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Russell Peters in Lebanon – Show Review: Lame

Russell Peters’ show yesterday could be divided as follows:

40% of the time, he was picking on a man named Bassel.

20% of the time, he was picking on a 16 year old Saudi teenager called Khaled.

20% of the time, he was rehashing old jokes made at previous shows.

20% of the time, he was offering the audience new things.

The end conclusion is 100% of lameness.

I have watched most of his previous DVDs. So the idea I had pre-conceived about Russell Peters was that he was a good enough comedian to have a great show, albeit with a few slow moments stranded here and there. I wasn’t complaining. You can’t have it all over the top.

But what I had to go through on Saturday night at Platea Hall was definitely not something I had expected. Not in the least.

To begin with, the sound quality of the hall was horrible. Being on a limited monetary income, we couldn’t splurge to get the high-end tickets of the “lucky” front-rowers. So us, the poor commoners in the back, had to sharpen our hearing senses to be able to hear Russell Peters who seemed determined not to get the mic close to his mouth. Some had even tried to shout at him that “we couldn’t hear” but he was busy going at it with Bassel, a 38 year old man who happened to have huge eyebrows. Or caterpillars as Russell called them.

At the times when he wasn’t making fun of Bassel’s eyebrows, he was alluding to the masturbatory habits of 16 year old Khaled from Saudi Arabia. It might have been funny at first but when he interrupts a joke more than once to allude to it, it gets redundant and silly.

After feeling Khaled and Bassel became worn-out issues with the crowd, he moved on to a rehash of his previous jokes, the most famous of which is his father’s Indian heritage and accent. Car blinkers, child punishments – all retold with an Indian approach. Been there, done that.

The newer jokes, however, were not all that bad and some, especially those culturally relevant to Lebanon, were quite good. My favorite was an observation about how rampant plastic surgery has become in Lebanese society. Even the government is giving loans for people to do plastic surgery. We can’t accept ugly people here, he joked. Then a fashionably late Lebanese woman walks in. Peters looks at her and complements her breasts – or governmental breasts.

This leads me to another observation of the night. Lebanese people have redefined the concept of fashionably late and Russell Peters pointed it out. The show was supposed to start at 9:00 pm. It started at 9:30 with an opening act. Russell Peters was on stage at 9:45 and some people were still being ushered to their seats at around 10:00 pm. How hard could it be to get there on time, I have no idea.

When the opening act was better than the main show, you know something was messed up. I felt Russell Peters was unenthusiastic, disinterested, going through the motions to simply get things done and be out of there. He wasn’t really performing like he usually does. He was reciting.

I may be either too serious a person or Lebanese people are way too easily entertained because some were going gaga over the show as it ended. I’d like to think it’s the latter because I can appreciate a good comedy show when I see one. This was not one.

6/10

The Hunger Games is NOT Twilight

I had no intention to write such a post. But when I saw people on various platforms saying that The Hunger Games is just another Twilight, I simply had to step in to say no. Just no. And I think I am a qualified person to make the comparison. How so? Well, I’ve actually read both book series before the hype for their movies set in.

1 – The Books

There is a drastic difference between the themes of the books to begin with. The Hunger Games does not have supernatural human beings, let alone vampires or werewolves that have been so ruined in their portrayal that they’ve become a common source for jokes. The main characters of The Hunger Games are not driven by their incessant need to be loved but by their primal instinct for survival. Both may be intended for young adults and have a central female character but when it comes to the plot, protagonists and reception, the two series couldn’t be more different. Twilight is a fantasy love story, while The Hunger Games is an adventure about survival. That alone create a huge difference in the central elements of the book: where characters in one search for a boyfriend, the characters in another prepare for a revolution.

This brings me to point 2.

2- Katniss Everdeen and Bella Swan:

Bella’s struggles in Twilight is to choose between the sparkly vampire Edward and the transform-at-will werewolf Jacob. Her character is also nauseatingly one dimensional, useless and completely infatuated with mundane things, making her unlikeable.

Katniss is the exact opposite. Where Bella had things handed for her on a silver platter (boyfriend trouble don’t count as life problems), Katniss has to survive a world where the government has made the people hungry, where her mother is disconnected from the world and where she has to care for her only sister. Katniss’ world does not revolve around a boy, unlike Bella.

Bella is driven by her infatuation with Edward. Katniss is driven by her need to survive a cruel world. Katniss is a character young readers should look up to. Bella Swan is not.

