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Money matters:
Graham Macdonald MBMG International Ltd.
A tax free Thai retirement, fact or fantasy?
Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes (QROPS) explained, part 2
Future Legislation
The Government Actuaries Department of the Pension Schemes Office
have announced that from April 2009, the life expectancy of the average retiree
in final salary pension schemes will be extended from 12 to 19.5 years, putting
more pressure on the funding of these schemes.
At the same time, they will be reducing the “Limited Price Indexation” on these
schemes from 5% to 3%, the maximum annual increase to the final salary. If the
Retail Price Index (RPI) is lower, then the RPI figure will be used. Clearly if,
in the interim years between now and your scheme retirement age the RPI
(basically inflation) is higher than 3%, this will reduce the spending power of
your UK pension.
Most pension experts believe that the above legislation will have the effect of
reducing the pension transfer values offered by final salary schemes.
What advice you require
Obviously your retirement fund is very important to you, and
therefore you will want the best advice. An Independent Financial Adviser should
produce a full report on your pension transfer.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA, who regulate UK pensions) document “the
risks of salary-related occupation pension transfers” recommends that you are
provided with a “detailed analysis”. This should show the rate your transferred
fund must grow to produce the same return as the final salary scheme you are
potentially moving your fund out of.
Therefore, the report should include:
* A transfer analysis that will show the growth rate required to match that
of the scheme you are transferring out of.
* The FSA document “The risks of salary-related occupational pension Transfers”,
if applicable.
* All relevant risk warnings in moving to a QROPS.
* Information on taxation, including double taxation agreements.
* Assuming that you will be placing your fund in an offshore bond, the Life
Office that provides the bond should produce an illustration that will show the
effect of charges including the trust charges.
* Literature from the above mentioned Life Office on who they are and why you
should use them.
* A copy of a letter from HM Revenue & Customs approving the QROPS.
* Investment recommendations.
To produce the above transfer analysis you will need to give the administrators
of your pension scheme(s) an instruction to give the adviser any information
he/she requires, or obtain transfer valuation(s) yourself and give them to your
adviser.
Investment recommendations
The last item in the previous section list of what you require is by
no means least. The FSA (and their predecessors) have always preferred that any
unsophisticated pension fund investor is placed in a balanced managed fund that
is not too aggressive, with the potential for steady growth, thus protecting
them from risk that they do not understand.
Because of this, most personal and group personal pension plans recommended
since personal pensions were conceived, whether they were sold to individuals or
companies, have invested mainly in these type of managed funds. This keeps
compliance departments happy, because this protects the adviser and subsequently
the company against complaints that a higher risk fund dropping sharply in value
could generate.
The problem is that a lot of these managed funds have performed extraordinarily
poorly over a long period of time.
I concur with the FSA that the unsophisticated or cautious investor should be
protected from high risk, but equally they should be protected from poor
performance. Therefore the QROPS recommended to the investor should have access
to the top performing, award winning fund managers. Equally, the adviser
recommending the QROPS should have the knowledge and experience to give this
advice.
To explain further, if you had invested £100,000 in the Scottish Equitable Mixed
fund 10 years ago it would now be worth £141,500. If you had invested the same
amount in the top performing pension fund 10 years ago, it would be worth
£317,000. If these funds were transferred to a QROPS and a 5% drawdown taken,
they would pay out £7,075 per annum and £15,850 per annum respectively. Which
income would you prefer?
Summary
How long QROPS will be available for is not known. Alistair Darling,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will certainly not be happy about losing the
revenue on the millions of pounds worth of pension funds that are being moved
offshore to these schemes.
As mentioned previously in this report, QROPS are being misrepresented and HMRC
have already been reviewing the status of one scheme. Without doubt, Alistair
Darling would like to close them all, and if the miss-selling continues, it will
give him an excuse to do justify doing just that.
