How could anyone NOT like WALL-E?

WALL-E.
Not a Review.
Because I already Not-Reviewed it before HERE.
Also because I watched it THREE times already.
But I just wanna talk about it again.
I don't care if you're already bored of reading about it here.
Because I think it's awesome.
And that more people should go watch it.
Instead of shit like The Mummy 3.



Also,
Yesterday I met someone who didn't like WALL-E.
Naturally, I was shocked. Stunned. Flabbergasted.
How could anyone NOT like WALL-E?
How could anyone NOT be charmed by that little bot?
I mean, it's only THE best movie of the year,
(Ok, just slightly ahead of The Dark Knight)
(But only because TDK is too intense to watch TOO many times)



So I thought about it.
Maybe they went in thinking it was 'just a cartoon',
And expected something light and fluffy like Kungfu Panda.
And was disappointed that they had to THINK so much.
And that no one was cracking stupid jokes like Jack Black.
Maybe they thought it was just a Short Circuit rip-off,
And was disappointed that it was so much more serious.
And looked so much better than Johnny Number 5.



Well,
It's NOT 'just a cartoon'
It's NOT 'a fluffy kiddy movie'
And it sure ain't a bloody Short Circuit rip-off.
(Please lar don't insult the awesomeness of Pixar)
(By comparing it to that silly movie ok?)
It's WALL-E.
It's PIXAR.
It's a PROPER MOVIE.
And it's one that you SHOULD go and watch,
AND watch again, and again, and again...

To Dream Of The Olympics

I've always loved the Olympics. I've watched every single opening ceremony since the 1988 Seoul Games, and have not missed a single torch-lighting ceremony since then either (that flaming arrow arching towards the torch in Barcelona was one of the most magical scenes ever). this year, Li Ning soaring through the air to light Beijing's cauldron was ranks as one of my favorites so far.

There's something magical about the Olympics that I love greatly. I used to DREAM about competing in them back when I was still active in sports, and this morning while watching the 400m heats, I was reminiscing about running on the track again (but then the thought of all that training I went through sent a shiver up my spine almost immediately).

This particular Olympics has been especially great, because I managed to catch a lot more of it thanks to Astro's great coverage and event timetables (no, this is not an advertorial, BTW).

For me, the Olympics is THE greatest sporting event ever. forget the bloody football leagues or the World Cup, no other sporting event holds as much magic as the Olympics. No other sporting event has as much glory, excitement and heartbreak in it.

This is where the greatest of the great gather in their sports, and go all out for their country, and for the greatest achievement a sportsman can achieve. What other tournament can you see the great Roger Federer playing DOUBLES once again? Where else can you see all the NBA stars on one team? And where else but the Olympics would you catch magical moments like these...

1) Guo Jing Jing sweeping the diving gold medals. I used to love watching Fu Mingxia diving in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. Then Guo Jing Jing (who incidently won silver with Fu Mingxia in the 2000 Games, BTW) took over her mantle in 2004, and won her fourth gold medal yesterday. Now I can't decide who I like more (and who is hotter).

2) Usain Bolt shattering the 100m world record despite celebrating the victory BEFORE he crossed the finish line. Imagine how much faster the time would have been if he had gone all out to the end. Probably the most memorable 100m since that Ben Johnson vs Carl Lewis duel way back in 1988.

3) Lee Chong Wei's rubber set win over that Korean dude in the semi-finals. It'd been so long since we had something to celebrate during an Olympics, and that moment was a great one indeed. So what if he lost tamely in the final to a superior and more determined opponent? I doubt even Misbun Sidek at his prime would have beaten Lin Dan last night. (And for those who dismissed his achievement, go read THIS and screw yourself).

4) China's Cheng Fei faltering during the individual gymnastics's events. She'd led the Chinese team so brilliantly during the team event, and to see her make those mistakes during the vault and floor exercise was just sad. And watching her cry after the floor exercise was heartbreaking.

