Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Set Phazorz To Starn!

secure: I'm currently simulating the internal multiwave guide to fix the posistron flux, this should allow us to know the stardate by reversing the polarity in the photon dampener of the warp core

Lynx: Remember to set your phasers to stun when jumpstarting the positronic modulation reflex field, or you'll cause a chain reaction in the dilithium stabiliser array, which will cause a flux in the quantum wave particle matrix, and in turn cause a disruption of the tensor emitter resulting in a conical gravitational singularity that will cause the universe to be divided by 0.

And make the water in my tea too hot.

Friday, March 16, 2007

SPARTANS! TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL!

300 is awesome. This is one movie i'm going to watch multiple times.

Although 300's story isn't anything revolutionary (based off an actual historical battle as it is), it is solid nonetheless, and has all the elements of a great movie. But what really shines here is its delivery.

The story unfolds as it is retold by the rough, gritty voice of Dilios, one of Leonidas' 300.

The use of foreshadowing and repetition makes the story flow very well, and connects events in the movie together.

Visuals are stunning and visceral, vivid dismemberments, "artistic" blood flying everywhere, swords, spears and shields running people through, set up on a beautiful sky filled with magnificient orange-tinged clouds which seem to be eternally in the evening/night.

I never thought i'd say this, but buff men running around with nothing on save red cloaks, shields and leather underwear never looked so cool(in a completely straight and manly manner of course).

And damn, I want a physique like Leonidas (Gerard Butler).

Here's several wallpapers I made, because frankly, the movie is *that* awesome:

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Thursday, January 25, 2007

300



Holy crap. OMFG. OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG OH EM GEE.

300 is on my seriously-must-watch list.

It is a movie adaptation of Frank Miller's comic series of the same name, which depicts the Battle of Thermopylae.



For those ignorant of ancient history, Thermopylae is the site of a legendary battle between a handful of Spartans (300 to be exact, hence the title)led by Spartan king Leonidas against a massive army of Persian invaders.



I really liked the style of Sin City, another of Frank Miller's comic-to-movie adaptations, which was given a very artistic treatment that complemented the movie's atmosphere, and 300 looks to be equally good.



First trailer (poorer quality):


Latest hi-quality trailer.
More media here.

The Battle of Thermopylae on Wikipedia.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

The End Is Nigh!

Yep, it really is! So REPENT YE SINNERS! 4 more days till the new year. Hehe.

Long time since i've had a post with any real substance, and for that i apologise. Staying up late nights does that.
I haven't been just sitting around wasting time though, as you my dear reader have noticed, i've been churning out a crapload of skinned models, and trust me, it isn't as easy as it looks... aside from spending hours searching for good reference pictures and textures which usually takes more than 5 hours, modelling and UVW-ing, even low poly ones takes 2-3 hours each and texturing around 2 hours.

I do wish i could do it faster, and handle more complicated models but my skills still aren't up to that level yet, but good thing is i've improved alot and learned some new things.

Anyway, i've a couple of items i'd like to address in this last post of 2005.

First up, another installment of mini movie reviews. Since there's a whole internet full of information about their plot/characters/whatever, i'll give my impressions instead.

+ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the movie based on the books by JK Rowling, FYI if you somehow lived under a very huge rock in a very deep well for the past few years or so. There have been some changes to it's production, from a new actor to play Dumbledore to a new director. The movie itself is pretty good, much better than the previous movies but has it's share of shortcomings as well. The initial part of the movie is rather abrupt, and the transition isn't really handled very well but it smooths out as the show progresses. A larger portion of the book was cut out, so fans might feel the movie lacks something, but even so the movie runs for around 3 hours, so its something that is really unavoidable and i feel the scriptwriters did a sufficiently good job to cover it, though IMO not as gracefully as the Lord of The Rings' translation from book to movie did.
Still, its worth a watch, and the dragon scene is pretty awesome.

+ The Chronicles of Narnia is another book adaptation from the works of CS Lewis, which is pretty good, i admit i was a little surprised because of some comments about the movie i heard. By far this movie is one of the most faithful book-to-movie adaptations i've ever watched, and is even better than the "imagery" that the book gave. The books reads like a children's book, which in fact is what it is, while the movie makes it more of an epic, even *almost* Lord of The Rings-esque kind of epic. Hell, i could have sworn even Galadriel's evil sister is in the movie lol.(Galadriel is the elven queen of Lothlorien for the ignorant, played by Cate Blanchett). Definitely a good watch, goes to show you can't believe everything you hear until you see it for yourself.

