Buried: A Review

"... it was they who had buried me as a dog - nailed up in some common coffin - and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave."

The Premature Burial (1884) by Edgar Allan Poe

Why can't more movie posters be like this?

I remember staying up in bed late at night as a kid after reading about the accounts of people who were accidentally buried alive back when the science of medicine was still an infant and lacked the sophistication to distinguish the deathly from the dead. There I was, lying on my bed, alone, in the dark and enclosed within the ceiling, the floor and the four walls of my bedroom, I contemplated the horror of finding oneself waking up in a coffin several feet beneath the crushing weight of dirt. Death is merciful when it's quick. Death is cruel when it allows you the time to acquaint yourself with the gravity of the situation: one in which you are inhumed in a box in the belly of the earth and there's nothing you can do to save yourself. Even if you scream till your vocal chords snap. Even if you claw at your prison till you rip your nails out of their bloody roots.

Buried is a film built around the premise of a man being buried alive. The entirety of the film takes place within the confines of a makeshift coffin, underground. There's no cuts to the outside world, not even in flashbacks. Ryan Reynolds is Paul Conroy, and he's the only character you'll see on screen. The film's running time is an hour and a half. Let all that sink into your mind for a sec.

In defiance of common sense, Buried turned out to be far more interesting and exciting than I thought it's restrictive and claustrophobic premise would allow it to be. Interred with Paul Conroy is a cellphone, and that's the complete extent of his access to the outside world. What would you do if you are in Conroy's horrifying predicament? Who would you call?

The film sought not only to tell the story of a man who is buried alive; it replicates the experience of being buried alive. We are stuck in that box with Conroy. He talks to people topside through the phone and they tell him what's happening above ground - but he had absolutely no idea if everything he's told is really the truth; an uncertainty we are forced to share with him. The movie plays a bit like a mystery as we slowly discover who Paul Conroy really is, how he came to be trapped by who and at where, and why.

The plot of Buried inherently invites the question: Will he escape? But I'm not the sort of person who cares about that terribly. The question which I find more engrossing is how he plans to do it.

I entered my screening and found, to my pleasant surprise, that the theatre was almost completely filled. I thought that it's a miracle that a film such as this could manage to get a wide release - and I consider it an even greater miracle that our local Malaysian cinemas would pick up such an unconventional film to screen. A near full-house of Malaysian moviegoers for Buried? There must be some sort of misunderstanding here, Mr Reality, sir.

As it turned out, there was a misunderstanding after all - a big one. Two fat Chinese girls beside me got progressively more and more frustrated as they slowly came to the realisation that the camera was never going to leave the coffin and all they would get are more closeups of Ryan Reynold's sweaty face. I had to shush them because their Mandarin complaints were fraying my nerves. Eventually, they lifted their fat asses from their seats midway through, declared that the movie was "retarded" and walked out, good fucking riddance. And it's not just that two philistines either - a low, continuous murmur of disapproval and derision prevailed in all corners. It ruined a lot of the quieter, more reflective moments of the film designed to let the implication of the character's situation hit home. Like I said earlier, the most distressing thing about being entombed alive is that it gives you time to think about it, and their bitching was ruining the experience for me. I almost stood up screaming: "Either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out if you hate this movie so much!"

This is a film about a guy being buried alive. The film's name is Buried. Just what the fuck did they expect to see? My girlfriend helpfully offered, "Maybe they expected Ryan Reynolds to get out in 5 minutes and kick serious ass, like the Bride did in Kill Bill."

I went in knowing full well what I was in for, and I got far more out of this film than I foresaw. The suspense never lets up but yet, it did not feel exhausting. The pacing is deliberate, picking up at times to highlight the crisis of time running out and slowing down when it needs to massage the essence of a moment into your head. There are scenes of genuine wit and humour. There are also scenes of thrilling, bona fide action, if you can believe it. At its core is a great story which meditates deeply into the poorly-lit labyrinth of human nature. There are revelations so devastating that they will haunt you long after you left the dark. And all of it is contained inside a coffin, deep beneath the ground.

It's one neat package, is what I'm saying. It's one of the neatest packages I've seen all year.



P.S. The ending was brilliant. Loved it!

If I had a penny for every time I saw a psychological thriller being compared to Hitchcock...

Shared a coffin with Ryan Reynolds,
k0k s3n w4i

Studying the Atheistic Animal

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."

