Super-unimpressed

Despite having heard reviews that the new superman movie Man of Steel was not very impressive, I still went and watched it, partly because I'm curious (later to have my curiosity punished by losing 2:20 mins of my life), and partly for the muscles. And I must say, the 4 seconds of Cavill's perfectly sculpted and chiselled torso was glorious. But the rest of the 2hr 22min 56secs of it was rather appalling. Here are my reasons why:

*spoiler alert*

1. It's in 3D. No explanation needed. See previous rants.
2. The "Love story" had no grounds whatsoever. All she did was listen to a short story about his past. Damn, I sure hope the people to whom I've shared a bit of my past with does think I want to start a romantic relationship with them (at least not all of them).
3. Lois Lane appears out of nowhere: after Superman just flew to the other side of the city from where she was - ALMOST AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT - and killed the 'bad guy', Lois turns up right there and then, and gives him a hug.
4. And how the heck did she climb over a glacier, wearing a beanie, in the middle of the freaking North Pole!? 
5. Ridiculously tiring 40mins solid of relentless fighting and destruction and these non-earthlings being thrown through buildings, sometimes the same building twice 
6. Music: sounded like someone accidentally sat on the bass super-booster / sub-woofer for far too long
7. Or tubas on steroids
8. CGI on steroids
9. Minimal humour - in fact the ONLY supposedly "humourous" line in the entire film (where the lady soldier comments on how she thinks "he's kinda hot") - not even funny, and came out of nowhere, like they suddenly realised that the whole film was lacking in a crowd-pleaser-funny-line, and shoved it in there without much thought or context.
10. The ideologies it is based on - nothing new (genocide, ethnic cleansing, exploiting scarce resources, end of the world...blah blah blah)
11. Russel Crowe plays the "powerful man" character - nothing new
12. THE WHOLE THING WAS JUST INCREDIBLY BORING. My (film-fanatic) colleague said it was like watching a cartoon. But a boring cartoon. He'd rather watch Dragon Ball Z.

If there's one thing that I did take away from this film is that: Krypton - supposedly thousands of years ahead of us in civilisation - was still governed by a political system that obviously failed abysmally such that it actually brought upon the destruction of it's own people. The lesson is: no matter how long we try and develop and try to find a perfect political system, we're effing doomed.

The other thing that I took away is: Hollywood films are a waste of time.

Beirut: Day 5

After our epic road trip through Lebanon (so epic that it took up TWO posts, but now that I come to think of it it was actually very leisurely just being driven all over the place), we took a break from the road-tripping and spent a relaxing day in Beirut.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went out and just walked and walked and walked a lot. Walked along the Corniche, walked along crumbly pavements and dodged unruly traffic, walked in and out of shops, including jewelry shops, christian music shops etc...and just walked everywhere. We went home to pick up J and baby E, and set off to the nearby AUB (American University of Beirut) to visit a stall at the University set up by Migrant Workers Task Force, a volunteer organisation that J regularly helps out with, at the University's "society's day" kind of thing.

For lunch we got veggie/hummus/whatever wraps and sat down looking at ambitions (and fashionable) students buzzing around a very pleasant AUB campus. When a rain cloud passed over we popped into the campus archaeological museum and nosed around inside.

When the rain stopped, we wandered out of campus and got coffee and more food at one of many hipster cafes in Hamra, watching people, playing with Ellinor, appreciating the interior decor, and just savouring vacation life in an exotic part of the world.

When father K arrived to pick up J and E, Jen and I decided to take another long walk to see the Raouche rocks again.

For dinner, we all squished into the bite-size family car, drove to Mar Mikhael, and had a lovely dinner at Seza, an Armenian restaurant. They had a tiny open kitchen, with only a few ladies working in there, but it was silent - no banging around of pots and pans, no clinging of utensils, no yelling, and no faffing about. And the food was delightfully satisfying.

Jen and I were eager to look for some live music within the thriving Beirut night life, (apparently?) one of the party capitals of the Middle East. We walked along the main road in Aschrafieh, checked out a few bars, but nothing with interesting live music. We finally came to a bar called The Angry Monkey - which was actually suggested by our hosts - and surely enough they had a 4 (or 5) piece all-dudes cover band belting out popular (yet not too teeny-bopper to drive us away) hits in the middle of a thriving bar packed with young rich hipster Lebanese. We drank, we talked, we listening to the (actually rather decent) sounds coming out of these American-accented musicians and their instruments, and tried to pursuade Jen to take the mic and guitar and jam up a tune (for she is, in fact, quite a talented musician herself).

We ended up chatting to some local Lebanese people who thought we looked "bored" (they so happen to catch us at a lull in our conversation/soaking up the atmosphere/thinking of songs for Jen to jam), nearly got coaxed into going to another club for some "more serious" partying, but instead headed home in a taxi where the driver took his daughter to work with him. A rather mellow Lebanese night out, I'd say?