The Last Vimto

What's Ramadhan without a glass of ice cold Vimto? Here's a short movie I produced about what would happen when we run out of Vimto; filmed the whole thing in under an hour, and edited in another hour or so. Pretty quick, and yes it's a bit silly, but did it for the hell of it.. (Click the video for the higher res version) - Enjoy:



Produced/Edited by; ammaro
Actors; Manaf (aka The RedBelt) and Basharo
Music:
1st Track: by The Recipe - 3 MC's
2nd Track: Damian Marley/Nas - As We Enter

Back from Beijing, Kyoto & Tokyo

Wow, it's been a long two weeks. I haven't updated the site in a while, but again, i've been on holiday in Beijing, Kyoto & Tokyo. Weird how I ended up there actually; the original plan was to fly to UK and a few places around Europe, the visas ended up getting delayed because of the summer rush (typical ammaro, leave everything to the last minute), and I wasn't too excited about Europe anyway since i've pretty much seen it all before (well, Italy, France, Holland etc).

Decided it might be time to check out somewhere new. Thailand? No, done it before. China? Hmm, maybe, but it doesn't really hold that much appeal on it's own. Tokyo???? Hmmm, now we're talking.

I've kinda been fascinated with Tokyo for years and years. The appeal of a country that does half of it's work via robots, is completely foreign to the rest of the world in terms of language and habits, comes out with the craziest styles, etc etc. Gotta see it first hand.

So, planned the trip, ended up planning a visit to Kyoto too since everyone I know from Japan recommended it, and added a few days in Beijing to see the Great Wall, Tianananananamen Square (I never know when to stop with the nana's here), etc. I'm working on a short video blog of the whole thing which i'll probably post up tomorrow or so, but for now enjoy some of the pix.

Ended up flying into Beijing first; funny thing there is that nothing is in English, and almost no one there knows how to speak it, so you better be armed with at least some basic vocabulary. Landing in the airport and getting a taxi to your hotel means writing down your hotel's name in Chinese, otherwise, good luck trying to get there :p

It was pretty fun though, everything from getting lost in translation to trying to explain things to people, trying to figure out what certain signs mean, unsafe 2km high cable cars, climbing up the great wall, to finding live edible scorpions on a stick. China is nuts.



Kyoto was next, although the Air China flight that was supposed to arrive in Osaka Airport at 9pm was delayed by around 3 hours. Ended up arriving at Osaka at midnight, and guess what? Everything was closed. That includes ATM machines and no more trains to take you to Kyoto (taking a taxi would have cost around 200 dinars). There was nothing in the vicinity of the airport since it was built on it's own man-made island, with the exception of a tiny hotel (which was fully booked), and a small supermarket. Great, homeless on my first day in Japan. With no ATM machines, no Japanese cash (they didn't accept my lovely dollars), I finally found a supermarket that accepted my visa card. Ended up buying a coke, some chips and some biscuits, which totaled around 10 dinars =o

Welcome to the reality of how expensive this place is ammaro :p

Anyway, had to wait till about 5am when everything opened up, got on a train and headed for Kyoto. Kyoto is amazing; it's like a small town, not too built up, but advanced as hell. And a good 20 minutes walk will take you out to green mountains, rivers, old classic geisha neighborhoods, century old shrines and temples. Some scenes looked like something out of Kill Bill. Wonderful. And the Japanese are great; they're totally organized, they follow all the rules, everything is in some sort of order, from people crossing the street, to eating, to to to... Nuts.



A few days in Kyoto and it was off the to the great Tokyo! Took a Shinkansen 350km/hr supertrain and ended there in less than 3 hours, passing by the ridiculously amazing Mt Fuji. Place looks like something out of a movie.