Delos B. McKown

I recently joined a Facebook group called MAFA, which is an acronym for Malaysian Atheists, Freethinkers and Agnostics which, at present time, boasts a measly 400-weak membership. The obsessive in me wishes that it spells MAAF (Malay for "sorry") instead even if there's really nothing we should feel apologetic about - it's at least a real word. But we can't always get what we want, right? How about FAHAM (Malay for "understand"), standing in for Freethinkers, Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics of Malaysia? I must remember to bring this up some day.

The week's not even out and I've already fallen into an argument with two other atheists with me defending the agnostic position when I'm not even an agnostic myself^{addendum, see below}. I guess we godless types are just a bicker-some, argumentative lot. I often thought that our strength lies in our diversity of ideas and our courage in voicing them rather than in the solidarity of thought anyway.

Seeing how outnumbered we are in a country so stuck up the butthole of religiousity as deeply religious as Malaysia, learning about where we stand in the demography of the world is of especial interest to me. I'll briefly discuss two studies in particular which in many ways, confirm what I already suspect. Please remember that I neither conducted nor participated in these studies - the numbers were not pulled out of my ass. I am merely conveying the data to you.



Atheists and Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious People.

Take this recent study published a couple of weeks ago by the researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, for example. What they did was dial 3400 Americans and quizzed them using 32 questions pertaining to the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life. As it turns out, the most knowledgeable people on the subject are - would you believe - atheists and agnostics!

One way to look at it is that we just enjoy being right.

The fact that atheists and agnostics would be more conversant than religious people on things they either have no interest in or outright disdain might be counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. I cannot speak for other godless people but my attainment of an atheistic worldview was purely accidental; a byproduct of trying to learn more and wanting to convert into one of the Abrahamic monotheisms, either Christianity or Islam. You see, the more one learns about religion, history and comparative theology, the easier it is to see that the whole "God" thing isn't a very intellectually tenable position to hold. After awhile, all religious people starts to appear alike: each one jealously hugging his or her collection of ridiculous superstitions close to heart while shrilly declaring that everyone else's collection of ridiculous superstitions to be fake or stupid.

To quote Dave Silverman, el presidente of the American Atheists: "I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists"

True enough - that's how I was made. Besides, it's also easier to win arguments against the faithful when you know as much as (or even more than) them about their religion, and I do so enjoy beating people at their own game. Just for a bit of anecdotal fun: I was arguing with a Catholic colleague awhile back over something within the Christian scriptures. At one point, I confronted him directly with the question: "Do you even know what's in the Bible?" He promptly admitted that he had never read the book.



Most Scientists Disbelieve or Doubt the Existence of God.

I wanted to write the subhead as "Atheists and Agnostics are Smarter than Religious People" and describe Helmuth Nyborg and Richard Lynn's 2008 paper which found a "highly statistically significant" correlation between atheism rates and level of intelligence in the 137 countries surveyed and that atheists score 6 g-IQ points higher on average than those adhering to a religion from a study of 6825 American adolescents - but that's just oh-so masturbatory even if its oh-so flatteringly true.

Instead, I'd like to talk about a landmark survey performed in 1914 and 1933 by eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba on the prevalence of religious belief amongst men of science. Nature, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, repeated Leuba's study in 1998. Can you guess what numbers they came up with?

Newsflash: Very smart people thinks belief in personal God is rubbish.

So yeah.

Just so we can all be clear here, the Leuba's pool of "greater scientists" was based off the designations in the standard reference work, American Men of Science (AMS). Nature's collection of "greater scientists" were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which supposedly is an even more elite sample compared to Leuba's. What they discovered was that 93% of these "greater scientists" either disbelieve or doubts the existence of a personal God. When you consider that in the American general public at large (as surveyed by ARIS in 2009), only 15% considers themselves to have no religion, that discrepancy can be quite the shocker. We have known for a long time now that learned men of science tend fall more on the godless end on the spectrum of belief in comparison to the average person on the street - after all, our two most recognisable icons of human intelligence, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, both reject the notion of a personal god. What I did not expect to see is that only 7% of America's foremost scientists hold some kind of religious belief.

There's two main ways we can interpret the data. The first is that atheists and agnostics tend to gravitate towards finding naturalistic explanations for everything, and are more likely to have a career in science. The second (and I think likelier) interpretation is: the more a person understands how our world really works, the higher the chance there is that that person will reject the agency of supernatural beings in natural phenomenons. Remember people, scientists are the folks we rely on to describe reality and the universe to us. I'd sooner trust them than trust some old books written by ancient desert nomads who (gasp!) heard voices in their heads and thought that the sun revolves around the earth, wouldn't you?