+ The Constant Gardener is a rather depressing movie that stars Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes, but its a good movie nonetheless. The movie is filled with surprises, twists and turns, and uses a flashback-esque style of exposition which turns what would otherwise be a rather unremarkable story (if told in a straightforward manner) into an engaging one, which just shows the skill of those involved with weaving together the story. Top that off with the excellent performances from Rachel and Ralph, and you get a grade A movie. A recommended watch, especially if you're interested in something more than mindless action and no-brainer "plots" in typical hollywood movies.


Next is some random notable things. Last week, i went on a trip to Pangkor island with some of my uni mates. The journey there for me started at 6am, when i woke up to catch a bus to KL, where we got on a coach heading to Lumut. It took us 4 hours to get to Lumut from Puduraya, a long and boring 4 hours so everyone took the opportunity to get some shut eye.

At the ferry station in Lumut, we were met by some very..... loud ferry ticket sellers who vigorously waved at us, apparently asking us to buy the tickets from them instead of their competitor. The ticket booths were right next to each other.
It was pretty.... scary i must say, their aggressive marketing, and i thought they looked like those prisoners who stuck their hands out between the bars waved and jeered at people passing them in the movies.
Thankfully, we already had all the arrangements done for us by Joe prior to the trip lol.

When we arrived, we checked into a beach resort with some moderately-priced rooms (3 room unit for 310 a night), and immediately went for a speedboat tour around the island. And good thing we did too, for it turned out to be a perfect day to be out at sea, low tides, clear blue skies...

I'd have to say the best day of the whole trip was on the first day, and highlight of that trip was the speedboat tour. Its just an awesome experience just sitting on a fast-moving boat, feeling the wind beating over your face, the smell of the sea...
Our "guide" and "driver" was a pleasant chap who cracked alot of jokes to keep us entertained, and pointed out various "creatures" and things that only the imagination can see in the huge rock formations and flora around the island.
Our guide even dived and brought up some aquatic life for us to look at a coral, a sea cucumber and a sea urchin. Of all 3 the most interesting was the urchin, you could actually see it's individual thorns moving as it crawled around the bucket it was put. Reminds me of a porcupine hehe.
We also passed by the Pasir Giam beach, which was a place of interest because at low tide, you could walk over there safely from the main island, but the "path" disappears under the water at high tide, and our guide said that it only gets low enough a few days a year, so anyone who doesn't bring a boat and get's stuck there has to stay for a year until the next year lol.
After "speeding" around abit, we stopped at a cove where shoals of various colourful fishes frequented, attracted by the many bits of bread us tourists tossed into the water, and i got in with a mask and breathing tube.
Several other tour boats were also around there, so the fishes were having a feast. My finger almost became a part of the feast as well when i was waving a big piece of it at the smaller fishes, when this bigger fish came out of nowhere and bit at the bread. Thankfully it had a small mouth so it was just a nip. Anyway I think i had its cousin for dinner hehe.
After awhile, we went to another small beach and just sat around and enjoyed the view before heading back.
That night after dinner, we went down to the beach to see the "blue tears/blue sand", which are actually small crustaceans called Sea-Fireflies
which are bioluminescent creatures. The shores were filled with these blue lights washing up, which was pretty cool, romantic even... for couples lol.

I also got to see a successful catch of a stingray. The removal of it's sting was rather brutal.... it was wrenched out a pair of pliers while the stingray was still alive. But the locals thought nothing of it, having probably done it hundreds of times already...

The other two days consisted of sightseeing the few places of interest around the island, like the Fu Lin Gong temple with it's mini Great Wall, and the *very* small(reconstructed) Dutch Fort.


And with that, here's some more 3D stuff if you're not sick of it already:

Gondor Guard Helm


Evil Sword & Shield


Misc Weapons


Swords


Orc weapons


Axes


Orc Falchion


Cheers, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Politically Correct Non-denominational Holidays!

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Movie Madness

Been to see a shitload of movies more than i usually do, thanks to Fredrik and Joseph lol.

Since haven't the patience nor the proper state of mind to write lengthy, in-depth reviews of all the highs and lows of each movie at 2am in the morning (yes, i'm a vampire!!!) , i'll just do a brief summary of each and my recommendations or otherwise (in no particular order):

+ Sky High is a "family" type movie that's about the a superhero couple, who's son is about to go to superhero high school. A surprisingly good movie which ties up it's ends neatly and manages to add in alot of appropriately corny lines amd cheesy humor, recommended watch.

