...but my iPhone and extensive phone gaming got in the way.
Those things are friggin' addictive. Sigh.
Anyway, what I've been up to the past two months are:
- Playing phone games and burning through phone data like how I eat food (I eat very, very fast).
- I saw Crimson Peak! Review in progress. I completed like, 80% of it within three day of watching it, but after that, forgot that I need to tidy up and put it up.
- Bought Star Wars: The Force Awakens tickets!! Cannot, cannot, CANNOT wait for 17 December.
- Work, work, work. And also: sleep, sleep, sleep. And kinda lazing around because I tend not to be in the mood to work at home. Argh, backlog!
That's it. I've not forgotten the multitude of reviews I've yet to put up (though tomorrow at work I may forget about them temporarily). Patience is much appreciated at this point!!
ALL THE WORDS ARE GIBBERISH TO ME BECAUSE MY EARS ARE BEING FOCUSED INTO MY EYES THAT ARE TRYING TO TAKE EVERYTHING IN.
More of a "I purposely got onto Blogger so I could post this awesome video". Enjoy.
The video title includes Kristen Bell and Jeff Bridges, but they're not in this video (only the segment).
The tweet read: "If you find Benedict Cumberbatch attractive, I'm guessing you'd also quite enjoy staring directly at a cat's anus."
Kids this young are so intelligent these days, it's kinda scary :P
[Sequel to "And since I'm on Blogger now..."]
Boom! Rush Hour 4 / Face/Off 2.
Yes, you read right! And I'm totally typing this post out from my iPhone, using Morganfield's wifi.
And speaking of farts, here's one from The Usual Suspects:
Plus, special sneak peek! Watch this one first:
and the official trailer (I don't get why they call it red band) that leaked during Comic-Con this year!
And all these happened yesterday/the day before!! Proud that I'm up to date even without social media ;)
EDIT: Green band trailer below! The ending is adorbz.
[I Googled for the difference between green and red - red is R, green is for everyone. Figures.]
Misdirection! This post is not about me going on a liquid diet.
Although, I will allocate this sentence to say that I had Campbell's Mushroom Cheese Soup with Croutons, and am not feeling hungry whatsoever yay.
Rather, this post will just ramble, in general, about things uncompleted and other things in general. Like...:
- Today in the car, I got the feels from a nursery rhyme.
- Feeling like I take things too seriously, and therefore have two sticks up my ass. To the extent that even Kevin Bacon would have a tough time teaching me to... (cut loose) #GuardiansoftheGalaxy #responsible
- My Steven Universe post, which I just remembered writing that I would do, after viewing my blog. Not that I don't know what's in my blog, but there's comfort in pitch black.
- Previous sentence is unintentionally creepy (but intentionally left in since I typed it out already).
- Going through the rest of my blog made me also realise that I forgot to post about The Dress. Since I'm on this, I might as well say that I'm predisposed to seeing light blue and shit-brown, but if I had to choose, then I'd say dark white and dirty gold (instead of deep blue and pitch black). Here's the photo again:
 |
| What is it about colors that tear people apart? |
The San Diego Comic Con(vention) happened last weekend, and despite not being in the U-S-of-A, thank heavens for the Internet and people with cameraphones!
Here are some post-worthy (methinks) videos from YouTube:
[Not late! Since not-late, hence, not-spoiler-free.]
Retcon! That’s right, retroactive continuity happened in Genisys.
After last year’s Days of Future Past (review of which I’ve not yet finished), I’m now big on movies revisiting the past and changing things so to get a different outcome. I intended to skip this movie (gave up after Rise of the Machines), but the trailer got me hooked.
If you've seen the trailer, I’m sure you know what's going to happen in the film (JOHN CONNOR HUGE WTF REVEAL!) so I’m not going to go into the storyline. Instead, and this is rather lazy of me, I’m just going to go into point-form about what I liked and disliked about the movie:
Likes:
And in a most unexpected way.
Which makes me not quite know how to feel about it at all.
I'm not at liberty to elaborate further, so I'm just gonna stop here.
I might as well post these vids of awesomeness. Look out for 1:29 - 1:39 in video #2.
[If only. All I could only think about then was, "No, Joss Whedon, I did NOT see that coming!"]
Very short post. FREEDOM not really making itself felt yet.
After my "FREEDOM" post, I thought I'd be able to bang out my Avengers: Age of Ultron review (which, right now, is still barely written), and I have another post about how my mind got blown last weekend (which only has its post title, but not its content).
