Movies

Awesome, but still achy

Posted on June 7, 2009 at 9:01 pm

The last time I ached all over was the day after the flamenco performance a month ago. Ms Rosita believed it was due to the floor, being hard parquet, made us work harder to get any sound out.

Yesterday I had three and a half hours of class, having requested a private lesson with Ms Rosita beforehand. It was brilliant and helpful, having the full attention of the teacher who is able to correct every section, not to mention fill in all the blanks for work you completely missed out on while struggling with the guajiras. She very slowly went through work I wasn’t sure of, and it made all the difference at class after.

She made me do some of the other work by myself just to see how much I remembered, and then corrected or refined as I went along.

The private lesson made class a lot more bearable after. For one thing, it was a lot easier to block out the usual whining and just concentrate on working on what I had learned earlier in the afternoon. The one-on-one was one of the best private dance lessons I’ve ever had, Ms Rosita is an excellent teacher. What I really needed, which I never get in the class, was the opportunity to perfect the work. Having the lesson helped me feel more confident instead of just fudging or stopping and staring bewilderingly at the footwork.

After class, unfortunately, Haz asked if I was going to watch Star Trek, which made my brain go poing!, and my fingers automatically buying tickets online. However, I will still continue to abuse Haz the way she abused me when she found out I had er, conveniently put off watching Star Trek. It was a late showing, but with a hot chocolate, it was a very relaxing late night-movie.

Except I forgot I had Sunday morning flamenco practice, and when my alarm rang at 7am, I had to drag myself out of bed despite too little sleep and my entire body in pain. Sleeping the rest of today was bliss.

Hmm. Bliss. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? No doubt this feeling will be short-lived, but I will savour the moment anyway.

Fandom-ho!

Posted on July 24, 2008 at 10:14 pm

When this fandom comes a-calling, apparently, I am still answering.

And my friends continue a-mocking. Sorryla, I know my Crazy Fandom is not smart enough to create (successful) spinoffs, or stay dead.

For starters, I was expecting The X-Files: I Want To Believe to be bad. REALLY bad. To be of EPIC FAIL proportions. I fully expected to leave the cinema halfway in disgust.

Perhaps it was my exceedingly low expectations, but it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought it would be, Mulder/Scully romance (ON THE BIG SCREEN OKAY, VERY TRAUMATIZING OKAY) notwithstanding.

Chris Carter & Co lovingly included a whole bunch of homages. From the sunflower seeds to the camera direction and sequence of character introduction, any die-hard fan would be delighted. And I think they’d smile. To everyone else, it would make absolutely no sense at all. Steph, I’m still looking at you ten years after Fight The Future.

Plot? Definitely dragged on after a bit. Or I’d go, uh, WHAT? Some bits made absolutely no sense at all. One could see they had a really great idea, it just didn’t pan out quite so once it hit production. It is interesting to note that while Chris Carter’s writing forte lay in the mythology of the series, the masters of standalone plots were Glen Morgan and James Wong. Guess who were missing?

I don’t really want to mention the Ship, but it’s like the invisible white elephant that won’t go away. Unfortunately, the Ship plays a huge part.

Congratulations, Shippers. The MSR is so strong, it’ll blow The Force away. Surprisingly, after all these years of reading fanfic, I still cringe at MSR. Wow, it’s like part of my 12 year old self never went away. Especially with this line:

“This is why I fell in love with you.”

Excuse me, WAT?! Who hired a scriptwriter from The Bold & The Beautiful?! Oh my god, putting Mulder and Scully in the same bed doesn’t seem so traumatizing now.

Then they break up. No, I am totally not kidding. They totally emo-ed it out and broke up. I could not stop laughing. XD XD XD

Then they get back together and have the biggest snogfest in the history of MSR, my 12 and 26 year old self barfed into the empty popcorn bag.

Hey guys, since you were so obviously going ahead with the Ship, you could have rated the movie NC-17 and given the rest of us some gratification. I ain’t complaining. I’m totally legal now. XD

The repartee between Mulder and Scully wasn’t it’s best, which is one of the stand-out things from the series. It’s lost some of it’s edge, seems a little, I don’t know, slow at times? I suppose with the exploration of their romance, some of the edginess to their dialogue was lost.

Most Cheerworthy Moment? AD SKINNER!!! Joy? We has it now!! IT’S ASSISTANT DIRECTOR SKINNER, OKAY, WHO IS SO MANY KINDS OF AWESOME.

Skinner is brought in half an hour before the damn movie ends!! THAT’S NOT FAIR. You can’t dangle his awesomeness at us for HALF AN HOUR!! SKINNER BEAT UP KRYCEK, OKAY!! HE HELD THE DAMN SHOW TOGETHER WHEN IT WAS DYING, OKAY!! GIVE THE MAN HIS DUES, OKAY!!

Oh yes, it was definitely upsetting how late they left reintroducing Skinner. Maybe it might have saved the movie, because Xzibit’s character totally wasn’t cutting it. It’s like looking at AD Kersh’s son – they had the same thing stuck up where the sun don’t shine.

Having said that, Mulder/Skinner shippers, start your engines. Totally not kidding again – they cuddle. FOR SERIOUS. XD

Verdict – Sorry guys, but this movie is definitely for the fans. Everyone else can skip it, because Mr Carter? Please stop flogging the dead horse.

Make what you will of the scene after the credits – perhaps it’s a farewell. Or a thank you for all the fish. Or both.

Review: The Dark Knight

Posted on July 19, 2008 at 9:00 pm

The Dark Knight totally blew Iron Man out of the water!! HEE!!

