Final Final Destination?

We guess we were expecting a fair bit from Final Destination 5.

S'been such a long time since the previous Final Destination aka "The Final Destination", which we recall was in 3D (and yes we watched that in 3D), and honestly the show is so formulaic that we never realized that this is the sixth Final Destination movie, actually (and we watched this in 2D).

Only the first movie actually made any impression on us - because of the sinister way everyone died (they actually highlighted that there was a sinister force at work leading to the deaths rather than it being totally coincidental!) and the way the cast tried to figure out who's the next victim etc. The other movies in the series...well, just before the end credits of Final Destination 5, they showed snippets from all the previous movies, and that helped jog our memory.

In Final Destination 5, it starts out the same: the main hero gets a vision of impending doom where everyone dies graphically, panics and creates a scene, then he and some others escape and cheats death, only to mysteriously die one by one later on.

The death of the first survivor, that was a treat. The way it focused on so many hazards really had us wondering just how the victim would die! The way the victim died, though, had us scratching our head as we can't really see it happening in real life - it was rather Happy Tree Friends. The second victim received similar treatment, focusing on different hazards that had us all guessing.

After that...everything seemed a blur as if the movie couldn't kill the victims fast enough.

Anyways, somewhere near the end of the movie we had an aha moment (let's not spoil it). What further made it an aha moment was when we realized something else that caught our attention just before the first survivor/victim died.

This aha moment was further reinforced at the end of the movie, but it's such that not everyone would realize why. So we felt like checking up to see if we were correct regarding our aha moment.

Hence when we got back home, the Chief and us started watching Final Destination 1. It turned out the Chief couldn't remember watching the movie so we watched the beginning till the point when the plane exploded, and onwards for a couple of creative deaths before calling it a night.

And yes, our aha moment turned out to be correct. And we're hoping this means that there will be no more Final Destination movies!

I WANNA GO SOMEWHERE FOR RAYA

So says the subject of the email thread that was initiated by lad last month in preparation for the long weekend.

So in the email discussions throughout August it was planned for a hike to Chiling Falls (at least we think it was Chiling...we opted out off as we already went hiking with them a couple of months earlier and didn't feel like going hiking again so soon), a day for lunch at Coliseum and boardgaming, a barbeque and potluck dinner and a trip to Sunway Lagoon!

Gosh.

We didn't even need to pack or get stuck in any sort of traffic jam.

So for us the holidays started with a trip to Coliseum for their Chateaubriand Steak. It's been a while since we've been to Coliseum, and fortunately for us the place was opened on the first day of Raya itself! A good start to the day with steak and beer.

After that it was over to esteban's house for some boardgames - we tried this game called Wits And Wagers, where players try to answer American trivia and then bet on the answers they feel closest to the actual answer. All the answers were number based and you'd to bet on the nearest answer without going higher than the actual answer. Mechanic-wise the game was okay, being short with only 7 questions, but American trivia can be a tad limiting for us over here.

After Wits And Wagers, we moved on to That's Life! It's been quite a long time since we've played this game and somehow there wasn't that sense of analysis paralysis as we used to remember from our early games...

After That's Life!, lad decided to start his test-run cooking of siew yoke for the upcoming BBQ. Lad paid RM60 for two large chunks of raw pork from Tesco, and rightly so wanted to test out the recipe he found first. After an hour of roasting in the oven, with some airing now and then and lots of getting rid of the oil that seeped out, lad had a winner recipe! It was absolutely crunchy and yummy! So good, that before anyone thought to take a photo the entire piece was cut up and finished in minutes.

Barbeque night was another night of fun! This time it was decided that everyone had to make something for the potluck - no one was to bring along take outs. We suppose quite a number of people were adverse to KFC. Still, there was quite a lot to expect! There's the chicken wings, sausages and meatballs provided by otousan, the host, lemon provided a carton of beer, the Chief made soya cincau and a jelly dessert, NJAPF brought a salad with chicken in her special secret sauce, 'Vin brought borsch soup, Puddy made nanchos with melted cheese, Stewardess Sal and her Banker Boi supplied lemang with beef and chicken rendang, lad brought more siew yoke, esteban made ravioli, and Stewardess Sue and her friend made a banoffee pie. Us? We scrounged Tesco, MBG and Cold Storage for assorted fruits to go with some Tip Top ice cream.

The verdict by the end of the party?

1. Everyone bringing something tends to lead to a LOT of food. So much that some force feeding may be required.
2. 'Vin says NO MORE SOUP. This because the previous potluck saw a pot of spinach soup left untouched and this time because 'Vin inadvertedly made two big pots of rather sweet borsch soup.

By 10pm everyone was dead tired and the party ended.

And next morning, Sunway Lagoon!

It's actually our first time at Sunway Lagoon. To be exact, our first time visiting the theme parks in Sunway Lagoon as opposed to going there for some event (and Sunway does well when it comes to providing food and entertainment for their events!). Only 6 of us ended up going: lad, esteban, otousan, 'Vin, lemon and us - in this case six was the optimal number: 2 lockers can fit our belongings, the Congo Ride (a water slide where you slide down on a mat) had 6 lanes, allowing us all to race each other down, not to mention an even number meant we could share tubes to ride down the Phyton Ride.

We spent the day at the wet park and at the wildlife park after that (because it was the nearest, we suppose). We wouldn't have mind spending the entire day at the wet park if they had had more rides, rather than 3 main rides. Since we weren't around the wave pool at the right time to experience the wave (instead we caught sight of couples lined up along the wall face sucking like there wasn't anyone else there) we found ourselves at the wildlife park watching the interactive wildlife show (where a macaw did tricks, a wee German girl got to hold a phyton and kissed it, and everyone wanted to touch a rather fat civet cat, including us), walked about looking at all the animals and then spending half an hour hoping to see the arapaimas being fed (we left in the end after a no-show by the fish).

Left around 4ish as everyone only had breakfast and were starving by then. Will we go back again? Not too sure. The last time everyone else went there were years ago, we're thinking it'll be years again when we would go there again, and it would probably with everyone's children by then. Lunch/Dinner was at Hartz Chicken Buffet (again, this is another place that would be visited once in a few years somehow) before everyone left for home.