5) The 'Redeem Team' wiping the floor with both the hosts (led by Yao Ming) and the previous gold medalists Spain in the preliminaries. It's scary how far ahead the NBA team is compared with all the other teams that you wonder why they had to redeem themselves in the first place.

I missed Michael Phelps' eight gold medals though, damn.

Anyway, all you idiots who dismiss the Olympics as inconsequential and complain about it just because your bloody EPL team lost players to it... GO TO HELL. You have no idea what what you're missing, and probably never will.

Me, I'm hoping to catch more of the Olympics, but I keep having to go to the office to work. So inconsiderate right? Don't they know the Olympics is on? Hmph...

Oh well, at least he did better than that Ah Beng doubles pair....

So he lost.
But I don't blame Chong Wei.
Lin Dan was fucking brilliant today.
He controlled the game from the very beginning,
Read Chong Wei's game all the way.
Oh well, at least he got into the final,
Not like that bloody Ah Beng doubles pair.
Who only got gold chain and earrings.
Chong Wei got a silver medal, ok?
Besides, Singapore didn't get a gold anyway,
So it's all good.

Because Even Tupai Drink Beer

I'm half-tempted to make this little fellow the official mascot of this little alcoholic blog:


Happy hours all night long for the tupai

A research has revealed that the pen-tailed tree shrew (Ptilocercus lowii), commonly referred to as tupai ekor kembang, can drink the equivalent of a case of 3.8% beer every night but does not get drunk.
......
The tree shrews go on a natural-palm-beer binge that lasts two-and-a-half hours on average per night.

-----------------------------------------

Wow, he drinks almost as much a Pole! I wonder how it'll fair when plied with vodka and tequila instead. Or coffee, for that matter...

Book Review: Superior Saturday (Garth Nix)

Who still reads my book reviews anyway? Hands up, all 1.5 of you.

I haven't been reading much (actually I have, but have been too lazy to review them); but since I've been traveling so much lately, I've managed to finish quite a number of books in the past three weeks or so. Among them, books 2 and 3 of Glenda Larke's Mirage Makers trilogy, Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, and a couple of Batman graphic novels (I had to satiate my hunger for more Batman and Joker stories, but ended up with Tim Sale and Jeff Loeb's Batman and Two-Face stories instead).

And of course, this one - Garth Nix's latest, and the penultimate book to his Keys of the Kingdom series - Superior Saturday.

----------------------------------------------------------



Title: Superior Saturday (Book 6 of The Keys To The Kingdom
Author: Garth Nix

Synopsis (from Amazon.co.uk):

On the Sixth Day, there was Sorcery...

Arthur Penhaligon has wrested five of the Keys from their immortal guardians, the Trustees of the Will. But gaining the Sixth Key poses a greater challenge than any he has ever faced before. Superior Saturday is not just one of the Trustees, she is also the oldest Denizen and the most powerful and knowledgeable sorcerer within the House. She has tens of thousands of sorcerers at her command -- and she has been preparing her forces all along for the Will's escape and the activities of the Rightful Heir. Everything is all just part of a greater plan she has been hatching for ten thousand years....

What I Liked:

• Despite the year-long wait, you can STILL remember what happened in the last books, unlike SOME series *AHEMHAIRYPUTTERAHEM*
  
• Finally, Will faces off against the most powerful Trustee of them all!
• The office cubicle denizens are damn funny
• Ending damn kan chiong
• Now I'm REALLY curious to see how Lord Sunday is like...
  
• Cliffhanger!
  

What I Didn't Like:

• ARGH! Cliffhanger!!!
• ARGH! FINISH SO FAST!
• If you haven't read the last few books, you'll get really lost.
  

Summary:

If you've been following the Keys of The Kingdom this far already, then this book won't disappoint. It's exciting, and it's intriguing, and it's got Arthur facing off against the most powerful Trustee of them all, the one who has been hounding his footsteps since the very first day.

