The Grand Budapest Hotel... and related memories

so... i am still not good with english-speaking movies, but wasn't able to resist this one. XD before i plunged right into the sea of jap dramas and films and not making any plans to turn back, some of those familar actor names did manage to lay down some really fond memories.

when the lead actor is Ralph Fiennes i think i automatically expected something much richer and darker with much more depth... *sob* and then it turns out to be really nothing more than something that can be summarised as some good guy from the east declaring "my non-fickle heart longs for the west when i am in the west and although i've admired it for a lifetime i still very much don't get it"

... 囧

...and then some random writer and reader come along and get randomly excited. and then it turns out to be a random tribute to Stefan Zweig.（i will reserve my opinion on Zweig and his nostalgia. ）

anyways the not very inspiring movie aside... i did enjoy seeing the familiar faces, esp Ed Norton. i don't actually follow his movies cos i find half of his characters are really disturbing stuff and i don't really have the stomach for them... -_-|||||

but every time seeing him on screen brings back the fondest memories of Kingdom of Heaven and King Baldwin IV. Its been almost 10 years, but this quote of his I still love to bits. Now that I am a bit older, perhaps more so in its entirety:

＂When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that. ＂

I will remember that.