If you are a professional expatriate with a UK pension fund, and you are
confident that you will never return to the UK to live, you would be foolish not
to obtain an analysis and report to at least know your options. The growth
figures required to beat a final salary pensions return are remarkably low due
to the QROPS tax free status.
It is fair to say that for the professional expatriate this is the largest tax
break that you will ever see from HMRC. If you (and your heirs) can benefit, do
not miss this opportunity.
Author - Bill Popham. Bill joined MBMG International in 2006, after running his
own successful Practice of Independent Financial Advisers in the city of London
for many years. Email [email protected]
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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
Back to basics
 I
bumped into a lovely chap the other day who was bemoaning the fact that
it is very difficult to get good basic photography tips. Now there are
plenty of books on basic photography around, but most of them were
written some time ago, and concentrate on film photography. Those days
have gone, as everyone uses digital these days - even me, an ardent film
fan professionally for (too) many years.
The prime advantage of any digital camera is instant review of your
photographs. You know immediately if you got an image - but that does
not mean that you actually have a good photograph, does it? However, if
you look critically at the shot you have just taken, you will be able to
work out how to make it a better shot, won’t you?
Since photography is accepted as ‘painting with light’, you should look
to see if your shot is well exposed, too light, or too dark and then
make the necessary compensation before shooting again. Sound too
difficult? It is not.
If you have just shot in poor light, then just activate the flash.
Problem solved. If the camera’s light meter was fooled by strong back
lighting, then this is no problem either. Just about all half decent
digitals have a ‘back light compensation’ setting. Use it. Problem
solved.
However, there is another way around these problems and that is called
‘bracketing’. Many digital cameras, especially SLR digitals have this
function. With mine I have set it up to give me three automatically
bracketed shots, each half a stop different. One below the presumed
correct setting and one above. This gives me three shots to review, and
99 times out of 100, one of those three will be the best exposure. This
maneuver I used to do manually with my Nikons. With my digital camera, I
have it permanently set to do this for me. ‘Professional’ photography
tips available to the digital photographer.
Another ‘pro’ tip is in the placement of the subject in the frame. We
know that the most pleasant visual effect is when the subject is not
bang in the middle, but off center. Simply make sure the subject is one
third in from either edge of the viewfinder. Just by placing your
subject off-center immediately drags your shot out of the “ordinary”
basket. The technocrats call this the “Rule of Thirds. While still on
the Rule of Thirds, don’t have the horizon slap bang in the center of
the picture either. Put it one third from the top or one third from the
bottom. As a rough rule of thumb, if the sky is interesting put more of
it in the picture, but if it is featureless blue or grey include less of
it. Simple!
Now, many digital cameras have an optional grid you can have in the
viewfinder, with just a push of a button and a selection from the
digital menu. This grid automatically shows you whether your horizon is
level and where it is in the photo - one third down from the top, or one
third up from the bottom. The grid also shows you exactly where to place
your subject - at the intersection of thirds. In my digital days I would
have to hand draw the grid on the focusing screen. Now the digital
camera does it for me.
Now, before we leave composition, always take two shots, one in the
“usual” horizontal format (called “landscape”) and the second one in a
vertical (portrait) format. You will be amazed just how this simple
trick can give you a better picture. Landscapes taken in the vertical
format make the viewer look more deeply at what the photographer is
trying to say in the picture.
In attempting to get that different viewpoint you should also try to
take some shots from something which is not the standard eye-level
position. Lie on the floor, climb a ladder - anything! Just don’t get
stuck with standard eye-level views.
Finally, walk several meters closer to the subject and fill the frame. I
know you can crop later with Mr Photoshop, but you risk losing
sharpness.
More when I think about it next week.
Modern Medicine:
by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant
Cholesterol and Eggs - just a sick yolk?
I received an email from Chiang Mai asking clarification
about eggs and cholesterol. I quote the email in part: “In one case study
carried out by Doctors in Australia, one body builder consumes 12 eggs per
day, blended and drank, a total of 84 eggs a week, when his cholesterol was
checked it hardly registered. So I am very confused, with all the
conflicting information, I am not a Doctor, but the latest advice appears to
be eat eggs they are good for you.”