3 – The Movies

Both movie series are turning out to be immensely popular. The Hunger Games has grossed over $25 million from midnight screenings alone. Twilight movies have broken records. Where they differ, however, is in the drastic critical reception. The Hunger Games has an aggregate score of more than 90% of positive reviews. Every single Twilight movie has been certified rotten by critics. You can read my review of The Hunger Games here. I didn’t even find it in me to review the latest Twilight movie. Enough said.

Perhaps both The Hunger Games and Twilight can be considered as a “teen” series. How that’s a bad thing, I’m not sure. The difference remains that one is absolutely relevant to what we’re living through today: revolutions, war, famine while the other lives in lala land. The fact remains that people need to get it in their heads that not anything that rings true with young adults needs to be compared with a preceding cultural phenomenon. Twilight was compared to Harry Potter. The Hunger Games is being compared to Twilight. How ridiculous, I know. When will such unfounded thoughts end? I have no clue.

Carrie Underwood – Blown Away Tracklisting

These are the tracks that will be on Blown Away, Carrie Underwood’s 4th studio album:

1. Good Girl (Carrie Underwood/Chris DeStefano/Ashley Gorley) – 3:24
2. Blown Away (Chris Tompkins/Josh Kear) – 4:00
3. Two Black Cadillacs (Carrie Underwood/Hillary Lindsey/Josh Kear) – 4:58
4. See You Again (Carrie Underwood/Hillary Lindsey/Dave Hodges) – 4:06
5. Do You Think About Me (Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey, Shane Stevens) – 3:37
6. Forever Changed (Tom Douglas, Hillary Lindsey, James Slater) – 4:02
7. Nobody Ever Told You (Carrie Underwood/Hillary Lindsey/Luke Laird) – 4:10
8. One Way Ticket (Carrie Underwood/Luke Laird/Josh Kear) – 3:56
9. Thank God For Hometowns (Ashley Gorley, Luke Laird, Hillary Lindsey) – 4:01
10. Good In Goodbye (Carrie Underwood/Ryan Tedder/Hillary Lindsey) – 4:17
11. Leave Love Alone (Gordie Sampson/Hillary Lindsey/Troy Verges) – 3:19
12. Cupid’s Got A Shotgun (Carrie Underwood/Chris Tompkins/Josh Kear) – 3:43
13. Wine After Whiskey (Carrie Underwood/Tom Shapiro/Dave Berg) – 3:51
14. Who Are You (Mutt Lange) – 3:55.

Wine After Whiskey, which I had blogged about previously, has made the album while the Lori McKenna track, Nobody Knows, has not.

All in all, the titles are quite interesting. I’m very interested in hearing the Ryan Tedder track, Good in Goodbye actually. The album features 8 Carrie Underwood co-writes and 8 Hillary Lindsey co-writes. This should be a good mix.

The Hunger Games – Movie Review

For legions of people, The Hunger Games is the most anticipated movie release of the year. And for a movie released so early in 2012, that’s saying something. Based on the book of the same title (read my review here), The Hunger Games stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen year old girl living in a post-apocalyptic America where hunger and oppression ruled, where hunting for rodents was the way to keep your family alive and where every day represents a fight for your life.

This post-apocalyptic America is the country of Panem, governed by the Capitol which oversees twelve districts, making sure they are stripped down to the bare necessities. Those twelve districts had been thirteen that rebelled against the Capitol’s oppression. They lost the war and are still paying the price, the heaviest of which is the annual Hunger Games which require each district to send a young man and woman, for a total of 24, to battle each other to the death. There can only be one victor. “May the odds be ever in your favor” is the sentence the tributes keep hearing as if odds will help them on the brink of death.

When her sister is chosen, Katniss volunteers in her place and is taken along with the male tribute of District 12, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), to the Capitol where they are groomed like lambs for slaughter in an attempt to make an impression which can make it or break it for them once the games fall upon them. And fall they do, with devastating consequences.

To see the Katniss Everdeen of your imagination after reading The Hunger Games books be incarnated so perfectly on screen by Jennifer Lawrence is a joy to the eye. Lawrence struts through every scene as if she was Katniss and Katniss was her. She exuberates confidence, sentimentality, fragility, innocence, worry, love and pain. Widely known for her Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone, Lawrence is still in the same vein in The Hunger Games. This time, however, she manages to polish the sides of her performance, nitpicking until she truly becomes flawless. In Katniss, Lawrence gives you a heroine you want to root for with all your heart. It doesn’t even feel forced, it’s simply natural to feel invested in the primal force that Lawrence conveys to Katniss. And it is then that you realize the brilliance of Lawrence’s Katniss. She has managed to make her character one that is driven by principle.