On the weekend the Chief and us visited the IT Fair at MidValley (for the auctions again, and once again left empty-handed), did some looking about at Low Yat and Sungei Wang and Pavilion, watched Final Destination 5 in the cinema followed by Final Destination 1 and 4Bia back home,

Come Sunday, the Chief and us celebrated the last day of the long weekend by heading down to Klang for a bah kut teh breakfast.

Reaching home we spent the morning eating John King egg tarts and eating soya cincau ice lollies (the Chief had an extra tin of cincau and carton of soya milk!) while finishing up Final Destination, which we initially only intended to watch the beginning (we had an aha moment watching Final Destination 5 and just wanted to check something) but ended up watching the entire show.

We'd suggested tapau-ing some pork home for lunch with Nissin noodles, but decided against OD-ing on pork and so ended up with herbal salted chicken from Damansara Uptown instead. The Chief deboned the chicken first while we cooked the noodles, the Chief was the lucky one with the wishbone, and yes, there was excess chicken so we packed the remaining chicken for breakfast the next day.

And now...after almost a week on holiday, the backlash is TERRIBLE.

The Legend Of The Chinese Movie Formula

We just came back from watching Legend Of The Fist: The Return Of Chen Zhen and boy, the show seemed a tad too ambitious in what they were trying to do. There was Chen Zhen acting as the Prince of Persia at the start of the show, then moonlighting as a masked crusader, there were Brits and Japanese forces in China, there were resistance fighters, plenty of gratuitous kungfu violence, and Donnie Yen making those high-pitched yowls and taking off his shirt for added strength.

We were thinking that the focus was going to be more on Donnie Yen pulling off a secret superhero identity while dressed like Kato from the Green Hornet (we think it's some kind of nod to Bruce Lee, since this show was suppose to be the sequel to Fist Of Fury), but somehow there were too many things going on when they have to add in the somehow-required Chinese Movie Formula script.

Oh yes. The CMF. Something we've been noticing in the kungfu films. For that, throw in the following:

One. A historical time of oppression, when China is under the iron fist of some other country.

Two. Some form of resistance, probably led by a newspaper editor. Said newspaper editor, and his office may at some point in the show be attacked by the oppressors and they may beat him up and probably say, "Write nasty stuff about us, eh? Let's see you write like this!" while crushing his hand.

Three. A Chinese police officer forced to work under the oppressive government. Probably able to speak their language too, but most of time is able to speak in rapidfire Cantonese or Mandarin and still be understood. And Chinese officer will be accused of being ineffectual and the oppressor's lackey.

Four. Chinese propaganda about how the Chinese will never give up and become slaves to the oppressor, and people saying about how it's okay to die as long as it's for something honourable.

Five. Oppressors are always shown to be violent, heartless and cunning, resorting to underhanded measures especially for point six. Unlike the honourable and compassionate Chinese.

Six. There will be a showdown finale between the martial arts savvy protagonist and a martial arts savvy oppressor. The oppressors, even though confident that they will crush the protagonist with ease, will either drug or poison, overwhelm to weaken with underlings, or cheat one way or another. Protagonist will still win in the end.

Seven. The show ends with text telling slightly more of what happens to the protagonist, and that the war is far from over...

Perhaps we're exaggerating but there's a familiarity that bores a bit after a while. The best thing we can do to enjoy the film?

Switch off brain. Enjoy gratuitous violent kungfu battle scenes. Applaud that Donnie Yen's allowed to go even more freestyle compared to his affable and reserved Ip Man role where he doesn't kill everyone. After that, remember only the fighting scenes and don't question the script.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot!

So let's see. This year there's been a fair number of shows that we had expectations from, but so far we've been let down now and again. On the upside the Chief has been winning lots of free tickets so we've both been enjoying a fair number of movies too! Let's do a recap on some of the shows...

Book Of Eli. Didn't expect much although from the trailer the first impression we had was, "Fallout!" No expectations, so no disappointments but not really that interesting for us. Miss.

Edge Of Darkness. Mel Gibson still puts on a good show, and the show makes sense in the end, but also not really memorable. OK.

From Paris With Love. We'd no idea what this show was about when we went in to watch it! John Travolta shocked us with a different look and Jonathan Rhys Meyers is still King Henry to us but this comedy was ok.

Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief. We suppose since we never read the books it wasn't as good as the Harry Potter series. But we were fine with them taking liberties with Greek mythology as it was a modern setting, and Uma Thurman really, really make an awesome Medusa. Watchable.

Valentine's Day. Somewhere at the start of the show we thought, "Love Actually!" We need to watch that show again. What really impressed us about the show wasn't how everyone was connected in some way in the show but the house that Ashton Kutcher stayed in, and Anne Hathaway as a phone sex worker! Watchable.

Shutter Island. We actually saw the ending while browsing at the DVD store. Then went to watch the movie to appreciate the beginning. Not a horror show as we thought it was in the trailers, but nevertheless a good movie. Good movie.

Alice In Wonderland. Most people told us that they were rather disappointed with this movie. We could not see why. It's a slight deviation from the story book (oh our goodness we tried reading the book and wanted to kill Alice) but Helena Bonham Carter made the Queen of Hearts the star of the show! Oh and Anne Hathaway amazes us by showing she can act slightly weird (unfortunately we've locked her as the sweet Andrea of Devil Wears Prada)! Watchable.

Clash Of The Titans 2010. Can we cry? The trailer, especially with the minus one of The Used's 'The Bird And The Worm' giving the action an edgy but great feel, gave us quite high hopes for this show. Major letdown as the 3D version had nothing but 3D Chinese subtitles, while the show, dark to begin with, was darker when wearing the 3D glasses. A visual feast but somehow that was all.

Ip Man 2. Great martial arts show that does as well as the first, although the storyline seems similar. Of course the scene to watch for is Donny Yen fighting Sammo Hung. Must watch.