Confusing indeed, but like everything you read, not all of it is necessarily
correct (even something I might have written)! For example, a quick Google
(although in this case it will be a ‘gurgle’) brought out the following (in
my mind ridiculous) statements:
High cholesterol levels protects against infection (says who?)
High cholesterol levels makes you live longer (really?)
Now contrast that with the following from Mayo Clinic cardiologist Gerald
Gau, M.D., who replied to a similar question with the following:
“It’s understandable that you’re confused. Eggs are high in cholesterol, and
a diet high in cholesterol can contribute to elevated blood cholesterol
levels. However, the extent to which dietary cholesterol raises blood
cholesterol levels isn’t clear. Many scientists believe that saturated fats
and trans fats have a greater impact than does dietary cholesterol in
raising blood cholesterol.
“Adding to the confusion, the American Heart Association recently
acknowledged that as long as you limit dietary cholesterol from other
sources, it may be possible to include a daily egg in a healthy diet - a
statement that was heavily reported in the media.
“Here are the facts: One large egg has about 213 milligrams (mg) of
cholesterol - all of which is found in the yolk. If you are healthy, it’s
recommended that you limit your dietary cholesterol intake to less than 300
mg a day. If you have cardiovascular disease, diabetes or high LDL (or
“bad”) cholesterol, you should limit your dietary cholesterol intake to less
than 200 mg a day. Therefore, if you eat an egg on a given day, it’s
important to limit or avoid other sources of cholesterol for the rest of
that day.”
Now, getting back to the 84 eggs a week body builder with cholesterol levels
that hardly registered, that information is as significant as Uncle Ernie
who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, drank one bottle of bourbon and
ate a crate of eggs and lived to be 103. One instance is not enough. You
have to look at large numbers.
The initial results of the Framingham Study by Dr. Kanel were published in
1960. This appeared to show that cholesterol and heart disease were
intimately connected, but the medical world is notoriously slow to react to
change, I’m afraid, and Kanel’s words fell onto some stony ground. But there
were a few believers (I actually met Dr. Kanel in the early 1970’s and he
convinced me).
The believers continued the research and it was in 1994 that the
Scandinavian 4S study proved the concept and the need to lower cholesterol,
to in turn reduce heart disease, and became universally accepted. This was
done with 4,444 patients (and not one 84 egg body builder, or Uncle Ernie),
and these results have been verified many times with huge numbers of
patients since then.
It is true that we manufacture cholesterol. Cholesterol is found in every
cell in your body. This fat-like substance is an important component of cell
membranes and a building block in the formation of some hormones, but your
body makes all the cholesterol it needs. Any cholesterol in your diet is
extra - and that includes the eggs.
The Mayo clinic recommends not more than 300 mg of cholesterol in your diet,
and 200 mg if you already have cholesterol deposits in the arteries. At this
stage I would give more credence to the Mayo Clinic. What the Mayo Clinic is
proposing is part of EBM (Evidence Based Medicine), and the two eggs a week
concept seems to err on the safe side. But, as they say in Thailand, “Up to
you!”
 Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
Agony aunts in other newspapers like “Ask Abby” get their photos published with
their advice column, but you have never shown us your picture. Are you shy or
are you malformed in some way? There’s been some drawings of you, but we want
the real deal. How about it, Hillary? We are all very interested to know the
truth. Are you really real, or are you some sort of made up character?