Star Trek/JJ Abrams, take note. This is how you push the little red RESET button on the franchise.

Lucky me got free tickets to The Dark Knight on Thursday. Poor Sarah hurt her back so she couldn’t make it. You missed an interesting selection of booze, dude, but the finger food was nothing to shout about. I did have Lil for ‘company’, though. She watched it in Malaysia at the same time. XD We synced our cinema viewings. This enabled us to squee like rabid fangirls late into the night, and boy, did we pay for it dearly at work the next day.

After settling in my seat and opening the complimentary bag of chocolates (what, no popcorn?), I thought I’d have to endure a million trailers. Instead, there were only 2 – The Forbidden Kingdom and Wall-E. The next thing you know, people were scrambling into the cinema during the opening scenes.

This northern summer’s hit? Most definitely. Christopher Nolan turning the entire franchise on its head continues to thrill. Everything you ever thought you knew about Batman isn’t quite so in his universe. THIS MAKES HIM SO MANY KINDS OF AWESOME.

The depth in almost all of his characters brings a brand new dimension – I mean, they gave fricking Two-Face Dent a proper background story, instead of the whole acid-thrown-into-face arc. It got a little chaotic towards the end, with a million different stories and emo-ing happening at once. You either laugh or go wtf.

I can’t say anything bad about Christian Bale’s Batman, except you know, the weird baritone when he dons the costume. Now I don’t laugh out loud. All I do is splorfle. Politely. Into my sleeve.

Sadly, I was a loser who whooped when Gordon was promoted, with the stupidest grin on my face a long time after. Alfred continues to be so many kinds of awesome, the role is perfect for Michael Caine, and it’s great they got him for Batman Begins and didn’t have to, *cough* change actors.

Which brings me to the next character. Maggie Gyllenhall was good, but the character of Dawes had reached its use-by date. In part, no thanks to Katie Holmes. Kudos to the scriptwriters for being able to weave the character into several story arcs.

Okay, so the talk of the moment is Heath Ledger’s Joker and the hope of an Oscar nomination. Undeniably he played it superbly, and dare I say it, better than Jack Nicholson. But Oscar nomination? Still not quite sure about that. It wasn’t a performance with the BOOM! factor, like James Dean’s nominated roles.

Also, you know, somewhere down the line, I’d like to see Christian Bale nominated. Come on guise, WHAT DOES THE PRETTY BOY HAVE TO DO TO GET YOUR FRICKIN ATTENTION?!

Somehow, I need to rewatch this movie, but unfortunately, the #1 Fandom movie is coming out next week, and at this point, I’m planning on watching it. Betcha I’ll get thrown out for screaming the moment they imply Mulder/Scully romance. -__-

That was HIM?!

Posted on October 19, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Revisiting movies can be an awesome, or totally wtf.

Independence Day was awesome, not because of its B-grade cheese or its completely unbelievable plot, but because Adam Baldwin was in it. Yay for Firefly connections!!

And then I watched Playing By Heart. Dude, THAT WAS JON STEWART?! Wtf.

Of Pottermania, Transformers and goodbyes

Posted on July 18, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Oh. My. God. Dolores Umbridge is the spitting image of The Supervisor From Hell. No really, from character right down to thinking processes. I say Ms Rowling, have we met the same person?

I like how they compressed emo!Harry into just a few short scenes. After wanting to slap him in the book, it’s good that they decided only a few glimpses of Harry going all Simple Plan was enough.

Did I mention I also watched Transformers on the same day? Yep, I’m nuts. Could Megatron be any more awesome? Can’t wait for the sequel. The writers can bring Megatron back to life like Kenny. I’m sure no one would notice. Please? Starscream may be cool but he’s too much of a pussy to be leader of the Decepticons. Now I also have a brand new respect for Optimus Prime, who is actually all sorts of fucking cool. See how much more interesting the good guys look without all the cheesy lines?

Lunch with my former co-workers was good, apparently this was meant to be my actual goodbye and Carina’s birthday lunch. Sarah yelled at me about not mentioning her on this blog, so to the n00b who has yet to understand It Is Not A Big Deal, I just mentioned it. Man, I think I’ve regressed 5 years in blogdom.

They gave me a $100 David Jones gift card which is super awesome. I even got reimbursed for my parking when I worked last week!! I am amazed. I half expected The Supervisor From Hell would have told Carina to tell me to stick them parking receipts where the sun don’t shine.

On the plus side, at least I didn’t get fugly birthday gifts. She picked all of Carina’s gifts and omg, they could be like, twins from now on. I LAUGH WITHOUT REMORSE.

Right now, all I want is sleep. I’ve been roused from my nice warm bed by a very insane Jules who dragged me to every department and toy store in search of Transformers toys. Hasbro got it right when they gave the green light to make the movie about 10 years after it was first created – the kids who loved Transformers are all grown up and have the purchasing power to get the most expensive ones in the range. Our parents call them bastards (still), we call them geniuses.

Distracting pictures and music books

Posted on August 15, 2006 at 7:01 pm

In a completely dorky moment at the music store, I encountered in the recesses of the movie scores sheet music section, Selections from The X-Files: The Album, at 90% discount. Ninety per cent!! With distracting pictures in colour!! I squeed like the ultimate dork of a fangirl that I am, and bounced all the way to the cashier.

(You know I’m delirious when I start using lots and lots of italics.)

When I got home, I almost tripped over a package propped up against my bedroom door. We Will Rock You: The Official Book arrived from the UK!! EEEEEEEE~!! More distracting pictures!! In colour!!

Tis a day to kick back with music. :D

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