Iron Man 2. No expectations except a reminder to stay till after the credits. Overall the show was good, Robert Downey Jr entertained, and thankfully there was no need to be a Marvel fanboy to enjoy the show (we wonder how many found the Captain America's shield bit funny). Good movie.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. Another show that we hoped would do well. It did...formulaic. Those who didn't know what Prince Of Persia was all about would be wondering what was with all the athletic jumping and swinging. The conversations between the Prince Dastan and Princess Tamina was entertaining, but somewhere in the show it suddenly felt like Pirates Of The Carribean.

Honestly we had even more memorable shows coming from Lady Gaga's music videos. Speaking of which Alejandro is out!



So we had to pick up our jaws at the bed scenes. But our gripe is, "Why can't BodyJam have choreography like that any more?!"

And tonight we got to watch A-Team!

Also another show with no expectations since we've never seen any trailers, only the poster. Only, this movie is so far in our opinion, the best show we've watched so far for this year. There's a lot of budget for the action scenes like Iron Man 2 has but the humour in A-Team outshines Iron Man 2. This is one show not to miss! Even from the second front row in Cathay we had no difficulty enjoying the movie (thumbs up to Cathay for having seats near the front that doesn't need one to crane up and look left and right just to watch the show)!

Oh and honestly Bradley Cooper in the movie. We want his genes. That wavy hair. That five o'clock shadow. Those eyes. That smile. And disturbingly, as we're not a fan off this, the chest fuzz. We want them genes!

Sigh we guess we'll have to resolve to boiled chicken breast meat for two weeks, more cardio and longer workouts. And make do without the hair.

Castles & Towers

First we had Angry Birds to occupy much of our time. Not only did the game had many green pigs to kill and birds to launch, they do a pretty good job getting us to come back to the game again and again, first to finish all the stages, then to score three stars for each stage, and with the recent update, a new episode with more stages and a new type of bird.

Now that that's over with, we're waiting for more episodes from Angry Birds to occupy our time. In the mealwhile, we've found two other games that tickle our fancy:

First up was Babel Rising. Was free for a while back, looked simple yet interesting for a god game, and so we figured no harm trying and downloaded the app. We had a good laugh with this, as we visited all sorts of divine retribution against the heathens building the Tower of Babel. Very addictive app, and after a few games we gave in and bought the (in-app purchase) Campaign and Fury Modes.



The Campaign Mode allowed for slight variations in gameplay (ie, the tower begins half built, a level is added to the tower at the following stages) and allows abilities to be upgraded, while the Fury Mode has the workers being invulnerable to certain abilities (blue workers cannot be electrocuted, for instance). In fact the longest we'd played on a single stage was in Fury Mode (normally somewhere within 10 minutes the workers would have overwhelmed us) was just over 30 minutes! The battery drain we faced!

Then we were introduced to Crush The Castle. Admittedly when we first saw this app on the iTunes Store we weren't impressed. Only recently we got around to trying the Flash version online, and it's sort of a mix between Angry Birds and Babel Rising. Instead of birds on a catapult attacking pigs, it's a trebuchet launching stones at castles with people in them. Kings, knights, maidens, all must be killed to clear the stage. Blood splatters everywhere as they scream when rocks fly, walls shatter and everything plunges and crumbles.



Using the trebuchet isn't as easy as the catapult but that doesn't stop us from now trying to score gold for every castle!

Now, if only there was a free version of Canabalt for the iPhone. We find ourselves singing Erasure's 'Always' when we play that. Oh yes, and there's also Canabalt Typing Tutor to try as well...

Bon Annee 2010!

We honestly don't remember how last New Year's Day was spent riffled through our photo folders and found out that New Year's Day last year saw us having lunch with the guys at Tony Romas at Cineleisure, and that the BFF celebrated the countdown to 2009 at Bunny's. Sometime after Christmas we were planning to do a New Year's lunch and movie with the guys, with Avatar (in 3D) in mind for the movie. As for the lunch venue, we weren't sure but thought that there were some places on the first floor in 1 Utama's old wing that we could try.

The Chief then commented on a radio ad about a restaurant in 1U where each patron had his own steamboat to eat from, and the others thought that the ad must be for Plus 1 Shabu Shabu.

Turns out that they were correct about the place and so we were soon led to a round table for six. Round tables really make for great conversing among the whole group, especially when waiting for our food to cook!

We decided to go for the chicken set while the Chief opted for the pork set, and our food was served in a jiffy. The Chief had the Chinese herbal broth and we risked the tomyam soup. The tomyam soup turned out to be not spicy and rather delish that we ended up not dipping our food in any sauce at all!

The meal was ok, but we suppose what makes the dishes taste better would be their selection of sauces available. We tried the fish sauce but that turned out to be too strong, and we ended up just drinking our tomyam soup.

Also the meal portion wasn't so filling that as soon as we were done eating we were all considering dessert elsewhere. After a toss-up between desserts or ta kei, the arcades won out and we all decided to buy popcorn instead when in the cinema.

The arcades in 1U still had a variety of games other than the fighting and racing games! There's the whatchamacallit claw game to try and snag a doll, penny drops, even a Guitar Hero-like game, air hockey (where Lemon and 'Vin battled it out so fiercely that the puck kept flying out from the table!) and...

The boxing game. Sans boxing glove now. That game has been there ever since the arcade opened for business and well, we were rather curious as how the game works as we never stopped to watch people play it before!

Lemon, 'Vin, Chief and us took turns playing. 'Vin was up first and started the basic game on Easiest mode, where the screen showed a cartoon ahlong trying to get money from him and 'Vin was suppose to knock him out.

First punch! And he scored some 70-something Mtrs (Metres, as in how far the victim flew? We don't know). We them find out that you have three punches total in order to score some 250-260 Mtrs in order to proceed. With an average of 70-something Mtrs per punch, 'Vin soon lost.

We were next up when we accidentally chose the camera function mode: instead of a cartoon ahlong, the game took a picture of our face and superimposed it on said ahlong's cartoon body. Seeing this the Chief perked up and volunteered to take over from us...However the Chief is gentle and thus scored an average of 60-something Mtrs.

Lemon decided to try the Medium difficulty instead! He managed to sock a 80 Mtr hit but with a required total of 290 Mtr to win he too was out. Turns out he wasn't trying for a higher difficulty but thought that it was just to change the victims.