Conclusion?

The data and statistics are sound but I must caution both my godless and godly readers alike to be very careful in making any conjectures. Correlation does not automatically prove a causal relationship. We can't assert conclusively that smart people are drawn towards godlessness while dumb people are drawn to religion - neither can we say that holding an atheistic or agnostic position can make someone more intelligent while faith turns brains into mush. The only thing we can say for sure is that the godless, on average, knows more about religion than religious people. We can also say that the more intelligent a person is, the higher the likelihood it is that he or she will dismiss - or at least doubt - the existence of God.

Also, if you're looking to kill a lot of godless people at once, it's safe to say that blowing up a university, a research institute or a scientific symposium will probably guarantee a good haul. Statistically speaking, of course.



P.S. Alright, before any one can quote Stephen Hawking, let me just do it first. Someone asked the guy what his IQ is and Hawking bluntly replied: "I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers." That being said, I personally don't know what my IQ is either.

Addendum: I'm an agnostic now. It turns out that I'm really an agnostic atheist all this time. Agnosticism is not the middle ground between atheism and theism, apparently. The latter two deals with the question of beliefs while the former deals with the nature (and limits) of knowledge. So now I'm really defending the agnostic position as an agnostic.



Statistically likely to be smarter than average,
k0k s3n w4i

To Quest Maxwell Hill

"You are the risk I'll always take"

I'll Hold My Breath (2010) by Ellie Goulding

How do you know if your girlfriend loves you?

Easy. Make her accompany you on a 18-kilometre hike up and down a hill in the wilderness and if she's still sticking around after that, she does. Oh boy, does she ever. I could have been imagining it but at times when I was walking ahead of her in our climb, I could feel her murderous intent (of love!) burning a spot on the nape of my neck.

The cold shoulders (of love!) from the girlfriend.

It was September, when the rainy Southwest monsoon was still blowing. For some reason, I thought that it was the perfect time to go on a nature walk to visit a hill station in Taiping - and Taiping, if you don't know, is widely considered to be the wettest town in the whole of Peninsular Malaysia. Pay attention to the information I just divulged to you. This, my friend, is called foreshadowing.

Maxwell Hill or Bukit Larut is probably the least known hill station in the entire country and it was locked out of development for decades. I have difficulty in deciding whether that was through design or neglect but the result is that the place retains a locus-lost-in-time charm and an atmosphere of rustic alienation, slightly overgrown. At the foothills, there's a government run office making hourly jeep runs to the peak which would have cost us a measly RM 6.00 a pop, return. Privately owned vehicles are not authorised from making the ascent - which is probably for the best considering the steep incline, the narrow road and the several hundreds of hair-raising, hairpin turns. Aside from the jeeps, the only other way to get up there is to hoof it.

Phoebe looked me in the eyes beseechingly, turned to look at the jeeps longingly and then turned back at me again. I grinned and gave her a thumbs up enthusiastically in reply, saying "We can do it! The exercise is good for us!"

She stared at the immensity of the hillside wearing a sort of strangled expression for a minute. Taking a deep breath, she asked: "Can we take the jeep down then afterwards?"

"Of course!" I lied.

Water falling down a waterfall into a crystal-clear rock pool. This is also a foreshadowing.

The park ranger told us that our feet should expect anywhere between 3 to 5 hours of punishment, depending on how fit we were. I'm a big fan of walking and I hit the stairs whenever I can. Phoebe is also a big fan of walking so long as it's performed entirely within the air-conditioned confines of a mall, and considers stairs to be relics of the past which should have been driven to obsolescence long ago by the advent of escalators and elevators. Maxwell Hill towered at more than 1000-metres into the clouds (which by the way is as high as the Cameron Highlands) and Phoebe clearly wasn't enjoying herself in our attempt to conquer it on our soles. After putting just the first two kilometres behind us, she started slowing down to a molluscan pace, wishing out loud for us to turn back and take a jeep. Every twenty minutes or so, she would stop completely, pronouncing dramatically "I'm DYING!" and "I'm... really dying... not kidding..."

That Phoebe. What a joker, eh?

Then there's the bugs, of course, and I don't think I need to explain just how much she adores the little motherfuckers,

I don't know. It's either a spider of the Gasteracantha genus or some unholy horror from the deepest bowels of hell.

