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Money matters:
Graham Macdonald MBMG International Ltd.
Inflation protected bonds and equities, part 1
Continuing claims for unemployment benefits in the US earlier
this month climbed by 29,000 to 2.83 million, the highest since Sept. 24, 2005.
With new claims added the total unemployed climbed to 3.2 million or one percent
of the total population.
At the same time U.S. stocks fell for five days out of six, with a massive one
day drop which was in reaction to more bleak news from the financial sector,
including a default at mortgage lender Thornburg Mortgage Inc. and news that
Merrill Lynch & Co. is opting out of the subprime mortgage market. This was at
the same time as the Mortgage Bankers Association showed record foreclosures in
the final quarter of last year and that there are now more Americans in arrears
with their mortgage payments than at any time since 1985 (after a deep recession
that had cost millions of jobs when mortgage rates had risen as high 18%).
Pending home sales are now down by 20% year on year.
The S&P 500 index is now at its lowest level since 2006. To cap a bad week for
the world’s leading economy the net worth of U.S. households fell by $533
billion, or a 3.6% annual rate, in the fourth quarter of 2007. This is the first
time that US total wealth has fallen since late 2002. For 2007 as a whole
nominal household net worth rose 3.4% to $57.7 trillion, the slowest growth in
five years. However, after the effects of inflation are included, real net worth
fell for the year in real terms, while household borrowing rose at a 5.6% annual
rate. This is much slower than during the credit boom years in 2003 through 2005
and is a clear sign that correction in the excessive liquidity that created the
asset bubble of the last few years has been reined in but that this is also
causing the bubble to deflate.
Yet more grim economic news from the USA for last month confirms that companies
in the private sector shed 23,000 jobs according to the ADP employment report
issued in early March. The mood was confirmed by the Labor Department report on
nonfarm [sic] payroll growth for February. Nonfarm payrolls grew by just about
2,000, compared to the 20,000 expected by Wall Street. Included in the reports
was an acknowledgment that job-growth in medium-sized businesses declined for
the first time since June 2003.
If we’re not yet in recession, we’re certainly on the precipice.
Fortunately, the only US equity exposure that we hold in any of our portfolios
is Berkshire Hathaway which continues to show strong gains of around 20% from
the point at which we most recently bought in last year. We do, however, hold
exposure to commodities including oil, although we have been taking more profits
here, especially now that oil futures have gone north of $105 per barrel for the
first time.
Meanwhile in the UK, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee are caught
in the eternal dilemma - twist or stick? In the end they probably looked more
like a rabbit in the headlights, holding interest rates at 5.25% despite
expectations that there could be up to three interest rate cuts this year (one
down, 2 to go since last month when the rate was cut). However much the BoE
might agonise over the decision ‘to cut or not to cut’ their deliberations are
becoming increasingly irrelevant - even the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which
is predicting three cuts this year, says base rate is just one of many factors
that determine the cost of funds to lenders. The trade body says that even if
further interest rate cuts emerge, it should not be assumed that this will
automatically result in a cut in lenders’ standard variable rates or discounted
rates. The liquidity dearth means that funding continues to be difficult to find
and pricing pressures remain upwards. The central banks have become somewhat
powerless; they can cut rates all they like but that won’t help the man on the
street if high street banks and mortgage lenders won’t cut their rates or worse
still won’t/can’t lend any more. The former scenario was evidenced by the fact
that despite base rate cuts, US mortgage rates had climbed in the previous 2
weeks well above 6% this week. The latter can be seen by the dramatic fall in
home equity release by blue chip borrowers with good credit, many of whom now
find themselves unable to refinance their primary mortgages.
This brings into sharper focus the endemic fraudulent practices within the
mortgage industry over the last few years on both sides of the Atlantic
highlighted by the Association of Chief Police Officers into mortgage fraud in
the UK. One problem is that while the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries
estimates that there are between 11,500 and 12,500 mortgage brokerages in the
UK, this is only an estimate. There is no verified figure because brokers are
not individually registered and the magazine, Mortgage Strategy, estimates that
today there could be some 40,000 brokers in the UK.
Key findings of the report highlight the fact that criminals are attracted to
mortgage fraud because of its low risk of detection and prosecution with high
monetary return. Mike Bowron, ACPO lead on economic crime and commissioner of
the City of London police, says: “Organised mortgage fraud can take many forms
and while difficult to measure accurately, remains a significant element of the
UK’s annual fraud losses.”
