The biggest races during the 2-day Macau GP were the WTCC finale and F3. WTCC rookie Jose Maria Lopez has been dominating all season by winning 9 races before coming to Macau and has already won the series championship. Then he won 1 more (from the pole): the first race at Macau, to break the all-time single season win record of 9, previously held by Muller, who was also the defending champion, ousted by Lopez. I think he could have swept both races given how strong his car was if not for WTCC's interesting qualifying rule: the top 10 starting drivers in race 1 start in reverse order in race 2 (i.e., #10 in race 1 starts from the pole in race 2) That gave another former champion and Macau "specialist" Huff a chance. He climbed up to P2 shortly after race 2 started and eventually passed the leader (whose power steering malfunctioned) after a late restart. The other WTCC highlight was 9-time rally champ Sebastian Loeb showing off his drifting technique on the famous hairpin of the Macau street course. Not sure if WTCC will come back to Macau in 2015 (I'm pretty sure I'm not coming back to Macau GP in 2015 though :( ) The F3 race featured future F1 driver Max Verstappen (who will be the youngest ever at the age of 18) The race didn't start well: a big crash in the front collected many cars, including the 2 frontrunners. Vestappen didn't get a chance to show off his ability. Rosenqvist was not challenged much after the restart and won easily.
The 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup series finale started a few hours later on the same Sunday in Miami. The 4 remaining drivers eligible for the championship: Harvick, Hamlin, Logano and Newman, were up front for most of the race. Harvick, Hamlin and Gordon all looked strong. However, Hamlin faded after a late restart, leaving Harvick up front with Newman chasing in P2 but the challenge was too late and Harvick won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup championship. Newman almost completed THE "mission": winning the championship without winning one race all season long prior to this final race (He would have won this race if he passed Harvick on the last lap) and thus proving how ridiculous the current chase format is (but he didn't. So this chase format is safe for now :P Ironically, the 1-win Kenseth winning the cup over Newman, the winningest driver in 2003, was the reason that NASCAR started its 1st chase format) Check out how ESPN ridicule this 2014 season with its "awards"
Then we had the F1 series finale one week later in Abu Dhabi. It took me a while to find a bar that showed the race live (found in East TST) The pressure was on the point leader Hamilton and the 2nd place Rosberg, who could have leapfrogged if he won and Hamilton finished worse than P2 because of the double-points rewarded to this final race. Rosberg started from pole while Hamilton from 2nd but trouble with Rosberg's car dropped him all the way outside top 10 and Hamilton kept his lead over a strong Massa to win the race and the 2014 championship for the 2nd time in his young career His previous championship was won in 2008. Coincidentally, Massa won the final race of that season but lost the title by 1 point. That was the last season that the championship was decided on the final race prior to this one! As much as people hate the double-point rule (and likely to be abandoned,) that's the only reason this last race matter :P Let's hope for a more competitive 2015 F1 season!
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
The Movie Post
As usual, I have a lots of movies to write about after watching them on the long US-HK round trip. This time I watched:
- Lucy: obviously Scarlett Johansson was the draw for this one. They didn't even try to make her look pretty in this but it doesn't matter. The sci-fi story is good enough. Most of the special effects were done well to show her special power after the drug accidentally got into her body which forced her brain to develop to an unprecedented level.
- Captain America 2: This is another movie with Johansson, who is even more attractive as the Black Widow here. I am a sucker for super-hero movies and enjoyed the first Captain America movie quite a bit (I liked the part about using the Captain as a propaganda machine) It's mostly predictable: the people with the most political power being the too-ambitious bad guy. The heroes had to fall from the grace before their triumphal return. Still, it's entertaining.
- Hercules: This is yet another movie with ties to comics, as well as Greek Mythology. Actually, it's more about de-mythicize the legends of Hercules: he didn't fight alone and the monsters he defeated were actually human foes. The centaurs he battled were actually cavalry. Again, it's kinda predictable like Captain America in the sense that the ones who were supposed to be good guys turned out to be bad guys.
- Million dollar arms: Sports movie is another of my favorite genre. This movie is about a once powerful US sports agent needed new blood to revive his career and decided to harvest talent from India, where there's a huge population of cricket players, whose bowling motion is kinda similar to pitching in baseball. He organized contests over there and the big prize money eventually attracted players with potentials. He brought them to US for more training and try out with MLB. I am not gonna give out the ending here. What I like about the movie is how relationship between people are portrayed: e.g., mentors and the students, family members, agent and the players he brought into this foreign country.
- Draft day: a movie about American football is of course a must-see for me! And this is familiar territories for Kevin Costner, who has starred in a baseball movie before. He played the role of Cleveland Browns' GM in this movie. The plot is about how he handled the NFL draft: trading picks with other teams and evaluating talents. It's also about how he dealt with the existing players, his mom, his girlfriend, the owner and the head coach who didn't necessarily agree with his decisions.
- 分手100次: 老實說我不像是會看港產愛情片的人，但我的確看了不少，尤其是坐飛機時，以及由鄭伊健主演的，以前有百分百感覺，近年有我老婆唔夠秤，我老公唔生性，還有本片。男主角伊健飾演一個kidult，女主角周秀娜（性感女神，片中不乏吊帶熱褲等養眼鏡頭）飾演對伊健照顧無微不至的女友，但常常會用分手威脅對方。雖然劇情頗有犯駁（伊健錢從何處來？），但相當成功帶出戀愛關係的無奈：必須包容對方缺點。這個網誌詳細介紹了本片，大家可以參考下。
- Rock of ages: this is the big-screen version of an 80s hair metal themed musical (that's why everything is sung in the movie.) Fans of the genre would immediately recognize this as the name of a big hit from 80s hair band Def Leppard, even though the song itself wasn't used in the movie. The whole movie is pretty much an elaborated version of an 80s metal MV: a girl chasing her dream to Hollywood and had to struggle (working as a stripper to survive) Of course that's not enough for a 120 min musical/movie so a struggling male character was added (a rocker who had to join a boy band to get signed) The writer also threw in a larger-than-life primadonna (played by Tom Cruise) Don't get me wrong though 'coz I enjoyed the movie a lot, as an 80s hair metal fan myself. Each actor/actress actually sang their own parts. I'm surprised that Tom Cruise could rock! He has definitely earned more respect from me after this.
- Batman Dark Knight Rises: this movie got famous for the wrong reason: a gunman opened fire at a movie theater on its premiere night :( I have never been a big fan of the Batman movie "franchise" so I've watched only a few (the "classic" one by Tim Burton came to my mind) This one is definitely better than expected. Again, the story is a typical super-hero one: Bruce Wayne was beaten and locked up and eventually escaped and revenged. The ending really got people talking: did he really sacrifice himself to save the city? Well, it can be interpreted in many different ways.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
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