'Freedom' meant spending two weeks writing justifications for my own performance assessment, and also one other (thankfully, just one other!), but mostly, time was spent on my own and not on other people's.
Phew.
That over (today!), I now have to wait three more weeks for another bombshell to drop (or not drop). Details when it happens (or does not happen).
[Three days late.]
So I just finished my work peak last Friday. Woot woot.
And over the weekend, I totally binge-ate and slept and played computer games. I even took leave today JUST SO I COULD DO IT ALL AGAIN.
Like, a two-day weekend in one day. But not so much.
Anyway, Imma go outside and eat chips. Avengers: Age of Ulton review is two weeks' late!
And I'm not going to see it on opening weekend. I'll only be watching it with the rest of the United States (and probably some other parts of world that is not China, probably).
Which makes me super jumpy and disgruntled.
Because this is a movie that I really, really, really want to see; have been waiting to see since three years ago (even more so, since last year).
And I don't even have frackin' tickets to a show just yet.
EDIT: While I was at work today, my awesome mom managed to get frackin' tickets to a show on Labour Day!! May 1, baby!! I'M GONNA BE WATCHING THE AVENGERS THIS FRIDAY!!
Work aside (am bottling that up so it'll eat me from the inside out), this week(end) has been fantastic for movie buffs.
First, I found out that the Batman vs. Superman trailer is out. There's not much to show for it, but since I'm completely unfamiliar with the storyline, I got kinda excited. It didn't occur to me that Batman would be bringing Superman to justice for what he did (in probably Man of Steel).
[So THAT's what Dawn of Justice! Duh!]
Then, we have the new Ant-Man trailer, a superhero I have no clue about except that he (Hank Pym) was the most aggressive of the Marvel Zombies, but the trailer revealed more and it looked cool. I didn't know he'd have superhuman strength when he's tiny!
And last (but not least), the icing on the cake: Star friggin' Wars!!!
But my connection was sooo shitty, that 1080HD quality couldn't load completely, and I had to downgrade to 480, which ALSO took forever to load.
The wait was absolutely worth it. I got goosebumps hearing Mark Hamill's voice (Internet says it's from Return of the Jedi, but why would they reuse audio when they could just get Mark Hamill to friggin' re-say those words for the trailer), then fights and battles and X-Wings, then seeing the Millenium Falcon being chased, and finally, Han SoloHarrison Ford!!!!
AND CHEWBACCA!!!
I can't wait for Christmas.
#ChewieWereHome
This morning, I saw a little pictorial on the cover of the Sunday lifestyle pull-out, saying "Remembering Terry Pratchett - Star2 tomorrow".
Shocked, I immediately whipped out my cellphone, Googled, and I found out he died three days ago. And there wasn't even a blurb in the papers saying he'd passed on.
[As I'm writing this, I've a sense of deja vu. I didn't see Robert Jordan's death coming, either.]
I haven't been a Pratchett fan for long. My first book was Interesting Times, probably back in 2008/09, and I've never laughed so hard nor did I ever think I'd find a book written by a Westerner that was so spot-on in satirising East Asian culture. Mort, The Last Continent, Thud! (which put Sam Vimes right up there with Rincewind as characters I look for), Going Postal, and many more soon followed.
[Interesting Times wasn't my first introduction to Rincewind and the Discworld, though. It was a little computer game named Discworld, released sometime in the '90s. I didn't get around to playing it until I was in college. And after that I found out that it was actually Samuel Vimes who was the protagonist in the book the game was based on.]
One of the main reasons why I loved Pratchett's books is because of his turn of phrase and narrative style: it's very conversational, and I love that he plays on the sentences he writes for added humour. A sentence of his (can't recall it exactly, but it's from Unseen Academicals) which is my personal favourite is about a very well-loved teddy bear who had a third button sewn onto its head, and is thus more enlightened than the average teddy bear.
Another thing about Pratchett's books is that he can write very poignant scenes (the last paragraphs of Mort come to mind), and he writes characters that you start to care about in only a matter of pages, and then you hope that he doesn't kill them off.
I remember reading Monstrous Regiment, and though no one died, the last few chapters made me cry; reading the part in Thud! where Sam Vimes is possessed by the Summoning Darkness and, in fighting said Darkness, he bellows out Where's My Cow? and miles away, young Sam hears him and is placated; and when Ronald Saveloy died in Interesting Times and got into Viking Heaven, I teared up.
