Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) – Movie Review

Hunger Games Catching Fire movie poster

It has become a Hollywood rule that sequels should suck. A few movies have escaped that sophomore slump. Add Catching Fire to that short list. Nay, have Catching Fire occupy an honorary spot on that list. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how sequels should be made.

I am a fan of The Hunger Games book series. I also thoroughly enjoyed the first movie. And let’s just say that the second movie makes my liking of the first seem mediocre, childish, fanboyish. I stand corrected – The Hunger Games was not the movie that brought this series to its potential. Catching Fire does that and so much more.

The events pick up where the previous movie ended: Katniss has to work with the consequences of her defiance at The Hunger Games that resulted in saving both Peeta Mellark and herself. Her act of defiance is seeding a revolution across the country. People are looking at her as their leader. And the Capitol wants her to do what she can to squash that revolution down, as they prepare for a very special edition of The Hunger Games, which have hit their 75th edition.

Saying anything more than that would be treading spoiler-zone worse than a minesweeper game. Catching Fire doesn’t let up. There’s no dull moment. There’s no frame that feels out of place. There’s no scene that makes you shrug at it being useless. It keeps you transfixed throughout its two and a half hour run. Just sit back and enjoy it. Special effects? Check. Riveting cast? Check. Twisted story? Check. Great directing? Check. Cinematography, art direction, costume design? Check, check and check.  Seriously, what more do you need?

Jennifer Lawrence, through her portrayal of Katniss Everdeen, is cementing herself as the actress of our generation. The sheer talent this creature has is simply spell-binding to watch. She captures the essence of Katniss perfectly, delivering one knockout scene after the next like it’s a piece of cake. It helps that she has multi-layered material to work with. But I highly doubt any other actress with less chops could have done the marvelous job she’s doing in this series.

If The Hunger Games series continues its upward trajectory, look for it to mark itself as this classic movie series down the line that we tell our grandchildren to watch as they shrug us off. Those movies? They’d ask. But they look so ancient. They’d add. Except they’re not. Catching Fire, despite it being fiction, feels extremely relevant in the world of today. It may not be the movie that would amass a ton of Oscars. It’s not because it’s not worthy. It’s because it’s just too easy to shrug this off as some silly young adult novel adaptation. Catching Fire, however, is one of the best book adaptations I’ve seen. There have been very few and there will be even fewer movies this year that are as entertaining.

Do yourself a favor and check in whatever you thought about the first movie at the door and head to your nearest cinema this weekend to get on this ride. You’re in for one hell of a treat. The Hunger Games have caught fire and I, for one, am still betting on them.

4.5/5

When Lebanese People Cannot Afford Hospitals

Hospitals have a way of desensitizing you. They overwhelm you so much that shutting off that part of you that is forced to care all the time is the only way possible at coping. And no, I’m not talking about medicine.

There’s a lot to be said about the state of healthcare in Lebanon. I’ve seen some aspects of it. The numbers behind it are all over the place. But no matter how those numbers are shuffled, you are left with almost 1 million or so Lebanese, in a best case scenario, that are not covered in any way or another and are forced to withstand the pressure of Lebanon’s increasingly costly medicine on their own.

Many crumble under that pressure and figure that dying is simply better than getting overwhelmed with debts or simply getting a hospital’s door slammed in your face.

There are a lot of stories to tell. They happen at a lot of the country’s hospitals. I’ve heard of a well-known hospital that wouldn’t take in a 2 month old patient because his parents couldn’t afford to pay down the required deposit for his surgery. I’ve seen old people who have no one left and nothing left to pay for the simplest of blood tests. I’ve seen exorbitant prices for surgeries, some of them possibly warranted given their complexity, that cannot be afforded by 99% of the Lebanese population.

Perhaps Lebanese hospitals focus on the business part of their affairs much more than they should. But are they to blame? They need to run their facilities, pay their employees and still make enough profit to constantly improve their brand of medicine seeing as Lebanese medicine is so specified that not having the latest it-machine at your facility means you’ve fallen behind the times. The people who can pay simply hospital-shop and go to the one with the newest toy, newest hotshot doctor….

Should they provide such highly costly services for free and then not be able to run themselves anymore?

A lot of patients cannot afford healthcare in Lebanon. Insurance companies make sure to screw you whenever they can. The Lebanese ministry of health has a limited budget that is allocated in an even more limited way and benefits mostly those who know someone who knows the minister more than those who actually need something. Many of the people who can afford insurance, for instance, simply do not buy it because they have good enough connections not to pay while those who cannot afford insurance rot at hospital doors.
The national social security fund is not really national and hospitals find themselves in financial problems because of it more often than not and decide to relegate patients who present with that form of coverage into the “we don’t have a place for you bin.”

What does a Lebanese person have to do to receive one of his fundamental human rights? I guess they can just die in a state that couldn’t care less. Many of you probably don’t give this a second thought but it’s time you do. If you can afford insurance, go and buy one as soon as you can. If you can get enrolled in the National Social Security Fund, make sure you do so as well. If you can find any possible means of coverage for you and your loved ones, seek it. There’s no better investment.

After all, we live in a place that is so behind the times that talk about universal healthcare is light years from becoming mainstream enough and where our grandparents’ fate is to get people to feel sorry enough for them to raise money for them to do their blood tests.

I wish I could tell all the stories that I have to tell. Maybe someday.

“La Vie D’Adele” Will Be Shown in Lebanon

La vie d'adele poster

This year’s most controversial movie is probably Blue Is The Warmest Color (French title: La Vie D’Adele) by Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche.