Director Gary Ross manages to not let the movie’s extended run at 140 minutes affect it negatively. The Hunger Games doesn’t let down. It keeps picking up, bring in gut-wrenching revelations and action sequences one after the other. Ross uses the action of the movie to serve the characters, not drown them. He keeps the suspense going throughout. His camerawork is also highly interesting, with lots of focus on his characters’ faces, giving them a more humane appearance and seeing the struggles in them easily. Co-writing the movie’s script with the book’s author, Suzanne Collins, he stays true to the book’s essence. Even though some sequences have been shortened and some have been omitted, the feeling of the book remains there, present for you throughout to sink your eyes into.

At the center of the deathly games is a growing love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth), a friend of Katniss from District 12 who’s lucky enough not to have been chosen as tribute. Liam Hemsworth quickly establishes himself as a forceful character, with the limited screentime he gets. Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is highly relatable as the man secretly crushing over Katniss whose only memory of him is him helping her in a time of need. But the greatest triumph in this regard for The Hunger Games is focusing less on the love triangle than other movies targeting the same audience, making you really not care about either Team Peeta or Team Gale. At the end of the day, the only team you want to be on is the movie.

Other actors that appear in the movie are Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, a TV host that charmingly narrates the games as they unfold. Elizabeth Banks stars as Effie Trinket, a Capitol spokesperson who’s as obnoxious as she is caring. Donald Sutherland appears as the horrible President Snow, governing his country with a hand of steel. Woody Harrelson is the always drunk Haymitch who has to sober up in order to tip the balance in his tributes’ favor.

The Hunger Games is an unflinching adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ book. In many ways, the book was more suited for a screen adaptation because it is that fertile for the imagination. The movie does not falter. It’s a more serious movie than many might think it could possibly be. It is gut-wrenching at times and heavily sincere at others. It takes you on a roller coaster ride that you never want to let go of. In fact, not wanting to let go is most evident when, after 140 minutes, the movie suddenly ends and you remain in your seat wanting more. Fans of the book, rejoice. The Hunger Games does not disappoint at all. It’s a haunting tale that, coupled with a chilling score by James Newton Howard that serves as a brilliant auditory backdrop the darkest of scenes, will leave you mesmerized by how real it feels and how good it turned out to be. May the odds be ever in favor of The Hunger Games.
10/10

Lebanese Muslim Students Request Prayer Room in Maronite Antonine University

We might be the only country in the world where such a request can spark a controversy. Popular Lebanese blogger Rita Kamel wrote about the issue yesterday. Muslim students had requested a prayer room in the Antonine University, an institution conformant to the Maronite order. After their request was refused, the students saw it fit to pray in the university’s courtyard as protest.

There’s nothing wrong with students praying. But provoking their university’s administration in such a way is totally unacceptable. Going to the Antonine university, those students were aware of its regulations and its rules. If that university had had a zero-tolerance policy as some people were inferring, it wouldn’t have accepted students from outside the sects it “prefers” to begin with.

When it comes to such an issue, we tend to tred sectarian lines lightly. Any wrong sentence and all hell would break loose. But let me ask one simple question. If I, a Christian, had decided to go to Al Nour University in Tripoli (I’m assuming one exists), fully knowing that it is a Muslim university with such leanings, is it my right to ask for a chapel? In simple terms – absolutely not.

A university is supposed to be an educational institution where you go for classes and for a new life experience. It shouldn’t be a place for anyone to flaunt their religious beliefs, which are surely respected by the Antonine University simply because it allowed people from all faiths to enroll without imposing on them religious courses.

The fact remains, however, that many Muslim students have found ways to pray on many campuses without making a big deal out of things. For instance, the Lebanese Southern Club at the American University of Beirut uses the club room for praying at specific hours. It doesn’t interfere with other students nor does it make a big deal out of it.

At the end of the day, when a student applies to any university with religious leanings in Lebanon, they are more than aware of what they’re going into. If a Christian student is bugged by an Islamic-leaning university, he/she can always transfer. The same applies to Muslim students. And in case students don’t feel like attending any religious institutions, there are always a multitude of secular universities for them to go to. It’s just the way things are. No, it doesn’t reflect on our sectarian system in Lebanon negatively because universities with religious leanings are present all around the world and have administrations which would have behaved in the same way in such circumstances.

The only difference is that we, as Lebanese, tend to see any negativity surrounding our religion as a personal threat. We tend to forget that our relationship with God is not one which needs to be shown for any passerby. We tend to forget that praying is a personal matter that shouldn’t be made into national headlines. The students have a right to ask for a prayer room. The administration has the right to say no. There should be no hard feelings and there should definitely not be talks about sectarianism on the rise in Lebanon because of such an incident.