Sunday, October 15, 2006


movie musings

i've just discovered that Undiscovered is actually being shown on Astro.



can't believe i paid 10 ringgit to watch it just a couple of weeks ago.

now it makes sense why we were the only ones in the cinema that day, log.



anyway, world trade center is one heck of a lousy movie.



either that or i'm one heck of an insensitive person.


the first 20 minutes of the show build up so promisingly but it falls flat just as the towers do.

you know how deceptively clever the producers are? they put the two magnificent towers on the movie poster and name the show World Trade Center to entice all us destruction lovers hoping to see a disaster being reenacted, but in actual fact it focuses on the two tiny main chracters shown sandwiched between the towers.



Nicholas Cage (with an unsightly moustache) plays a policeman who charges into the collapsing towers valiantly with his bunch of cop buddies and ends up getting stuck underneath slabs of concrete without saving a soul. That's when the movie starts going down hill as the two surviving policemen experience flashbacks of being with their wives while thinking of their death, and the wives experience flashbacks of being with their husbands while wondering why they decided to rush into a crumbling tower.

most of the film time is spent focused on Cage's dirty face as he's trapped in the rubble, and boy, his moustache is distractingly crappy.

noone sums it all up better than rotten tomatoes:
"... World Trade Center yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience ..."

the only thing is, i didn't get the supposedly touching moments like jaya did (he somehow thinks the movie deserves a 5/5), which means it was just the slow-moving, arduous part i felt.

verdict: not worth going to the cinema for, but since everyone else is watching it anyway, you know you will.


one movie worth watching (more than once, even) is the devil wears prada.



i've watched it twice already, and after all the sucky movies that's been coming out lately, this was a refreshing change.

and to think i wouldn't have watched it at all if it weren't for st's high recommendations. the word 'prada' in the title of a movie just doesn't interest most of us people who have external plumbing.



anyway, it the end it was a pleasant feel-good type movie where the charming Anne Hathaway (clad in clothes picked by the Sex & the City's fashion people, mind you) gets her customary happy ending. Meryl Streep was fantastic as usually expected as well.

since i never read the commercially-successful novel by Lauren Weisberger this movie is based on, i don't know how it fares in the aspect of book-to-film adaptation. anyhow, this movie is certainly worth the price of the ticket and worth rewatching as i have done thanks to err, the internet.

Posted by ~z at 12:25 AM

Sunday, October 08, 2006


elephants can't jump

i'll try to keep my posts shorter from now on, for a variety of reasons.. =p



finally finished both seasons of House, M.D. as well as Grey's Anatomy, two of the most popular medical TV series to have surfaced in the aftermath of shows like Chicago Hope and E.R.



Dr. Gregory House, a maverick medical genius whose comments are as famous as his hopeless bedside manner is the obvious star of House. His sarcastic one-liners and outrageous behaviour make the show thoroughly entertaining. Hugh Laurie deserved an Emmy nomination at least for his impeccable American accent alone. What's interesting is that his father was a doctor once and he said that he felt guilty for "being paid more to become a fake version of my own father" after being cast as House.



Grey's Anatomy stars Dr. Meredith Grey as a surgical intern whose life is a mess, especially in relationships where she is pathetically hopeless, IMHO.



i finished both seasons of House in one week whereas it took me around a month to finish GA, which more or less sums up how i feel about each series relatively. Generally, House is a lot more heavy on the medical side where all kinds of medical jargon will pop up more frequently whereas GA, in the words of many friends, is more sexual. Heck, the cover itself already shows two pairs of feet under a blanket.

The very first scene of GA is about sex, and almost every episode ends up with someone sleeping with somebody new who works in the same hospital. The show focuses on lead character Meredith's failed relationships, where she either gets dumped and then cries pathetically, or hurts someone then cries pathetically.

The saving grace of the show for me, is Dr. George O'Malley, who has had a crush on Meredith since kindergarten or something. He manages to make me laugh quite often.



One cool thing about GA is the amount of indie/alternative music they play (click here for list of songs used), although i feel it tends to interrupt the flow of conversation in the movie by coming on at the wrong times (contrary to what most people say). i distinctly remember Rilo Kiley's Portions for Foxes being the opening song of the first episode and making me view the show in a different light. Another cool thing is how every episode is named after a song, such as Yes' Owner Of A Lonely Heart and REM's Losing My Religion.

and i'm inexplicably attracted to the character Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd played by Kate Walsh. i don't know why, maybe it's the way she is unbelievably nice or how doggedly determined she is to win her husband back.



i would like to say more on why i love House but the last episode i saw was a month ago so i can't really remember much. But my verdict is this, House trumps Grey's Anatomy hands down!

I think GA relies too much on its sexual appeal whereas House has a better plot and more intriguing medical cases (though some cases are similar in both series), and then there's Dr. House! watching soaps in a coma patient's room to escape clinical duty or playing on his Gameboy Advance SP while seeing patients, making fun of his boss' sexual identity or freeloading off a colleague and annoying the crap out of everyone, there's no one like him.

oh yeah, and then there's Dr. Allison Cameron in it as well, played by the ever-lovely Jennifer Morrison.



Boon says that she's the reason he watches House at all.

[mp3s]

Massive Attack - Teardrop (House Theme)

Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes

Psapp - Cosy In The Rocket (Grey's Anatomy Theme)

other random stuff:

Posted by ~z at 9:57 PM