Author Archives: Valerie Leung

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About Valerie Leung

I ♥ Sydney Swans. Square-eyed from too much television. I don't read enough. You can find me blogging at LibraGirlRules.com, writing about TV, films and books at ArmchairParadise.wordpress.com and occasionally traveloguing at ThursdayHasAView.wordpress.com. I have been known to write fanfic at fanfiction.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2660477/) and you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @valshopaholic.

Movie Review: IN TIME

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Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer , Vincent Kartheiser, Olivia Wilde, Johnny Galecki

Written, Produced and Directed by: Andrew Niccol

Release: 28 Oct, 2011 (US)

“For a few to be immortal, many must die.”

And therein lies the premise of IN TIME, a film written and directed by Andrew Niccol (who also brought us Gattaca and The Truman Show).

Here’s the setup: it is late 21st Century and the human race is genetically engineered to stop ageing at 25 and are given one more year to live unless they have “replenished” their clocks.  In this world, the currency of exchange is time – you literally trade for more time on this earth.  Everyone is born with a clock (it’s digital, if that helps) on their left forearm and you “transact” on your right.

The Time zones

In this world, time zones are literally geographic areas that determine how long you have to live.  In Dayton (the “ghetto”), the average life expectancy for its occupants is 23 hours compared to that of New Greenwich (where the rich live) of 347 years.  The rich can earn decades at a time, effectively making them immortal, while the poor do whatever it takes to survive from day to day.  To keep the ghetto-dwellers from earning their way out of their time zones, the rich drive up the cost of living, essentially making it impossible for them to move outside their borders. Continue reading →

When Junk Doesn’t Mean Trash

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Matt Bomer at HFP Press Conference Oct 2011

Oh my dear readers, words can not begin to describe how much I love this man, Mr Matthew Bomer!  He is always so polite to everyone and never says a bad word about anything or anyone.  He is quite simply, according to everyone I know who has met him, every bit the gentleman.  And we all lust after him.  My best friend recently called him “the thing” and when I asked her why, her response was “Look at him! He is too perfect to be human!”

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What’s Your Number?

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I wanted to start this post by announcing my birthday 🙂 Yes, happy birthday to me, with a hug and kiss from one of the stars of my favourite TV show White Collar, Tim DeKay 🙂  I have lost count of how many times I have played back this video now – and yes, if you have been reading my blog for at least a year, you will have noticed I got a birthday shout-out from Tim last year, too 🙂 What a lucky girl I am, thanks to two wonderful friends, Julie (in New York) and Carol (in California).

Age is a funny thing.  It is just a number but it means different things to different people.  Some embrace it.  Some are afraid of it.  Personally, I belong to the former category – for as long as I don’t look my age and people don’t expect me to act my age, of course 🙂

When you’re a kid, you can’t wait to celebrate a birthday.  You want to know how old everyone is and you count your birthdays by the month (“I’m five years and four months old!”).  You always want to be older than someone else and there is nothing worse than being “the baby”.  As you hit those puberty blues, you just want to get to your “sweet 16” followed by 18 when you’ll be “legal” and considered an adult – you can drink (unless you live in the US, in which case, you can do just about anything else BUT drink – strange!) and vote.  Then you turn 20 and suddenly you can say you’re not a teenager anymore but I’m not sure why no-one makes a big deal of that.  When you turn 21, that’s another big milestone…a new decade though, strictly speaking, you kick-start a new decade once you turn 20, so again, why don’t we celebrate turning 20 as a big milestone instead of 21? Hmm…

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Footy and Meat Pies

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I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

Australia: the land of kangaroos, koalas and deadly spiders.  Back in 1904, just three years after the federation of Australia, poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote what became an iconic poem entitled “My Country” to describe her love for her home.  I’m a far cry from being a poet and am definitely not qualified to criticise such a legend, but I think there’s a little something missing from Mackellar’s tribute:  Aussie Rules and Aussie meat pies.

OK, we can forgive her for not mentioning the pies…according to Wikipedia (don’t we all get our facts from there?) the Aussie meat pie originated in the early 1900s, so maybe Mackellar had not had the privilege of trying one when she wrote her poem.  But Aussie Rules football has been around since the 1840s!

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September 11: A Decade of Pain, Faith and Healing

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Everyone has a story to tell of where they were when a significant news event happened: I was late to school the morning I watched the Challenger explode shortly after blast-off  in 1986; I was with my Dad and brother-in-law buying a new air-conditioner the afternoon news broke that Michael Hutchence (lead singer of Aussie band INXS) was found dead in his hotel room in 1997; I was with my parents driving into the city as news trickled in with reports of the car accident that eventually took the life of Diana, Princess of Wales that same year.

Of all the global tragedies during my lifetime so far, there is no doubt the attacks of September 11, 2001, will forever be ingrained in my mind.  I remember, as if it was only yesterday, that fateful day when the twin towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC) came down after two planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into those buildings in the heart of New York City.

It was late at night in Sydney when the first plane flew into the North Tower.  I had been working on an assignment in my study. My TV was on in the living room – I was waiting for The West Wing to start.  It was nothing unusual that programs regularly did not start on time.  I kept going out to the living room every couple of minutes to check if the program had started yet.  At first, I thought the TV station had changed its programming to some late-night disaster movie when I saw smoke billowing from an office tower.  Then I realised it was “Breaking News”.

Like everyone else, I was stunned and horrified at what I was seeing.  There was no real explanation as to what was going on.  Reports told of a tragic plane crash – everyone thought it was an accident.  It had to be.  How else could you explain what had happened?

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