Bruce Almighty: What if you were God? 0 lalalas

A news reporter, Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) is not happy with his life, mainly because he couldn't get his dream position of a news anchor. He complains about God being unfair and not doing His job. God (Morgan Freeman) meets up with him and gives him God's power to have a taste of what being God feels like.

This is another movie about guy getting into trouble, overcomes it and learns something about life. What's different is that it portrays God in an interesting way. Morgan Freeman played the character God pretty well. He is wise, witty, and composed and not downright ridiculous like typical comedies would do. The movie plays a lot with the idea of becoming God and doesn't lack parodies of biblical events like the parting of the red sea or in this movie's context, tomato soup. Jim Carrey is a good comedian and he doesn't fail to make religion fun (or make fun of religion) in this film. Although in the end, that is not the movie's true purpose. The main theme, as I perceive, is about humility and using your gifts to benefit others.

One really pleasant surprise is seeing Steve Carrell as Evan Baxter in this movie. I've seen this guy in the US "The Office" series and I liked his characters a lot. I heard he's going to be the main character in the upcoming "Evan Almighty" which is something I'm looking forward to.

Jennifer Aniston is pretty convincing in her character as Bruce's disappointed girlfriend. Generally speaking, this movie has its share of laughter and touching moments, but its plot is somewhat predictable and the jokes aren't that amusing/smart. And it doesn't have the emotional impact as say, Click. Despite all that flaws, it's still an above-average comedy that stands tall among the overproduced cheap low-taste comedies.

Die Hard 4: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfu- 0 lalalas

Well, there’s nothing new about this movie’s plot. It’s the usual clichéd, recycled stuff alright. Some bad guys hack into the U.S. intelligence network, controlling everything, siphoning money throwing the world’s greatest nation into an unprecedented havoc. The good guy cop single-handedly kicks the baddie’s ass real hard. Well, not really single handed: he’s got a young hacker comrade (or hackers, if you count that fatty Freddy warlock couch potato yang berisi). And there are the incompetent government bureaucrats who couldn’t do no shit when faced with the bad guy’s onslaught who always shows up late when action is over just to pick up the leftovers. Man this hacker thing is becoming a trend, isn’t it? They gotta do something about it because it’s getting more and more uninspiring and un-innovative with each time it’s used.

What’s nice about this movie is watching Bruce Willis in action. He may be getting old but he still packs a punch. Seeing him pulling those stunts like using a car to kill a freaking chopper is just pure awesomeness. He’s bad tempered, foul-mouthed – calling everyone names for one - and invincible - explosives, assassins, Chinese ninja chick couldn’t snuff him out; covered with injuries, he just stands up, shrugs off the dust, and gets ready for action again. One helluva badass cop if you ask me, and he’s enjoying himself.

Pause~ Check out the trailer if you haven't seen the movie (includes the car kills chopper scene)




Another thing I liked about this movie is that it doesn’t preach “noble” principles like justice and U.S. patriotism that bunch load of cheesy craps like many movies do…cough…cough….Transf…… When he was asked by the hacker Matt Farrell why he is fighting so hard, John McClane answers because no one else will do it, so he gotta do it. Just that, no didactic speech or moralizing. And this movie doesn’t go out its way to erect a ridiculous romance plot – while there were hints of romance, this movie doesn’t stretch it and strike out a couple just for the sake of it.

The action was great. Crisp and clear and your usual Bing! Bang! And Boom! Some scenes were pretty creative and overall, it’s fun. One thing that hmmm…shocked me… was how hard Bruce Willis pounded a young hot chick like Maggie Q. That's a very serious offense against women! The actions were pretty exaggerated, e.g. people standing up as if nothing happened after say, getting banged hard by a car, but hey, it’s Die Hard, and that’s the freaking spirit, I says!

