0942hrs

Listening to: Kylie Minogue - I Believe In You


This year, I've already watched more movies than the whole of last year. And the trend is set to increase, with lots of good shows coming up, and also because of this:



Hoho, my sis (and to a lesser extent, me) went crazy at MJ/TS yesterday! In all, we bought eight movies and one Stef Sun karaoke VCD, lol. My choices were (top left) That Thing You Do! (I've got a thing for movies about bands and music) and Maria Full Of Grace, which I've heard a lot about. The rest are my sister's choices of educational movies to enrich her (and her students') soul, hahaha. ;)

I also think I'm going to get this, yay!

1328hrs

Listening to: Do As Infinity - For The Future


I watched a Japanese film on DVD yesterday, and have been strongly encouraged to do a review on it... so here goes!



Last Quarter (2004)


An adaptation of a popular manga called Kagen No Tsuki, the film is headlined by Chiaki Kuriyama (the psychotic girl from Battle Royale and Kill Bill) and Hyde, the lead singer of popular band LArc-en-Ciel.

 

Kuriyama is Mizuki, a girl who breaks up with her boyfriend on her 19th birthday and wanders to an eerie abandoned house where she finds Adam (Hyde), a mysterious guitar-playing dude.

 

Hyde doesn't have too many lines in the film, but I think all he has to do is to be on screen for all the girls to faint in their seats. ^o)

Anyway, a week later, Mizuki finds Adam missing, and a phonecall from him sends her rushing to meet him. However, she is hit by a truck and goes into a coma. This starts a chain of events which, if I were to explain in detail, would take a few days for me to remember and type out :S In a nutshell, Mizuki's soul is trapped in the eerie house after her accident, and her boyfriend and two random kids try their darndest to get her out of there. Heheh.

 

Here's the boyfriend Tomoki (Hiroki Narimiya) and the two random kids, Hotaru (Tomoka Kurokawa) and Masaki (Motoki Ochiai). The latter two are 15 and 16 years old respectively in real life! :O

Together, they discover the mystery surrounding Adam and his connection with Mizuki, and all the loose ends are nicely tied up by the end of the very long movie.

Comments about the film? Hmm, it's definitely not a no-brainer kind of movie... I was really thinking hard and going "ohhhhh!" when something clicked, haha. But it's mostly well-acted (mostly...) and the script is well-written.

Oh yah... thank God for English subtitles. Heheh.

Lester's rating: 3.5/5 stars!

1032hrs

Listening to: Live - Selling The Drama


The response to my quiz has been pretty good, with 23 entries! However, about half are entries from people I don't know or have chosen to remain anonymous. Aww c'mon people, if you have the guts to take the quiz, have the guts to leave your name! Be like eggplant and germ! :P

Anyways, here is the hall of fame (or shame, haha) for the people I know:


Congrats to me (aka my sis haha) and daphne for getting full marks! Perhaps the questions were too easy already, heheh. Hope everyone had fun and now knows a little more about me... put your real names next time so I know who you are, okay? :)

Start time: 1418hrs

I was told yesterday: "Your blog is detached from you." (I can't remember the exact words, but that's the gist of it)

I took that to mean that I don't write about what goes on in my life everyday. Thinking about it, that's both true and false.

I don't write about the little things that happen to me daily 'cos that's not what this is about lah. My blog is not a diary or a log of every damn thing, haha.

To me, it's an outlet for me to share little snippets of each day that I find interesting and worth remembering, and also worth taking the time and effort to type out.

I'm sure that anyone who reads my blog will get a pretty good idea of what I'm like, and what I like. Stuff like music, movies, food... I write about these topics all the time.

I'm glad my blog has a direction nowadays. No bitching about people, no whining, no !#$%s here and there. 'Cos that's really what I'm about. :)

End time: 1423hrs

0152hrs

Listening to: Semisonic - Closing Time


Someday I'll tell the story of how the above song helped me think up my first e-mail address, haha. But for now, let's get on with the review of today's film:



Robots (2005)

20th Century Fox proves with this action-packed animated feature that it is up there with Pixar and DreamWorks in this film genre. The protagonist (heheh this word is nice) is Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor, he of Moulin Rouge fame), a young inventor who moves to the big (Robot) city to fulfill his childhood dream of meeting Big Weld, "the greatest robot in the world" according to his daddy (Rodney's, not Big Weld's).



Rodney has a close relationship with his parents, and they give him their support in moving to the big city. Once there, he bumps into Fender (voiced by Robin Williams) and gang, a bunch of old rusting robots who are finding it hard to find spare parts to repair themselves because...



... Big Weld has gone into seclusion, and his corporation has been taken over by the evil Ratchet (Greg Kinnear), whose focus is to get rid of all the old robots who "can't afford to upgrade" (sounds like HDB, hoho :X).



The rest of the movie is filled with very fast-paced action, witty dialogue and great visuals. My favourite robot joke: check out the signs on the washroom doors, hahahaha. Hilarious. xD (To fully understand, please go catch the film.)



There's a passing resemblance between the voice actors and the animated heroes, don't you think? Robin Williams is really funny as the weirdass Fender, and Ewan McGregor takes a break from the serious stuff (Star Wars Episode III, akan datang) to voice the all-around good guy Rodney.

Other voice actors like Halle Berry, Amanda Bynes and Drew Carrey round off the cast. Overall, I really enjoyed the film and there were many, many times when I laughed out loud and scared the five-year-olds sitting in front of us, haha. Sharon really enjoyed it too; she was laughing really loudly at the funny parts and going "oh nooo!!!" during the "scary" ones, heheh. :X

Lester's rating: 4/5 stars!

1630hrs

Listening to:



Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway (2004)


I'm very much taken by this American Idol winner's voice and her music. Despite having a debut album that didn't produce anything memorable (anyone remembers "Miss Independant"?), Kelly Clarkson has overcome the second-album jinx and delivered a much better punch the second time around. Last month, she opened the NBA All-Star Weekend 2005 activities in Denver, Colorado:



Kelly did a super rendition of "Since U Been Gone" (grammatically incorrect title but a damn catchy song!). For those of you who have heard this song, my favourite part is the bridge when she hits a really high note... and man she nailed it live that night! (y)! She may not be the hottest girl singer around based on looks, but the overall package works pretty well for me, haha. :$ (who says you can't be a star if you're fpp and have dsb? :P)

The rest of her album is extremely listenable, and I'm still deciding if "Breakaway" or "Since U Been Gone" is my favourite song from it, haha. If Avril Lavigne were a few years older, lost that kiddie attitude and ate a few more cheeseburgers, she would be like Kelly! Hahaha. :) Definitely the most popular of all the AI winners so far... where's Fantasia and Clay Ruben now anyway?

Up next: the Robots review!

1051hrs

It seems like the recruitment drive has, well, gone into overdrive. On today's radio show were two recent graduates, telling all the impressionable 19-year-olds out there listening to P10 how great their alma mater was.

That's all well and good I guess; what irked me was how those two (a guy and a girl) spoke.

Guy: "The States are [sic] doing that too."
"Soft-skills (what the heck is this anyway?) was [sic] taught to us."

I'm not sure how to emote what the girl said, but she had a really weird hybridised American/British/Australian/Singaporean accent (go figure). And all those "assss-em-yewwws" just made me change the channel. Luckily, Switchfoot was on Power 98, heheh.

Continuing the recruitment drive....tomorrow on The Morning Show (no stupid baby Ts on my blog, hoho): SMU's canteen uncles and aunties come in to speak about how business-minded the students are when buying their mee pok and chicken rice!