Us, we scored the same as 'Vin, with 70-something punches. Discussing about the game we figure the punching glove would have made it much easier to score. Still, all in good fun!

And yes, Avatar 3D!

Interestingly, everyone except the Chief and us had already watched Avatar, in fact, 'Vin watched it in 3D too! This made it his second viewing in 3D!

Our take on the show? Excellent. Show's pacing did not seem sluggish nor rushed, the story helped immerse us even better into the Pandora and the Na'vi culture. Oh and after a while we forgot all about 3D, heh. Definitely a great watch.

Next up will be, as the Chief put it, Gong Zhu Jing Wah, and we've yet to catch Sherlock!

And movies we're looking forward to this year: Prince Of Persia (please be a decent game-based movie please), Clash Of The Titans (stunning effects, does anyone have a minus one of the song "The Bird And The Worm" that was used in the trailer?), Iron Man 2, Shrek Ever After (Puss now makes us think of Garfield!!!) and should we be expecting the first part of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows?

So Imagine I Was Glad To Hear You're Coming

To our local entrepreneur! Especially since we'd blogged about you a month ago!

And we've been preparing for your arrival by getting the first book from Terry Goodkind's 'Sword Of Truth' series from the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale to read! Truth be told we saw a fair number of books from the series while at the book sale but not knowing how good/bad the series is, and there being twelve books in all (twelve!), we weren't ready to buy as many as possible even though it costed only RM8 per book because of the usual argument (no space to keep books).

Anyways we were so glad to see you on the shelves of our local entrepreneur that we immediately picked you up and paid for you.

And now we can enjoy you in two mediums.

And certainly not roleplaying any characters as the Naughty Nyukster puts it!

DVD Deliberations

So we've finished Battlestar Galactica and Hercule Poirot for now, and of late instead of watching DVDs of movies we've missed over the past months, we've been watching...the director's commentry for Lord Of The Ring's Fellowship Of The Ring.

And later we'll go back and watch the designer's commentry, the production and post-production team commentry, and the actor's commentry. By the end of it all we'll probably need to buy new DVDs again.

Why the commentry and not a movie? 'Cos we've watched LotR before, and so can easily stop any time, while if we watch a movie we'd like to finish it in one seating. Not really feasible when we only come back from rehearsals near midnight.

Also, we've resorted to watching LotR because we've an inkling to watch odd films if we were to go buy DVDs. It started with us remembering a phrase: Clockwork Orange. Never did get a chance to look it up so we wiki'ed it, and that led to Soylent Green later on because we wanted a synopsis of the movie, and then that led to reading synopsis of movies on Wikipedia like Stephen King book-to-movie titles and to other Kubrick films especially 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Clockwork Orange's idea of ultraviolence then is violent, but from the way it's acted out (as watched from YouTube) it doesn't seem so, nowadays movies are rather violent too. It's hard to picture it as violent when Alex sings 'Singing In The Rain' while attacking someone...



From there, since we started on movie synopsis we thought we might as well read up Soylent Green's synopsis. And from this trailer, well, you don't even need to watch the entire film. Just watch the trailer and then, go look up the secret of Soylent Green if you didn't already know and would like to know.



What we do want to catch if possible, is 2001: A Space Odyssey.



But the one question that runs through our mind each time we think of buying the shows to watch: These are old movies. Do we have the patience to sit through them any more?! Nostalgia is one thing where we have already readily accepted the fact that certain elements of a show is old, like the original Star Trek and the fake panels in the background of the Enterprise, but for shows we've not watched or heard before?

We should be preparing for movies like this instead, yes?



Prince of Persia movie! The games were good, but we don't have any feel for Jake Gyllenhaal but hey if the movie's good we can live with it.

Asides from movies, the only DVD telly series we're interested in? Oddly enough Gossip Girl is still sitting on our shelves as we don't find the interest for it much, but we're keen on picking up Monty Phyton's Flying Circus, and The Legend Of The Seeker when and if it comes out over here.



Hmmm should start reading Terry Goodkind's books then regardless of the differences.

The Labours For Poirot

Now we are admittedly big into Agatha Christie, and thankfully our school library had quite a number of her books for us to go through. Like many others we love Hercule Poirot and Ms Marple! It was sometime then too when we caught an episode of Poirot on TV3 one Saturday afternoon, but it didn't hit us then that we were actually watching a Hercule Poirot tv adaptation, even when David Suchet was the most accurate adaptation of Poirot!

Took us a while after that episode (since we happened onto that episode halfway through) when it all registered in. Moustache. French portly feller. Murder mystery.

Only...either we weren't free on Saturdays to watch it, or TV3 finished its run. Never did get to watch it entirely. Sigh.

Of course, we've been hunting about for the DVDs everytime we're shopping (even if we never do buy anything) and we've even seen the series selling at La Ramblas in Barcelona last year. Unfortunately the price tag of 30 Euros per season stopped us from making an impulse buy of all seasons we could get our grubby hands on (because we know, we just know that we won't stop at the Poirots but snag ever Ms Marple series we could find too!) and four seasons of both Poirot and Ms Marple would set us back an estimate 240 Euros.

We're not rich enough to do that. Plus it was likely to be bootlegs so we didn't dare trust the quality unless we happen to be going back there pretty soon.

...Come to think of it, we keep forgetting to check HMV when at Sporeland. But even then a price tag of SGD100 would mean we need to exercise control when buying.

But in any case, we've been checking out the, ah, local DVD entrepreneurs should they happen to stock them, seeing how they can keep all sorts from BBC documentaries to National Geographic specials. Yes we totally bypassed Speedy and the likes because they be pricey and Poirot doesn't seem like a title easily available (not to mention all the store assistants, even the entrepreneurs, would give us a puzzled look when we mention the name Poirot).

So came a time early this year when we were checking out titles at the DVD entrepreneur near our place, when we came across a DVD of Poirot! Can't remember which season but we were surprised to find that yes, we could find Poirot here!