Regular readers of this column know that I have been very downbeat for quite
some time about the state of the world economy. The only surprise is that it has
taken so long to get to the appalling situation we are now in where basic
foodstuffs are now getting more and more expensive and there is less and less
money to pay for everything. Despite the false optimism of George W Bush, I
still believe that the US has at least another 15% to give us before it even
begins to look attractive - possibly quite a lot more.
To be continued…
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The above data and research was compiled from sources
believed to be reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its
officers can accept any liability for any errors or omissions in the above
article nor bear any responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any
actions taken or not taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For
more information please contact Graham Macdonald on
[email protected]@mbmg-international.com.com
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Snap Shots: by Harry Flashman
Which lens? For what? And why
 Any
pro shooter, or even a serious amateur, can be recognized with their
photographer’s jacket pockets stuffed with lenses. Fish eye, wide angle,
“normal”, long, and extra-long. Ever wondered why the pros all walk
around with all these lenses and three cameras slung around their necks?
Is this a kind of photographic masochism, or is there a good reason for
this? There is!
The reason is called “quality”. Pro shooters have to return to their
editor or client with a professional image, giving the best
interpretation of the subject and finally be pin sharp in its
definition. Something you can’t get with a point and shoot camera or an
image from your phone-cam.
To illustrate this situation I thought I should give you some ideas on
three of the lenses to use, for what and why. Now if you own a 28-105 mm
zoom or whatever, don’t despair, just adapt your thinking to use the
zoom at the wide angle when I mention wide angle lenses and the other
end of the scale when I mention telephoto lenses.
The three principal lenses are Wide, Standard and Long, and for the
purposes of this article I am not including “extreme” examples. Consider
Wide to be around 24-28 mm, Standard around 50 mm and Long around
100-150 mm. So you can see, the average zoom lens will cover these focal
lengths.
Let’s begin with Wide lenses. These are the lenses for 99.9 percent of
landscapes. You get a wide angle of coverage, you get great depth of
field and as an added bonus you get blue skies! Even in Bangkok. The
reason is that you have a wide angle of sky “squashed” into a 35 mm
negative, so the colour is denser than it would appear to the naked eye.
I have always said that photography is the art of telling lies with a
camera.
The Wide lens is also the one you should use in low light situations,
such as twilight, as most Wide lenses have larger apertures which let
more light in to the camera. This means that you can get readings like
1/30 second at f 2.8, at which you can hand hold. With the average Long
lens (or zoom in the tele position) it would be ¼ second at f 5.6 a
shutter speed you cannot hand hold.
The Standard lens is actually one of the most neglected lenses in your
camera bag. This is the focal length that most closely approximates what
the human eye sees. Use this lens and you get the most “life-like” image
that people can immediately relate to. No strange distortions in the
foreground or on the edges either. For example, if you want to
photograph food, pull out the trusty Standard lens. Stand on a chair and
you get what the diner sees.
The Standard lens is also very good for getting either full length
portraits or waist up pictures. Again, it is the lack of optical
distortion which is important, and you can also use aperture settings
around f 4 to blur the background.
So to the Long lenses. The focal length of around 100 mm would be more
accurately called a “short” telephoto, but this is a common focal length
and one that many of the zooms can cover. This is the lens you use to do
all portrait shots. This lens will give you flattering views, without
enlargement of the nose, and slightly compresses the image. When
combined with a wide aperture of say around f 4 to f 5.6 this blurs the
background enough to produce an uncluttered image.
The ability to compress the final image makes the Long lens the ideal
one to show traffic jams or parades. Use a high viewpoint and look down
the road when a parade is coming and you will get an image that appears
to show that the road is just crammed with floats, one almost on top of
another. Or better still try Sukhumvit Road from the overbridges.
Finally, it is important to remember that Long lenses are not a
substitute for walking in close, especially at night, when the flash
burst does not carry all that far.
Modern Medicine:
by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant
What makes for a “full” check-up?
In one morning I had three people ask me what they should
have examined as they wanted “full” check-ups. The usual request is “I want
everything.” I think they would all probably faint if I told them that
sitting on my desk is the “Manual of Use and Interpretation of Pathology
Tests” which is almost 400 pages and there are about five tests per page.