Nix's style is still very much the same, and the book itself is extremely easy to read and follow, unlike SOME so-called young adult fantasy books *COUGHHEAVYPLOTTERCOUGH*. Though if you're not familiar with the series you'd get lost with all the references to the past characters in the past books.

This is probably the most exciting book in the series, IMHO, mostly because Superior Saturday is so much more powerful than the rest of the Days. And THAT ENDING. DAMMIT. Lord Sunday can't come soon enough!

PIXAR WEEK 2008: Presto! The Jackalope Lifted a One Man Band!

WADAYA mean why is it still Pixar Week? Of course it is! WALL-E just opened yesterday, plus I've just watched it twice in two days... so OF COURSE it's still Pixar Week on EOE! :D

Anyway, one of my favorite parts of a watching a Pixar movie is the animated shorts that have preceded every single film they have released, except for Toy Story.

The most recent one, attached in front of WALL-E, is Presto, which is about a magician and his hungry bunny. Words can't describe how funny this short is, so when (and I mean WHEN, not IF) you go watch WALL-E (which you MUST, because it's THE best film of the year, in my biased humble opinion)

I recently bought a DVD (and original one, BTW, I can't bear to buy a pirated Pixar DVD, the snob that I am) of Pixar's animated shorts, and spent the best of 90 minutes going through all their shorts in chronological order, from the most primitive ones ( love the Luxo Jr. lamp shorts) all the way to Lifted, the short that was attached to Ratatouille.

Besides the ones that were not released in the theater in the first place, the only short I had not seen was Geri's Game, which was attached to A Bug's Life; and was OMITTED from the theatrical release in Malaysia back then. GRRRRR.

Anyway, here's a list of my favorite Pixar shorts so far... I'm only going to include the ones that were attached to the films, ok? Am too lazy to go through the whole DVD again...

Here goes!

1) For The Birds (attached to Monsters Inc.) - I'd never laughed so much at such a short film before. everything, from the stupid sounds of the little birds, their expressions and the premise of the whole film was hilarious, and I can watch it over and over again.

2) One Man Band (attached to Cars) - Even those who were not as enamored with Cars as I was remember One Man Band, which was brilliant in its simplicity. Besides, the music was great, and the kid was cute as hell as well.

3) Presto (attached to WALL-E) - Very Looney Tunes (and its not just because of the bunny, mind) and very funny too. The bunny has got to be the cutest ever animated.

4) Knick Knack (attached to Finding Nemo) - I found this memorable because of the contrast between this and Finding Nemo itself. One with slightly more basic animation (the water especially); and the other so much more advanced.

5) Boundin' (attached to The Incredibles) - Cute, fun, and with a damn bloody catchy rhyme too. Who DOESN'T love this?

Is There Tetris at the World Cyber Games?

I usually can't sleep much on airplanes, so when I was on those bloody long-haul trips to San Diego and Amsterdam recently, I spent my time watching a lot of movies (Memento is brilliant, Amelie is wonderful, Children of Men is amazing, The Usual Suspects is great, and Cars is ALWAYS awesome), and playing a lot of video games.

By video games, I mean just one game - TETRIS.

Yes, I'm really outdated when it comes to video games. I've never owned a games console in my entire LIFE, and even during my adolescent arcade phase, all I ever played was Street Fighter II (I've posted about my obsession for the game HERE before) and Daytona (the advance stage only though, I could never get pass the second turn on the expert stage). Oh, and occasionally I'd play Raiden or third person beat-em-ups like Three Kingdoms or some shit like that.

Yeah, my favourite games have been the really ancient ones such as Street Fighter, Final Fantasy and so on. And as far as first-person shooters are concerned, I DO remember starting out with Wolfenstein 3D, which was damn brilliant at the time but looks damn jaded now. I DID used to be quite addicted to Doom and Doom II, and then Quake (the axe was brilliant) and Quake II.