It is the winner of the Palme D’or at this year’s Cannes festival. Its subject matter being about a lesbian relationship, however, was thought to be too much for our Lebanese censorship folks so everyone figured the movie won’t be screened in the country, especially after two other movies were banned from the Beirut Film Festival earlier this year.

Good news for Lebanese cinephiles ahead.

As of this moment, however, our assumption is wrong. La Vie D’Adele will be screened in Beirut on Saturday November 30th as part of the European Film Festival that takes place yearly at Cinema Metropolis Sofil.

Tickets will go on sale today at 3 PM. I would assume this screening will be one of few for the movie in the country, if not the only one. It’s simply not the kind of cinema that our theaters would invest in. 

Now let’s hope someone with the intellect of a fish doesn’t get offended prophylactically and makes a big deal out of this.

You can check out the full schedule of the European Film Festival here.

 

How The New 50,000 Summarizes Lebanon

20131115-184534.jpgCome on people, is there anything more suitable than that 50,000 to describe the state of Lebanon lately? If anything, we should look at this positively: it might be the first time ever that those in charge of running things are aware of how dismal they have made things to be, even if only with a representative bill. And they have decided to describe things. Here’s an attempt to explain what went on with their brains.

All Those Festivities:

I really don’t know what’s special about the number 70 for it to warrant an honorary bill. Why not 71? Even better, why not 69? I’m positive that number means much more to so many Lebanese than simply 70. Zeros are so overrated if you ask me. Yet again, our currency has so many of them.

I guess we have always been a country to celebrate whenever we had the opportunity. Oh, look – can we turn this into a festivity? Sure, why not, let’s do it!

Identity Crisis:

One look at that bill and the entirety of our Lebanese existence is summarized in front of you with the monetary version of our infamous “hi, kifak, ca va.” Arabic, French and even a word of English thrown in there by mistake is the perfect summary of how this country is: lost in translation, unaware of what it wants to be or what it is.

Let’s stick to our frenchiness would say the people who only know the ca va to every kifak. Except we barely know how to speak French lately as is evident by that hilariously shameful typo on the bill. Side note, is there any other country with a typo on their bills, regardless of what that typo is?

No, let’s move on to English man. That is where the future is. Never. We are Arabs. Mutliple personality disorder, perhaps? Who cares, it’s unique.

Inefficiency:

Let’s leave the fact that the new 50,000 will still be big enough for you to use as a picnic mattress. Shouldn’t they resize all our money into something that fits in normal wallets before redesigning the bills at every possible opportunity?

Anyway, I’d hate to think our bills can get less efficient than they are. There are just so many zeros there and they’re as useless as they come. That 50,000 bill is so inefficient that it cannot afford you a burger at Roadster’s anymore.

Inefficient… I like it.

Blame others:

Our central bank head decided to blame the British company that printed the bill for the fiasco. Typical, I guess. Let’s always blame others for our mistake, as long as it makes us feel better about ourselves and about the messes we keep finding ourselves in. We get into a war, we blame some mysterious entity. Our economy goes to the trash, we blame some other mysterious entity. Our 50,000 gets a tasteless makeover? Let’s blame the company that printed it, not the Lebanese who must have overseen the design (or lack thereof) process, the Lebanese who did not notice the mistakes and the people with a horrendous taste who OK’ed it.

Intact Joie de Vivre:

But no worries, ladies and gentlemen, our Joie de Vivre is still well-represented in that bill. Our love of life, love for drinks and parties and getting high is well defined within those mutliple colors that fill that monetary canvas. Pretty nifty, eh?

Lebanon, summarized:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can’t but notice that Lebanon has been on a downward spiral lately. Culture is dying, sometimes at the hands of the ministry of culture. Fundamentalism is rising across the board. The country is losing whatever it has of itself with each passing day. Looking at all of that, our new bill cannot but stand and shout that infamous line: shou we2fet 3laye?

Our country is the gift that keeps on giving. Can you imagine living somewhere where life was boring? What would we blog about? When it comes to that 50,000 bill I have to ask: why not use it as our national flag instead?

23.

I turned 24 today. And it was a horrible day.

I woke up feeling I couldn’t breathe, feeling like it was just another day to get through the motions. I went to the hospital. I took care of my patients. I did what I had to do but not more like I usually do. I smiled as people wished me happy birthday. I had yet to see the happy in the sentence. I didn’t know what else I could do. 

Perhaps there was nothing really wrong about today. But I didn’t see it that way all day. Call it overt-anxiety. Call it over-scripting of things and dramatization. But that’s how it was. My head told me today was a bad day and I didn’t try to tell my head it was wrong.

And then when I got home this evening, exhausted and feeling mentally drained, my little brother surprised me with a piece of cake on which he had lit a candle. And I hugged him as he sang me happy birthday. There was nothing else I could do. I thought that would be it until my parents called and my mom sang me happy birthday over speaker phone. And my grandparents called to wish me long life and the only thing I could do is wish them health. Their calls filled me with so much joy that the only thing I wanted to do was go spend my day with the people who made it as such. 

Then, as I headed to the dinner my friends begrudgingly dragged me to, I realized that many of the people that made 23 the year that it was were around that restaurant table, had called or texted me earlier that day. Those people had changed their pictures into a collage of their memories with yours truly. They were really, positively happy that this was my day and they wanted it to truly be a happy birthday.

This post may not mean much to most of you. But, as I turn a new page, my thoughts turn to family and friends – cliche as it may be – in order to tell them thank you for being there and I hope they’ll keep on being there.

Here’s to all the people that made me. Here’s to all the people that make each of my days worth living.

I turned 24 today. And it turned out to be a good day, indeed.