Arriving in Tokyo and navigating their overly complex Subway system to get to the hotel wasn't as difficult as I thought; luckily their stations are all labeled in English. Coming out of the station straight into Shibuya Intersection (basically Japan's version of Times Square) was an overload of noise, lights and people. The place was crazy, and the without a doubt the best examples of organized chaos i've seen. In Times Square, Picadilly Circus etc there are people walking all over the place, all the time. Here, they all stop for the lights, and gather gather gather up until it turns green, and then within a few seconds they're all let loose on the intersection. It's a pretty cool sight (i'll post it up in the video).

The hotel was right above Shibuya intersection; just the view alone was ridiculous. Here, take a look:


Wow. Of course, with Tokyo considered one of the three command centers for the modern world economy (along with New York and London), this place is pretty damn big. It feels more like a bunch of collected cities than just one single one, each with it's own personality. Akihabara was geek town, full of gadgets, electronics, anime and manga shops. Roppongi held the shady side of town, with seedy night clubs and adult outlets, Shinjuku with it's crazy dressed weirdo's, and so on it goes. Spending a week in Tokyo was nowhere near enough to take it all in, but sadly, that's all I had. But another visit is due, soon!



I've got a ton of photos up on my FB page, so if you're interested in taking a look at more higher res images, check out the Beijing album here and the Tokyo/Kyoto ones here! And don't forget to check back for a short vlog of the trip in a day or two!

iPhone 4 Reception & BBM Broadcasts

Random vlog I did because a few people kept asking about my iPhone 4's reception problems..

Inception (2010)

I haven't done a 'movie review' in a while, basically because we've had quite a lot of rubbish recently. Well, either rubbish, or cliches. Gone are the day's of the 90's, with great movies that were actually intelligent, like Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Sixth Sense, and so on. Now all we seem to get is more of the same dumbed down movies, over and over again, and so on for the past decade (sure, there have been a few good movies here and there, but that's all they are, a 'few').

This year seems to have made a comeback, though; is this decade going to be a good one for movies? Shutter's Island at the beginning of the year with it's crazy multiple psychological twist, trailers for Salt showing a clever WTF plotline, and just yesterday, Inception.


Wow. It's not often I sit and watch a movie in the cinema gripping the edge of my seat, dreadfully anticipating the next few seconds. Not often that a movie ends and everyone in the cinema starts clapping.

So what is this Inception business? Well, to actually review the movie without spoilers is kinda tough, and even though it's kind of immune to spoilers (telling you the ending would not take away from the story, as it's the point of 'how they got there', and even if I tell you 'how they got there' it would probably make you more confused) so if you haven't watched it yet, read until the ---Spoilers--- tag below. The movie has a cast that basically drove it to perfection; Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Lewitt, Marion Cotillard, and stars the lovely Leonardo DiCaprio, who got famous from the cheesy "I'm the King of the World" scene in Titanic (well, that and getting it on with Kate Winslet in the back of a steamy car). Let's just say back then he was a little, what's the word, soft (Arabic word would be فرخ).


But over the years, he's gone from some young and pansy romantic actor into my top 10 list (along with Al Pacino, De Niro, Brad Pitt, etc), and again that's partly through his mind blowing performances in movies that again, blow your mind; from Gangs of New York, to The Departed, to the recent Shutter's Island, and now this? I must say, we're far off from that little kid back in Titanic.

Inception is basically about dreams, how you can actually enter someone's dreams (through a physical connection while you both sleep), and from there steal hidden ideas and thoughts from their subconscious. DiCaprio plays an expert thief at that game, and along the way is forced to take a pretty tough mission (details of which I can't discuss, see spoiler part below).


The acting was high quality, graphics amazing without making it seem over-done, and the plot-line way above anything you've seen in theatres over the past few years. This being said, it's not a movie most people won't get, but if you are a dumb viewer who can't grasp more than your typical straightforward storyline, don't bother watching this. I counted at least 8 people leaving the cinema half way through the movie. Many others would probably want to watch this a second time due to the complexity and number of levels this movie hits.

I've always had a fascination with dreams, and how the dream world works in comparison to the real world; dreams within dreams, the time aspect of it, controlling your own dreams, or even being aware that you're actually in a dream - I wrote about this a while back, read it here.