[Every time.]
Finding out (some years ago) that Pratchett had Alzheimer's shocked me; the irony of it being that he's still writing, his books are still as witty as ever, and here he had this illness that preys on the mind; an illness of which most people think you'd only get if you don't keep your brain active.
As I was catching up on Pratchett's death via phone, I clicked one with the title, "Terry Pratchett posts final conversations with Death on Twitter" (no link because there are many with the same title and I can't remember which one it was I'd clicked).
And as I read through it and his tweets, I cried. At the car workshop, because I was getting my tyres checked. I totally almost-bawled, and had to hide my eyes with my sunglasses.
In ending this post and with a very heavy heart, I embed the below bittersweet and meta tweets, right from Pratchett's Twitter account (the first one is from Death, who TALKS LIKE THIS).
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
The End.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
And new scenes!!
And tickets have been available since Chinese New Year!!! The earliest I've seen advance ticketing happen was for Transformers 4: three weeks prior.
Two whole months (and then some!) is a new record! To me, at least.
Time to queue up for the Labour Day crowd.
My next post will be about dresses and colors. Wasn't late to the party, just late to tell everyone else about it.
[...but my reaction was immediate, as laid out below.]
OHMIGOSH WHY MICHAEL KEATON NO WIN OSCAR ONE!!!! I MEAN EDDIE REDMAYNE IS STILL YOUNG HE HAS ANOTHER FORTY YEARS TO GET ANOTHER OSCAR NOM.
I told my friend the above and she said, "hahaha okay", and I replied, "APA OKAY IT NOT OKAY LAAAA YOU SEE I DON'T WATCH OSCARS LIVE NIA THEN MICHAEL KEATON NO WIN LIAO."
Capslock aside, I thought the Academy was all about rewarding people who've paid their dues. Keaton's certainly been in the industry long enough, and coupled with the fact that Keaton was nominated for a role reminiscent of his own career in a movie that is so freaking meta, I figured he'd practically be a shoo-in already.
[I even heard Jeff Bridges say, "You're gonna win this, maaaaaaannnnnnn". Sigh.]
Now Tim Burton, please go do Beetlejuice 2 so that Keaton can have another shot at the Oscar ktnxbai.
AN ENTIRE WEEK BEFORE THE INITIAL ANNOUNCE DATE OF 29 APRIL!!
I AM ELATED AND SLIGHTLY DEFLATED BECAUSE I WOULD NEED TO WAIT AN ENTIRE WEEK BEFORE MY PEAK ENDS AND I TRULY AM FREE TO SEE IT.
Long capitalised sentences aside, I'm really quite stoked. Usually, the first movie would set the tone for the rest of the series, but given that the promos and everywhere are saying that things'll be darker and Civil War (and Spider-man!!) and all that, I'm a bit doubtful that I'd enjoy the movie as much as I did the first.
But hey, 2015 seemed a long way ahead back when we finished the first movie. At least this is the year it finally will open, amirite?
In semi-related news, the Crimson Peak trailer is here and I can't garner much story from it, which is good. Nothing like a complete lack of plot detail on the Internet and a good ol' haunting house vaguely reminiscent of The Shining to pique my interest, Hiddles notwithstanding.
[See what I did there? Pique // Peak. Eh.]
I initially wrote this post early this week, thinking that because my idiot box is in the shop, I would have one less distraction and actually get quite a bit done. In my optimism (rare!), I had listed down the things that I'd be able to complete in this one week.
I actually started the post off with, "It can get a shitload of things done!".
Not so.
Chinese New Year is coming, so I've got to prep for that, and this past week I've been stuck in the office more than usual, trying to finish the unfinishable and hope that a curveball doesn't fly my way at the last minute.
[Although it most assuredly will!]
I think the only thing in my list that I managed to achieve is phone-surfing, which, in a(nother rare!) moment of foresight, I got the one-week pass before I found out the TV was being difficult and that we would send it to the shop that very weekend.
Other things that I thought I'd get done (but didn't) are:
- movie reviews. My very at-least-two-years overdue movie reviews.
- moving furniture back to where they were - we re-tiled the kitchen and part of the living room because the weather was so hot the tiles exploded (I think this is the word for it). The re-tiling happened last May.
- cleaning the house
- travelogues. My at-least-eight-years (2007!) overdue travelogues.
I stumbled onto The Guardians of the Galaxy in all its pixellated glory.
