To be or not to be: And maybe find love along the way

Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her "Only a fool would speculate about the life of a woman," says blind Carol (Cameron Diaz) towards the end of this finely-woven film. Indeed this is a film that shows rather than speculates, as it charts short courses in the love lives of various Los Angeles…

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A clone is a clone is a clone

The 6th Day If you have trouble finding one Arnold Schwarzenegger difficult to believe as an actor on screen, you’re going to come to serious grief watching The 6th Day, where audiences are treated to Arnie and Arnie acting together on-screen. At least that’s an interesting sort of concept, unlike the rest of The 6th…

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Full steam ahead into trouble

The Yards This restrained film is a quiet study of human nature; of how people make choices they know are right or wrong; and of how sometimes they just get swept up and make choices without quite thinking at all. The Yards opens with Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) on his way home to Queens borough…

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But where’s the magic?

Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas It’s ironic that a movie conveying the message that Christmas is about more than just buying presents needs to employ so much expensive gadgetry – around US$100 million – to get its point across. While Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is certainly entertaining in parts, this…

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Run to see the chickens

Chicken Run The first full-length feature from Aardman Animation – which has three Academy Awards for shorts under its belt – combines the fantastic artistry of those shorts with solid storytelling to create that rare species in Bangkok: a film actually worth venturing out to see that definitely won’t be tied in with any fast-food…

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Girls still just wanna have fun

Charlie’s Angels "Charlie’s Angle" the cinema’s newspaper ad said, so it could have been an attempt to hide the fact that it was really Charlie’s Angels. The trailer had been so cheesy and awful it wouldn’t have been surprising. Surprisingly though, if you can stomach the blatant exploitation of the Angels’ boobs and bums –…

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The ringmaster

From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000 By Lee Kuan Yew If Singapore has been Asia’s most successful tiger, then Lee Kuan Yew has been the region’s greatest ringmaster. The second volume of Lee’s memoirs further consolidates Lee’s singular view of the world and Singapore’s place in it, making for compulsive reading. Lee…

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An authentic taste of Thailand

With its soft opening on November 1, the Hotel Plaza Athenee has put Wireless Rd back into focus for those with their fingers on the pulse of the hotel scene. And with the new hotel, of course, comes several additions to the Bangkok wining and dining scene – in fact no less than five new…

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