Tag: review

Iron Man 3 Review

I just stepped out the theater and here’s what I’m thinking:

Tony Stark was supposed to have been undergoing some kind of issue that may or may not have been discussed in the past and it has to do with how he cannot sleep. I think there may have been a story somewhere there and they should have pursued that, a kind of ‘he is not as infallible as you think’, always compelling with superhero stories imo, but for some reason they didn’t.

Or maybe they did, but at some point during the movie a villain appeared, (the guy who played the king’s brother in ‘The King’s Speech’), and there started a story around him as well as a girl (she played Ben Affleck’s girlfriend in the excellent ‘The Town’), but it wasn’t really interesting, didn’t make sense, or both. At any rate I felt I was being distracted from what I really wanted to know – what was wrong with Tony Stark and how was he going to deal with it.

Continue reading Iron Man 3 Review

Les Miserables Movie Review

In a word, I found it tedious.

lesmis

I didn’t much care for the idea of singing out every line. I am only lightly knowledgeable about Les Miserable songs, and I didn’t like having to figure out when they are singing or starting to sing one of them or are just declaring something. I don’t know what that adds to the experience.

Continue reading Les Miserables Movie Review

Cannot Sleep Post

I unfortunately cannot sleep. In lieu of ZZZs, I am thinking about the ff. (yes, let’s bring on the famous bulletpoints). Start: 10:45PM.

  • Foremost, is the incredible Facebook API, and it’s recent decision to allow 3rd party developers to create apps that can change things like notes, links, videos and the all – important status updates. For what use is a social networking app, or anything on the ‘net if you think about it, if you cannot make broad hints at how available you are to your crush via Facebook? For what else is the internet for??

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Lust, Caution Movie Review

From the moment that I first saw the movie’s preview I had determined that I wasn’t going to miss it, and when I finally watched it it just went ahead and exceeded all expectations. Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) is an amazing piece of story – telling – an intricate, tightly wound tale between lovers whose love has no right to exist in the turbulence and violence of the world that surrounds it, but exists just the same.

I had been thinking a great deal about this amazingly beautiful movie. Ang Lee never lets up at any time throughout, providing striking image upon image of a war torn yet still somewhat beautiful 1940s Hong Kong and Shanghai. Yet at the end of it in an almost Shakespearean process, it brings home the very simple story of a love that is not right, shouldn’t be, should never have been and yet still exists.

There is a great deal of pulling and pushing, of the story moving across time and involving characters who change and mature in the midst of a tumultuous war providing the backdrop to the conflict making their love even more implausible.

Read the rest at FlickManiac!

Tropa de Elite and other planned reviews

I just watched the highly controversial Tropa de Elite, which I was desperate to see after seeing just a few seconds of a report about it from BBC news and consequently Googling it up. The movie runs a narrative using the voice of Capitao Nascimiento (played by the amazing Wagner Moura), a fictional leader of the BOPE or Special Operations Battalion, and elite corp of highly trained soldiers that, if the accounts from the movie are true, operate above the law in what it perceives as an all – out war against drug trafficking in the poor sections of Rio, Brazil.

The movie is a stunning display of violence and real life in the drug dependent slums of Rio, where large sections called Favelas are controlled by drug lords with small armies armed to the teeth with high powered rifles they carry around with them like jewelry. The streets are dark and dirty, the poor wear tatters and live in sub human conditions, the local police are so crooked and desperately corrupt that they often end up in turf fights of their own, and the rich College kids are lazy, doped out brats whose insulated view of the world makes them just as guilty to the depravity around them. On one hand, they work in NGOs trying to help the poor and mouth slogans and sing songs against the police, but on the other they consume and even distribute drugs that helps fund the cartels. A pretty familiar world for the typical city dwelling low income Pinoy, if you ask me.

Continue reading Tropa de Elite and other planned reviews

Everyone, meet Karen. Karen, everyone.

Funny how, since I’ve not blogged for such a long time, I actually forgot I had one. There I was thinking – man I should blog about this (topic), but how? Then I realized I had good ol’ lefthandedlayup. Shame shame.

Anyway, ladies and gents, meet Karen. To the world, an IBM X21 P3, 256mb 20gb laptop. To me, Karen Walker of Will & Grace fame, my latest PC in a long line of PCs named after fave sitcom characters.

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Here are the reason I got it + some observations:

Continue reading Everyone, meet Karen. Karen, everyone.

Ok so this is one of those ‘this is what i did today in pictures’ posts – A Semi-Review of the Sony DSC-N2

Which, I’m sure, is probably not gonna win any awards, but what the heck who cares. At any rate, this scores as a techie post as well. See, I’ve two new cameras at my disposal, the bombastically blingy DSC-N2 and the fashion-y DSC-T50, which Jill has already reviewed for Kikay.

So the thing is, the PR firm always loans me Sony cams without memory sticks. This is of course very limiting since I very well can’t go out taking 10 megapixel shots at full quality. The DSC-N2 only has 25mb. internal memory, so I’d probably end up taking 2 shots at most. So instead, I decided to take as many nice pics as I can at the lowest setting (VGA) possible. See, the way I see it, if the pics still come out okay, then that means the lens and the way its processors interprets colors – two of the more important factors that make a digicam – are ok too.

Brilliant eh? So armed with this self – styled (and I wouldn’t be surprised if flawed) reasoning, plus the fact that there’s a free entrance vintage car show at the Greenhills parking lot today commemorating San Juan’s Centennial, the fact that I’m a San Juan boy through and through, PLUS the fact that Jill has 1k worth of Burgoo GCs for some reason (who asks details when someone has GCs? Just go for it!), meant we had all the elements for a nice day out with a nice hi – end cam (I just used the DSC – N2 today. I’ll use the T50 for another time).

So on with the pics!

Continue reading Ok so this is one of those ‘this is what i did today in pictures’ posts – A Semi-Review of the Sony DSC-N2

The Pursuit of Happyness Movie Review

The Pursuit of Happyness is a movie about a great part of the life of Chris Gardner, a man who went through near – unsurpassable obstacles to reach success in his life – that is, success in the sense that he makes good money by running a profitable business and providing for his family, and unsurpassable obstacles in the sense that he had to at one point – lock the door at a men’s Oakland subway station’s bathroom so he can sleep there at night.

You can imagine that this is a true inspirational, dramatic sobfest, and it is. It leaves no doubt that Chris Gardner, who made his money via the stock market, is a man made of true stern stuff. His determination and single – minded purpose is incredible, regardless of how he is interpreted by Will Smith. And I say that because Will Smith is a truly impressive character just as well, but I’ll get to that a little later on.

Yup. You know what to do. Go over to Movie Exchange to read the rest. Camaaan do it already!

300 Movie Review

I gather that a great number of girls as well as men are raving about 300. And as we speak, the movie has broken 3.12 million US last weekend, and I am amongst those completely unsurprised.

Yet as I left the theatre, why was I not raving about it as all those other men and women? For sure, it kept me quite enraptured throughout. It is a visual feast like no other I’ve seen in a very long time. I can only think, maybe, of The Curse of the Golden Flower or any of it’s other Asian cousins such as The House of The Flying Daggers to compare to the grand imagery of thousands upon thousands of warriors in battle, but even these pale in comparison to how grand this one turned out.

(I’m trying to revive my movie reviewing skills, so please read the rest at Movie Exchange).