Imagine the bill for all that lot! But I doubt if many of you need Basement
Membrane Antibodies to be done if you haven’t got bullous skin lesions. So,
no, it is not possible to test for “everything”.
There is also out there, in the collective subconscious, interest in a
“whole body scan” which is thought of as some magical device that you can
walk into in one end and out the other and a print-out will tell you (and
us) exactly how you are inside and out. Every organ! Even Willy the Wonder
Wand! Unfortunately, this is stretching the truth somewhat. Machines like
that are only seen in Star Trek movies and the like.
However, there is the PET scan, which is a specialized form of whole body
scanner, that can give an indication of what is going on inside.
PET stands for Positron emission tomography and is a type of nuclear
medicine imaging. Nuclear medicine is a subspecialty within the field of
radiology that uses very small amounts of radioactive material to diagnose
or treat disease and other abnormalities within the body.
Nuclear medicine imaging procedures are noninvasive and usually painless
medical tests that help physicians diagnose medical conditions. To be able
to produce the images in a PET scan, you have to have radioactive materials,
called a radiopharmaceutical or radiotracer, and these are injected into
your vein. The radioactive material has a very short life and is usable for
only about two hours, though it will take a day before you have excreted it
all.
The radioactive energy is detected by a device called a gamma camera, a
(positron emission tomography) PET scanner. These radiology devices work
together with a computer to measure the amount of radiotracer absorbed by
your body and to produce special pictures offering details on both the
structure and function of organs and other internal body parts.
The PET scanner is most usually used in cancer medicine and can demonstrate
a ‘hot spot’ to show up the primary cancer, stage a cancer, show any
metastases (spread), and even show whether cancer treatment modalities are
working. For example, the PET scan can show the difference between scar
tissue and active cancer tissue.
The benefits provided by PET scans are primarily because the information
provided by nuclear medicine examinations is unique and often unattainable
using other imaging procedures.
For many diseases, nuclear medicine scans yield the most useful information
needed to make a diagnosis or to determine appropriate treatment, if any.
Nuclear medicine is much less traumatic than exploratory surgery.
By identifying changes in the body at the cellular level, PET imaging may
detect the early onset of disease before it is evident on other imaging
tests such as CT or MRI.
The risks are very low. Because the doses of radiotracer administered are
small, diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures result in minimal radiation
exposure. Thus, the radiation risk is very low compared with the potential
benefits.
Nuclear medicine has been used for more than five decades, and there are no
known long-term adverse effects from such low-dose exposure.
Allergic reactions to radiopharmaceuticals may occur but are extremely rare.
Injection of the radiotracer may cause slight pain and redness which should
rapidly resolve.
Women should always inform their physician or radiology technologist if
there is any possibility that they are pregnant or if they are breastfeeding
their baby.
So can you get this kind of scan here? Yes, at Wattanosoth Hospital in
Bangkok, and it costs around 90,000 baht. However, if you purchase a
Chivawattana personal health card (available at Bangkok Hospital Pattaya) it
has a discount for the PET scan (as well as many other benefits). Well
worthwhile looking into if a PET is on the agenda.
 Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
So sorry to hear that you had lost out on the president’s job. I thought you’d
make for a great president, never mind the first woman. What are you going to do
now, and how much did the attempt to get into the White House cost ya?
Abe Lincoln
Dear Abe,
You are pulling my leg, aren’t you, Abe? Why do I think this is a spoof?
Probably because Abe’s been dead a long time now, Petal, and anyway you should
know that the person you have written to is Hillary, and the lady who wanted to
have a crack at the White House because she’d lived there before, was called
Billary! How much did it cost her? Several millions of dollars I believe, and
they talk about Thai politicians buying votes! Nothing compared to the US
variety.
Dear Hillary,
Reading all the tales of woe every week must have an effect on you. Don’t you
just want to go and hit some of these stupid people on the head? It beats me
that there are that many who end up buying the motor bikes and gold chains, and
have never learned from anyone else’s experience. They seem to follow each other
into disaster like lemmings over the cliff. Do you know why that is?