Considering how already high the nostalgic factor this movie already has, hearing retro music like this ups it up even further.
Check out more of CineFix and their full 8-Bit Cinema playlist here!
[My first movie of 2015! And on time, too. It opened here last weekend.]
My interest in the movie stemmed from its premise (a former-superhero actor trying to distance himself from what made him famous and revive his career with a show on Broadway) and its lead actor (Michael Keaton).
A case of art imitating life, perhaps?
Granted, Keaton hasn’t been on Broadway nor has his career in later years been a comedy of errors, but after the Batman movies, I heard some typecasting was to be had, and like the elusive Billy Crystal, he hasn’t been in much in past years.
[Which is why I enjoyed seeing him in The Other Guys. “We're losing him!... HE’S DYING!!”]
Riggan Thomson (Keaton’s character), once famous for Birdman (a superhero in a series of films), has now faded into obscurity and constantly hears his alter-ego (Birdman) talk to him about returning to his action movie roots. He adapts and stars in a Broadway play to gain relevance, but in getting said play to make it through previews and opening night without a hitch, he has mend his relationship with his former addict of a daughter (Emma Stone), and deal with method supporting actor Mike Shiner (played brilliantly by Edward Norton).
Birdman is more dark comedy, with the humour being more comic than your standard kind of funny, and made for some great laughs in the film. It also tries to incorporate some fantastical elements (telekinesis, especially), and though it looks great, it’s almost an excuse to have a special effects department (reminding me of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a movie that could’ve been just as effective without showing us how overactive Walter’s imagination really is). The much-hyped long takes were woven seamlessly as one, and though very, very cool from a technical point of view, I found it distracted me because I kept trying to spot where one take ended and the next began.
With Keaton’s casting, you can’t help but see the parallels between his and Riggan’s career (downward spiral excepted). The movie even quotes that the last time Riggan played Birdman was in 1992, which was the last time Keaton donned the Batsuit! The long takes worked in his favour, I feel, because even though he’s not physically on-camera (in certain scenes his reflection is onscreen), your attention is still on him because you just can’t take your eyes off his almost-trainwreck of a character.
There is almost a tragic quality to Keaton’s performance, and I’m glad that (his) life doesn’t mirror art at all. A lot of people are saying that this is Keaton’s role of a lifetime, and given the meta-ness of it all, I agree with them. Keaton got a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal, and I hope he wins, come Oscar night.
[Maybe next time, BC.]
Norton almost steals the show as Mike Shiner, a renowned but asshole-ish theatre actor that you get a kick out of watching and eventually sympathise with because Norton manages to make him both likeable and vulnerable. Quite a number of the film’s comic moments come from Norton, and he’s spot on as Mike, which makes me wonder whether Norton was chosen given his own reputation for being difficult when it comes to artistic integrity.
[On that note, my crush on Ed Norton has been renewed.]
There is a sense of impending tragedy in the last part of the film. The first two instances were interspersed with random humour that succeeded in creating some levity, but turned out to be false alarms and left me still on the edge of my seat because I’m rooting for Riggan to pull himself together and make it through the film. The movie ends with the last instance, which is on a positive note, although it’s highly Inception-vague.
This is a movie that requires your full attention, and I blame the single-camera system. Having at least two people on the same screen at the same time all the time means that you may not be able to appreciate fully the performances of the actors on screen because you’d only be looking at one (usually the one talking) and not the other.
Do watch (a few times).
Translation for first part is: Oh my glob, Benedict Cumberbatch got an Oscar nomination!
Congratulations, Ben!
And congratulations, Michael Keaton! I'm rooting for the both of you!!
[But I'm rooting for BatmanMichael Keaton more.]
More subdued, but hey.
I honestly can't tell what from what, so it's a bit difficult to get excited. Maybe the blistering heat (I'm not outside but I can feel it through my walls!) is getting to me.
The video comments tell me the movie has leaked. Must... refrain... self... from... Googling...
and it's not very long because most of them don't interest me.
[Toldja I'd use the comma.]
[You might be thinking that I’m waiting for Batman vs. Superman so that I can do a double feature, but no. Since it’s been a long while (two years!), my recollection of the film's plot in some parts mightn’t be accurate.]
(Probably) in line with the Nolan Batman movies, Zack Snyder gives us a more logical approach to the mythology, in that Lois actually finds out who Superman is first (and without any fanfare), so when Clark finally goes to work for the Daily Planet at the end of the film, it’s like nudgenudgewinkwink.
