Birthday, Spidey, Tank

Happy birthday, aik joon!!! He seems to have bad blood (pun unintended) with mosquitoes, for them to give him dengue twice and now malaria (both mosquito/blood-borne diseases, if you didn't get what the pun was about). I'm pretty sure he now shares my abomination for mosquitoes.

Jinny, zejia and I popped by his house today midnight (0000hrs) to give him a birthday surprise. We had a birthday cake and song, like what we did for zejia's birthday (albeit in the dying seconds and with a really miserable slice of cake). Hope we can carry on the "tradition", though we should opt for less fattening cakes in the future. LOL.

Watched "Spiderman 3" on thursday. A bare bones review would have read something like this: The action and CGI rocked but the plot and dialogue sucked, esp. in comparison to the critically-acclaimed sequel.

But for most of us action junkies, the many well-choreographed and executed action sequences would have been a real blast. It's almost non-stop action peppered with crappy dialogue (except , probably, for Aunt Mae's wise words), many subplots, and comic relief moments. There are attempts at characterisation, especially with Sandman, but having time split between 3 villains meant they aren't (or couldn't be) as well developed as Dr. Oc in spidey2. Can't have the best of both worlds, I guess, unless you're talking about the LOTR trilogy by Peter Jackson, which took three 3-hour++ films.

I thought Toby Maguire (Spidey) put in a credible performance, switching between wide-eyed earnestness and the darker venom-consumed spidey pretty convincingly (apart from the comical interlude). Kirsten Durst (MJ), as usual, could not extricate herself from the sobbing/screaming vase stereotype of the fairer sex in male hero comics. But she shares a chemistry with Maguire, developed over three movies, and that's great.

Went back to HC to watch Tank's school concert (free) after the movie, and I was pretty impressed. Not because he was a great 'live' singer, but because, to quote zejia, "he sang seriously, making sure every 尾音, 拉音, 假音 and every 转音 was done probably...the thing I had felt most today was his sincerity and the effort (he) put(s) in when he sings". 认真的男人最吸引人。Yep, plus he's humble, and I can see how his down-to-earth demeanor easily endears him to his audience.

One more day of rest tomorrow, and it's back to camp.