Jackson
Dear Jackson,
Yes, all the tales each week do have an effect on me, Petal, but after all these
years I am getting used to it. I used to cry myself to sleep every night and
wake with a soggy pillow, but these days I just say, “Here’s another one, what
can I do to make it better for him?” You see, really I’m very kind and
compassionate, and you will often find me helping old gentlemen across the
street and weighing their wallets for them. After all, if I don’t, one of those
grasping women from the bars will have their hands in the billfold before you
can say “Wun moah beeyah?”
Dear Hillary,
I am a good looking American gay guy who has found paradise in Thailand, other
than one thing - there still seems to be a lot of prejudice against gays from
the farang population, but the Thai population just accept. Why should this be?
In Pattaya where I hang out, everyone is gay. Should I restrict myself to the
Pattayaland and Sunee Plaza sois or what do you suggest? Or are you anti-gay
too? I am interested to see your answer.
Robert
Dear Robert,
Are you kidding me? Some of Hillary’s best friends are gays. This is the most
tolerant country gender wise you will find, Petal. Hillary has said before, but
it is worthwhile repeating - there are four sexes here: girls, boys, lady-boys
(katoeys), and boy-girls (Toms). Nobody really gives a fig leaf, but I do
suggest you keep yours on when sunbaking. Perhaps you yourself are asking for
people to turn the prejudice on by the company you keep. Generally farangs do
not like to see middle aged gay men in the company of very young Thai boys, but
remember they do not like to see middle aged hetero males with very young Thai
girls either! If you want to be accepted in mixed company then try to behave
conservatively and not flaunt your sexual bias, after all most straight folks
don’t go round shouting their hetero-ness from the rooftops. If you can’t manage
this, or don’t want to do this, then do restrict yourself to the gay areas if
all you are craving for is acceptance.
Dear Hillary,
I am sure you must have been asked this question hundreds of times, but here
goes - do Thai girls make good wives? They seem so sweet and loveable I just
feel it’s all too good to be true. I am an Aussie and I can feel myself falling
in love with a girl I have met here and I am unsure if I should continue to let
the association develop, or call it quits while I am ahead. What should I do?
Jasper.
Dear Jasper,
You are following your carrot I fear. It’s all too good to be true - you said
it! However, as a serious answer to your question - of course Thai girls make
good wives, but so do the English girls, French women, German ladies and
American madams, and as for the South Americans! Wow! The divorce rate for most
of those countries is around 50 percent with another 50 percent unhappy in the
association. With those stats, Thai girls are as good as anywhere else if you
are a betting man. What you have to remember is that unless you are living here
permanently, which you didn’t say in your letter, it is very difficult to get
Thai girls (even legally married in this country) into some parts of the world,
and Australia can be one of those. Permanent residence visas are not easy to
get. Provided you take all those things into account then forge ahead. Just
remember there’s a 50 percent chance you could end up in the courts and also
remember that it’s not all the woman’s fault. It takes two to tango, but it
takes the divorce courts to untangle!
Learn to Live to Learn: with Andrew Watson
Searching for truths: Dialogue with a painting
“I like that,” they say. How do they know what they like? To
what stimuli, if any, are they responding? By what criteria do
they wilfully issue their value judgments? “I like the black,”
they persist. “It’s not black,” I respond. “Well it looks black
to me,” they protest, raising my ire. Such arrogant presumption.
“You know not what you say, fools,” I think, but do not speak.
“Tell me what you know about colour; tell me what you know about
light, about composition, balance, image and tone!” I want to
shout in their faces. I despise ignorance in all its grotesque
manifestations. Ignorance is darkness.
 “After
Piero”
But I do not shout in their faces. Instead, I explain patiently,
compassionately, that what they see before them is a combination
of spectrum violet and raw umber, encasing a burning frame of
cadmium red within which there are broad bands of hooker’s green
and ultramarine blue, divided according to the natural law of
Fibonacci’s sequence. The vibrancy of the colour serves to
increase the depth of the darkness. It is only through the
bright light that we can understand the darkness. It’s not black
though. It’s dark, deep dark, beautiful, resonant, darkness, but
it’s not ignorant black. Indeed it’s quite the opposite; it’s
rich and dreamy, soft, sensual colour. You can meditate there;
find a truth or two.
