care for those that are the other way around, i.e. movies that have been made into books.

P.S. I Love You is not a hardcore romance novel although the title suggests it. It is about an Irish girl, Holly, who is devastated by the loss of her beloved husband Gerry to a brain tumour. Months later, she discovers that Gerry had left her a collection of notes, one for every month, guiding her through a new life without him, each signed 'PS, I love you.' She finds support from her close friends and family through her bouts of tears, sadness, laughter. It's definitely a girly-type story/movie that could move you to tears.

It's probably a story with a simple life message that could touch your soul but does not require you to be a brain surgeon unlike some stories with deep, abstract ideas. I say 'probably' because I've yet to finish the book. To the point where I've read, it appears that life is beginning to work out slowly but surely for her. It'll quite definitely have a happy ending. I'll just have to keep reading till the end to find out and then decide if I should also watch the movie.

A check with Wikipedia says that although it got bestseller status and the movie had high box office numbers, they both did not get great reviews.

Snow Buddies

This is a new movie by Disney released in February this year. Great fun for the family, especially those who love dogs and enjoy dog movies (like Caitlin and I). You get extremely cute, adorable (and talking of course, it's a kid's movie after all) golden retriever pups and one husky teaching you about friendship, teamwork, loyalty and good sportsmanship.

Caitlin watches it at least twice a day since getting it on Saturday and as usual, has memorised the lines from some of her favourite parts.

I must admit I've yet to get tired of watching it. Those pups are oh so, so very cute I wish I could have at least one!

Balto

Caitlin is watching a cartoon titled Balto right now. This is the fourth time she is watching it in the past 24 hours since we got her the movie last night. She can't stop thinking and talking about it all day today. She watched it at breakfast, at lunch after school, this evening after returning from her drum lesson and right now after dinner, from beginning to end, and repeating selected segments that she enjoys.

She simply loves dogs and anything and everything dog-related. She has memorised some scenes and dialogue from the show by now...

The cartoon is based on a true story.

Balto at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, photo by Luke Scarano in Wikipedia

Definitely, Maybe

I watched this romantic movie called Definitely, Maybe last month on DVD. It's been a long time since I enjoyed a love story. It's about Will who is in the midst of a divorce when his 10-year-old daughter Maya asks him to tell her the story of his life before marriage and how her parents met. So he tells her about the girls in his life, giving them fictitious names, while Maya guesses which girl is her mum. Like most love stories, this movie has an ending that is sweet and feels good.

And I like one of the songs in this movie, an oldie called I've Got A Crush On You. I think by now you'd know I'm an oldies kind of person from all the YouTube videos I've posted! I'm certainly not from Generation X. (Anyone knows what the pre-Gen X is called? A few of my old classmates and I were wondering when we got together over the weekend).

Here it is: