Writer's block's back.

[insert string of expletives here.]

It's not that I don't have anything to post about; heck, I've got two movies and a bunch of book reviews to flood the world with more proof that I have opinions and bygoshdarnit Imma use 'em.

I'm not out of ideas. I'm not out of things to write.

It's just that I haven't been able to, well... bring them out? Bridge the gap between mind and screen?express myself. Words finally hit me two weeks after postage. Gah.

I'm not even bothered to think of a better way to finish the above sentence, so I hope you catch my drift with those two quarter-assed attempts.

At the moment, I can't even produce coherent sentences. Everything's just a jumble in my head.

Yannoe, I thought I'd really gotten past the block. It looks that the only things I can post about these days are UPDATES!!!!, which are just about the lamest things in the world and really doesn't require effort on my end, which is kinda great in a way ('cuz I'm lazy), but not as well, since there are so many things I need to vent about, and my blog is a channel to get my bitchings through.

But I seem to have lost access to the channel I need to get to the channel that I use to air my rants. Knawmsayin'?
 
This must be what emo feels like. Minus the suicidal tendencies.

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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

Okay, this review is so, sooo long overdue. Sorry about that. Have just been feeling uninspired and 'meh' lately.

Which brings me back to this movie. Meh.

Didn't hate it, didn't love it. For a movie based on a video game, could've been a lot better.

Likes:

• Alfred Molina. If he's in it, I'll watch it. In this case, I've been meaning to watch PoP already, so two birds, eh?
• The CGI is totally freaking awesome in this film! Every scene with Sand (geddit? Ged the capitalization?) looked absolutely cool, and I loved it whenever time was reversed.
• Nostalgia. I grew up playing the first Prince of Persia game, and though I sucked at it and never got very far ('cuz I suck), it was rare to get a Mac game back in the day. And I loved it. Though I kept sliding off ledges and having bloody deaths.
• Jake Gyllenhaal. Hot hot hot hot! Did not see that coming.
• The Hassassins. Cool, scary mofos. Basically any scene with them in it is awesome, and that snake time-reversing scene was the best of the lot.

Dislikes:

• Not enough shirtless Jake. Yes, I'm a geek, but I'm also there to see Jake Gyllenhaal without his shirt on, and unfortunately in this movie, he only has his shirt off in ONE scene. Somewhere near the beginning of the film.
• PG13 storyline. I get that this is a Disney movie, but they didn't have to Disney-fy the ending. Now, I'm not against happy endings or Disney endings in general, but somehow it didn't do it for me here.
• Too much jumping, too little fighting. Seems that he's avoiding fights more than getting into them. Not much use for cutlasses here.
• Moar shirtless Jake!

Sorry for the half-asseddistinctive lack of effort for this review, it's just been held off for so bloody long because it totally did not leave any lasting impression on me whatsoever. Yeah, it was fun while it lasted, but eh *shrugs*

By the way, is it me, or does Gemma Arterton speak a LOT like Rachel Weisz?

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Guess who's back!

[Back again. Piggy's back. Tell a friend.]

[Again.]

Annual deadhorse-beating aside, I know I've not updated in a really, REALLY long time, and that I still need to forcefeed the world my two cents on The Persian Prince: The Timely Sands.

Ooo! And Inception! Yay for regular movie-watching! :)

So the title of my post doesn't only refer to my being back to the blogosphere (well, back to be updating a bit more regular that usual hahaha), but also from my KL trip, which I just came back from Friday.

[Ready yourselves for a wall o' text, peeps.]

My department and I were in KL for our Business Development Plan Meeting, which basically details what we'll be doing for the coming financial year. We took Firefly, Thursday morning flight out at 7.05am, which means having to wake up at 5.30am. I had the misfortune of taking like, the slowest cab down to the airport, which caused me to reach said airport at 6.30am, and rush to be checked in, since check-in time is half an hour before take-off.