Painting is like that, lambent, philosophical. But a painting
might ask questions to which there are no answers, only more
questions. Actually, if it’s working well, there should be more
questions, shouldn’t there? I’m not sure I believe in happy
endings. But I should at least consider the possibility that the
“black” they saw, is in fact, black, if only because it was
black to them. I’m having a conversation with the painting now,
wondering what it thinks. Am I prepared to concede that “other
people with their differences can also be right?” That there are
“truths” rather than a single “truth?” Perhaps I can celebrate
difference, providing that we recognise that “truths” do not lay
half way between two bi-polar opinions. Substantiate, justify.
Consider the whole picture. The picture is luring me back to
Jerusalem in 2002.
The first female suicide bomber in Jerusalem was a Palestinian
paramedic. “Look, even their paramedics are terrorists!” they
cried, staring in horror at their television screens and their
newspapers. But they were looking only at the object,
demonstrating neither awareness of nor appreciation for the
space around the object. They had never learned to see.
“What should we put in this negative space?” I wondered. Should
we, heaven forbid, suggest that something other than rampant
religious extremism had driven this person to malevolent murder?
Is it conceivable those rubber bullets, which had on more than
one sickening occasion bludgeoned her body whilst she saved
lives as a paramedic, turned her anger into blind hatred? If
such a possibility exists, then we must consider it. The
alternative is to choose a path of ignorance and that will
never, ever be, alright.
Do we dare contextualise? Furthermore, if we apply intelligence
and consideration (and, dare I say, compassion once again?) to
the situation, should we not also acknowledge the possibility
that we just might have done the same terrible thing, in the
same situation? Are we not all equally capable of random acts of
kindness as we are outrageous acts of evil? What would you do,
if all hope was lost? Have you ever known what it is like to be
without hope?
“The terms of the struggle are dictated by the oppressor, not
the oppressed,” spoke Mandela. “When you have nothing, you have
nothing to lose,” echoed Dylan. If you don’t want it to happen
again, then understand why it happened in the first place.
Develop some perspective. But tarry, before I am wrongfully
accused of being an apologist for suicide bombers, it is
important that I clarify my position. I have nothing but
contempt for those who promote salvation through murder; it is
the very worst sort of human lie. I see cowards shunning light,
imprisoned by their greed, suffocated by their hatred and
sightless in their horrible, ignorant blackness. There is no
colour in their souls, no life to speak of. Perhaps we should
bomb them into dust, even if we could? Or should we consider a
bigger picture? By which I do not mean that we should be
tolerant of intolerance, for cultural relativism is literally, a
dead end.
I will not allow a blemish to appear on my painting. Sometimes,
I think I should work in an oxygen tent, free of contaminants
like dust, insects, hair. How dare they pollute the purity of my
mind and my heart! I’ll commit murder to keep my canvas clean
and pure! The painting must be perfect, superhuman, immortal.
Infinity is within my grasp, closer and closer I come with each
brushstroke! I have conquered doubt; I am surfing on hope,
reaching up to heaven. You see how easy it is to become an
extremist?
Then I hit the wall and I know that my reach will inevitably
exceed my grasp. It was just the euphoria of the work talking.
Experience and education, neither readily embraced, has taught
me this. I recognise, with desperate inevitability, my human
fallibility. In the end, the work will not be perfect, I think.
But where is hope now? Perhaps it is here in this simple
sentence, one which unites youthful exuberance with vaulting
ambition: I will never allow anything to prevent me either
aiming for the stars, or from demanding ethical absolutism in my
art and my life. But I learn as I go; life keeps me humble. How
can it not, when I am regularly rendered incapable at the hands
of a six inch sable brush? Yet, I keep going, each application
of paint reaffirming the eternal lesson Einstein taught, every
painting teaching me the same with each successive stroke, the
next dependant upon the last; “That we are here for the sake of
each other, above all, for those upon whose smile and well-being
our own happiness depends. I realize how much my own outer and
inner life is built upon the labours of others, both living and
dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in
return as much as I have received and am receiving.”
Slowly, sometimes too slowly, truths are revealed.
Next week: When is it Okay?
DOC ENGLISH Teaching your kids how to learn English:
Big writing for little children
 This
week I want to talk about what I consider to be the four stages of
writing. There are several processes involved in writing and children
may need to be shown how to carry out each stage.
