Les Miserables - What It Has Taught Me

Les Miserables (‘ “ - ^ insert punctuations where deem fit)

So pronunciation was the first struggle everyone had even before watching the movie. Smarty pants me began by pronouncing it as “lay mi ze ble” (you know… I took French in college and pass… barely) and some bulat-bulat just went “less mi za ra bless”. Everyone was trying out different pronunciations.  Well, some friend was smart enough to google “pronunciation les miserables” and if you’re still wondering how it should be pronounced, feel free to listen to it over and over again here.

Anyways, here are some reasons why I thought Les Miserables (‘ “ - ^ insert punctuations where deem fit) was so awesome and how it has thought me so much:

         i.         There are people out there who can exhibit extreme patience like when you are so tired, worn out and deep in your sleep (Marius) and someone decides to sing at your face loudly (Jean Valjean).

       ii.         Police are really cool people. The next time a police ask you a question, you can actually sing him the answer. Like for example when he asks you, “Macam mana settle?”, you can go like “Lalalalala… Do a deer a female deer, Re a drop of golden sun, Mi a name I call myself, Fa a long long way to run….” and then drive off. Totally fine.

      iii.         Dying people are given this supernatural power to sing opera. Like when Fantine was on her deathbed, she didn’t even look like she was dying and sang like Pavarotti before dropping dead the very next minute. Also at the end of the movie when although Jean Valjean’s face look really bad, he could still sing like a super crazy opera man. Amazing.

     iv.         Superman has been around for a very, very long time. He was born in 1815 as a young French boy , got shot by the French army while collecting bullets like 4-5 times and never once screamed in pain (and could still sing joyfully), pretended to die only to come back in the 21^st century as Clark Kent.

       v.         Buying fake IDs started in France in 1815. So what if the police have stamped you as a dangerous criminal. Just buy a fake ID which lets you become become an owner of a factory and a mayor. So much better than our fake IDs which can only get you into a club.

     vi.         Sex kills. Bet nobody ever thought of this but if you have never had sex for a long time, please be careful. Fantine died after having sex with a stranger after a long time of celibacy (assuming she never had sex after her husband left her and the birth of her child).

    vii.         Not having sex makes you go crazy. Also like Fantine who sold her hair, her tooth and walked around suddenly in drapes and was only relieved of it all after she had sex…  only to die thereafter.

  viii.         History does not happen on a linear curve (i.e. 1800 – 1801 – 1802 etc). Dr. Emmet “Doc” Brown (Marty’s friend from Back to the Future) was right! Parallel universe does exist. The French Revolution happened between 1789 – 1799. In Les Miserables (‘ “ - ^ insert punctuations where deem fit), the year was 1815 and it was also the start of the French Revolution!!! You don’t need any more proof.

     ix.         France in 1815 has an extremely effective policing system. No matter how Jean Valjean runs around France (which by the way has a land area of approximately 545,630,000 sq km), Javert always finds you. Always. It’s not any other police but Javert. PDRM should definitely adopt their system.

       x.         People have extreme tolerance when a song like “I Dream a Dream” is sung countless times during the movie and all other songs (apart from some) kinda sound like it for the 3 hours you’re sittted in the cinema.

     xi.         Father-in-law’s are really great people. They would risk their life to ensure your safety (even though you’ve only met his daughter once and you’re not even betrothed to her yet – given that at least you sang a song with his daughter), get into shit with you, pull you through shit, does some amazing Samson-like-moves by carrying you on his back and climbing up buildings (literally) and risk his own life by defying the strongest possibility of a bullet shooting through his heart – all for you. Your own father won’t even do that.

    xii.         The Indians and French have something in common. They like to sing. More so for the French.

  xiii.         French people are a little bit crazy. After being shown grace by Jean Valjean, Javert kills himself. If the French were to have written the Bible, it would go something like this, “The father welcomed his prodigal son back with open arms. The prodigal son then went to the kitchen and killed himself”.

Movie Day: Tower Heist

My wife and I have this arranged date every week to catch a movie a week mostly on a Wednesday at GSC (cause it’s only RM7 per tix and if we end up watching a crappy movie, we don’t feel the pinch). We’ve kept this practice for the past 7 years ever since we were dating in college to working to married life and to having a baby. Of course we were lucky enough that my in-laws stays really near so we can drop the baby off for the night and have some alone time by ourselves (with 100+ ppl in the cinema).

Last week, we managed to catch “Tower Heist” featuring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy. Was a little apprehensive at first to watch the movie cause Ben Stiller was the featured actor. I really hate movies where toilet jokes are made and Ben Stiller is notoriously known to me to have made the most disgusting toilet jokes in his other movie “Along Came Polly (2004)”. So even though it’s been 6 years and he’s acted in some really good movies (without disgusting toilet jokes) – Starsky & Hutch, Meet the Fockers, Dodgeball & Night at the Museum, the thought of him and his disgusting-ness still lingers. Eddie Murphy on the other hand… I totally love his movies!

Tower Heist is generally about a tower (premium class condominium) and how the employees were conned out of their money to invest with the owner (Arthur Shaw) of the tower (ala Madoff style). Ben Stiller acts as the manager of the building (Josh Kovacs) who entrusted the employee’s retirement fund to Shaw who ended up being investigated by the FBI for fraud. In a bid to regain back the fund, he devices a plan to break into the Shaw’s penthouse to break open a safe presumably containing enough millions to return to the employees. Eddie Murphy (Slide) is recruited to train and assist them for the heist.

Shitty:

The movie starts off with some vagina jokes which really put me off. It seemed like the joke was intentionally made just to try to make the movie more sellable to some shallow minded pig who gets high on low level jokes.

Good:

The movie as a whole was a really good movie to watch. It was not only funny but it also connected well with the reality of being an employee, especially a blue collar one (doorman, concierge, liftman etc). A lot of focus was concentrated on how much the savings meant for the employees (even though it didn’t seem like a lot), the various difficulty they faced and the condition of their day to day at work (ie employee-employer relationship, employee-residence relationship).

Great:

Originality of comedy. It’s very rare these days to watch a movie where the jokes, actions and script is original and not something like you’ve seen or heard before repeated over and over again (especially true in romantic comedies). The only other movie that had so much originality would have been “Johnny English: Reborn”.

It was really great to be surprise at the funni-ness of the things that they did and the unexpected ending. We had a good laugh throughout the movie and came out feeling really good and satisfied that we’ve watched a great movie.