Post-Tazzie blues

Post-travelling life hasn't been easy; the melancholy rises up to my throat every time I re-read my entries of my Tazzie trip, my tongue longs for the taste of Cascade Light and Captain's Catch, and every pore still seeks out the chilling Tasman sea breeze. *sighs* None of that back here.

How else can we burn time, apart from engaging in our favorite money-wasting pastime?

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, while lacking the luster of the other POTC prequels, managed to draw me into the story quickly. I shall not hide the fact that half of my disappointment went to the absence of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in this sequel. The other half went to the lack of chemistry between Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp. Of course, the movie never goes wrong whenever there's Captain Jack Sparrow to dispense snippets of laugh-worthy dialogue in generous amounts, but a movie without much sparks flying probably wouldn't draw many thumbs-up. But I'd choose POTC over any movie, anytime.

Thanks to inSing (there, you got your advertisement), I got my hands on 2 preview tickets to X-Men: First Class. I shall forgo ranting about my treacherous journey to seek out inSing's new office (they used to be near Maxwell), but I'll just have to say this movie deserves a 5-star rating, regardless of whether it tags religiously to the original Marvel comic. If Marvel gave the green light for this movie, it probably wouldn't matter much if there are little lapses or unaccountable pieces of the puzzle. Everything will fit in. Eventually. So basically, First Class filled in the space bubble before Professor X and Magneto became enemies, accounting for the reason why mutants are fighting against humans and against each other. The explanations ran pretty smoothly with whatever's left of the X-Men story in my head, and everything made so much sense all of a sudden. As for the little bo0-boos (which irate Marvel fans managed to sieve out), I shall just shut one eye on that, on the account that the producers managed to fill a movie with so much detail, so much action and so much emotion.