[Which makes far more sense, really, because how can you not recognize someone just because he took off his glasses.]
The first hour or so of the movie is surprisingly subdued, focusing more on Clark finding about his heritage, and flashbacks to when he was growing up. Far from the rosy childhood that we all thought he had (as rather implied from the Christopher Reeves’ films), I was stunned when Jonathan Kent chooses to die in a tornado rather than to let Clark reveal his powers to save him.
[I teared up at that scene.]
I was also surprised to see Jor-El have more direct involvement (having grown up with Marlon Brando’s disembodied head) with things, especially in the scenes where Zod has taken over Supes’ Kryptonian ship and was using it as a base of operations
It’s a bit of a frenetic mess in the last hour, with full-blown CGI and a slightly short-lived death match between Supes and Zod, but in Zack Snyder’s hands, well, I can still see what’s what, who’s who and where’s where.
I also don’t get why everyone got worked up about Supes killing Zod. Yes, Supes doesn’t kill people (he doesn’t even lobotomise), but in this instance, Supes didn’t have a choice – Zod was going to obliterate those people with his heat vision. And I understand Supes’ pain/agony about his decision, because Zod is the last of his kind (that he knows about) and by killing him, Supes will be the last of the Kryptonians.
Man of Steel is certainly a step-up from the really boring Superman Returns, but tries to over-compensate the lack of action in the latter with far too much destruction and city-levelling in the final hour. I mean, there’s barely any city left at the end.
I saw quite a bit of movies on TV as well, so it and cinema seem to blur together (because I didn't get a chance to draft-post my TV movies).
So it's presumed that my resolutions for 2014 are the same as 2013's, since I didn't even draw up a list.
Out of my 20134 resolutions, I think I managed to make time to watch films.
Other than that, I bombed my other resolutions.
As recent readers would know, I've already drawn up my 2015 resolution last year, so I'm not gonna double post on that.
[I keep linking back to that post because the picture is so cute. Bite-size one to the right ->]
Remember what I said about being happy?
Well, I totally broke that today.
It started with me going to my building's parking management's website to pay for this month's season parking, which is due on the 3rd. I absolutely do not trust internet banking, but have no other choice since the parking management has shoehorned everyone into doing this by refusing to accept direct bank-in / cheque / cash payments effective from 2015.
Humbugs.
I had poked around the website earlier, and noted that you can select the month, but not the year. My concern is, what if I pay in December 2014 (meant for January 2015), but the system gets confused and thinks that I'm paying for January 2014 instead?
[Shit has happened for even more stupid reasons.]
So I waited until today (when it's actually 2015) to transfer my money.
And I found out I wasn't able to do it.
Everything was peachy up till I got to the payment page, when I couldn't select my account. I called the bank's helpline, and was told that it's probably the FPX provider's issue, which I easily believed, because the parking management has been quite stupid andunclear about things so far.
Then I tried to test whether this "please select" problem came up on other sites.
I could only find one such site for me to try it on (because then I would have accounts with sites that I totally don't go on at all and why should), and I couldn't even get onto the payment page.
So now I don't know whether it's an issue with the bank, or the parking management's website. I don't know whether to sort this out with the bank, or to open an account with another bank, but the main problem is that tomorrow I'm working and banks don't open on Saturdays.
After this debacle (I attempted this five more times), I was feeling rather crappy inside so I thought we could go to Nando's for lunch.
The manager (I think) directed us to the two-seater, which is:
a) super-cramped between tables
b) super-narrow in size, and/or
c) couchy, if they give you a wall-seat.
Since the place wasn't full yet, we requested that we sit at the smaller four-seater. After all, the food comes real fast, and we never dally when we eat.
The guy refused. Twice.
So we walked out. I tend to be accommodating, but I was already so pissed to the extent that I figured, it's a new year, I can fucking walk out if I don't get my way.
Then we went to Sushi King. It was pretty smooth, aside from the fact that one of the cooks tried to pass us our dish by just handing it over the conveyor belt, implying that I, a customer, would have to lean over and stretch out to get it from him. Like, hellooo, we pay service charge.
I just glared at the guy, and one of the waitresses took it from him and passed it to us the proper way at our table. I later saw that she is the restaurant manager.
It's not easy to be happy. But I guess that's why it's called a 'resolution'; it's something you resolve to do, which means that it isn't something that just be done willy-nilly.
This is my challenge for this year. Only the first day and it's has been a trying one already.