About the other characters, they were alright. Matthew Farrell was sort of the comic relief. He sometimes overdoes it, but it’s kept in check. I usually don’t prefer young whippersnappers in movies, as they usually don’t have much acting skills, or they’re too wimpy or they become unimpressive heroes. But I’ve gotta admit, I liked him. The way he develops from being a scaredy cat to one who dares to defy the bad guys. About the bad guys, they’re just the stereotyped bad guys. Arch bad guy Thomas Gabriel has some hmmm… unpleasant history while the others were just cardboards.

To be honest, I was pretty disappointed with Mai's character. It wasn’t like I was expecting hot and steamy scenes, but just some show of flesh to please the eye. She’s not as hot as Megan Fox anyway. Thank God there wasn’t any lovey-dovey stuff between Mai and the bad guy or Farrell/Lucy. Superficial romance only makes me cringe. And I was pleased that the movie didn’t steer away from its path by setting up stages for just-for-show heroism and trying too hard to get emotional. It remained true to its action genre and gave the audience a satisfying serving of it. It didn’t bother trying to please everybody by portraying heroism and patriotism half-assedly like cough….cough… Transf….

This movie kicks ass. It’s honest and comfortable with itself and doesn’t try things out of range nor being what it’s not, unlike the world’s flashiest GM/eBay commercial.

Peace.

Shrek the Third: Is the third serving too much? 0 lalalas

Recently I've watched Shrek 3. I've been a huge fan of Shrek and Shrek 2 because there were so much fun and so many brilliant parodies in those film.

Shrek 3, in my opinion, was just so-so. Somehow it lacked the energy and momentum of ita prequels. Anyway, in this movie, the frog king of Far Far Away Kingdom has died and Shrek, not wanting to be king, tries to find Arthur who is another heir to the throne. Prince Charming, wanting to usurp the throne, rouses the bad fairy-tale guys to rise against the good guys.

The new characters, Arthur and Merlin wasn't that impressive. Moreover, the movie seemed to have become a children's cartoon instead of the grown-up fairy tale it used to be. Maybe the parodies weren't significant enough. I don't know exactly, but it's just much weaker than Shrek and Shrek 2.

Anyway there's still likable characters in the movie. My favourite scene was the interrogation scene where Prince Charming asks Gingy and Pinocchio where Shrek is. Oh man, that scene was absolutely the bomb. Gingy having those flashbacks and suddenly goes nuts, singing "On the good ship lollipop", while Pinocchio tries to avoid telling lies by making obfuscating statements. Catch Gingy in action here


and Pinocchio here.


Not a bad movie, but not a great movie either. It certainly has fallen below everyone's expectations. Maybe a third serving is straining our appetite too much?

Transformers: More than meets the eye? 0 lalalas

Kuantan, June 28:

My friends and I went to watch the Transformers. I've watched the Transformer cartoon as a kid, but unfortunately, due to some serious brain injury,

my poor skull...

I don't remember much of it. And being out of contact with things related to Transformers many years, it became nothing more than a shadow of my innocent, happy childhood.

It's entertaining alright. Oozing with metallic mecha-coolness, this movie boasts of fast-paced, explosive action featuring the ultimate showdown between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Watching them pounding and blowing each other up into scrap metals is an exhilarating experience, with all those explosions and the robots' unbelievably agile moves, not to forget car-chase scenes. The CGI animation is brilliant - all the robots are designed to the tiniest details and their transformation is pretty cool.

Besides that, it features an attractive and youthful cast. With her tight abs, curvacious body, and angellic face, I bet Megan Fox (as Mikaela) got a lot of guys (and lesbos) drooling over her - and I'm a hot-blooded, healthy youth. The few scenes where she shows some skin were really... ahem, pleasing to the eye.

And the hot Australian hacker played by Rachael Taylor is not bad either. Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky is alright, energetic and lively as he is, and a bit on the cute side.

Yhis movie is filled with cheesy jokes and witty remarks, which, while not making the movie smart, manages to amuse.

