First Day Back

Wasn't as bad as I thought. Lots of people dropped English Extension 1 though. My Chemistry teacher was telling us "If you have 13, or 12 units, do the sane things and drop some of them" but not Chemistry, drop something else.

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So, I'm doing After the Bomb in English Extension 1, which is about the period of the Cold War and how the atomic bomb changed people's ways of thinking.

I was googling about "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" because it's a movie I wanted to watch if I have time (I knew about it because Benedict Cumberbatch is in it, you know, the actor that plays Sherlock Holmes in BBC's modern adaption?). I thought I might be able to use it for my English Ext 1 because Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was about the British intelligence services and their agents and they people who controlled them some time in the Cold War period.

The book that the movie was adapted from (also called Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) sounded interesting and the author had some experience in the British intelligence system, which is what the book and movie was about, spies and betrayal and such (not very James Bond, but sounds a lot less glamourous and lot more realistic and gritty).

But clicking through links on the wiki, as you do, I found that the author of the book, John le Carré, is the author of one of the subscribed texts for by Extension course, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold! They're even set in the same universe! I was pretty unenthusiastic about that book before, but now I really can't wait to read it. I don't have the time now though, I'm reading Great Gatsby for English Advanced, and I'm finding that I really do like it, to my surprise. The language and techniques is very good.

p.s. The sentence structures of this whole post is too long and too clumsy and I'm sticking too many clauses together. But it's just a quick post and it's late and I just wrote this because I couldn't get to sleep yet, and I'm not going to go back and edit and rewrite like I usually do in my other posts.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and Coraline

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4 in 3D yesterday. It's mostly pretty predictable, even if I haven't even watched the first three movies yet, but it's still quite an enjoyable movie. I think this is the first time I've watched a live action movie in 3D.

I love the mermaid scenes, it was so magical. Everyone one of them were amazingly pretty, but the mermaid Syrena is one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen. She really delicate and innocent looking, and her accent makes her sound so cute. She has that really pretty European/French look, and if you look the actress up on youtube, she looks amazing in some of her ads.

I'm just very partial to mythology, made up or otherwise. Especially the about things and people that looks beautiful but are actually very dangerous. I love the contrast.

I also watched Coraline on a friend's iPad and got half way through Mulan. It was Athletics Carnival and there wasn't much to do. I quite liked Coraline, but I don't know if I'm just a scaredy cat or what, but I don't recommend watching it at night by yourself, it can get creepy. The soundtrack is really good.

Coraline is based on a book of the same name by Neil Gaiman, and he's one of my favourite authors. He's one of the few author's I actually remember the name of. He wrote Stardust, which I enjoyed, and he was also the writer for a graphic novel series called Sandman. That series is one of my absolute favourites, it's about 7 entities, more powerful than gods, called Endless, and focuses on one of them in particular, Dream. It's a wonderful mix of mythology and legend and magic, the words he writes just sounds very, I don't know, deep and meaningful.