March 2008 - Couch Pumpkin

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you'll have to pardon my apparent ignorant being. i like being enclosed in my bubble of delusion and fantasies. because when i caught THE DARJEELING LIMITED i thought it had something to do with tea. maybe a lot of tea or less or something along the lines but tea nonetheless.

so to my dismay and confusion, it's the name of a train taken by three brothers, that runs through picturesque india. yes, lovely country and someday i'd like to visit it. commentary aside, it's supposed to a journey of discovery and self-reflection, of forgiveness and some spiritual enlightenment. it seems to fail, since the brothers somehow land themselves in some weird-ass situation or rather. the truth is that the big brother (played by Owen Wilson) are dragging his two other brothers along to find their mother - this nutjob of a lady who keeps disappearing and eventually decides to make a nest in the himalayas.

it's quite drama, at some moments you actually pity the three of them and then you feel like whacking them on the head for being so wrapped up in their own world. i'm still trying to grasp the effects the loss of their father (and the fact that their mom didn't attend the dad's funeral) affected them. coz it seems like apart from chasing and looking after the mother, that's the main consistent theme that runs throughout.

it's somewhat feel good, if you enjoy getting your brains screwed. mostly it just made me want to visit india.

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gundam 00, the long and short of it

March 31st 2008 12:59

i promised that once GUNDAM 00 ended, i'd write about it. and it has and everyone waits with bated breath for season 2.

honestly, this series rocked more than WING and SEED combined. fanservicing aside, the plot was actually quite solid (despite many a controversy) and had sentiments that rung pretty close to home; even despite the fact that this supposedly happens many years after our fossil fuels run out and the denizens of earth decide to do something with that mighty ball of fire called the sun. euphimisms and pretty words aside, GUNDAM 00 spoke of war (didn't all the rest?) and of the sometimes fooliosh decisions we make in trying to quell it.

yes there's that cliche that we fight fire with fire. but hasn't anyone come to realize that if you literally fought fire with fire, you get burnt and everything else gets reduced to cinders? the same somewhat goes for GUNDAM 00. four meisters with their gundams under the name of an anti-terrorist faction called CELESTIAL BEING intervenes with any armed conflict found on earth. some parties find it admirable and logical. after all, these gundams were far more superior in terms of technology and firepower. and if it fought both sides then neither would win (just CELESTIAL BEING) and people would eventually stop fighting.

that's where they're wrong. the fighting continues, escalates even to a point where countries are exploiting CELESTIAL BEING and the events that transpire to work in their favour. when you take it at face value, it's just a boy's anime - battle, gun fights, dog fights, explosions, blood. but when you strip off that layer of action, you find a deeper sociological meaning to it.

while it's sad that they didn't really manage to explore the characters deeply (i mean c'mon they had about 20 odd 'main' characters on top of the four 'main' heros, you can't squeeze them all into 25 episodes without skimming the sides a little), they did try their best to make things appear as wholesome as they could. unfortunately, there were too many loose ends and far more questions than answers which somewhat works in their favour - retained and possibly and increment in viewership as they dangle carrots in suspense?

be prepared to do some crying, because i did. they made it really dramatic, befitting for main players (oops, that was a spoiler) as they make their un/timely demise. i don't know. i felt that it was too soon to kill someone off and besides eventually it seems everyone gets finished in one way or another.

the heros are the bad guys, the bad guys are likeable. even though you want them dead, somewhere along the way they seem to grow on you like moss and when they get written out, you feel as if a part of you's been ripped of too. yes yes, don't get attached to things/creatures/people that don't exist but Sunrise made all the characters personable and very identifiable.

i bet someone somewhere out there would identify to ali's almost-desperate thirst for war, brutality and violence.

that said, it's a gundam series that you shouldn't miss. at least it doesn't drag on and whilst the plot is almost predictable, the twists catch you off-guard nonetheless. i'll be waiting for season 2. until then, more re-plays of certain epic moments because i can't get enough of drama.

i'm sick that way.