Stage One: ‘Provide Input’
Before you write, supply lots of comprehensible
input - stories, letters, newspapers, books, emails that are just above
your child’s current language level. Make sure your house has lots of
printed text lying around for your children to study. Try to think of
texts which they will enjoy reading and want to write about, such as
children’s magazines and story books. If they have a particular interest
or hobby, then you could write about that.
Stage Two: ‘Brainstorm’
Writing from scratch is hard, I know. It takes me
hours to think of things for this column and I often have to scrap
everything and start again because I did not think things through during
my planning phase. It’s important to plan before you write and so we
need to get together to brainstorm and pick each other’s brains before
we start (yuk!).
First of all you need to brainstorm, decide what you are going to write
about and come up with ideas (and vocabulary) for your story / letter /
article. I normally use a whiteboard and marker with my class and
(together with their help) draw a big spider diagram to help us
construct ideas. Sometimes the students can use their own white board or
scrap paper, working individually or in pairs. Do not be concerned with
neatness at this stage as this is a rough draft of what we want to put
in our story. If ideas are not forthcoming immediately, you can set a
time limit and challenge your child to come up with as many ideas as
they can within that time frame. Sometimes I will carry out the
brainstorming phase a day before we start writing - it’s quite a job to
carry out all three phases of writing in one day and still have fun and
feel relaxed at the same time.
Once your children get used to the brainstorming process, then they can
quickly organize vocabulary and they can start anticipating what they
want to write about.
Stage Three: ‘Big Writing’
‘Big Writing’ does not mean that your child is
going to have access to a load of aerosol paints and a large garden
wall. Big writing is a term that refers to the writing phase itself.
Writing can be quite daunting for some children when they are learning
English, so it is a big deal to them. They will need a lot of support
and encouragement and they will need to feel that their writing efforts
are worthwhile. The end result should be a big step forward in terms of
their writing progress. I have nicked the idea for Big writing from my
colleague ‘Karen’ and adapted it a little. I am sure she will forgive me
in time, especially as she probably stole the idea from someone else
anyway. Sorry Karen.
Before you start, It helps to prepare the writing ‘environment’ - remove
all distractions, such as crying babies, toys, TVs, karaoke machine and
relatives. Make sure your child is sitting comfortably and they have a
correct grip (‘froggy grip’) on their pencil or pen (see diagram). You
could go out and buy a special pen or pencil for the writing phase, to
let your child know that they need a special tool for a special job.
Provide good lighting, but not too bright, set the mood. Play some soft,
gentle music if that will help. If it’s too distracting, then turn it
off. Stay on the periphery if you like but don’t interfere too much as
the idea is for your child to learn to write independently. You can
supply the brainstorming ideas you came up with earlier if you like, to
act as a ‘scaffold’ to your child’s writing.
There are a few rules to ‘Big Writing’. The first as I have mentioned is
that you must not help. The idea is to encourage independent learning
and provide fluency practice. The second rule is that your child should
write whatever comes into their head and they should not erase or cross
out anything that they have written. The third rule is that they should
not be overly concerned with presentation, spelling, punctuation or
grammar. They should be more concerned with ideas and content. They
should also write as much as they can, as quickly as they can.
Stage Four: ‘Thank Goodness That’s Over With’
When you have finished, allow your child to read
through their work silently in order for them to self correct and notice
any errors. As they read through, encourage them to look for errors, but
don’t point them out yourself. Provide hints and alternatives whilst all
the time providing praise and encouragement. You can also ask your child
to read their writing aloud, to practice expressions, intonation and
pronunciation, etc. Invite some relatives back in to hear your child
read and remember to applaud at the end.
If you are desperate to correct any errors your child has made, try
doing this on another day, or via another piece of text and use their
written work as a guide to producing future lessons. Use their errors as
a guide to help you understand which areas of English they need to work
on.
Try writing at home at least once a week. Review a story book together,
make a new story or encourage your child to keep a diary or write
letters or emails to relatives. You could even get your child to write
to me if you like and I’ll publish their story or letter in here.
I hope your little children enjoy ‘Big Writing’.
That’s all for this week mums and dads. If you want more information on
teaching your kids at home you can email me at: docenglishpattaya@
gmail.com
Enjoy spending time with your kids.