I never really got into Counterstrike though. For me, all that strategy and military nonsense never made sense to me; having grown up on Doom and Quake where the only objective was to frag as many monsters as possible and trying not to get kill while doing it. But if you're into that kind of teamwork first person shit, there's this competition you can sign up for HERE if you want. Me, I'll stick to mindlessly fragging monsters, thank you very much.

Nowadays though, there's competitions for video games, and even World Cyber Games championships like the one going on this weekend. People actually COMPETE against each other over video games. It's become like a SPORT now, good grief. And to think that I used to play video games FOR FUN.

Anyway, by the time stuff like Counterstrike, Half-Life and Quake III came around, I was already bored of first person shooters and had moved on to real-time strategy games like Warcraft and Starcraft; and CRPGS like Baldur's Gate II and Final Fantasy SEVEN.

That was ten years ago. And I'm STILL playing Baldurs Gate II and Final Fantasy SEVEN on my PC, for gods sake.

Anyway, here're some of MY personal all-time favorite video games, and might I warn you, the choices here may or may not reflect my age.... sigh...

1. Tetris - Come on, who doesn't love this game? I can play this for HOURS and HOURS on end, and not get bored. It's probably the only game I'm actually GOOD at, and even then I still suck at it. Bah. I could do without all the annoying Russian jingles that is its 'soundtrack' though.


2. Street Fighter II - the 2D version with those original 12 fighters. IMHO the best fight game ever made - so good that every other similar game were subsequently known as 'Street Fighter-styled' games. I was only ever good at Chun Li and Vega though. And I had an uncanny way of losing to anyone who used Ryu or Ken against me. BAH.


3. Final Fantasy VII - I've never really gotten into the OTHER Final Fantasy games, but I could (and still can) play this for hours and hours, doing nothing but chase chocobos all day long. I love it so much I even bought the action figures... hehe. And yes, I prefer Aerith to Tifa. So there.


4. Dune 2 - THE ORIGINAL real-time strategy game - the one that sparked the whole Command and Conquer craze and set the template for Starcraft, Warcraft and Handicraft. The fact that it's based on freaking DUNE was even cooler. I love them Sandworms! (except when they swallow my harvesters. GAH!)


5. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn & Planescape: Torment - I had to put these two together because I can't tell which one I liked best. I DO think they are the two best CRPGS ever made, IMHO. Also the only two I've ever completed without cheating. Haha.


6. Quake II - I used to play this for HOURS, with the sound turned up and the lights dimmed down. Damn scary shit I tell you. And there's nothign more fun than getting together with a bunch of friends and fragging the shit out of each other. Teamwork? HAH! Eat hot BFG plasma, bitch!


7. Full Throttle - I love adventure games such as this, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and so on, but Full Throttle was the coolest and funniest one I'd played in a LONG LONG time. it's so cool I even played and finished it a couple of times. Plus the lead character is voiced by Luke Skywalker!


8. Wing Commander - Ok, I'll admit it. I was never very good at flight simulators. And I never completed this game either. My brother did though, and he was damn good at it, so I enjoyed watching him play the game more than actually playing it myself. But this was one cool game. It had a cool (but now very dated) soundtrack, great stories, and the ships were damn cool.

Honourable mentions:

• The Monkey Island series
• Grim Fandango
• Raiden
• Double Dragon
• Mean Streets
• Battle Bugs
• Cannon Fodder
• Alleycat
• Icewind Dale
  

Will add more when I think of more. In the meantime, if you really really like playing video games, or just like watching people who are really good at them play them instead, head on over to the World Cyber Games Championship going on this weekend at the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre. Here are the details:


World Cyber Games 2008 Malaysia Championship

Date: 15-17 August 2008
Time: 10am-9pm daily
Venue: Hall 2&3, Mid Valley Exhibition Centre

Remember those Ah Bengs you used to watch kicking ass with freaking ZANGIEF in Street fighter arcade machines? Watching the World Cyber Games should pretty much be like that too, minus the seedy atmosphere, fengtau music and the cigarette smoke, of course.