Benny and the Jets
Dear Benny and the Jets,
Just how many are there in your gang, my Petal? And how about what? And what do
you mean by “made up”? Of course I make up when I go out. I don’t want to appear
impoverished or anything, and there’s just the odd wrinkle to cover, or plaster
over. Why do you need your gang in this with you? I’ve heard of your types
before, a young lady can’t take any risks these days. I remember when you could
cross the street safely, but those days have gone, unless you live in Nakhon
Nowhere (population 15 people and 23 buffalo, but one died this week, so make
that 22). No, you impertinent young man, I am neither shy nor malformed, but a
picture with the column just wastes space. Anyhow, that picture of Abby has been
used for the past 67 years, and she hasn’t changed a bit. It’s wonderful what
those cosmetic surgeons can do these days, not that I’m accusing my sister Abby
of a bit of nip and tuckery. Not at all. I’d have it myself if I had the money,
but I just blew last month’s rent money on a scoop of rice. Things are tough
Benny. Things are tough.
Dear Hillary,
A friend of mine who has been to Thailand a few times says that you can tell
lady-boys from lady-girls by their shape. He says the lady-boys don’t have hips,
so that’s the easiest way to tell if the person you are talking to is a woman or
otherwise. I was told to look for the Adam’s Apple. Which is right? Do you have
any sure way of telling? I don’t want to end up getting embarrassed.
Unsure
Dear Unsure,
Unfortunately there is no sure-fire detection method as Thai surgeons are very
clever at doing sex change operations so grabbing for a bunch of grapes doesn’t
work either as a go-no go test. Even the shape test does not work any more as
the lady-boys can buy silicone buttocks, which are like a set of knickers with
built in bumps for hips and bottom. Believe me, you can get them on the third
floor of the Royal Garden Plaza in Pattaya, and at any good gentlemen’s
outfitters near you. Adam’s Apples can be shaved and there is laser treatment to
get rid of facial hair. The easiest (and simplest) way is to look at the height,
look at the hands and feet and listen to the voice. If your new girlfriend is
taller than you, be very suspicious. If the girl speaks with a very husky voice,
be very suspicious. If she has very large hands and feet, be very suspicious.
And always remember, the best looking girls in Thailand are always males. So
don’t worry if you find you have made an error of judgment, you are not the
first, nor will you be the last.
Dear Hillary,
I have heard about tourists being drugged by katoeys and waking up and all their
money and passports are gone. Does this really happen, and are there some places
I should avoid on my trip here? I am coming over for three weeks next month. I
am looking to have a good time during my holidays, so a few beers might be drunk
and then after that, who knows? But I want to be safe, Hillary.
Harry from Huddersfield
Dear Harry from Huddersfield,
First off, is Huddersfield crime free? I doubt it very much, my Petal. Is
Thailand crime free? No, but the incidence is less than the UK or America. (As
one famous ex-mayor of New York said, “If you take out the killings, Washington
actually has a very, very low crime rate.”) Harry, if you walk through the red
light areas with a bellyful of booze at three in the morning in any major city
you are asking for trouble, as all ‘good people’ who are wanting a ‘good time’
are already in their beds. You have made yourself fair game with that
risk-taking type of behavior. Certainly the drugged coffee scam occurs in
Thailand, just as it is done everywhere in the world. And if you are wondering
how to spot a katoey from a regular “lady” read the letter above yours this
week, though there are not too many regular ladies around at three in the
morning. We would all like to live in the perfect society, but hearken to the
words of Aesop, “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public
office.” Aesop was living around 620-560 BC when he was writing his fables, so
you can see things haven’t changed very much in the last 2,500 years, have they!
Learn to Live to Learn: with Andrew Watson
Reclining
A week in Milan at no expense spent, in the midst of a glorious
European spring, where the blossoms are so super abundant that
blown by a lapping breeze, they cover the streets and grass like
a feather bed frost. I’ve never seen anything like it. Strolling
through Parco Sempione, the rather English park at the centre of
this cosmopolitan city, you emerge with clothes highlighted
white by flurries of this surreal spring snow. The air is
pregnant with honeyed aromas of the season and rose beds are
bursting with crimson and pink (I always stop and smell them).
For a city which attracts some less than favourable aesthetic
press (Milan’s misfortune to be born in Italy), I’m pleasantly
surprised.