Thing was, we already getting some other DVDs (can't recall, was it Battlestar Galactica?) so we decided to put the Poirot on hold till another day. The Chief was with us, and knowing how we were interested, helped by hiding the DVD somewhere at the back of the stack where we found it so we could grab it another day without having to hunt for it. Only when we got back to the store another time the DVD was gone. Searched through all the stacks to no avail and even the fler manning the store told us that stuff in those stacks, if you see them you better grab them, gone means gone.

'Course, we were plenty disappointed. Also resolved to just grab it next time we saw it. And that's how we ended up snagging both Season 1 and 2 when we saw it in another store today!

Pure happiness. And to top it, while still browsing the store we overheard some girls saying, "The Colour Of Magic," and we gravitated straight to them to find Sky's take on Terry Pratchett's The Colour Of Magic! We thought the movie was still in the works! We were looking more for Hogfather rather than Colour Of Magic, even though we're quite apprehensive of how Hogfather will turn out based on how reviews tag it as a 'love it or hate it' show (the Illustrated Screenplay doesn't calm our fears either).

Admittedly a closer look on the cover it says 'Terry Pratchett's The Colour Of Magic Part 1' but since we're on a roll why stop...and the first 10 minutes of the show gives us the impression that it's gonna be something like the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie - slightly different but still humourous.

So now we have a telly series to continue now that Battlestar Galactica's done with. Gossip Girls, get to the back seat.

Chief Comments Canton

Now we're no food blogger - we don't have the necessary sensitive tastebuds to isolate each and every herb and spices used in the dish, nor do we have the handy notepad to jot down the taste experience, but we do have the ever-handy camera to take shots.

Altho'...like the Chief even asks, why do we take photos of food in the first place? No idea. Just because.

So last week we finally got the bug for movies, especially since the summer movies are starting to trickle in.

Angels & Demons? Good but not great, our attention to the movie was more to noticing the differences (vast differences!) from the book. Still not too bad and pretty straightforward, but like Da Vinci Code, will never be as good as the book.

Night At The Museum 2? Lighthearted fun. Please leave common sense at the front door - not because of the fact that things come alive, we're okay with that, but because of the things they do. The singing cherubs had us in laughter with their songs, tho'!

Star Trek? Must say it's good. Even tho' we kept making fun of how, when people try to elicit a emotional response from Spock, we kept pointing a finger and making sawing noises a la Sylar. We do wonder why are their uniforms rather baggy, tho'.

Oh yes. Food. Just before Star Trek we'd to do dinner, and as dinner goes we both found ourselves at Canton-I MidValley. And like we said, we're no food blogger...so we asked the Chief to comment and we mulled over it.

The Chief finds this slightly lacking...oh dear, we can't remember what it actually is now. Char siew pau comes to mind, but that's not it. There just wasn't enough meaty filling and it crumbles to bits.

The fried rice with chicken slices and salted fish, now, would have most people reaching for their glass of water after one spoonful. Too salty for the Chief, but we liked the dish.

The char tau kuey on the other hand, was easily the best dish we had. As the Chief puts it, firm crispy skin but once you bite into it, melts in your mouth. We tried a piece, it did exactly that, but also proceeded to burn our tongue.

Of course, the rice and char tau kuey didn't seem enough to fill us up, so we decided to get a bowl of congee to top it up. Smooth. Good for dumping in all that salted fish, except we didn't.

Their flower teas are really just plain decorative, bitter teas. We'll stick to the choices from Winter Warmers next time.

And of course, dessert. Since both of us love mangoes...we could have done without all that flakes, tho'.

Ring Fever III

Now sometime just before the Fellowship Of The Ring movie was due out, we happened to be in shopping and came across the VCD of the cartoon (yeah, VCD's were the main format then!). Of course, it looked a decent effort (based on, well, the front cover art and the screenshots shown on the back of the casing). So we got it and watched it.

In retrospect, it was a good thing that we bought it and watched it before the movie ever came out.

It's an old cartoon, mind, made in 1978! We made allowances for limitations of effects and such (although we wouldn't forgive lousy artwork), and we were surprised at some of their efforts. For instance, there was quite a fair bit of live-action sequences blended in with the animation! Sometimes, like in the beginning of the show where a narrator summarized the forging of the rings, we saw silhouettes of actors behind a red canvas and thought that it was rather lazy. Others, like in the Inn of the Prancing Pony, live action was used to model for animation and blended very well.

But what got our goat was that the show only showed up to somewhere near the end of Two Towers! It wasn't the whole show nor was it just up to Fellowship Of The Ring!

Still, is was a good effort and we forgot about it soon after.

Then we were stunned by the movie. We guess quite a number of people were. The designs, the cultures, the music, the scenery...and the jarring changes of part of the script from the book. But the bit we LOVED the most about the whole movie? The Nazgûl. Their dressing really showed them to be things to be feared about, and the choral bits gave a lot of depth to them.

Throughout the movie, though, we had this sense of deja vu...as if we'd seen that scene before. Even if it was the first time watching the movie! Then we realized that we probably seened it from the cartoon, and decided to go watch back the cartoon to compare.

It was. Effing. Painful.

Here, let's put up a comparison that we found superbly painful. Our poor Nazgûl. Here's how he is from the movies, to refresh your memory.



Youtube link here.

And here's him from the cartoon - just fast forward to the 7-minute mark. Unfortunately we had to source YouTube for the clips, and the best was this long clip. If we had some form of free video editing tool we would have clipped off just the required scene from the VCD.



Youtube link here.

Mind you most of the cartoon is still good! Only some portrayals could have been much better that, watching it now it wouldn't have us cringing.

Shutter Shudders: The Remake

Now we ended up watching the English remake of Shutter on Saturday with the sis, her housemate and Chief. It's one thing that the four of us were horror movie buffs, but it was another thing when all other good movies at 9 something were sold out.

Interestingly, all of us have already watched the original Thai version, so this was more for us to compare between both films. Ah, heck it. We already know the Asian version of horror films beat the Western remakes hands down, but we just like to see just how well does a Western remake hold up to the original.

