July 2008

Fandom-ho!

Posted on July 24, 2008 at 10:14 pm in

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.

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Review: The Dark Knight

Posted on July 19, 2008 at 9:00 pm in

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. -__-

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Credit, what?

Posted on July 18, 2008 at 10:00 pm in

In these uncertain times, the advent of the debit Visa card is no longer a safe choice. Unfortunately, the only replacement is applying for a proper credit card, with a proper bank. When I say proper, I say it in the loosest terms. The day I figure out how to get paid in cash is the day I begin stashing my pay under the bed. At least the collecting dust will be more substantial than a bank interest.

Now, I venture into the territory of credit cards. The idea of owning one is not an idea I relish, what with annual fees, interest rates, etc. Sure, I can pay up every month to avoid interest rates, and I can pick one with low annual fees, but being paranoid, I’m very sure there are a million other hidden fees they’re not telling you in the fine print. The lower you go with your choices, the less perks come with these plastic substitutes for cash. How is it possible that the ones I look at offer nothing on travel insurance, whereas Papa’s does? And he gets frequent flyer points? Am I looking at the poor person’s options?

Ugh. I don’t want a stupid piece of plastic. Sure, I still have my supplementary card, which I dutifully pay back every time I swipe it. But the last thing I want is a conversation that goes something like this:

Pa: What is this statement here… Coach? Again?
Me: I paid you back last week!!
Pa: FIVE HUNDRED FRICKIN DOLLARS FOR A HANDBAG?! I thought it was for a car service!!
Me: I paid it all back?
Pa: Waitamin, what is this one… how is it possible for someone to blow a few hundred bucks at Borders?
Me: I speed read?

Yeah, that’s the only reason.

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The good in venting

Posted on July 15, 2008 at 7:26 pm in

Wow. I’ve forgotten how cathartic it feels to write about events, especially when I’m angry. Boy, was I angry when I first started blogging, I can only just recall what a cleansing ritual it is just to be able to say anything without care of retribution. Perhaps I should try to take that road again.

Yesterday, I wrote a long entry, but I didn’t post it. But it left me feeling free, like it’s off my mind and I never have to explore it. Until a similar situation occurs again, at least.

As for yesterday, well, I love my old man, I really do, but sometimes he can come across as so uncaring, demeaning even, that it’s difficult to want to get along with him. As a child, he was seen as a lesser bad guy, since the old lady dished out the discipline. And I am very well aware that he treats me a lot differently, being his only daughter.

His treatment of me is a stark contrast to that of his sons. That is, the whole ‘be a man’ sort of thing. He’s much sterner, more of a disciplinarian without the rotan and screaming worthy of a Drama Minggu Ini episode. His style of discipline is more straight to the point, but sometimes, the situation just does not call for that, and yesterday was one of them.

Papa, a little gentleness towards your sons will not turn them into sissies. It doesn’t make you, or them, lesser men for having a relationship closer than arm’s length.

Such is that a father learns how to treat his sons from the way his own father treated him. Not pointing fingers at Grandpa. It just happens to be one endless cycle. We damage those we love most, no?

Must be the coming full moon that’s making everyone loopy.

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-

Posted on July 14, 2008 at 9:21 pm in

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

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Stop

Posted on July 12, 2008 at 9:47 pm in

I stopped in the middle of the farruca, shaking like hell. God knows why, I have never had a problem with this dance, and the more I seem to work at it, the more I feel like I will never perfect it – and I hate it – I picked up this dance much faster (leaving the sevillanas to rot, but something had to give), and given the difficulty of keeping up a persistent, powerful rhythm with a gentle upper-body style towards the end, I think I prided too much in being able to execute this with near flawlessness in the first few tries.

We had to do this solo, so the embarrassment was magnified even further by that. I still cannot believe I was shaking and struggling to breathe, like I haven’t done this dance before. Perhaps it’s the spillover from a very stressful June, but it has been the cardinal rule that, no matter what, you never stop, and you finish it even if you feel like you’re going to die before you got there.

I am still shaking now, and it has been several hours since class.

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