if you’ve watched Hugo (or read ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’), that famous image of the rocket poking the eye of a grumpy moon and all the rest may have reminded you of this awesome Smashing Pumpkins video… (it sure did us.)

(it also reminded me of the Film History textbook i had for a module in uni, which i dug out in a nerd-moment to find a useless trivia, i.e. i share the same birthday as Georges Méliès! ok /endnerdmoment.)

ps: a whole week to catch up on movies yey!

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didja like The Lorax?

some parts made me teary.

like when Once-ler cut down that first Truffula tree and The Lorax looked all sad and the forest animals gathered around the stump to place a circle of rocks around it.

and when the population of Thneed-ville burst into a song to let the last Truffula seed grow.

i didn’t know i was such a closet softie for the environment.

and while the critics say the movie didn’t truly capture the original spirit of Dr Seuss’ book, and the moral of the story is pretty much what Wall-E had already delivered earlier, i went in with no expectations and surprised myself by liking it well enough.

well, better than the other Dr Seuss movies, anyway. (i especially hated the one with Jim Carrey as the Grinch.)

i also hope they’ll leave them books alone and stop making them into movies and COME UP WITH ORIGINAL STUFF FOR ONCE.

that is all.

now, let’s go buy some more books… made from cut-down trees… (damn you, industrialism/commercialism! sob.)

peace!

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extracted from here:

My Husband Has a Man Crush on Ryan Gosling

…. “It’s amazing all the things Ryan Gosling can do with his eyes.” He sighed. “The emotions he can convey, with just a look. I could watch him in anything.”

Atticus is a discerning cinemaphile who re-watches his favorite films the way some people re-read books. He is particularly compulsive when it comes to movies about outsiders trying to connect. Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. Ben Affleck in The Town. Clint Eastwood in anything. But his affection for Ryan Gosling is unparalleled.

I grinned. “You have a man crush on Ryan Gosling!”

Atticus scoffed. He’s 150% guy. Drives a bright yellow sports car with black rims. Rides a red motorcycle. Has my name on tattooed on his bicep. Checks sports stats on his iphone several time a day. And if not for my relentless prodding, he would never even have considered applying product to his unruly hair.

Atticus won’t admit he has a man crush on Ryan Gosling, but it’s true. Recently, he came home with a smorgasbord of Ryan Gosling on Blu-Ray. I sifted through the DVDs. Blue Valentine. Half Nelson. Lars and the Real Girl.

“The Notebook?” I glanced from the swooner responsible for Gosling’s permanent warm, mushy place in the hearts of women the world over to my stridently non-metrosexual husband.

“Best Buy was slashing prices,” he shrugged, sheepishly.

I’m glad Atticus has a man crush on Ryan Gosling. Because I can be open about the fact that I also think he’s one smooth drink of water, and Atticus totally gets it. In fact, we seriously considered changing the date of our camping trip last weekend so we wouldn’t miss the opening of The Ides of March.

In case you have just relocated from Siberia, Ryan Gosling mania is now ruling the zeitgeist. The media has latched on to the actor’s statement about female sexuality being sublimated due to a “patriarchy-dominant society” and has positioned Gosling as a feminist-approved love object. The fervor officially tipped over into satire last weekend with the creation of the uniquely hysterical spoof web site, Feminist Ryan Gosling.

But my husband is proof that Ryan Gosling is not just for women. Or girly-men. Gosling has a brazenly iconoclastic masculinity–an I-am-who-I-am-wounds-and-all-and-I-don’t-give-a-f**ck-what-you-think-ness–that appeals to the most alpha of Alpha Men.

“I kind of think he should only be in indie films, where he’s a crack addict or in love with a doll,” he said. I nodded. But it didn’t matter. There is no question, that as long as we both shall live, we will watch Ryan Gosling in anything, even if it’s Mouseketeer reruns.

hmm, i wonder who *my* husband’s man crush is… :D

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i happened to catch these trailers earlier today at Funan mall while waiting for the husband to do some shopping i had no womanly interest in whatsoever…

Snow White and The Huntsman

(it’s Thor! it’s Bella! whee!)

vs.