Our previous experiences with Western remakes? The Ring was good, Dark Water barely memorable, Ring 2 disappointing, the Grudge was also good, Grudge 2 not as nice, the Eye was quite okay. Right, that isn't quite a systemic grading system to go by, but suffice to say don't watch the bleh ones cukup.

The Chief have already experienced watching horror movies with us - we can find things funny and end up laughing throughout the movie, probably spoiling certain scenes for the Chief too. :P With our sis around, we have yet another reason to laugh. See, while sis enjoys horrors, at times she enjoys them by peering from the corner of her eye or through her fingers as she covers her face.

When she does this at home if we watch a DVD, we even tell her what's going on:

Janvier: Why the hospital corridor so empty wan? And see there's water on the floor everywhere!
Sis: Shit.
Janvier: Really, you can see what's going to happen already - he's walking on the wet patches.
-eerie hantu music plays-
Sis: Shit.
Janvier: Nah look he walking near that stupid window! Know already the ghost gonna push him down or something...
Sis: Shit. No need to tell me already!

Oh joy. :)

So. Shutter. English version. Don't worry, no spoilers but rather some comparisons. We wanted to know how faithful to the original it was (allowances made for bits of the Western setting), as we enjoyed the Thai one.

Well we did miss the beginning bit, probably some 7 minutes of the show but still got most of it, and while it remained quite faithful to the original, especially the spooks (yes, so it didn't spook us 'cos we knew what to expect already) there was only one bit of discontention for us: the original was a Thai horror flick. Why, for the remake, was the story based in Japan? Can't they give tribute to the film's origin?

Still, it was a pretty decent remake, ranking up there with The Ring and The Grudge. Watch it if you've never watched the original. Or better yet go get the original!

Finally, iWatch

OK. We first got our very first iPod on...the 24th November 2005. And since that iPod was an iPod 30GB Video, it meant that it we could play movies and the likes on it (supposedly). Only, we're not one to go into heavyduty, er, 'searching online' for a DVD/movie-to-iPod converter or compatible files, so the only movies we ever had for our iPod were Happy Tree Friends episodes downloaded via iTunes and a few videos taken with our iXus and then converted (which takes bloody long for a bloody short video).

Then iTunes added in some form of converter that could convert avi files into a compatible file format to play on our iPod. But it was limited because we still couldn't convert DVDs, where the main bulk of our media was.

So it's been some 3 years 3 months now and we have added the iTouch to our collection of gadgets (not surprisingly the iTouch doesn't make our iPod redundant, as the iPod is still our primary music player), and only just recently did we finally find a DVD-to-iPod converter, from Giveaway Of The Day's website. And only sometime last weekend did we finally get to try it out.

So what movie did we convert? Batman Returns, which we find is still the best among the first four Batman movies.

Admittedly, it's because The Dark Knight is screening in May that reignited our interest in the first two Batman movies. The storyline was a bit rusty already although we could still remember bits and pieces. We wanted to compare Jack Nicholson's Joker (quirkier) to Heath Ledger's (spookier). And how we missed Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman!

It's rather obvious that the iTouch is the perfect portable media for movies. :)

So instead of bringing out a book for lunch, and without having to wait to use the telly around midnight, we could watch Batman Returns. During our lunch hour, in public view of everyone else. In bed, just before we doze off to sleep. In the living room, while the parents watch whatever's showing on Astro that doesn't catch our interest. Anywhere.

Showoff-ism was hard at work in us. Not only were we displaying our iTouch everywhere but we were watching a movie with it some more!

So now that we've finally done watching Batman and Batman Returns, our sights were set on Batman Begins. Surprisingly we couldn't find the DVD in the usual stores! Thankfully the Chief has a copy, which saved us having to head to Speedy to check out their prices (yay!).

After that, there's all them other movies we've yet to watch because we rather spend the time juggling other things. Movies like Amiable Aix's The Piano. Or Junior's 200 Pounds Beauty. Our Sailormoon episodes. Or Ouran High School Host Club. So many movies!

Oh, and we can also watch it on the iPod, in case we don't bring along the iTouch. Just that it's a smaller screen, so we might wanna do shows that doesn't require subtitles.

In The Name Of The King!

A line never heard in the span of the entire movie.

The only reason we heard about this movie was because we saw the trailer once. We think when we were watching Rendition. It looked to have everything a classic fantasy should have (judging from a trailer, mind), good guys vs bad guys who look like orcs, tree-huggers swinging from vines who could be elves, lush unspoilt landscapes of grasslands, forests and mountains...ok, we were really thinking of some Peter Jackson LOTR wannabe but hey, it looked promising. And it's based on the game Dungeon Siege.

Trailers always do, don't they?

Then we found out that Uwe Boll was director, and we cringed. Well most of what we ever heard about him was from other people bashing his ability to screw up movies based on video games or the likes. Well, video game movies never really could live up to expectations, and we've seen a fair share of our favourite games crumble box-office-wise since we were young: Super Mario Bros ("It's a Bob-omb!!!"), Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat (don't talk to us about Mortal Kombat: Annihilation...our poor Mileena), Alone In The Dark.

Among the abovementioned, Uwe Boll only directed and produced Alone In The Dark, but even then we were sorely disappointed. Fell asleep watching the show halfway and never was interested enough to finish watching it too. It was Alone In The Dark! It's supposed to be a horror/thriller! Nevermind. On with the show.

Well, maybe like how Tough Teacher puts it, because our expectations dropped so low, the show didn't turn out as bad as we thought it would. Also maybe since we have no idea how the game goes there really was no set level of expectation. The storyline's pretty much straightforward, a farmer named Farmer goes on to great adventures and triumphs over evil in the end. The storyline could have been made richer if the show was stretched out more, but at slightly over 2 hours, it was ok lah.

OK the post got so bloody long we decided to just cut the following rants to just quick lines.

We've never watched Jason Statham act before so we're wondering if his acting here is the same as in Transporter? John Rhys-Davies reminds us a bit of his role as the Atreides mentat...and now we miss Gimli. Matthew Lillard (whom we only remember as Shaggy in Scooby-Doo) must have really enjoyed his role. No stand out performance really.