Top notch animations, youthful lead characters, romance plot, funny scenes... Seems perfect.

Unfortunately, no. The plot is far from convincing, and the character development is practically non-existent. In this movie, the transformers are just impressive transforming robots without distinguished personality. Well, that's robots for you, I guess. And the romance plot is obviously just for the sake of being there. The lead characters jump from barely knowing each other to becoming lovers. And the scene when Sam was looking for his ancestor's glasses in his house: Although it's amusing, it's needlessly long and clogs up screentime which would have been better to flesh out the characters.

All in all, this movie is superficially entertaining. Well, just like many of the modern things, this movie is wrapped with an attractive package - pleasing the visual and auditory senses - but neglects the content. While it thrills the audience with the animations and explosions, it fails to contribute to his thoughts or rouse his deeper emotions of pity, anger, and sadness.

More than meets the eye? I'm afraid not.

Spiderman~ Spiderman~ 0 lalalas

I watched Spiderman 3 last night. I have mixed feelings about this movie. It started pretty well, with the usual stuff - the birth of a villain, Lelaki Pasir (is that the Malay translation in theater?) with a sad story. Which reminds me of an old song: Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (bung, bung, bung, bung)Make him the cutest that I've ever seen (bung, bung, bung, bung)Give him two lips like roses and clover (bung, bung, bung, bung)Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over. by Chordettes titled Mr. Sandman.

Methinks this villain is extremely powderful hor because he is made of sand wor. How can you possibly destroy him huh? Water washes him away but he can easily regather his parts. Bomb him? The sand disperses but again, he can collect himself again. So I still haven't figured out how you can defeat him, permanently.

But anyway, back to the main topic: Spiderman himself. I think Toby Maguire couldn't manage the bad boy part. Especially the dance parts. He's supposed to be flamboyant, charming, but he just looks ridiculous without failing to remind me of

Ooops, that was the wrong picture. No, the bad spidey reminded me of

Peter Parker danced just like Austin Powers.

Anyway, I thought the development of the characters weren't detailed enough. For example, the inner struggle of Spiderman with his dark side could've been more fleshed out. And Venom was like a push-over. The ending fight was flashy and spectacular, but it's like Venom's so weak. While Spidey and his friend was pounding Sandman, Venom was nowhere. Conveniently he always appears for a second then get knocked away, hits something and faint until the guys finished off Sandman.

I thought there were too many characters and they wanna give a bit of attention to eveyone without really focussing on anyone.

Putting all of that aside, SM3 (haha SM) is not that bad. For viewing pleasure, it has all the eye candies. Slick actions, cool animations (sandstorm), cool new characters. Heck, what more can you ask of a modern commercial film?

p/s: I'm not an avid reader of Spiderman comic so I'm not in a position to comment about how the director didn't do justice to Venom.

Breaking news: Done and done 0 lalalas

It's 4:30 a.m. now. I've just finished packing my stuff. It took me about maybe 9 hours to finish the job as I was constantly faced by the dilemma of whether to keep certain item or not. Tedious work - I wish I've had a maid to do the job for me.

I've written my last paper - Physics 170 about 16 hours ago. It wasn't too bad. Phew, I'm so glad that it's finally done now. Reminded me of a Chinese proverb "养兵千日，用兵一时".  All this time I've been studying and neglecting pretty much everything else except gaming. I'm afraid in the future I might only do these two things.

I'm finally moving out in about 6 hours time. I'm gonna miss this place and my floormates with their idiosyncrasies and weird antics, and things that happened here during my short stay. It's true that the food wasn't that good and stuff was expensive and going up to my room on 4th floor was taxing, but I'm still going to miss this place. In 6 hours time, room 407 Cariboo, which once belonged to me, will be just another generic Vanier room.