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the predictable chronicles

March 25th 2008 08:29

why do people make adaptations of books into movies?

some people do it well, like THE KITE RUNNER although it was more of a grossly condensed story shoving a somanypageslong book into 2 hours. i believe that some books shouldn't be made into movies. a reader's imagination is far more vivid and fertile as opposed to what could be done on screen. yes, we have wonderful special effects and animation but it sometimes all that hard work and money simply doesn't justify what the book really is.

so it's no wonder that THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES came out as rather bland and blah. very very typical. there were the interesting moments like thimibletack the brownie turned vicious boggart that can only be appeased with honey (sorta reminds me of another character but eh...) and since everything was squished into about 2 hours, you're left with so many questions. like how can a boy memorize such a thick book in the span of what? a day or so? photographic memory doesn't quite cut it. but he was a pretty good child actor as opposed to the many out there who leave me wondering just what in the world was the producer thinking when they got them to act.

kids would like it i suppose. all flighty, floaty fairies and sylphs and gryphons and ugly goblins and an ogre that doesn't look like a conventional ogre. as you can see, it didn't leave that much of an impression.

(i'll tell you what did, but i'm waiting for the final installment before going all apeshit)

don't waste your money. wait for it to come out on dvd. which i suspect it will. really really soon.

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we are not alone.

March 20th 2008 17:30

on my 13th birthday, a long long time ago, my brother gave me my first (and last) birthday present. it was a vcd boxset of evangelion. i had only just started watching anime, hooked on to RUROUNI KENSHIN (which got sadly bastardized by axn and renamed SAMURAI X) and then started raving about the snippets that i knew about evangelion.

a couple of hours ago the boyfriend and i made a random decision to catch a movie. grumpy from work i figured why not catch THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. long story about how we had preview tickets but i was unhappy and blablabla and we weren't in town anyway. but we reached the theater and caught sight of EVANGELION. the only review i got was from my sister, she's watched it before (thanks to me i might add) and told me that it wasn't anything new. consider it a very condensed version of 4 discs (which is roughly 8 episodes). so we went in, not expecting anything and definitely not hyped up about it

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asian vs western horror

March 20th 2008 03:49

i've always found it a lil' funny. that western-styled ghost stories don't freak me out as much as asian ghost stories. perhaps it's the culture and that flashing-neon-light fact that i am after all asian and grew up in a society that, for all it's metropolitan modernization, has still got its feet trapped in the tangles of tradition.

i got freaked out by nightmare on elm street because of the graphics. but it definitely wasn't one of those things that stuck for long. to be honest, after watching a really old malay flick called pontianak which basically means female vampire, that one had me cowering under the sheets, triple-checking the locks on my windows and me praying till sleep claimed me

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do you dare to love?

March 19th 2008 14:59

on-screen romance is more often than not, trite and cliched. it's always the same old plot the same old cheesy lines and the same old words. i mean come on. look at enchanted or notting hill. yes they're classics but you know. the plot and climax is so predictable you could possibly start plotting a formula at exactly which time a conflict appears and then the main characters will all have their emo moments and THEN they wake up their idea and realize they're being complete utter idiots and then find their own true love and it's all happily ever after

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inside man

March 18th 2008 06:34

[taken from my wordpress: http://nofruitplease.wordpress.com]

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(don't) meet the spartans

March 18th 2008 06:31

[taken from my wordpress: http://nofruitplease.wordpress.com]

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horton hears a who!

March 17th 2008 06:25

MATURE CONTENT

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opening credits roll

March 17th 2008 06:03

I watch a decent amount of movies, be they on the big high-definition screens or on my laptop. I don't trust reviews from the local press because everyone here knows how biased they are. I try to be as objective as possible in my assessment of these shows.

Haha. No I'm no professional critic. Like every other person who wants nothing more than to ensure the money they paid for the ticket and popcorn is worth it

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June 2008

4 Posts

April 2008

1 Posts

March 2008