Upon reaching KL at 8.15/20am, it was a mad rush to the offices, since the meeting was supposed to start at 8.30am, and I say 'mad' because there was a huge, huge jam from Subang to 1Sentral and I really, really, really had to pee.

[And I've always had this phobia about exploding bladders and really horrible agonizing internal-toxic deaths.]

We got there at 9am. Didn't get to pee right away, 'cuz everything started once we walked through the door and put down our bags.

So, despite being called 'Business Development Plan' and hearing from my seniors that it was all about discussing the budget and going through slides and yannoe, really dry stuff, it was a helluva lot of fun! Only about one day was spent on going through the BDP, and the rest was team-building activities and that kind of stuff. First day, we were supposed to go into random food establishments and see how that particular service line is similar to ours. Yay for food assignments! So we went to Meal Station and had breakfast.

Other groups went to Coffee Bean, Le Meridien, McDonald's... ENVY!

Lunch was provided, and was great for both days. Chicken = heaven.

We'd received an email on Wednesday saying that there would be a team event that'll last till 9pm-ish, which I wasn't too excited about, since it would mean that we'll reach our hotel at 10pm, and after the obligatory showering and washing up, sleep at 11pm?

Shudder.

Turns out, we were to go to the badminton semifinals of the Inter-Accounting Firm Games! Which, to me, was infinitely better than what the term 'team event' usually means! Strength for strength, both set of players. The match for the first set of players was really intense; the second, not so much, since the two teams playing weren't really that good. We were up against Deloitte, and we totally won!!!

[Plus, got a PwC t-shirt that day, though it was XXL.]

We stayed in Cititel MidValley, which was pretty awesome. Our room was small, and felt slightly cramped, since they put the two beds pretty close together, but it was clean. (and that's what's most important!). I turned in pretty early that night. Got me some chocolate from Coffee Bean, then went straight back to my room to rest and recuperate and watched 10 Things I Hate About You.

Yes dear reader, you thought correct. There was absolutely nothing else on TV that night.

Second day, meant to sleep in, but I automatically woke up at 5.30am (a-fucking-gain!) and couldn't go back to sleep after. My roomie and I were the first down to breakfast at 7am. Spread was lovely; got roti canai, teriyaki chicken, wedges, franks, the usual egg station... If I were on holiday, I'd have eaten a whole lot more.

Friday was also a lot of fun, but office activities were relatively uneventful, compared to what happened to us after we left office.

We (my three seniors plus moi, not including my boss, whose friend was fetching her to the airport) had booked a taxi from the service in KL Sentral to go to Subang airport, because KL cabs usually charge crazy, but there were absolutely no cabs for the people ahead of us to get on. That was at 6.15pm, with about seven groups of people in front of us.

On hindsight, we would've been much better off hailing a random cab from the sidewalk.

We finally got a cab at 7pm. It was running low on gas, and the driver was female. Like, the needle was at 'E'. She tried to fuel up, actually, but the quite huge-ass petrol station was SO BLOODY FRIGGIN' FULL OF CARS, so she went out on a limb and continued driving.

A quarterway into the journey, heavy, heavy traffic, and it was raining to boot.

My senior joked that if we couldn't reach our flight on time, we should call the airport and tell them there's a bomb on the plane. It was our own version of the Amazing Race, if you will, 'cept that the prize isn't a million dollars but instead, a budget no-frills flight home.

Nervous laughter all around. It was about 7.45pm at that point. Our flight was at 8.20pm.

We reached Subang at 8pm, and very, very luckily, our boss (who had reached earlier than us) managed to persuade the check-in counter to wait for us and not close up in our faces. Also luckily for us, the plane was late, on account of rain.

Still, we ran all the way to the departure gate.

None of us had had anything to eat, and none of us could really eat, after all that happened. My boss had some crackers, but yea, that doesn't really count.

[Random: I've never walked on airplane-runway tarmac before this. I found it totally awesome.]