 Designer
Chris Skøjtt’s recliners; very easy chairs they are, too.
With more than a hint of foppish, self-deprecating irony, I’m
sporting quadruple cuff, by Nini. Paul Smith went for four but
that was ten years ago, at least. It’s time to move on. I won’t
follow fashion here; fashion must follow me. The city has
swollen to almost twice his normal size as anybody who is
anybody (and everybody seems to be somebody) descends on the
world’s largest furniture design fair, “Interni”. To arrive
here, let alone triumph, requires vaulting ambition coupled with
artistic brilliance and something often overlooked in the
classrooms of the world; a competitive nature, the will to win.
In the arena of the politically correct, some who misunderstand
the business of differentiation and multiple intelligences would
have us believe that “everybody can come first”. Er, wrong. A
well-intentioned sentiment it might be, but misdirected and er,
wrong.
But back to Milan, where I had fallen into a recliner and
conversation with its designer, Chris Skøjtt, a winner by nature
and a young designer whose name is reverberating with increasing
resonance around the world of furniture design in general and
chair design in particular. He hasn’t got where he is today by
being happy with coming second. I wondered to what extent his
varied and by no means comfortable life experiences from Liberia
through the Middle East, Denmark and latterly London, had
contributed to his desire to be successful in a highly
competitive industry?
“I’m not sure what effect nearly dying has on you (which Chris
nearly did when he was baby in Liberia) but I think it must have
some effect. Maybe inside, you realise that there is something
that you need to do in life and that you can overcome anything
with passion and persistence. It’s true that I hate to lose and
love to win. I think there’s nothing worse than average. That’s
why I support Manchester United, by the way (I nodded in
approval, this was surely sound logic). But more seriously,
philosophically and ideologically, I think that the losers in
design are those that succumb to consumerism”.
He must have noticed my eyebrows raised. I liked what I was
hearing, “If someone has become rich through design,” he
continued with increasing élan, “then they can be considered a
success, but even if you’re not ‘financially famous’ then you
can still be a great designer. There’s an ethos that I follow:
‘don’t sell your soul to design’.”
Mmmmm, that’s all very well. I exhibited paintings for ten years
in London, trying to remain true, as far as possible, to my
notion of artistic integrity, but this did not mean that quality
paintings and quality income were mutually exclusive. In fact,
necessarily, quite the reverse was true, because it was my
living.
So, in light of Chris’s evident idealism, the obvious question
was, “But how would you make money?” He smiled. It wasn’t the
first time he’d heard it; “You live in the hope that the
consumer searches for the same clarity and purity in design that
you do, much like the days of Kaare Klint, when purity and
craftsmanship were truly valued and designs were bought and
meant to last a lifetime and not to fit a season or a trend.”
Doesn’t sound very ‘Milan’? Chris refuses to compromise on this,
does he? At least, how far would he go before he compromised?
Isn’t artistic compromise inevitable? Or is he incorruptible?
Chris wasn’t going to be provoked this easily. He paused,
implacable, before responding, “It depends on the intention of
the design. There’s nothing wrong with say, IKEA, purely
designed for consumerism and trend, because that’s their ethos,
which is much like fashion. There’s nothing wrong as long as
that is the intended outcome of the design and you don’t try and
play it off as something that it is not. For example, pretending
that it has a deeper meaning to it.”
Ah, I like this, it brings out the healthy sceptic in me; “How
can a chair contain a deeper meaning?” He didn’t blink an eye,
it was the artist talking; “If it is connected to the family,
like an heir loom, or the choice of material or the wood
resonates within you - it might be synonymous with your nation
for example - or it might have come from the place where you
were born. If memories form when you’re in a particular reading
chair. If the chair is the chair where you think, ‘this is where
I read my good books’ or ‘I drift away into a different world in
this chair’ or ‘that’s my siesta chair’. If physically, it feels
like the chair starts to form around you, over time. You
remember the marks the spilt coffee made, you notice the wearing
down of the arm rest as you use it and of course, it’s
comfortable to you but to you in particular, because it holds
memories for you that it doesn’t hold for anybody else.”