While the show is so-so, we wondered why the colours were...what's that word? Desaturated? It had that dull, slightly-brown feel to it that reminded us a lot of when we used to watch movies on RTM2 on Thursdays or Fridays during their Dunhill Double features. Was it on purpose to make the film look old? What's wrong with sharp and clear colours? Will it make the krugs look fake? Oh oh oh if the desaturated colours didn't make the show look old, adding Burt Reynolds in certainly did! We always think of Win, Lose or Draw when it comes to Burt Reynolds.

All in all, this show is best viewed on cheap Wednesday movies or for DVD Night with Domino's Pizza. There's plenty of eyecandy to go around. And we think it'll be better than Dragon Wars, to give an example. :P

Shutter Shudders

It's funny, given all the hype (and we were very interested after seeing the trailer) we never did get to watch the romantic love comedy Shutter when it came out in 2004. Sis almost spoiled the show when she told us about it but thanks to terrible memory and distracted moments we never did hear how the show ended.

Fast forward to last week, as we celebrated Christmas with the sis by going on a movie spree, watching Warlords on Christmas Eve followed by dvd shopping and watching I Am Legend and National Treasure 2 on Christmas day itself before the family dinner at night. It's a thing for us, quality sibling time to be spent watching movies, browsing dvds and general shopping.

Anyways, while perusing the dvd shelves we finally snagged Shutter (and the japanese Ju-On 1, still can't find japanese Ju-On 2) and last night we settled down with some expectations for a good show. And we must say that we had quite a fair bit of expectations.

We must have also softened up over the years. For one thing we didn't think we would watch the show with the lights off (unless we were watching with company, bravery in numbers kinda thing). And we also had a pillow to hold at times. Egads, malu only. The imagination did wonders at making things up.

And to be honest it wasn't really scary, but they did a good job with the suspense buildup. Definitely a good Thai romantic love comedy to watch. It won't change the habits of a camwhore (or would you prefer to be called a shutter slut?) nor will you lose any sleep. Promise.

By the way, you know how in Thai romantic love comedies their spirits and death scenes have this budget look certain quality that identifies them as Thai romantic love comedies? So happens that we came back home earlier on and walked into the toilet to see this.

Tell you, we honestly had a wtf moment, wondering just what our mum was thinking (although the first term that ran across our mind was "What did the cat drag in?!"), preserving a cat dog corpse (oh we knew very well it wasn't the Wee Wog, it was too small). Upon first glance it really looks like something from a Thai show.

Then it struck us just what it was.

Eat My Dust

"It's an accelerometer, a speed measurer. It tells you how fast things go."

Well that's not really right. But that's what Golden Compass really made us think of. Magus was right when he said that the show's really a sort of fast-forwarded 2 hour trailer.

Liddis.

Lord Of The Rings, semacam travelling in a blimp - pacing not so fast/slow, very scenic, can take in everything.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, like in a cruise ship - also take your time, enjoy the sights and sounds that is Narnia.

Stardust, in an airplane - it's fast but you don't feel it going fast. Like watching clouds go by slowly, each scene in Stardust you can take in and understand what's going on in the film without feeling hurried, and yet the pacing of the show is good that nothing was draggy.

Golden Compass, that was like sitting in an F1 car for one lap. Everything speed pass you, you see lines only, can see a bit when slowing down for corners. There is no sense of time too, but that's because everything is zipping by so fast you keep thinking you're still in the 1st second.

And the worst bit? All the others can watch movie first then read the books. This is one show where you would best do to read the book before watching it. Because hell a lot of things were lost in the movie, and some of these were things actually strengthen the storyline. It was rather weird to see Lyra, just meeting someone for the first time, suddenly becomes close best friends two scenes later. Sense of time is so distorted.

So here's one or two things general things about daemons and such. So you'll be told that in Lyra's world, every human has a daemon which is part of that human. Daemons can change shape while the human is still young, but will stop changing and maintain a certain animal shape once the human 'grows up'. Humans and daemons have some connection - hurting one will hurt the other. Daemons can freely touch other daemons, but it's considered a gross breach of etiquette to touch someone else's daemon (worse than molest? dunno). If one dies, so will the other.

The importance of the human-daemon connection which was built up in the book got lost in the movie. So the shock of seeing a human without a daemon, or about intercision (cutting off the connection between human and daemon) wasn't as horrific as it was in the book.

Well enough about that then. Must say that we did have a premonition at the start of the show - as the show started, we quoted, "The world is changed," (no, we didn't do the "I amar prestar aen..." bits) and next thing you know Saruman and Gandalf were in the film, all thanks to New Line Cinema. No reminders of Casino Royale or The Invasion at least.

The movie eyecandy is absolutely stunning at the least. Anbaric power is shown to be some sort of atom-driven power, the structures are grand, the clothes are better than how we actually pictured them when we read the book (we admit to stereotyping based on most fantasy novels, so the priests of the Magisterium wore monk's robes of sorts instead of snazzy suits). The details on Daniel Craig's coat and vest at the start of the movie. When it came to appearances, they managed to pull off the 'almost the same, yet different' look very well.

Asides from that, this show lost to Stardust and Enchanted. We'll hope they pull their socks up for The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

"27th We're Free"

Now that our Nok7710's back up and running, we need to make use of the calender function a bit more frequently. Or be a bit more hardworking and type them out while using the keypad on our L'Amour then. Because on three occasions regarding our availability yesterday we've actually claimed that we had nothing on to do.

jack208: Hi there, just have got this confirmed with Outpost. We'll be calling for a Halloween Gaming Nite on Oct 27 (Sat) at Outpost (The Curve)...
Janvier: Oooh we should make it! Werewolf! Werewolf!

'Vin: I'm having my housewarming on next month Saturday the 27th, block that date out ya?
Janvier: 27th kah? We should be free, got nothing on.

Email: We're gonna be doing lunch on Sat 27th, please keep the whole day free.
Janvier: Saturday...should be empty. Can!

Well all this was being planned like sometime last month. And you can see just how terrible our memory is that we OK'ed all three. While the lunch could take place without clashing without the other two we were more concerned as to how were we going to juggle 'Vin's housewarming as well as the Halloween Gaming Nite.