All-in-all, a very, very fun and eventful two days, and with the inclusion of the final-taxi-ride-to-the-airport, emotionally exhaustingfulfilling as well.

The only thing that I'm pissed about from my trip was that despite spending A LOT OF TIME on the road, I did not manage to see a license plate that went, 'WTF'. The acronym was brought to my attention when my roomie told me that she saw one in Penang.

[MOAR ENVEE!!1ONELEVEN1]

Plenty of 'WTR's, and 'WTS's, and 'WTE's(!!) even, but no 'WTF'.

Wtf.

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Headdesk.

This morning, I emailed a client, and he called me, "Mam." I can't delve much into this, but it was most definitely not in a good way.

Then in the afternoon, while having chocolate cake during tea-break, I chatted up a few friends of mine (two of whom, are dudes I like-like), conversation had revolved around how the cake came to be, and well, I've never laughed harder in my entire life.

Going into the bathroom and catching my reflection in the mirror, I saw that I had chocolate all over my mouth.

And I was out there for half an hour, and no one said a bloody thing.


Tabletop, I believe you have already met My Face.

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Iron Man 2 (2010)

I liked it.

What I've been hearing on the Interwebz is that the movie tries to cram too many things in two hours, and that it's as bad as Spider-man 3.

I know I've been neglecting my blog and my reviews, and granted, this post is three-four weeks past opening night, which makes it TOO LATE. And so much for getting back in-game with Prince of Persia; I took my uncles out on Friday, went back to work on Saturday, and grocery-shopped on Sunday.

Hopefully I'll have better luck next weekend.

Anyway, back to Iron Man 2: It's not as bad as everyone says it is. At least, not as bad to warrant a comparison with S-M3, which was messy and unsatisfying in its own right, since S-M2 is like The Empire Strikes Back of all comic book movies.

But IM2 (Iron Man, not Ip Man haha) does suffer from overcrowding in terms of characters and plotline details. Scarlett Johansson is really unnecessary in this, even though she looks superhot in black latex/leather. I'm not a guy, so adding her in the movie didn't really do anything for me.

The only awesome scene in the entire movie is the racetrack scene, which, contrary to my belief that everything journalistic is super-hyped at times, is really, well, pretty awesome. It's a great introduction to the damage that Whiplash/Crimson Dynamo amalgamation Mickey Rourke can do, and in my book, destruction always looks good onscreen.

Which brings me to the downside of the film. The final fight scene.

In Iron Man, the fight between Tony and Warmonger lasted 7-10 minutes. In Iron Man 2, what has the potential to be the biggest, loudest, awesomest battle scene between Tony and Ultra-Whiplash and War Machine, ends in under just one minute.

Yes. One. Friggin'. Minute.

In place, we're given attempts to placate Pepper, his not-really-exciting discovery of a new element (which was not named, and Googling attempts have failed to give me a name for this new element), and a bunch of other unnecessary scenes that could've been cut out and replaced with a longer fight scene, because the way the film was going, Ivan Vanko is clearly more awesome Obadiah Stane.

As can be expected from Iron Man, the movie is absolutely hilarious, and the cast does a stand-up job. We get to see more of Jon Favreau in this, and although I'm not a fan of directors putting themselves in their movies (*cough*M Night*cough*), his scenes are pretty funny. Ditto for Garry Shandling, whose humor I've never been able to appreciate all these years.

Anyway, as with all Marvel films nowadays, there is a short scene after the end-credits, and even though it doesn't make movie history like the after-credits scene in Iron Man, it's a prelude to what Marvel has in store for us in 2011.

All in all, it was pretty good, even with the anti-climactic ending.

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Things to look forward for the rest of the year!