That was nothing if not a comprehensive answer. But it all came
from the user end of things. What about if you’re designing a
chair? How can you incorporate an individualised component into
it? It was as if Chris Skøjtt’s focus had intensified. His eyes
were steely in their gaze; the competitive instinct had been
aroused.
Next week: Getting visually tactile
DOC ENGLISH Teaching your kids how to learn English:
Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Hello! Welcome back to the column for parents teaching
their kids English at home (you brave people).
There are many tests available these days to check your child’s reading
ability. One fairly reliable test that has been in use since the 70’s is
the ‘Burt Reading Test’. I am not saying that this is the best test out
there, but it is one that is easy to administer and gives results that
are easy to understand. The test comprises of a set of words that your
child must decipher. This test is designed for native English Speaking
children, so if your child is not a native English speaker, you should
expect their general reading age to be one or two years behind.
Instructions for carrying out the Burt Reading Test:
· Administer the test in a quiet area away from other children.
· Children (younger than 9 years old) start at the top and read words
from left to right.
· Stop after 10 consecutive errors (or earlier if struggling).
· Your child should not be told whether his responses were correct or
not; if he asks, only general encouragement should be given.
· Your child should be allowed to read at his/her own speed.
· Your child should not be hurried, and self-corrections should be
counted as correct.
· Guessing is allowed.
· Count the words that have been read correctly. This is the raw score.
Consult the chart ‘Revised Norms For Burt (Re-arranged)’ and convert the
raw score into a Reading Age; e.g. a score of 24 would give a reading
age of 6.5. The reading ages are given in years and months (Not years
and tenths of a year).
Recording: While the child is reading the words on the printed sheet,
you should record the responses on a separate sheet (a photocopy of the
test works well).
The table for checking your child’s results and for determining their
reading age is too long for this article, so I have included a link
here: http://www.rrf.org.uk/Burtreadingtestonweb.pdf. Remember that this
test is just a general indicator of your child’s general reading age;
don’t be too worried if your child scores low, it may simply be that
they have not encountered some of these vocabulary items yet. You can
find alternative tests at the ‘Learning Able Kids’
(http://www.learningabledkids.com/reading/reading_tests_free.htm) site
if you want a second opinion on your child’s reading ability.
Ready to start? Here is the test. Good luck!
to
is
up he
at
for
my
sun one
of
big
some
his or
an
went
boys
that
girl
water
just
day
wet
pot
things
no
told
love
now sad
nurse
carry quickly
village scramble
journey
terror return
twisted shelves
beware
explorer known
projecting tongue
serious
domineer obtain
belief luncheon
emergency events
steadiness nourishment fringe
formulate s carcely
universal
commenced overwhelmed
circumstances destiny
urge
labourers exhausted
trudging
refrigerator melodrama encyclopaedia
a pprehend
motionless ultimate
atmosphere reputation
binocular
economy
theory humanity
philosopher contemptuous
autobiography excessively champagne
terminology perambulating
efficiency
unique perpetual
mercenary glycerine
influential
atrocious fatigue
exorbitant physician
microscopical contagion renown
hypocritical fallacious
phlegmatic melancholy
palpable eccentricity
constitutionally
alienate
phthisis poignancy
ingratiating subtlety
Have a go at the test yourself if you like. Are you smarter than a 5th
Grader?
That’s all for this week mums and dads. If you want more information on
reading tests please email me at: [email protected] Enjoy
spending time with your kids.
Let’s go to the movies:
by Mark Gernpy
Now playing in Pattaya
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: UK/US
Adventure/Family/Fantasy – In this second installment of the series
based on the children’s books written by the Christian apologist C.S.
Lewis, the children who had been appointed kings and queens of Narnia at
the end of the first story, return from England one year later to find
that 1,300 years have passed in Narnia, and things are not going well.
