Godzilla: King of Monsters - Movie Review (3/5 stars)

By Hamza Shafique (Instagram / Facebook)

What do you expect when you go for movies like Godzilla, King Kong and Meg? Of course, some crazy, well-choreographed, visually spectacular, CGI heavy Monster action on screen and from that perspective Godzilla: King of Monsters has full marks. What I feel this franchise still lacks is a plausible narrative, but Monster part especially the action is so amazingly done, that it covers for it in this installment.

Aladdin - Movie Review (2.5/5 Stars)

By Hamza Shafique (Instagram / Facebook)

My first impression when I saw the trailer of Aladdin was not very good. As a kid I had already imagined how Agrabah would look in real life, so when I saw the trailer nothing gelled with what I already had in mind. For example, Agrabah looked more Indian than Arab, Jaffar didn't look evil infact he looked like an angry comedian, Will Smith's Genie lacked Robin Williams' energetic voice and animated fluidity, Jasmine lacked the big expressive eyes of her 1992 animated character and Mena Massoud's Aladdin with his zillion forehead lines just didn't look like the street smart hero I had in mind. But I must admit I had a pretty decent time at the cinema with my family and all the elements mentioned above didn't really bother me while going through this new world of Aladdin created by Guy Richie.

Travel Wisdom – Weekend Trips and how to plan

By Hamza Shafique (Instagram / Facebook)

Instagram is full of travel bloggers with perfect beach bodies telling their audience in perfect written quotes that you live only once and life is short, so enjoy the max possible. What no one tells is that Life is short and budgets are even shorter. Story of every middle class, corporate slave, Desi travel enthusiast like me. I guess we all have seen ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’, where Ranbir Kapoor, to pursue his passion for traveling has to detached himself from his world (friends/ family) and responsibilities to an extent that he finds out 2 weeks late about his father’s demise, and that’s kind a true for our world. If you immerse yourself into Desi world as a responsible adult following the fixed path that most of us follow, you will always have millions of responsibilities and priorities unless you are an Ambani or Zardari. As a result, you will always be short of time and if you manage to find some time to travel then budget constraints will always be there.

I have found a solution for this, which works, at least for me and that is "weekend trips". Instead of planning a full fledge trip that spans over weeks just plan a quick getaway manageable with in available weekend, so you can save your annual leave for the important family events that you may need to attend throughout the year and being in Dubai gives us this amazing opportunity of budget travels with amazing weekend offers, easy on pocket as well.

This year I travelled to Turkey for 2 nights cost 1200 Dirhams (flight and hotel only), 3 nights to Georgia cost 1099 Dirhams (flight and hotel only) and without having this facility of weekend getaways I would have never been able to travel to these two amazing places in the first 3 months of 2019.

My major concern is always how to cover a country having thousands of years of history and hundreds of touristic sites in just 3 days and for that I have developed a simple five step planning process which ensures I see/ experience most of what that country has to offer in whatever time/resources I have. Here it is.

Brightburn - movie review(3.5/5 Stars)

By Hamza Shafique (Instagram / Facebook)

What an interesting take on the classic tale of Superman. An alien boy raised by Human Parents who then finally becomes mankind savior, here basic plot elements are kind a same as we have already seen in trailers but there is a twist, our little boy in red cape is no mankind savior in fact he is here to take over the world.