So yeah, if you're into video games, head on over there this weekend. For one, it should be really good to WATCH, because the guys participating would be really good at those games. After all, nothing beats playing a video game more than WATCHING someone kick ass at the games!

PIXAR WEEK 2008: WALL-E OPENS TODAY!

WALL-E OPENS TODAY!
GO WATCH IT ALREADY!

And if you've seen it already,

GO WATCH IT AGAIN!

Taxi Mati Plans Transatlantic Styrofoam Plates

The O.C.? What's that? When I first heard Plans, then Transatlanticism albums, I'd never even HEARD of that TV show, let alone watched an episode. But I was so enamored with the songs, and the lyrics that accompanied them that I went out to look for the old Death Cab for Cutie albums, just to see if they'd always been making music like that. and Happily, they did.

Now, that's a good thing, AND a bad thing. I realized last night at the DCFC concert at the Esplanade was that old or new, their songs all follow largely the same template; never mind whether they were indie or major label. And the problem for me during the concert was, thanks to my continuously listening to ALL their albums back to back, I could recognise all the songs, but I just couldn't recall the titles.

But what the heck am I complaining about. It was a great concert, and it was awesome hearing the songs sung live. I rediscovered so many songs I might have overlooked before (Styrofoam Plates has just been elevated to one of my top five DCFC songs), and had a great time singing along to my favorites.

Watching them play live was an experience as well. I've never been to a concert where I've paid attention to the lyrics quite as much as this much, and despite the somewhat er... slow pace of some of the songs, the energy emanating from the band was constant and unrelenting.

Ben Gibbard looked like he was twisting to his personal 'Let's Do The Twist' track the whole time, guitarist Chris Walla looked like Peter Crouch doing the robot, bassist Nicholas Harmer was the most hyper one on the stage, and it was brilliant watching the drummer Jason McGerr hammering away, especially during the last song Transatlanticism's brilliantly uplifting finale.

I never thought I'd say this, but that 5-minute intro to I Will Possess Your Heart is actually quite brilliant, especially when you see the four of them jamming on it live. In fact, some of my favorite parts during the concert was when there was no singing at all, just the four of them jamming and just playing music.

It was during moments like that where you got the feeling that this was a band that didn't care how many people came to watch them... all they want to do is to be on stage, playing their hearts out.

Setlist:

1. Bixby Canyon Bridge
2. The New Year
3. Why You'd Want To Live Here
4. Crooked Teeth
5. Photobooth
6. Long Division
7. Grapevine fires
8. A Movie Script Ending
9. Company calls
10. Title Track
11. Soul Meets Body
12. I Will Follow You Into The Dark
13. I Will Possess Your Heart
14. Cath
15. Styrofoam Plates
16. Expo 86
17. The Sound of Settling
18. Your Bruise
19. Title and registration
20. No Sunlight
21. Tiny Vessels
22. Transatlanticism

RIP Isaac Hayes, The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer With Chocolate Salty Balls

What a double whammy this week was. First, Bernie Mac passes away at age 50, then Isaac Hayes. Andthe eerie thing is, both of them just finished filming Soul Men with Samuel L. Jackson. Should we be worried for good old Mace Windu then? Nah, stop being so superstitious can or not?

Anyway, Issac Hayes may not exactly be a household name here, but he is actually a three-time Grammy winner and won an Oscar for his theme for the 1971 movie Shaft.

Me, I got to know about him through South PArk, of all things. His character Chef was one of the coolest dudes on the movie, always singing songs about making love and his chocolate salty balls. Too bad he fell out with Trey Parker and Matt Stone over their Scientology episode. But at least Chef went out with one heck of a death scene.

So rest in peace, Isaac Hayes - Soul Man, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and singer of Shaft and Chocloate Salty Balls.