I watched a movie while taking a break from packing up my stuff. Have you heard of Grindhouse? Blood, gore, nudity... you name it, you got it. Basically the film has 2 parts, one directed by Robert Rodriguez (Sin City), another by Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill). Pretty much a no-brainer movie - there's a joke/pun about no-brainer in the movie - but it's entertaining. Part 1: Planet Terror was about zombie invasion and how survivors - including a chick with a machine gun as right leg (how cool is that?) escape. Lots of cheesy one-liners and lots of action, it's an above-average zombie flick.  Tarantino's part is called Death Proof. It's about a crazy stuntman who stalks hot chicks and kills them with his "death proof" car. It has a lot of dialogues, which I personally enjoyed, but are disliked by many movie-goers. And it has an exciting car-race at the later part where eventually the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Both parts features mutilation of body parts, and are suitable for minors and those faint of heart. It has some fake movie trailers in between and "missing reel". A really unconventional and innovative film and I can say it's fairly well done.

(I'm so going to have a headache tomorrow...) Another update: I've just discovered that I'll be back at Malaysia at 12th of May instead of 11th (I made some inaccurate assumptions). I'll be staying at my relative's place until then. Any plans? Well, I plan to get my glasses fixed - the 2 pads that support the nose for my glasses has fallen off for a few months now. I'm also going to repack my stuff again for my return to Malaysia. And I'm going to hang around my Canadian and Malaysian friends hopefully. And plenty of rest.

That's all for now, folks. Tata~

Status: Chaotic 0 lalalas

Life's totally getting out of hand. I sleep late at nights, sometimes because I'm studying, sometimes because I'm playing Oblivion, most of the time a mixture of both. Like the tragic hero who knows his actions will only lead him to his doom yet sadly and deliberately walking down the path to destruction. Hopefully I'll never have to face that.

So finals are going ok. Had my APSC quiz, it was so-so. English, for which I've studied very hard, didn't turn out as well as I'd hope to. One essay got out of hand, loss focus and consumed too much time, leaving too little time to brood on another short essay. Crappy, slightly, but I'm consoled by the feeling that I did better than my first in-class essay, which earned a B-. Physics was sweet, a lot of questions were actually from past year papers and assignment. I don't want a brag (note the paradox - am I even using the correct term?), but I finished the paper in an hour and a half and spent the remaining hour checking my answers and deriving a formula that I forgot. Slightly un-challenging, but at least I felt better than having done a crappy job after preparing so hard, e.g. English.

Tomorrow's Math. I've prepared sufficiently I guess, although there are still rooms for uncertainty. Hopefully no mental block this time. I've to sleep early (note the paradox), and it's 2.00 a.m. and exam's on 12.

Enjoying Oblivion frequently now, which is something that I wasn't supposed to do, at least for now. My character's getting stronger, but the NPCs' got stronger too and kicked my ass really hard it cracked for a few times (Reader: But isn't the ass cracked already in the firsy place? Me: shut up, will ya?). Just found out how to get the maximum out of leveling up, can't wait to try it out, but Math comes first.

Oh yeah, did I tell you guys I watched Borat. Crazy movie. Loved that part where he fights the fat director naked and running around naked. And when he exclaimed to the rodeo audience that "We support your war on terror", then spoils it all by singing Kazakhstan anthem in U.S. anthem's music (or was it the other way round?). And when he finds out from his driving tutor that you need woman's consent to marry her in U.S. Funny movie and very vulgar. Nevertheless my favourite movie is still V. It has a sort of elegant beauty and tragically heroic atmosphere unmatched by other movies I've watched, not to mention the depth and the frequent references to Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my favourite books.

Haven't watched anything since then.

It stopped snowing and started raining again. Vancouver is known for largely snowless but rainy winter. But it's still snowing in my room because my hair is too long (Reader: ewww~ you're so gross. Me: Thank you.) My glasses are also slightly damaged because of paintball helmet and haven't fix it yet. So much is yet to be done, yet so little is the will to do it. Gotta curb my computer addiction, but as always, easier said than done.