Let’s go to the movies:
by Mark Gernpy
Now playing in Pattaya
The Other Boleyn Girl: UK/US Drama/History/Romance – A
sumptuous and sensual tale of intrigue, romance and betrayal set against
the backdrop of a defining moment in European history, The Other Boleyn
Girl tells the story of two beautiful sisters, Anne (Natalie Portman)
and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) Boleyn who, driven by their family’s blind
ambition, compete for the love of the handsome and passionate King Henry
VIII (Eric Bana). Both women shall share the King’s bed, but only the
one whom Henry loves the most shall rise to the throne and take power as
his Queen of England. One sister shall fail, and the other will pay a
high-price for her success: her life. Outstanding performances by the
three Hollywood leads and a host of the finest British actors.
Beautifully filmed and costumed. I recommend you see it if you have the
slightest interest in historical dramas of this kind. Despite some
heavily critical and sarcastic reviews, I don’t think they come much
better than this. Mixed or average reviews.
Good Morning, Luang Prabang: Thai/Lao Drama/Romance – Thai
superstar Ananda Everingham, part Laotian himself, is extraordinarily
charming as a partly-Laotian Thai photographer assigned a photo shoot in
Laos. He is reluctant to return to his homeland, which he left many
years before, as he feels estranged from his country. This relaxed and
sweet love story/travelogue is a valentine to the land and people of
Laos. It will bring to mind the places you saw on that trip to Laos, or
the one you will take. A labor of love for Ananda, he waived his acting
fee. It’s a Thai-Lao co-production, and marks the first Laotian feature
film in nearly 20 years. Slow, languid, and loveable – and recommended.
The Happening: US/India Drama/Sci-Fi – The world is waiting to
see if M. Night Shyamalan is at last back on track with a movie worthy
of his early promise (The Sixth Sense). Mark Wahlberg plays a science
teacher who tries to figure out why the world has suddenly gone crazy.
Rated R in the US for violent and disturbing images.
The Incredible Hulk: US Action/Sci-Fi – Starring Edward Norton.
Not a sequel to the 2003 movie. Not an alternate origins story. Sort of
ignores everything that went before. It’s the second film with Marvel
Comics as producers, after the very successful Iron Man.
Kung Fu Panda: US Animation/Comedy – An animated comedy set in
the legendary world of ancient China, about a lazy panda who must
somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to save his valley from a
villainous snow leopard. Jackie Chan voices one of the characters.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: UK/US
Adventure/Family/Fantasy – Further adventures of the four British kids
in Narnia. Generally favorable reviews.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: US
Adventure/Action – A few notes: Shia LaBeouf’s wardrobe was designed to
be a nearly exact copy of Marlon Brando’s costume in The Wild One. And
did you notice that during the Hanger 51 scene the Ark of the Covenant
can be seen briefly inside a broken crate, which was the object Indy was
after in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, the aliens closely resemble the
ones in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, also directed by Steven
Spielberg. The “alien” prop used for the warehouse scene is in fact one
of the original alien puppets from the earlier film. Note carefully that
it is explicitly stated that the aliens are not from outer space, but
from another dimension, from “the space between spaces.” If you like
good adventure films, go see this. Generally favorable reviews.
Somtum: Thai Action/Comedy – Stars the giant Australian wrestler
Nathan Jones, a widely popular martial arts fighter, playing a timid
fighter of immense bulk, with a heart of gold, as he and a bunch of Thai
children befriend each other.
Never Back Down: US Action/Drama/Sport – A
pugilism-and-perspiration epic that glorifies violence and rationalizes
revenge. At his new high school, a rebellious teen is lured into an
underground fight club, where he finds a mentor in a mixed-martial-arts
veteran. Generally negative reviews.
Sex and the City: The Movie: Fans of the television show and
Sarah Jessica Parker should be very happy indeed with this chick-flick
about very rich, witty, well-dressed women and their so-called problems
with men. Mixed or average reviews. Rated R in the US for strong sexual
content, graphic nudity, and language
What Happens in Vegas…: US Comedy/Romance – Cameron Diaz and
Ashton Kutcher star as strangers who unwittingly end up as bride and
groom after a wild night in Las Vegas. When one of them wins a jackpot,
the two greedily fight for the loot. Generally negative reviews.
Scheduled for
Jun 19
Get Smart: US Action/Comedy – Steve Carell as Secret Agent
Maxwell Smart, on a mission to thwart the latest plot for world
domination by an evil crime syndicate.
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