Well come yesterday there was a top-priority item to get done with first - get the car fixed, as nothing else could probably take place without getting it repaired. Thankfully lad was available to fetch us around after that - thank you! Shall buy you lunch from your pork noodle aunty next day!

Lunch was moved to a different date so our afternoon was free to learn this about L'Occitane. Members get 5%, a RM20 voucher on their birthday month, and points collected throughout the year will be cleared at the end of each birthday month unless some 5000 or more points have been collected, which can be exchanged for a voucher. Not like we would be shopping at L'Occitane in the first place but if we do we know who to look for.

Ended up late for Ken's Jam and stayed on for Calvin's Combat. Then it was back to pick up the car and head off for 'Vin's housewarming first - a buffet dinner event by caterer's used by the pharma sales industry. A lot of people about, and a surprise showing up by Esteban. We're a bit unhappy with Esteban for revealing something we've been keeping mum about - while the look on his face was quite funny the look on our face wasn't. And we had a second earful from otousan. Left soon after, don't think we even stayed an hour at 'Vin's place. Sorry yah, didn't meant to arrive that late too!

Next up was Halloween Gaming at Outpost. Throughout the discussion of events it seemed as if the lineup of games included some 10+ participants for Werewolf, followed by a few other horror based boardgames like Haunted House On The Hill, Arkham Horror and Doom. For us we were really only interested in Werewolf and getting our event polo tee (which we paid for!). In the end we had three sessions of Werewolf among the other stuff Outpost was organizing, with plenty of roles to make it more interesting. Now if only we had more noisy people.

Sometime before our third game wolfx made mention, "There's Stardust showing at 2am." Immediately our hands shot up and we said, "ON!" and so wolfx, rhyen and us bought tickets.

Given how we got excited when we first saw the trailer during the Transformers premier (it so happened that we just finished the book then) we had high hopes for the show. Admittedly we were worried that the movie adaptation might differ greatly and disappoint (heck everyone needs to worry about movie adaptations) but Stardust turned out very well. So well that we are definitely watching it again. Maybe three times. Plenty of scenes that'll keep you chuckling.

Claire Danes was okay. Charlie Cox was okay too. Peter O'Toole had us thinking of Troy, but he's funnier here. Michelle Pfeiffer had us thinking of Ms Baltimore Crabs/Velma Von Tussle for a while, but after the initial bit she was Lamia all the way. Robert De Niro was very entertaining, especially during the Can Can. Didn't realise that was Rupert Everett as Secundus.

Story pacing was done very well with never a dull moment. Wolfx did complain about most of the music being rather 'epic music' - he had a point there. Instead of an action scene with 'epic music' catching our attention it was the bit in Ditchwater Sal's caravan and the backgroun strings that held the best attention then.

Ok. That review of Stardust was rather vague. Well the book was simple but good, and the movie's along the same lines. Definitely watchable. Twice.

And we oughta make sure next month we don't clash anymore appointments. Gotta mark down the dates we're heading down to Sporeland for Ethancya's and Renzze's celebrations!

Kaki Botol

Not like we aren't admitting to being one.

Maybe because it felt like another Monday - work, Jam, Combat, Polo Sport-sniffing, home for dinner, finally in front of the pc usually - that we clean forgot that we'd actually suppose to join otousan, Germ, lad and Lemon for The Bourne Ultimatum. Thankfully manage to call mum up as she was just preparing dinner, and she decided that we should just eat out instead of her keeping our dinner portion till past 11pm.

The Bourne Ultimatum is good. As good as the first one (we knows not about the second one as we haven't watched it yet). What initially impressed us was that in some bits of the show we had lad and Lemon telling us who was who (a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean, don't watch one bit won't know who's the character is), not that it mattered much though. It was only after the movie that they tell us that they'd watched both The Bourne Identity and Supremacy over the weekend in preparation for Ultimatum.

Well, at least some people did their homework. But we do remember bits and pieces from Identity, enough to go, "Ooh, deja vu!" at some points.

It was after the movie that lad asked if we were free Tuesday night for dinner with another friend. Shame that his vegetarian wife would be following, there's not going to be any bah kut teh for dinner. We couldn't join them as we have a wedding birthday dinner to attend actually.

Turns out that aside from the dinner plans they have tomorrow, lad still remembers well the Carlsberg Extra Cold ad he saw and was keen on trying it out. Mystique at Cineleisure Damansara has a Extra Cold tap, this lad found out. But instead of Tuesday night, why not tonight? After all, we were already in Cineleisure Damansara, Mystique is just around the corner...

Resistance is futile.

So the three of us (otousan and Germ headed back) ended up having Carlsberg from a tap..."sheathed in ice and uses glycol-based technology to dispense beer at -1°C". Well, cold draft beer always goes down well.

As it was the stroke of midnight when our beer arrived, we actually celebrated the day with Carlsberg mooncake.

Thing was, when lad asked the waiter about it, we were first told a glass costed RM18.80 or so. When we paid up, the receipt showed 'Carlsberg Draft' and was RM12. So we thought that he misheard our order and gave us normal Carlsberg instead.

"Aiyah, want to complain or not?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Down!"
"Down!"
"Down!"

And this was half a glass of Carlsberg. Only after we finished our first glass did Lemon asked the waiter about the beer we got, referring to the receipt. And we were told that it was Carlsberg Extra Cold. We basically downed the drink instead of enjoying it as we intended.

In the end each of us bought a round - 3 glasses of Carlsberg Extra Cold each. Heh. Things got a bit scary when Lemon went down to 7-11 to get Malboro Menthol Lights. It's a frickin' Monday and we're already hitting the beer (or we could think of it as the weekend's not over). Throw in cigs? Might as well not show up for work then on Tuesday. Both lad and us backed out after one stick. To round up the night, we all headed over to Jasema's for supper before finally heading home.

Our eyes actually feel sunken in today. :P

Oh, and a wedding birthday dinner tonight! More alcohol!

Edit: Sorry about the slight deception Sporty Shaun! We did thought that we nearly gave the game away and so pushed the wedding story all the way! :D