There was even a point when she was attacked by three butterflies. This is not a joke. Three scaly-winged critters flew out of nowhere and decided that the airspace around Phoebe's head is the best possible place for them to flutter about in some sort of threesome mating dance ritual. I wish I caught her on video now. Her terrified shrieks and panicked flailing of umbrella at three harmless butterflies was one of the most absurd things I have ever seen her do.

As we slowly gained altitude, the air began to cool perceptibly. I checked if the crisp mountain air had improved the girlfriend's mood and she told me, "If I want cold air, I'd turn the air-conditioner in my bedroom on."

Still, we beat the odds somehow and managed to make it topside under 4 hours,

Some triple-storeyed gazebo that's falling apart - which meant that I have to climb it at all cost, of course.

Bees. Of course, there are bees.

Unidentified Floral Object #1.

Unidentified Floral Object #2.

Unidentified Floral Object #3

Weee are the chaaampions, my friends/And weee'll keep on fightiiin' till the end...

Check out the panorama.

At the jeep-stop, we met a jeep driver and made arrangements to hitch his ride back down at 4:00 pm, which is the final run of the day. The bloke and us parted ways after that - he was off to pick up some tourists littered all around the hilltop while Phoebs and I pottered around a bit.

At about 3:40 pm, the same jeep driver drove by us with a car-ful of sightseers. He slowed down a notch, rolled down his window and asked in Malay, "Nak turun?" That meant, "Wanna go down?" in English.

"YEAH!" I told him.

"Okay!" he cheerily replied and blew exhaust in our faces as he drove further and further away, leaving us holding a nice mix-bag of feelings. Bewilderment was one of them. Sudden paralytic apprehension was another.

"Um, maybe he wanted us to board at the jeep-stop?" I ventured uncertainly. Operating on that assumption, we started to walk briskly back to where we met the man in the first place. While we were on our way, it started raining in torrents down on our little unprotected mountainside, I shit you not, and Phoebs' tiny blue umbrella and makeshift butterfly cudgel offered scant shelter from meteorological vengeance of the unforgiving Southwest monsoon.

Eventually, we got to the stop in one, not-too-soggy piece but found no jeep there.

"Maybe, he's coming back after he dropped those other people off. It's not 4:00 pm yet after all," I said none too optimistically. So we waited there quietly as the rain grew in strength and ferocity all around us, drowning us in a sea of mist and silhouettes. The cold began lulling Phoebs into a fatigued sleep and she laid her head on my shoulder, her eyes closed and fast. Oh, the poor dear. "Long-suffering" does not even begin to describe her.

Spectral.

When it got to about a quarter past four, it became quite evident to us that absolutely no one was coming to rescue us from that isolated, people-less hilltop miles away from civilisation. The deluge showed no sign of letting up and dusk was on a rapid approach. Colour me a pessimist but I don't think being stranded overnight on Maxwell Hill without food or warm clothes is going to improve the girlfriend's disposition.

"We got to walk downhill," said I, bearer of bad news extraordinaire.

"I knew it! I knew it! We have to walk all the way down again?" The look of disappointment on her face would break your heart.

"Yes."

"In this rain?"

"Yes."

"And it's getting dark, am I right?"

I sighed deeply and answered in the affirmative.

"Then no one will see or hear me do THIS!" she snarled.

As quick as lightning, the girlfriend seized me by the throat and started choking the life out of me with her bare white-knuckled hands. I struggled to draw breath but her thumbs have collapsed my windpipe. The last thing I saw was her bloodshot eyes and her nostrils flaring like the Minotaur's, her breaths misting angrily in the chilly air. I kicked once, twice and then kicked no more. Wailing in anguish like a banshee after biting down on a chili pepper charting a million heat units on the Scoville scale, she lifted my limp, lifeless body over her head and threw it down the mountain, watching remorselessly as I tumbled like a ragdoll against rocks and trees, painting them black with my blood and white with my brains.

And that's the end of me and the end of the story.

My body is just out of sight, down the side in a ditch.

P.S. Anyway, one third of the way down, we met this lone barefooted and shirtless fat guy in his twenties heading to the summit. He had his waterlogged sneakers around his neck, his wet T-shirt in one hand and was carrying a huge backpack - probably filled with the essentials of a couple of days' stay. My guess is that he must have rented one of those cheap bungalows littering the top of Maxwell Hill. "Am I reaching there yet?" he asked, almost pleading. I told him that he's looking at another hour or more of climbing. He groaned.

P.P.S. Phoebe ended up walking funny for like a week.