Plenty of stuffs comin' out 2010, aside from the usual barrage of movies I'm always crazy about, like...:


1) Towers Of Midnight
With The Gathering Storm partially completed before Robert Jordan's passing, we couldn't really see how Brandon Sanderson being the new author affected the book, as TGS was totally freaking awesome!! Save a few very obviously not-RJ's writing style in some spots, some parts wrapped up a bit too quick (considering Books 6-10 were all about making more moneyunnecessarily complicating things), overall TGS exceeded my expectations by a million-fold. Towers of Midnight will be the first book in the Wheel of Time series to be fully written by Sanderson, and with TGS being so good, standards will be very, very high. For me, at any rate. Hopefully, it will be released this October.

2) Mystery Case Files: Game 7
MCF: Dire Grove came out last year, and having played through it, I was a bit disappointed that it was a stand-alone game, rather than a direct continuation form MCF: Return to Ravenhearst, which I thought was really really awesome after the headache that was MCF: Madame Fate. The yet-untitled MCF7 is slated for release at the end of this year, and promises to continue on from RtR, where at the end of that game, Victor the (other) villain is seen leaving in a time machine heading for 2008.

3) Post-release reaction to The Last Airbender
I'm a huge fan of the animated series. Though it was a solely Western production (no collaborating with Asian studios here), the series was set in a predominantly Asian world, with a rich history and loads of backstories based on real-life Asian and Inuit culture. Unfortunately, the movie has decided to cast the leads and those who have lines, with white actors, and no, the Dev Patel card doesn't work here, because he wasn't first choice, Jesse McCartney was. Props to McCartney for backing down. Serious deviation of the source material aside, the fact that the trailer looks pretty cool (a fact that I begrudgingly admit), doesn't really help. I'm interested to see what casual fans and non-fans alike think after watching the movie.

4) My Chemical Romance's next album.
Emo or no, The Black Parade was pretty awesome. My Chem's follow-up is slated for release some time this year, and I'm pretty excited, even though they're notorious for pushing back release dates, and cancelling things (*cough*Mama*cough*). Just sayin', is all.

5) Second half of the year
I've been really crazy-busy with work the past four months (up to the point I did 7-day weeks), and though I'll still be busy, I'm starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, knowing my track record, that light is most probably from the bullet train that's barreling down my way, but eh, I'm in the mood for a bit of positive-thinking, which doesn't happen often.

And that's it. Five things to look forward to this year doesn't seem much, but it's still good enough for now. Oh, and Iron Man 2, which I will be watching later on today (since it's like, 1am in the morning).

And Human Target, which airs at 10.30pm on TV3 every Sunday, which I totally forgot to watch last week 'cuz I was watching CSI: Miami.

[What made it worse was that it was a repeat, and not of a very good episode, either.]

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I can has Perfume!

I really can has xD

Last weekend marked my first weekend off in months, because I've been doing seven days since Chinese New Year's.

So I went to the bookstore, and got myself Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Yes, as in THE BOOK. It was only 24 dollars and not 32.95.

I'd link to a previous post that has me raving about how totally freaking awesome the movie was, but looking through the archive, there doesn't seem to be any. Huh.

So, here's a summary (or a recap, if there really was an earlier post):

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with an extremely keen sense of smell, able to distinguish even the minutest of scent, one from the other. He becomes obsessed with capturing scent and preserving it, or rather, its beauty, and through the course of the book, he goes on a killing spree, combining his victims' scent to make the ultimate perfume.

The book is much darker than the movie, although it's close. Maybe Alan Rickman didn't like how his character ended up in the book.

Anyway (if it hasn't been typed yet), I first saw the trailer when I got my laptop and was still crazy about iTunes. Even though it caught my attention, I conveniently forgot about the movie until my mom was telling me how Alan Rickman was in this creepy movie on TV once (she was trying to figure out the title so long I suggested Die Hard for the heck of it), and mentioned the word 'perfume'.

AND THEN I REMEMBERED !~!ONEleven

I was back for winter hols then, and luckily, they had a rerun that same month (of July of '08, if you were wondering). The rest, they say, is history.

I haven't had the time to properly sit down and enjoy the book again. Hopefully I can do that this weekend :)

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