The Golden Age of Narnia has passed, and Narnia is now under the control
of an evil king who rules the land without mercy.
You will enjoy this sequel if you enjoyed the first film, or if you are
interested in Christian allegories (the lion Aslan represents Christ who
sacrificed himself to save Narnia at the end of episode one, the White
Witch is Satan tempting Edmund, who is Judas, while Peter represents
“the Wise Christian”). Or see it if you simply enjoy children’s
adventure/fantasy stories.
This episode features bickering between the two rival presumptive kings
of Narnia (Peter and Caspian), both of whom fight against streaks of
cowardice and uncertainty within their characters. Generally favorable
reviews.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: US
Adventure/Action – Indy is back, after an absence of 19 years, and is he
welcome! I think this movie is just a lot of fun – preposterous, but
utterly delightful. With Harrison Ford (of course), Shia LaBeouf (being
groomed as the next Indy), and a deliciously evil Cate Blanchett, all
directed by Steven Spielberg.
Nineteen years have passed within the series’ timeframe as well, and
it’s 1957, at the height of the cold war. Indiana Jones is abducted from
his quiet life as a professor to help agents of the Soviet Union find
one of the most sought-after archaeological items in history – the
Crystal Skull of Akator, a legendary object of fascination,
superstition, and psychic power. They travel to the most remote corners
of Peru – a land of ancient tombs, forgotten explorers, and a rumored
city of gold. It’s simple: If you enjoyed the previous Indy films,
you’ll like this. Generally favorable reviews.
Penelope: UK/US Comedy/Drama/Fantasy – This modern fairy tale
begins with a generations-old curse by a jilted lover: the next girl in
the aristocratic Wilhern family will be born with a pig’s snout and
ears. Though ages pass, the bad luck finally manifests itself in young
Penelope much to the shame of her mother.
The film depends wholly on the charm of Christina Ricci, James McAvoy,
and Catherine O’Hara (as the mother); if you enjoy them, you may well
enjoy this slightest of fables. Mixed or average reviews.
Memory: Thai Horror/Mystery – In Thai only. A much anticipated
film starring Thai superstar Ananda Everingham. It’s a really nice Thai
horror film, very crisp and clean in its direction and camera work, and
with some of the world’s greatest squeaking doors. But . . . the film is
shown without English subtitles. This is a real shame.
Speed Racer: US Action/Drama – A family film based on the classic
1960s Japanese and then US anime series about a boy who was born to race
cars. A dense and visually inventive work, it was filmed almost entirely
in front of a green screen, with the backgrounds and foregrounds added
later, using a layering method reminiscent of anime that keeps both the
foreground and background in focus. John Goodman and Susan Sarandon play
the parents.
Generally negative reviews. Nevertheless, I think it is a milestone of a
motion picture, extraordinary in the details of its universe. I suggest
you give it a chance to work its magic. The more times you see it, the
better it becomes: the races become easier to follow, and you are able
to spot some of the incredibly rich details, and references to earlier
films – such as the ending’s reference to the ending of 2001. And you’ll
better appreciate more some of the original sights never before seen on
screen.
Iron Man: US Action/Adventure – Superb popular entertainment. A
huge hit around the world, both with the public and with the critics. I
think they got everything right in this movie for once, and I’m sure
you’ll like it very much. Robert Downey Jr. plays a wealthy weapons
manufacturer who builds an armored suit in order to escape his terrorist
kidnappers, and ultimately decides to use its technology to fight
against the evil use of weapons that he himself created. The intense and
powerful Downey is simply brilliant in the role. Generally favorable
reviews.
Somtum: Thai Action/Comedy – Stars the giant Australian wrestler
and strongman Nathan Jones, who was widely popular as a martial arts
fighter in previous Thai films such as Tom Yum Goong. Here he plays a
fighter of immense bulk, but of equally immense timidity, and with a
heart of gold, as he and a bunch of Thai children befriend each other.
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