Mirror, Mirror

(it’s, erm, Julia Roberts.)

incidentally, i’d just read to the kids the whole set of classic Disney stories (with a pink book cover, no less), that included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and yes, Snow White (call it post-Disneyland syndrome, gah!), so it’s a refreshing change to see less conventional female protagonists after the deluge of frilly, demure, perfectly-poised, saccharine-sweet feminine characters that the Disney machine has so successfully typified.

introducing (yes, i am well-versed in identifying them all now, post-Disneyland):

Cinderella

Belle and Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty)

Snow White (actual name)

and since it was SO HARD to hunt down these live characters around Disneyland to take pictures with (they made special celebrity-like appearances at designated times and places and if you’re a second late to join the queue, there’s no negotiating/pleading/begging their ‘minders’), here’s the full line-up (‘pirated’ figurines courtesy from a hong kong night market stall). (YES I BOUGHT THIS SET FOR AUNI HA HA.)

from left to right:
Cinderella (in blue, for the ball); Cinderella (in white, for the wedding); Belle (that’s french for Beauty, you know); Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty – she was under a kind of CIA witness protection programme, thus the many aliases); Aurora again (different dress colour because her godmothers Flora, Fauna & Merryweather couldn’t make up their minds); Snow White; Ariel (as mermaid, with tail); Ariel (as human, with legs); and Pocahontas.

and since we were on the topic of Snow White, it seems that she has travelled through time looking exactly the same, while i… err…

(Disneyland, LA – 1984)
(Disneyland, LA – 1997)

(no wonder the Queen wants her dead.)

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“You can lie, cheat & steal. You can start wars and bankrupt the country. They’ll forgive you for that. But you don’t fuck the intern.”

did I like the movie? OF COURSE i did. admittedly i am biased, but seriously, The Gosling *was* brilliant. and with that final flick of his eyes up on screen at the end, i died. a little. :p

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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was drafting another post but, well, i got distracted…

saw Drive the other night, and i couldn’t get the soundtrack and this particular scene out of my head (0:22, people!).

not exactly the same effect Blue Valentine had on me (that one scarred my soul for weeks), but… i don’t know…

THERE’S JUST SOMETHING ABOUT THAT GOSLING GUY.

sigh.

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Interview with Ryan Gosling on Blue Valentine:

“The knight slays the dragon and then lives happily ever after with the princess in the castle,” he says, “but when they’ve moved in together, they have to share a bathroom. How do you keep love alive in a domestic situation? What is it about that that dismantles love?”

<3

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This, the scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall I was referring to (when the spouse said he wants to try yoga at the holiday resort)… “I’m doin’ a headstand m*f*ka!” Lolz. (<3 jason segel.)"

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there’s this scene in Dan In Real Life, starring steve carell (in an endearing role filled with endless pathos, reminiscent of steve martin in ‘father of the bride’, another favourite tearjerker), that struck me.

early on in the movie, his 15-year-old daughter declared her love for a boy after knowing him for 3 days, and as the rightful protecting father that he is, proceeds to ground her – for life.

Dan: And by the way, you’re grounded.
Cara: Oh yeah? For how long?
Dan: For life.
Jane: Dad, come on.
Cara: Yeah, this is humiliating!
Dan: Alright, you’re grounded for a month.
Cara: A month?! But… that’s worse than forever!

but he had to eat his words when he met marie (the beautiful juliette binoche), and fell in love with her after a morning of conversation – only to find out later that she’s his brother’s girlfriend. and so ensued an excruciating 3 days for him, stuck with her at his family gathering, repressing his feelings like a lovestruck 15-year-old. till the turning point in the movie where she breaks up with his brother, unable to repress her own growing feelings for him, and the entire family, including his daughters, discovered them kissing, resulting in a whirlwind of chaos.

Dan: I know I messed up.
Cara: Yup.
Jane: Yes you did.
Dan: So here is what I’m going to do. I am grounding myself for life. And so I will be with you–
Jane: You’re with us every day.
Dan: I’m not going anywhere. See, I got a little confused with Marie. That is over, okay? I kind of lost my head. I got a little stupid, because I love her. No, that’s not…I don’t love her. and that’s not what I meant. I mean, how could I love her? I’ve only known her..
Lily: Three days.
Dan: Yeah. And how can you know in three days? Well, no. Yes I do. I love her. I love her, I love her, I love her. I love her.

that part about grounding himself for life, man, that did it for me. there’s something heartbreaking in his attempts to be the übermensch single father – the self-sacrifice, the unconditional love, the rules and decisions that make him, as his 9-yr-old daughter says, “a great father but a bad dad” – but eventually succumbing to human fallibility.

i guess a single mother could make an equally compelling story – with more martyr-like panache for dramatic measure – but because he’s a single father, it brings out… a different kind of aww-factor fuzziness. yeah, i’m a sucker like that. coz for some strange – biological? evolutionary? – reason, we women have a soft spot for the nurturing male of the species, so much so that we even want to nurture the nurturing male. we can’t help it. just look as far back as the bedtime fairytales of yore, you’ll find more instances of stepmothers than stepfathers (refer to: snow white, cinderella, hansel & gretel, et al). from kings to woodcutters, they all seem to have these women (nevermind that they’re usually evil, vain, material and non-maternal) taking them into their open bosoms.

and, yes, in true fairytale fashion, dan did end up marrying marie. (except she’s not evil and they all love her, and i REALLY MUST STOP reading too much into those darn fairytales i read to aniq at night coz they’re screwing up with my brains).

