Easily one of my favourite manga series, the first film in the trilogy ofthe live action adaptation of 20th Century Boys was great. It stayed faithful to the manga. And wow, they managed to cast actors/actresses that look uncannily like their counterparts in the manga.

Some downside to the movie would be the complexity of the story, which is much much worse in the manga (trust me on this: at the end of the series, I still cannot fully understand who Friend is or his motives.) and the constant flashbacks (which was done in the manga as well). There are too many characters as well, a problem in the manga. But this adds on the a consistent complex story that is entertaining.

If you like complex stories, this movie is for you. You might want to read the manga for a better understanding. 22 volumes + 2 (serialized under the title “21st Century Boys”) volumes. That’s a lot to read. I am looking to forward to seeing how they will compress this much content into three films.

For those who liked this, try Monster by the same author. It features a similarly complex plot with an ensemble cast.

My full collection.

Tags: 20th century boys, monster, urasawa

I caught two movies this weekend: The Dark Knight and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I must say that the former totally blew the latter off.

In other words, Dark Knight was excellent. Probably the best movie I’ve seen in a while. Actions aside, there were lots of issues raised, moral and philosophical. Of course, we have the intelligent and cunning Joker to add to the fun.

In order to avoid having the same problem of not being able to get tickets again, I went over the cinema on my way home yesterday night to grab the tickets for today. I was able to get excellent seats: third row from the back!

ICCT next week. Hopefully it’s going to be a better week.

Remember the pair of shoes I mentioned last week? I finally found a shop that has a pair of my size and I bought it. Time to change the pair of shoes I bought more than a year ago. (It is still in a wearable condition but you can see age catching up.)

With this, I have ended my shopping for summer 2008, albeit with some stuff I would have wished to buy. But alas, money is a scarce resource.

$75 (pair of jeans after 15% discount) + $49 (shirt) + $149 (shoes) + $9 (belt) = $282

With this I have spent $282 and this is pretty much more than enough.

Need to catch The Dark Knight next week. I heard it was pretty good. Too bad all the tickets are sold out for the cinemas I went to this week. I couldn’t believe it when we couldn’t even get seats in the first row.

And I can’t believe Wall E only premiers in Singapore on 28 Aug, TWO MONTHS after its premier in the US.

Tags: shopping

I have just seen the most interesting “book” in a bookshop that goes by the title as you see above.

A normal looking book cover with some accolades from reputable sources on the back. It almost costs $9.

Open up the book and you see…

…

For those who don’t get it, it means that men know nothing about women. What an interesting way to package a notebook. And I’d say it cheats people of their money as well.

In other news, I think I’ve just watched one of the worst movies in my life. What the hell. There is practically no plot.

And lastly to end off, something interesting I found online (click on the image for more):

Tags: national service

Finally, BMT is over for me. POP was two days ago and I was just too lazy to blog about it. It was pouring rather heavily during the parade and the VIP decided to embark on such a long speech that the poor souls standing there in the rain had to endure feet pain. To add to the concoction, there was an accident somewhere in Loyang and everyone was stuck at the ferry terminal – so basically, my company only left Tekong at around 8 pm nearing 9 pm.

But hell, it was worth it. At least our two days of rehearsal did not go to waste. (There was a wet weather programme and that programme is so truncated that it was not even worth doing.) Postings are going to be released on the 21st. I will keep my fingers crossed.

By the way, for those who want to watch 10,000 BC, please don’t. It’s a bad movie. I rated it 4/10. Apparently, Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 6% fresh rating. This is probably one of the worst movie rating I’ve seen.

Tags: national service

It’s rather hard to maintain a so-called life. Weekends are rushed and you can only go out so many times and when in camp, you basically do the basic routine over everyday. Still I’ve managed to watch a few good movies lately. I haven’t really seen much movies lately that I can safely say was money was spent.

First up was Atonement. It’s basically a tragedy kind of story and since it was rated M18, it was my first M18 show. Honestly, I think it didn’t really warrant that rating – a NC-16 would have been sufficient anyway. The soundtrack was pretty unique and was excellent. It used the sound made by those ancient typewriters as part of the music.

Next up was Kite Runner based on the novel of the same title. The story is great but I think the novel does the story more justice. You miss out certain important elements like characters’ thoughts which obviously cannot be put on screen.

On a side note, I finally managed to achieve a sub-ten 2.4 km run timing – 9:52 =)

I believe I wasted a little money today on the movie Bratz. Well, I had hoped to watch Stardust but since they ran out of tickets, I guess I had so settle for something lesser.

And look how it turned out.

Well, the show is at least funny and heartwarming but my biggest problem with it is the simple plot. Not a lot of plot twists. Just some bimbo high school girls.

The funniest thing was when they showed someone mixing up some chemicals like Silver, Magnesium etc. up in a test tube to create some fireworks and called it the bernoulli effect. Well you could either take it as a joke to punch at geeks stereotypes (and this joke will be rather obscure to be spotted) or just simply… ignorance?

Final verdict: 6/10.

And Six more days.

For some of us, at least for me, we can’t listen to songs with lyrics when trying to memorise facts of which Economics is the worst culprit of them all. The lyrics just distract me from memorising. So, I turn to acoustic music, that is music without lyrics, that usually come in the form of soundtracks.

My interests in soundtracks can be traced back to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack which I have already written to death here. For those who want to know though, the third Return of the King Complete Recordings is going to be released in the midst of our A-Levels on November 6. For some kind souls who have spare cash, please consider a Christmas gift for me with all three complete recordings

So far, there has only been five “entertainment” (mixture of movies, TV Show and anime) that has wow’d me with their soundtracks:
– Lord of the Rings (duh!)
– Lost
– Eureka seveN
– Death Note
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Of course, there is also the once in a while song or two that sounds good but these are my top five in no order. As again, here are some of my selected songs for your listening pleasure. A mix of upbeat, majestic and soft music.

Well, in case you were wondering about the seemingly music themed entries nowadays, let’s just say that I’m in this mood right now to write these kind of posts.

Tags: death note, eureka seven, Lord of the Rings, lost, soundtracks, tengen toppa gurren lagann

I’ve just came back from watching the movie. I must say, I can proclaim that it is definitely of “Death Note” standard. Much better than the first one which I would say was only a kind of appetiser and introduction to the world created by Tsugumi Ooba. If you didn’t like the first one, you should be give this a chance – you might like it!

WARNING: Detailed spoilers for the movie and manga follows. You have been warned!
Read the rest of this entry »

A Merry Christmas everyone!

I went to watch the movie The Holiday yesterday. Not my type of movie but I kind of enjoyed it, at least the humour within, much unlike the terrible You, me and Dupree. The crowd at Orchard was just terrible. I wonder how it’s like right at this moment, 10+ minutes to Christmas.

Today, on Christmas eve, I went on a shopping spree, including stuff that weren’t for me. I had a haircut, followed by a trip to Sim Lim to buy 200 CD-R and 50 DVD-R for CCA usage. Gosh, that was SO heavy and expensive (SGD 87). I almost died along the way carrying that home. I bought myself a Bluetooth adapter and for my cousin a network card and a thumbdrive (a pretty good looking one if you ask me).

Walked around for a long time before settling on a pair of Niké shoes. Believe it or not, this is my first piece of Niké merchandise I ever bought. The rest belonged to Adidas and New Balance etc.

And later on, I bought another jacket and a new shoe bag.

Phew, remind me not to shop at this time of the year again. The crowd is kinda huge. I still need some shorts and pants. That should be all that’s left to get.