October 3, 2010 | Awake & Dreaming

Loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus, Clash Of The Titans is a 2010 remake of the 1981 hit movie. Sam Worthington takes over Harry Hamlin’s role of the demi-God Perseus, son of the king of Gods Zeus and a mortal woman. Directed by Louis Leterrier and made on a budget of $125 mil, the movie has made nearly $500 as of date.

The movie also stars heavyweights & award winning actors Liam Neeson as Zeus, Ralph Fiennes as Hades and Pete Postlethwaite as Spyros along with Mads Mikkelsen as Draco. Gemma Arterton, Alexa Davos play the two main female characters of the myth while Polly Walker has a brief role as Cassiopeia. I think most of you must know the story (I myself first learned of this myth as a 9 or 10 year old in school, where the tale of how Perseus defeat Medussa was a lesson included in an English class), so here’s just a few points about the movie (my 20 cents):

Some great talent was wasted here – Pete Postlethwaite dies early, Neeson & Fiennes don’t really get to do much. Polly Walker also has a very brief role as does Alexander Siddig.
Did not like the computer generated Medussa (although using an actress’s image); it had little effect and detracted from the great myth.
Sam Worthington seems to be the man of the blockbusters at the moment. Avatar, Terminator : Salvation and now this role here.
The giant scorpions were good and I think their movements were realistic, even if it’s on a huge scale.
The witches were quite tacky. I’ve seen better!
One thing going really well for the movie; although long there’s never a dull moment. It’s keeps going on a a good pace.
The Kracken was a great disappointment, very dumb looking.

7 outta 10!

It was a bright, sunny & beautiful day and I felt that it was a waste to stay indoors the entire time and waste it. Especially since I had stayed home all Saturday and spent most of it in bed – just lying about watching videos and reading. I wasn’t so sure that I would go out as I didn’t sleep well and woke up by 5 am and then drifted in and out of sleep occasionally getting up to answer my phone. I thought that I might be too tired to go out in the afternoon but turns out that I wasn’t.

I took a shower and got ready to go out. On the way back from the ATM near my apartment, I noticed that it was a beautiful blue sky with big clouds and I just had to stop and take a pic. Sorry that my camera is just a 2 mega pixel thing but I love the pic. It’s now used as the wallpaper for my BlackBerry.

A bright sunny day like this deserves some good coffee and so I headed over to Shenoy’s Junction and went into Cafe Coffee Day. I noticed that they had a huge jumbo pedestal fan over there and they should have used it as the place was warm. Apparently the air-conditioner was down and I sweated a bit as I settled at a table. However about 20 minutes later the ac kicked in and things were much better. I later changed my seats to one of the big sofas, as soon as one became free but I discovered that they aren’t very comfortable at all. I sat there for a while and read a few chapters of a book.

My coffee, a new one that I was trying, is one of the new wares that CCD have in their new menu. I wanted to try out the All day refresher which is thick coffee milkshake, whipped cream and what looked like powdered cookies. It tasted ok but I wish it was a lot more colder. Anyway I did like it and sipped it as I read my book. 90 minutes there and then I headed over to Planet M and checked out the cds, dvds & movies over there. I browsed the titles and decided to buy The Wolfman & Clash Of The Titans (2010 version). I also checked out their selection of cell phones for sale. Despite the price of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 going down it’s still too expensive for me at this point in time. Maybe next month or so.

Then it was on to the second hand books store in the same building. I spent about 40 minutes there checking out the various titles and fending off the dust bunnies that seem to be lurking in every shelf. My choice was the 2009 Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol, another in the series featuring Robert Langdon. Then I took an auto and went to Velocity bar.

I enjoyed 4 MGM Apple Kizz vodkas with 7up and lots of ice. To eat I had some tiny fish fry (kozhuva for us localites) and then some kada (quail) fry which was oh so good. Dipped those birds in sauce and bit into them. Yummy in my tummy! I watched some Hindi songs remix videos which all features these women gyrating and bouncing about. Funny thing is all these videos start looking the same, especially after a couple of drinks. Babe in short dress is late, her boyfriend is upset and decided that he is not going to propose to her (the ring that he hides from her is slipped into his pocket as a sign to us that he is not sure about her). So babe is left with only one option – slip out of her short dress into a much more shorted one and dance along with her suitably attired friends. By the time she has bounced her assets, the guy is reconsidering his decision and by the end of the video, her friends point out that he has brought out some puppies in a basket, flowers or some other objects that show affection and he slips the ring on her finger right at the end. Man, are these concepts lame or what!

By 4 pm I was back home and lying on my bed watching Clash Of The Titans. A review will follow.