+ Transporter 2 is a no-brainer action flick, complete with tough, gruff and asskicking hero, evil, evil spanish villain who has a lithe girlfriend who is apparently a borderline psycho, likes wearing skimpy attire and likes wielding akimbo submachine-guns, as well as an eeeevil evil (no, i mean really, really evil. Really.) plan that seems like a kidnapping but is something muchas muchas more sinister. If you like alot of mindless no-brainer action and see-thru bras, then transporter 2 is for you or else just wait for the VCD.

+ Zorro 2 is about Zorro, married now and middle aged but still alive and kicking bandito' ass, who has to deal with "asskicking life" and "family life". Things don't get easier for our intrepid black clad hero as his equally asskicking wife, Elena gets involved with some shady characters, which naturally leads to more asskicking. Rated "OK", but did not get that "Excellente Movie" feel from this one.

+ Corpse Bride is a movie made with the painstaking art of stop motion a-la the Wallace and Gromit series (and upcoming movie), and tells the tale of Victor, the naive and rather clumsy son of a wealthy fishmonger family who screws up his wedding vows to Victoria, his bride-to-be and accidentally "married" a corpse bride. The movie has the same dark, twisted and haunting yet beautiful atmosphere we've (or at least i've) come to love in Tim Burton's movies.
Alot of tongue-in-cheek humor lifts the mood a tad and the movie has a nice pace to it, combine to make it a very nice movie which is a little sad, but definitely worth a watch.

+ Doom is a movie-nised version of the popular PC first-person shooter series of the same name, Doom 3. Its.... better than expected, but not an excellent, deep and emotional movie. Not by a long shot. Its a sci-fi version of Transporter 2, just with more mindless action, zombies, wierd-ass creatures and a demented Dr Carmack whose name everyone keeps shouting as if you were partially deaf.
The story itself, (what little of it anyway) has just a passing resemblance with the game's story, but is just adequate if you don't look *too* close. Hovers between "OK" and "Tolerable", probably worth getting on a VCD for the funny one liners alone.

+ A Sound of Thunder i, to quote the official synopsis, "When a hunter sent back to the prehistoric era runs off the path he must not leave, he causes a chain reaction that alters history in disastrous ways." In reality its a pretty sucky adaptation of an excellent short story, the movie only pulls it off at half the quality of the story.
Its a little scifi-ish considering the setting, but all the special effects in the world cannot save this movie from mediocrity. Wanna see monkey lizards? bat-pterodactyls? Big eels and ants? Killer weeds? A poorly disguised attempt at illustrating the "butterfly effect"? A Sound of Thunder is all that. VCD material.

And now, i leave you with this awesome Nirvana song:

Monday, October 24, 2005

Its been awhile...

Been some time since i last posted an update, so i have to force myself to stop being lazy lol.

Taking abit of a break from 3d for now, to catch up on other things. Been spending some time watching movies instead, which is what i'm gonna talk about here.

First up is the new Final Fantasy: Advent Children movie. Its a pretty awesome movie that displays Square-Enix's skills at 3d, which sets another goal to aspire to lol. The movie is basically about what happens after FF7, where some uncurable disease called the geostigma is spreading among the planet's populace, which is apparently the planet's self-defence mechanism kicking in(sounds alot like that gaia theory...) and its up to Cloud and his buddies to save the world again when some guy called Kadaj and his brothers seemingly want to destroy it by bringing Sephiroth back from the dead.

While the visuals are top notch, the story is rather confusing since there's little explanation of what is going on; it is meant for fans only after all. Still, even if you don't know wtf is going on, the gravity and physics defying fights and insane motorcycle stunts will keep you satisfied.



I'll get down to the other movies in the next posts.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Constantine. John Constantine.

Holy shit. This movie is cool.

Went to MV today to catch this totally kickass movie with SoY, YeY, AiL, HoY, EuW, Li and Nic.

It really surprised me because i was expecting another horror show with the usual, boring scare gimmicks. But its more of an action movie of sorts rather than a true horror movie. Sure, you have angels and demons and such in the film, but whoa, damn.
It had a rather dark atmosphere throughout the movie, but its all good.

Not gonna ruin the movie for you so i'll post my full review of the movie later here. :)

But if you like action movies, Keanu Reeves, and The Exorcist, then you wouldn't miss this one.

Got myself a couple of books from MPH as well (Grr, why can't Kinokuniya open a branch in MV...... MPH suxxx, more expensive prices and not as wide a range of books.), but as a result i'm pretty broke for the whole month lol.

Then had dinner at BK(more fats.... -_-; next time go Little Penang to eat) before rushing back to meet my appointment with CCM and Makei to takei at Horus (sorry for being late! had to send some ppl home!), hehe.

Woots, finally gonna get the KoTOR 2 tomorrow, which i've been waiting for so long .