Dead and rotting,
k0k s3n w4i

Cheque, Mate

"When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is."

Oscar Wilde

Ah, my favourite Victorian wiseacre.

I got mail,

My real name is Kok Sen Wai. I know, shocking right?

It's a very modest amount, I know; I'm not one of those blog-for-loot hacks. I started this site more than 3 years ago for the sole purpose of sharpening my proficiency with the pen. Owning a functioning journal I can read years from now and meeting great people are just benefits collateral to that, as are the occasional wads of free money from renting out ad spaces. I said "free money" because even if I did not get paid I wouldn't have written this blog any other way

The last time something like this happened was in April earlier this year when I picked up like 300 bucks right off the ground, finger snap.

One thing you may not know is that I once took an oath promising that I would always write truthfully here in this blog, no matter the subject. This, my lovelies, is called integrity and I like to think I have a lot of it. This is why I don't write advertorials; I refuse to have the honesty of my opinions sullied. I want people to know that when I consider something to be awesome or when I heap big, steaming piles of condemnations on something awful, my readers can trust that they are my own sincere (if exceedingly biased) appraisements. I could have earned at least US$ 400 (about RM 1200, methinks) just this year for like a couple of hours' work, but I have chosen instead to decline all comers all because they require me to oh, I don't know - lie through my fucking teeth? Maybe one day, I'll kick myself in the seat of my pants for this but right now, I kinda enjoy being an insufferable idealist and feeling superior to everyone else who have turned into shills for soul-less consumerism.

Of course, had they come to me with products I actually like, I would have pocketed the cake and eaten it too. Alas, alack.

You know what would kick ass? Some publication paying me to review or write about films; which I can totally do without using any cuss-words, easy. I follow film production news from script to screen religiously on my own volition and I have more than a passing familiarity with both contemporary and classical literature, comics and video games (which are the sources of most movies these days) as well as a pretty good working knowledge of pop culture, if I may say so myself. And I can write well enough to hold a reader's interest, sort of (I held yours this far, didn't I?). All that puts me a head above most film critics writing professionally in Malaysia, a lot of which are journos who got pigeonholed into a media niche they aren't crazily passionate about. This is pure speculation on my part, of course. What I can say for sure, however, is that most film reviews I read in print hereabouts are rubbish.

And nope, I have never tried selling myself to any publications. I have always imagined that they would beat a path to my door someday. I've got all my path-beating tools out there in the garden by the way, in case anyone needs to borrow them.

I'm just rambling, really. Point is, I received money for doing absolutely nothing and I like it. C'est tout.



Ever so slightly richer,
k0k s3n w4i

The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole: A Review

"There's nothing wrong with dreams."

Soren in The Legend of the Guardians:
The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)

I am a fan of Zack Snyder's style-above-substance sensibility in filmmaking. There's just something refreshingly dependable about an auteur who seems to never cease asking himself, "How can I blow minds with this," instead of worrying his head over what big concept he's trying to sell. The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is another solid entry into Mr Snyder's canon of work, and I have already seen it twice.

The books it was based on has the far more compact name of The Guardians of Ga'Hoole, and it was originally what the film was called before (I presume) some nitwitted studio exec happened by and thought it needed to sound as stupid as Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Go figure. So for everyone's convenience, I shall refer to the film simply as Ga'Hoole from this point on.

If your mind is going "Aww, so cute," you're in for a surprise.

Critics are polarised and are quite neatly split down in the middle in their opinions regarding Zack Snyder's maiden foray into a fully animated venture (as opposed to his other mostly animated features) but from what I can tell, the average moviegoers liked it and sometimes a lot. I understand the criticisms levelled against it and I fully agree that at its core, the film is just a standard-issue high fantasy epic told in the grand tradition of The Hero's Journey.

But with owls. Non-anthropomorphic owls. The closest example in fiction I can think of is Richard Adams' high fantasy epic novel, Watership Down, which stars non-anthropomorphic rabbits (waaay better than it sounds, by the way). The plot of Ga'Hoole offers little fodder for discussion, so I will avoid doing so. I'll focus instead on the reasons why you should see this movie,



1. It Looks Gorgeous.

No kidding.