It does raise multiple questions about your life, dreams, what is real and what isn't. I would go as far as say that it brings about that same feeling you get when you first watched 'The Matrix'. Everything in the real world seems kind of blurry for a while. And this movie makes you think, oh yes it makes you think. I couldn't find much to fault with it, except that even though the whole thing lasts about two and a half hours, I felt a few parts were rushed, and probably needed a little more development, while others dragged on a little. Overall, this didn't deter much from the enjoyment, I give this a 9/10, a definite must watch and so far the best movie of the year!



-----SPOILERS BELOW------

Okay, now let's get down to the real business! The whole thing was genius; dreams within dreams are concepts that have been explored in movies and cartoons, but the technicalities of getting there, and getting out, such as the kick (feeling of falling) to wake you up, and actually getting someone to sleep in a dream to go into a deeper level of dream, are amazing details thrown in by Nolan. And then the concept of time; i'm sure most of us have realized that a period of time sleeping equals a longer period while dreaming, but the fact that it gets multiplied to years as you go down into a deeper level of dream alone just stopped me there in awe. Wow. The details about dreams in the movie, that Nolan took to a whole new level, were unbelievable.

The details of the scenes was beyond magnificent. Everything to put you in a dream state, from checkered floors (think Alice in Wonderland?), to the Chinese fortress scene, Serbian winter-storm, to the final crumbling city on the beach scene and so on, were perfect to build that whole dream feel.

The architecture of the dreams was unreal. To actually know you can do anything with dreams is one thing, but to go ahead put ideas and labels on that; the hotel scene without gravity, because the higher level of dream was in a falling car, that was genius (I keep using this word, but I have to say, it's the perfect word for this), and then how the music (pre-kick) goes through all the dream levels, and then finally how it goes back and forth between the dream levels, showing you how much time has passed between one, and then between the next. And after going down three dream levels and the shock of saying, let's go down another level? And then another? I really can keep going on and on.

Oh, and on another level (pun?) I loved the quote: "We need to buy all the first class seats" "Oh, okay, I bought the whole airline". Hilarious stuff.

Nolan has created a masterpiece here. Let's just say this is probably the smartest movie to come out of Hollywood for a while now, and with all it's complexities, let's hope to see more of the same. Can this decade bring a new fresh wave of movies back into the cinema? I sure hope so.

Weird World Cup

Well, I must say, it's been a pretty unexpected one this year. Now i'm not really much of a football fan generally, and I don't follow all those English/Spanish/Whatever leagues that everyone else seems to be into. But then again, once every 4 years, the game captures my attention (and seemingly everyone else in the world), including the USA who actually think football is a game you play with your hands (weirdos).

The games didn't start off really great this year though; standards didn't seem very high and the first few matches were pretty uninteresting. And then the heat started, and things started to take off, and something weird started happening. The big teams; the ones you'd expect to see play around the final matches, started being eliminated. Italy, out. France, out. England (ok, objectionable :p), out. And today; BRAZIL. Out. And we're still in quarter finals.

I'm not really a big supporter of the big regular teams that always win. They're predictable, they're kinda boring. I prefer the underdogs. With this year, S. Africa being the host, I wished they would get somewhere, but again they played like crap. The hope for Africa, however, was Ghana, who seemed to do better and better each game. I was rooting for them for a while now, and they've made their way up, even kicking the US out.

The game with Uruguay today was pretty intense, and sadly they lost at the last minute on penalties. Penalties! And there goes the hopes of Africa to win the cup.. Sigh.. For me they represented a nation that's been beaten down time and time again, and a win would have brought the whole continent joy, and maybe even hope. I'm still heartbroken.



Anyway, moving on.. The last few games are on, and with a few more days, who knows who the cup will go to? This year, things don't seem to be what you'd expect. A few more days left till the fever is over, let's watch and see...