Colonel Bogey's Bridge

The movie should have been re-titled Mad Nicholson's Bridge.

Mad British pride built the Bridge on the River Kwai. Fighting the Japanese disregard of the Geneva Treaty, ego-maniac Nicholson withstood the cruelty of the Japanese camp commandant, Colonel Saito and eventually took over the building of the bridge from the Japanese.

Good dialogue and some side-show provided by William Holden and Jack Hawkins as the commando group sent out to blow up the bridge.

Memorable 1956 fare especially for the mesmerizing Colonel Bogey whistling tune.

Good movie by Sam Spiegel and David Lean.

A Grade A Bee Movie!

One helluva movie! Colourful and fun.

Build around the ecological premise that everything in nature is inter-related and symbiotic. The premise: If bees suddenly stop pollination and honey making from flowers, ecology will be destroyed and the food chain will actually go down the tube. That will spell the end of humankind on earth.

I think all the actors and actresses who lend their voices here from Zellweger, Matthew Broderick to Chris Rock had fun.

The court-case when the bees won against humans for honey theft was a riot!

Underdeveloped Love Affair

Irritable unsatisfying station romance! That is what the original Brief Encounter is all about.

This earlier David Lean effort is chatty at best. Action plods from one scene to another; accompanied by a dull dialogue by today's standards. Perhaps Noel Coward is to be blamed for this dry script. Or maybe, it was considered good in those bygone war years. Never can tell.

Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson were quite good in this irritable romance. Celia was particularly good, playing the uncertain wench, in need of love and attention from a passionless husband who was more interested in solving crossword puzzles than taking notice of her.


As such, a chance encounter at the fictitious Milford Junction Refreshment Shop by the two protagonists played out to a dry and unsatisfactory end, in spite of the hidden possibilities of sexual romance. The war years could have averred from such developments, I think.

Watchable. I wonder how the newer version fared?

Stupid Comedy

What a Farce about Nothing!

A Billy Wilder fare, this is one good movie spoofing the oldest profession in the world-the streetwalker. In a world where every streetwalker has a Mac (a pimp) who takes money from her so that she felt owned, Irma found the persona of Jack Lemmon.

To get her off the street, he impersonates a British Lord and gives her 500 francs per night twice weekly, just to play cards. To get that money, he slogs the whole night long at the Paris market. some funny moments here, though

It was fun when I first saw it during my teen years but the fun seems to be thin at best now.

Watchable fare especially to see a young Shirley Maclaine in the role of Irma La Douce or Irma the Nice

Frivolity Accentuated

Frivolous Silliness!

This 1965 fare is sheer silliness centering on the antics of a hedonistic magazine editor who truly wants to marry his steady girlfriend but is virtually besieged with beautiful women all the time.

A rare movie to show Peter O'Toole fooling around. Peter Sellers is his old self as if playing out his Indian character in The Party. As for Woody Allen, he wrote more meat into his role in this movie than in Casino Royale.

The casting of the actresses here is genuinely beautiful. From Ursula Andress in her prime, Romy Schneider, Capucine to Paula Prentiss. A sight for sore-eyes as they pranced around in Paris! Thank God for celluloid!


If you have the time, relive the 60's and immerse yourself into the humour of that era.

Island of Dreams

Adventure and Fun on a Deserted Island!

Talk about Indiana Jones, Alex Rover is another in the genre.

An agoraphobic author, took a chance of a lifetime to live some of the possible risky adventures her hero only takes in her books.


Good fun with Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerald Butler.

Good movie to watch if you have the time.

It's Not Time alone...

It's not the amount of time alone that will be the controlling factor. As such increasing time for English by 70% come 2012 was be inadequate. The more important thing is teaching methodology and the ancillary scaffolding structures that must be put into place to ensure practice and usage brings about language use fluency.

Currently, given the the present curriculum, English could only be increased by another 14% in terms of time.

It is definitely a big laugh to learn that English was taught with scant attention to grammar. Without the structural form, no wonder Manglish is allowed free reign to destroy English standards in Malaysia.

Again, as there was no English literature to foster reading and deeper understanding of the language,most students speak only rudimentary English and the lack of a good vocabulary bank is one of the biggest stumbling block in English learning.

Muhyiddin, who is Education Minister, said the increase in the number of hours would allow for the introduction of new elements in the teaching and learning of English such as English literature and more emphasis on grammar.

The Education Minister seems to be mouthing all kinds of worn-out strategies these days ranging from appointing more skilled teachers, review the types of textbooks used and the setting up of English laboratories.

He claims that English will henceforth be made into a main language. How so, begs the question?

As for the translation initiative by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and the Malaysian National Institute of Translation, it is at best a flawed argument as translation itself is a big problem as we lack bilingual experts in science and mathematics.

To the minister, it seems the about turn on English as the medium of instruction is now written in stone and cannot be changed.

Where is your flexibility, Mr Minister?