The story is set on continental Australia, judging from the presence of indigenous Australian species such Tasmanian devils and echidnas. From the stark but picturesque mountains where the bad guys hide out at to the breathtaking great Ga'Hoole tree on an island out at sea sheltering the titular Guardians and their people, the sights this film offers are near pornographic. The attention to details which the animators paid really shows, especially in depicting the kinetics of the owls' flight. I'm no ornithologist but it sure looked convincing even in slo-mo (and there's an obscene amount of slow motion in Ga'Hoole, this being a Zack Snyder film we're talking about after all). The protagonist's airborne acrobatics through a rainstorm out at sea and later, through a raging bushfire are the highlights.



2. The Fight Scenes are Awesome! The Owls are Bad Ass!

Beaks! Will! Drop!

While it's definitely not on the level of Watership Down which somehow managed to turn cute, cuddly non-anthropomorphic rabbits into awe-inspiring bad asses, Ga'Hoole managed to elevate the most adorable of predatory birds - the owls - into convincing players in yet another eternal struggle between good and evil. This is nature red in beak and claw compounded with cruel, ripping steel claw-extensions and sabres. The aerial combats are magnificent sights to behold indeed. Say what you will about Snyder's signature style of speed-ramped fight sequences, but I appreciate being able to see every slash, kick and wing beat in bullet time. It's what stopped this film's most exciting moments from turning into confusing flurries of feathers in mid air, if you ask me.



3. The Owls are Cute.

Here's a thousand words for you.

We are talking about birds with faces as round as the moon with eyes as big as saucers here - after penguins, you'd be hard-pressed to find another order of bird cuter. It's a bonus that the animation studio that made Ga'Hoole were the same guys who also brought you tap-dancing penguins in Happy Feet.



4. Geoffrey Rush.

Our wide-eyed idealist hero, Soren, with his Obi Wan, Ezylryb.

The voice cast is star-studded with names as big as Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith, Elrond, Megatron) playing two characters, Sam Neill (Dr Alan Grant from Jurassic Park), Helen Mirren and David Wenham (LOTR's Faramir and 300's Dilios) who's in a role you'll never guess him in but you're welcome to try while watching the film. And Geoffrey Rush - Captain Barbarossa himself - stole the entire film as Ezylryb, the eccentric screech-owl mentor figure who took Soren under his wing as a student.

Ezylryb gets my vote as the most heroic character I've seen in a film this year (so far). Some of the things he said or did made the feathers on the back of my neck stand on ends. It's because of him that I'm dying to get my hands on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole novels. I want to see if his ink and paper counterpart proves to be even half as awesome as he is.



5. The Villains are Easy to Hate.

Metalbeak and Nyra voiced by Joel Edgerton and Helen Mirren respectively.

The bad guys in the movie is an amalgam of two separate factions in the books - the St. Aegolious Academy for Orphaned Owls and the Pure Ones - and they are basically feathered Nazis under the command of Nyra and Metalbeak; the latter having a villainous, electronically-enhanced baritone to rival James Earl Jones'. They even have their own Hitler Youth.



In Summary.

This movie is not perfect. The running time of 90 minutes scarcely did the richness of the books' mythology justice, and I'm speaking as someone who have yet to read the books here. There are parts which were obviously rushed; the protagonists' journey to Ga'Hoole and their time spent there learning the different owl-arts à la Hogwarts for example. On the upside however, all that proved to be incentives for me to check out the source material. The film will find the books a whole new boatload of fans, I'm sure.

When compared to Toy Story 3 or How to Train Your Dragon, it cannot be disputed that Ga'Hoole is an inferior movie obviously targeted at a younger audience (yes, kids like violent, brutal fights in their movies) with comic relief moments intended for that age group. On the other wing, there are also surprisingly mature scenes such as when Ezylryb waxes philosophical on the reality of warfare, the nature of heroes and what doing the right thing means.

So, if you like vanilla-flavoured epic fantasies with a new twist or if amazing fight choreography in bullet time tickles your gizzards (or if you're simply just a fan of Zack Snyder) you'll find a lot to love in The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. Kids will enjoy it. The kid in you will too, if you can locate the little squirt.



P.S. I saw it in 3D the both times I caught it and I think the quality of its extra dimension falls somewhere between How to Train Your Dragon's (whoaaaa) and Toy Story 3's (meh).

P.P.S. By the way, Owl City contributed a pretty neat song to the film's soundtrack which played during a montage centred around the um, owl city. I approve.

P.P.P.S. Tyto refers to a genus of owls encompassing all barn-owls (excepting one or two) and they belong to the family Tytonidae, one of the two families of owls. The other family is called Strigidae which funnily enough, is also called true owls or typical owls. Those wacky Nazis.



Will never look at owls the same way again,
k0k s3n w4i