Update post of sorts!

Actually, it just is a plain ol' update. I'm sick of typing "UPDATE!!11!" after every hiatus.

I've been really, really busy with work for the past coupla weeks, and will be till end April. Or end June. I don't really care anymore.

So I was in KL from end of February for the induction / orientation event that my company has. The eight of us newbies were there for two-plus days, and took the night bus back. The driver was super-awesome. He got us from KL to Penang in four hours flat AND he stopped twice at rest stops.

Of course, he drove really, really fast, but hey. As long as the bus doesn't go belly-up while I'm in it, I'm happy.

Since we're from Penang, all of us either had a mutual friend, tuition-mate, classmate, etc.. Living proof of six degrees of separation, folks, and all of us thought the other looked relatively familiar. Aside from the people I already know.

Anyway, my baptism is coming up soon! I've already chosen my outfit, which I think I can quite rock provided I don't take dinner for the next two weeks leading up to the event. But I don't think taking two Cloud Nines a day would help. My weight has gone down one kilo (which I feel is a pretty good start), though I hope it doesn't go to my head and I start eating again.

Also, Savage Garden's Truly Madly Deeply is currently stuck in my head, thanks to a cellphone going off in office. Person in office with ringtone, I applaud your excellent taste in music. TMD is one of the rare easy listeningballads that doesn't make me change stations. The worst part is that I only know the opening verse and chorus, so it's like a broken record in my head now.

[Previously, some other person had Lily Allen's Fuck You as a ringtone, but I never found out whom :(]

Side note, isn't Darren Hayes' Insatiable like, the dirtiest song ever? I love, love, love it, but really, if you haven't noticed, next time you hear the song, do pay close attention to the lyrics.

Speaking of radio stations, the ones on my car got messed up. See, I bust it up last week so it had to be hauled and overhauled, and now, the radio stations are wonky. Now I only have Fly.fm and Red.fm, and can't hook on to Hitz.fm or any of the old stations I used to have. Sigh.

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Night Visions.

Night Visions was a totally awesome TV series in the early Noughts (or Aughts or whatev) that was totally cut short. It's like this millenium's Night Gallery, the horror genre's Twilight Zone.

I used to look forward to Wednesdays at 11pm because of this show. Nowadays on Wednesdays (and every other day) at 11, we watch Chef At Home.

Yup. That's how mellow TV programming has become.

Anyway, each episode is one hour, with two half-hour stories. Practically all of them have a twist ending, with the protagonist predictably getting it, but it was still fun because it was thrilling. And plus, every episode has someone (relatively) famous in it, with Aidan Quinn *swoon*, Bridget Fonda, Malcolm McDowell, Cary Elwes *dubbleswoon*, David Paymer, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jay Mohr, Gil Bellows, and a truckload of other familiar faces.

The special effects are, admittedly, a bit lame, but hey, it's a TV show. We're lucky that we're getting any special effects. I mean, look at Supernatural. An episode where angels and demons literally have a stand-off, and they fist-fight.


It was boring.

Right, getting back on-topic, I actually thought I'd missed the initial few episodes when they started airing it on TV, because we were away on holiday for about a week or so. The only reason why I wanted to watch the show because I saw Aidan Quinn in the commercials but turns out, I didn't miss any. Aidan Quinn's was the first ever episode, which was the first one we watched, and that one was pretty good (please see description here, somewhere in the middle). The second part of the show was called The Bokor, but that one was so-so, though it was awfully creepy.

My favorite episodes of the series are:

1) Darkness
Michael Rapaport inherits a huge mansion from the uncle he never knew, and inherits the evil that comes out whenever it's dark, refusing to let go of his newfound wealth. Simple storyline, but it stood out for me, and at the end, Rapaport's still staying in the house, except that in the process of eradicating the Darkness, he accidentally blinds himself permanently.

2) A View through the Window
Bill Pullman plays a scientist summoned to explain a mysterious phenomenon in the middle of the desert: a one-way "window" looking into a small house in the countryside. Pullman falls for the daughter of the house, and when the window opens for one brief moment, he goes through it. His ultimate fate is really quite predictable, but the episode really leaves a lasting impression in the final scene, where the window still exists, but the one-way view is now reversed.