Gotta get back to studies now. Sleeping really soon. This is all for now. You guys in Malaysia, I miss you a lot!

Why do I live in the shadow of the past?

[Exeunt]

Vancouver Film Festival 0 lalalas

Last Wednesday, I went to the Vancouver Film Festival in Granville with 5 housemates. You may wonder, "What's so special about this film fest? Do you see film stars or what?" I don't know about film stars (because I didn't see any), but the films here have never been screened before in any part of the world, have not been reviewed (or censored/cut) by the film board, and they usually have bizzare (or eccentric/mature) themes.

The movie I watched was titled "La Cou-I-forgot-the-second-part-of-the-second-word-in-the-title-Oh-my-God" . Before the real movie started, there was a random short (weird) movie. It was about a woman being anaesthetize by a weird-looking doctor, who cut her heart (in the movie, you can see the heart - eew!) out (by the way, we saw her naked breast too). Then the heartless (literally) woman moves around like a zombie (!!). Then the woman's mother dresses her up in cute red clothes. Later the red-clothed, heartless woman and her mother and her husband and her child and the grave digger and the doctor gather in front of a grave made for the woman. The doctor gives her heart back, which she put back into her body and she smiles and everybody smiles and they have a tea-party. Then the scene changes into the doctor, looking wretched, who meets the woman whom he treated once. The woman smiles but she doesn't remember him. ~The end~ (One of the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life, besides a front-toothless God of Nature).

Now to the real movie: It started with a hot, steamy sex scene. Nudity here (no genitalia, sorry) but the heroine is not that gorgeous, methinks; I think perkypie, despite the fact that she is gaining weight, is hotter. I found out later that the heroine, who already has a husband and 2 not-so-lovely children, is frequently having hot, steamy sex with her more-good-looking-than-her-husband brother. The incestuous relationship started when they were travelling together as teenagers, ceased momentarily before and after her marriage, and continued a few weeks after her marriage. However, everyone around them turns a blind eye towards this damned relationship.

The heroine tries to get out of it by persuading her husband to apply for a position in a far away place (far from her brother), which he succeeds. So the family is about to move to another place now. A long, arduous, painstaking struggle ensued which sees the damned couple trying to separate coolly but unable to do so. Both of them tried to love another person (she her husband and the brother an extremely ugly girlfriend who somehow looks like her). To make things worse, her daughter (also rather ugly) fell in love with her brother and even offers to have sex with him (what!? a nece-uncle incest) which makes the movie more disturbing. When he rejects his niece, she questions him if it's ok to have sex with his own sister but not his niece? She then questions if the fact that she's his lover's daughter forbids him from having sex with her. He only answers, "I don't love you" and chases her out.

Later, the jealous daughter who is constantly being ignored by her uncle (who was always only eyeing the heroine) explicitly hints to the father (or heroine's husband) that the two commited incest. The husband gets jealous because the two females in his life never looked at him the way they look at the brother. Finally, the heroine admits to her husband that she loves her brother, something he has always strongly suspected/knew but never was willing to face. Unable to contain his jealousy and rage, he argues with the heroine (who promises him again and again that the problem is solved/will be solved when they move) and asks the brother to leave the heroine alone. But the husband and the lovers know it won't be resolved, ever, because the lovers need each other. And I forgot the ending.

The movie dragged on and on, and got repetitive, and got boring. And my feeling of surprise and horror (at the revelation of the incest) turned into agony and impatience because I couldn't wait for it to end. But then I realized, this was how the characters in the movie felt regarding the abnormal relationship, especially the lovers: they know that it is wrong, and they wanted it to end, but it wouldn't end, and they couldn't end it. The director did a good job by causing the audience experience the sort of emotions that the characters felt.

This was my virgin experience of seeing nudity and sex on theater. But that isn't the main point. I saw a good (although it's shocking and disturbing) movie, that's the main point.