A great Friday movie

Alyssa: Yung and I went to watch the movie The Departed on Friday night and I was absolutely smitten that Hollwood has finally created a kick-ass version of the brilliant original Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs. There were rumours a few years ago that Brad Pitt was planning to remake this movie, and I actually thought Brad Pitt himself was going to star in it but he only ended up co-producing it. Anyway, The Departed had all the elements of a box office hit: star studded cast, great plot, fast pace and a lot of mob opera violence. The movie depicts the clash between the mafia and the police where both sides plant an informer (Matt Damon and Leonardo Di Caprio) in each other’s organisation. The movie picks up pace as each organisation tries to uncover the other’s informer through a series of criminal operations. In terms of the cast, you’ll get to watch Jack Nicholson’s big ego, and rumour has it that thankfully, his 3 way sex scene was taken out of the final cut (I think Nicholson’s constant naked beer gut on display already makes the pop corn hard to digest). Di Caprio shows us that he can be more than just a man-boy and Matt Damon is perfectly cast as the self-assured villain. I would also highly recommend you watch Infernal Affairs which is just as sophisticated depicting the conflict between police and triad gang lords in Hong Kong. There are 3 chapters to this movie (confusingly played by different actors in each chapter) but the final chapter (shown in the picture below) is my favourite because the two main characters are played out by both my childhood idols Tony Leung and Andy Lau . If you've been subjected to Chinese movies throughout your childhood like I have, you'll know what I mean.



In other news, it's spring race fever down here in Melbourne and I can't believe it has been nearly a year since the gals came down from Sydney for the Melbourne Cup race. This time Yung and I decided to dodge the crowd by heading up to Palm Cove in sunny Queensland during the Melbourne Cup long weekend for a 4 day trip - our final holiday for the year.