3) Bitter Harvest
was another brilliant episode. A young man accidentally causes the token creepy old guy (played by Jack Palance, R.I.P.) to lose his forearms, and as the boy is afraid of telling his parents what happened, he is forced to work on the Palance's farm while he recuperates. Nothing happens to the boy, and at the end of the week, all that anticipation finally gets to him and he asks the old guy a flat out "Why??" Turns out, the old guy isn't into direct revenge. By the end, a foal born with no forelegs, and ominously, the boy's mother announces that she is expecting.

4) Afterlife
opens with a dead Randy Quaid, whose eyes keep popping open despite the very fact that he is, well, dead. During the funeral (his), he comes back to life, and his family is overjoyed. Later, though, Quaid keeps tasting dirt despite NOT eating dirt, and becomes obsessed with heaven, wanting to go back, and creates collages (lovely ones) that depict what he remembers of heaven. He eventually tries to kill his daughter, who totally runs, and as wife and daughter watch in horror, he commits suicide. We come back to the same funeral parlour, and as Quaid's eyes pop open again, the camera pans over to his POV, looking up at the (same) two funeral parlour people from the beginning, and moving up towards the ceiling, where we see a stained glass that is the splitting image of 'heaven'.


So anyway, those are my top few. A few episodes are on YouTube, like Afterlife and A View through the Window. Do check the other episodes out when you have time to kill; they won't disappoint :)

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Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!!

 Bring out the leftover fireworks and stuff your faces with mandarin oranges, it's a new year!
May the Year of the Tiger bring all of you great health, loads of wealth, and an abundance of prosperity!!


And hopefully, better weather.

************

Sorry for my lateness; I meant to post this on Sunday, but the lousy Internet decided to go on leave as well. Till now, that is.

Oh well, Happy Holidays, everyone!!

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Passengers (2008)

Passengers is about a psychiatrist (Anne Hathaway) treating five survivors of a plane crash. As she grows closer to one of them, played by Patrick Wilson (who totally doesn't sing in this movie argh), her patients start going missing one-by-one. Suspicious airline official David Morse (as usual) mentions that there were no survivors in that crash, and when Anne gets a hold of that passenger list, she sees her name on it.

In other words, Passengers is like the Night Visions episode The Passenger List, starring Aidan Quinn and Paul Guilfoyle.

Except Hallmark-y.

Which is why the Night Visions episode is much more superior to this movie, and no, not because Aidan Quinn was in that. *swoon*

Passengers starts off as a thriller. People go missing, David Morse acts suspicious, some of the people she knows acts suspicious, Patrick Wilson keeps seeking her out like all suspicious-like. And the ending was anti-climactic.

It turns out that the five (well, six) are actually in limbo (technically), and the people around Anne Hathaway were actually supposed to help her come to terms that she's dead, and to move on. Except for Patrick Wilson, of course, because he was on the plane as well.


I would've preferred a conspiracy involving the airline.

In The Passenger List, Aidan Quinn is a crash inspector who receives a call about an airplane crash. Heading on-scene, the coroner tells him that there were no survivors and they've got all the bodies, except for one person who's literally in pieces, and since they're in the process of putting him back together and the passenger list isn't back yet, there is no ID on the guy. He becomes romantically involved with this lady whose family died on the plane, and as he investigates, suspicious things (I can't remember what; it's been a long time since I saw this) start to happen. Eventually, he gets a call from the coroner who tells him that they've finally pieced the body together. By the time he gets there, the passenger list has been faxed/despatched over as well, and viewing the body, he sees... him.

As in, himself. It's his body.

Flash-forward (or something like that), and he wakes up on a plane. THE plane. As he panics, he sees familiar faces, ones he's (and we've) seen throughout the episode, and the lady he's currently dating. The plane malfunctions, and the episode ends with the first few people to arrive onto the scene, telephoning Aidan Quinn, and his cellphone starts to ring a few feet away from them.

See? THAT'S how you make a thriller. Although The Passenger List is only a half hour, but seriously, it's Hollywood. They can hire people to make it an hour and a half longer. I will blog about my love for Night Visions another time; I want to finish this and watch TV now).

Anyway, the only thing I like about the movie was the ending, and not because it meant the movie was over, but because it was... sweet. Anne Hathaway and Patrick Wilson turned out to be acquaintances on the plane, and as it was crashing and Anne's panicking and screaming, "We're all gonna DIE!!", Patrick consoles her and tells her that he is there for/with her, and flashbacking through the movie, HE was the one who kept meeting up with her, and kept her company, and seeking her out, and generally, was WITH HER.

I thought it was sweet, and basically the only thing in the movie that made it even worth the two hours. Sappy, but sweet.

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On the radio...

While driving today, I noticed that out of the five stations I have on the car radio (five because there were only five buttons), three of them were playing Jazz music. And these stations were Hitz, Mix and Lite.

Three radio stations as different as night and day, which means that they NEVER play the same thing at the same time. Let alone Jazz. Ugh.

Red.fm was having piano music, which was nice, but kinda disappointing because I was looking forward to some Lady GaGa. Fly was the only one playing songs, current ones too, like that annoying Fall For You song, but even though they had the announced, "Fly... FM," every other song, still no DJ, no ads.


It's nice to know that even with airwave issues, Fly.fm is still awesome.


Which makes me wonder... would Fly.fm survive a nuclear meltdown?

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Avatar (2009)

Or, as it's commonly known on the Internet, Dances with Blue Furries.

I get nauseous easily, and that's why I'm very reluctant to watch a movie in 3-D because 1) 3-D is more expensive than regular movies and 2) I don't want to pay extra money to get a headache and puke all over the person in front of me.

But, the first thing I thought when the movie ended was, "Dammit, I should've seen this in 3-D."

For once, it's not overhyping on the moviemakers' part. The CGI is absolutely gorgeous, and the star of the movie is so obviously Pandora, the planet the film is set on.

Now I'm totally kicking myself for not opting for 3-D the first time.

Storyline, however, is just meh, and because of its total and utter 'meh-ness', doesn't warrant a second round in the cinemas. As you may have heard, the plot is recycled. So is every other Hollywood film, actually, but when the fact is so obvious that the movie just screams, "BORROWED MATERIAL!!", it's not a good sign.

True, the plot is just a device to show off the entire ecosystem created by the makers, but come on, we're talking about a big-budget studio movie. Don't tell me they can't come up with a storyline better than what we've been given. Jeez.

And that's why I'm not gonna watch Avatar again. I feel it's not worth a second time.

If you do want to see it on the big screen, do watch it in 3-D. Saves you the money, and the energy expended in kicking.

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Twilight Chapters 15-24 + Epilogue = Finally finished!

So sorry for the delay. I've been putting off my reading because it's such a drag to read everything from a screen.

[Note: I ALWAYS finish a book I've started.]

So in Chapter 15, we get to meet the Cullens.

Full chapter on Carlisle, which is good, since it diverts from the love-talk. The Vulturi also makes an appearance in a painting, though their collective name is not mentioned (probably because Meyer hadn't thought of it yet), only the individual members.

And then we have baseball!

[Supermassive black HOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!]

I'm enjoying the reparté. Whether it's truly witty, or I have finally lost my mindgot used to the idea of pleasant banter for the sake of it, I'unno. It's surprisingly not painful. The book also explains why James didn't kill her father. The movie, aside from saying that he's ruthless and crap, didn't explain any further, so Hollywood basically just made him look inefficient.

Additional proof that the book is ALWAYS better than the movie. Except for Perfume: Story of A Murderer (which is equally balanced in awesomeness).


Chapter 22, though long, was interesting enough as we find out about Alice's mysterious origins. Mind you, we still don't know much about her, but at least we know how she came to be. James did the first and foremost mistake in villainy, and that is monologuing to his prey. But anyway, if he didn't do that, there wouldn't be Chapter 23, which was a bit cringe-worthy because every other sentence with Edward in it refers to him as "the angel". "The angel is screaming", "The angel is so beautiful", "The angel bollocks." *rolls eyes*

The epilogue could be a few pages shorter, as most of it was of Bella crying and whining in the car about how she doesn't want to go to the prom and how she didn't see it coming and crap. It was absolutely annoying. Everyone pretty is at the prom, with special elaboration on Rosalie, which reminds me of how Movie Rosalie's prettiness can't match that of Movie Alice. Not by a long shot.

And so I'm done with Twilight. I'm not used to romance novels and teen lit, so my recounting may be a bit biased, so anyway read it at your own risk.

Twilight can also be considered the first book I've finished reading in 2010, so yeah. That's that.

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