+++++

speaking of grounding, we’d ‘grounded’ the boy on sunday on account of his adamant refusal to partake in a weekend activity we’d subscribed him to for one hour. his excuse: he wanted to play with his toys. so fine, we told him, play with your toys all you want at home, but NO TV and NO following us out AT ALL. (we were going to shop for a birthday present before proceeding to the said birthday, where his cousin dadam was anticipating his arrival, so he’d be missing out on all the action.) he cried at the penalty. “too bad,” we told him. “that’s called Punishment, aniq.”

i mean, he has to learn that he simply can’t have his way all the time without some kind of repercussion, in this case, at the expense of fun time with his favourite cousin and the goodies that come with birthday parties. right?

sometimes i ask the husband, “is he spoilt? is he a spoilt brat?” i have my suspicions, but how exactly we’ve ‘spoilt’ him, i’m not too sure. it’s not like we give in to his whines or demands, we teach him to mind his Ps & Qs, we scold him whenever he does something wrong, praise him when he’s right… so what happened in between the acquiescent, eager-to-please baby he was and now? have we been too soft? could corporal punishment have its merits, after all?

in any case, when we came home, he was all kisses and hugs and, the cold, unforgiving mother that i am, i told him i was still angry. (i’m cruel, i know.) remnants of his remorse lingers the next day, smothering me all over with affection when i returned. “do you want go to the [subscribed weekend activity] on sunday?” “yes,” was his immediate response. “good boy,” i said.

I AM AN EMOTIONAL-BLACKMAIL FIEND, is what i am. if this were a fairytale, i’d be the stepmother.

+++++

since we’re on the topic of fairytales, and i clearly have a fascination at demystifying them, i leave you with this rhyme, an english translation at the end of a Perrault story to warn young girls with a propensity for attracting sexual predators (i’m sure you can easily guess which one).

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way,
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you’re pretty so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay, and charming—nevermind!
Now, as then, ’tis simple truth—
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

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(Ok, last post about G-Force, promise…!)

So, everybody loves a hero, right? Well, duh! Aniq especially knows a superhero when he sees one!

Darwin is the guinea pig leader of the G force unit in the movie. With his badass hi-tech gadgetry and weapons which include his IR goggles that helps him navigate in the dark using heat signatures and his standard issue electro whip together with the plasma gun that can shoot long range targets, no wonder Aniq was literally “gunning” for Darwin in the show.

Aniq loves his toys and so does Darwin. With his arsenal of deadly “toys”, Darwin always has something up his sleeve. Not just that, Darwin also kept the audience on their toes with his agility and strength in doing his stunts which Aniq tends to re-enact too enthusiastically at home, much to the disapproval of his mother! :p

Anyway, Darwin’s never-say-die attitude and the purveyor of everything good is indeed a role model for all the kids out there.

When i grow up, i want to be just like Darwin, i want to fight bad people! Check out the movie site here.

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So we caught G-Force the movie over the weekend, and what can I say – the boy loved it!

And being the impressionable boy that he is, Flo Rida’s Jump is now “my song” to him.

After watching the movie, he is yearning for his own G-Force collectibles. The boy is ready to show some of his G-Move in “The G-Move contest” to earn his own ‘toys’. The contest? You have to create and upload your video doing the G-Move (click here to watch how to do the G-Move by Hurley) to this Facebook page .

Now, check out his G-move. Wade Robson, eat your heart out… :p (pardon his pyjamas, it’s supposed to be bedtime, you know.)

The movie’s 3D special effects were fantastic. It figures, coming from a director who’s a visual-effects veteran with a list of SFX blockbuster hits under his belt such as The Rock and Armageddon. Rodents and debris flying out of the screen – ok not exactly terrifying like the above two movies, but still – neat!

The story is basically about three specially-trained guinea pigs on a mission to save the world, but the team gets thwarted by an FBI agent who totally underestimates the trio, so they end up in a pet shop and… well, let’s not spoil it for you now, shall we?

In all, Aniq and I give it 4 popcorns (or, as he would say it, “pop-tohn”!) out of 5. There are enough thrills and spills in the movie to entertain both the young and the young-at-heart (like, ahem, yours truly).

And there’s even a corny (or, in Aniqspeak, “tohn-ny”) twist at the end, so look out for it. :p

Already open in cinemas and a great movie to watch for the school holidays!

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Our soon-to-be 4-year-old has a near-obsession with action figures. Which ‘normal’ boy doesn’t, right? Erm, right.

Oh, he loves super furry animals too.

Anyway, what would typically happen whenever he catches sight of characters toting fancy gadgets and – *gasp* – guns on screen, coupled with highly-charged hi-jinks and exciting explosives? He’d freeze in his tracks and produce an awe-induced “WAAHH!”. Naturally.

Yes, the testosterone runs deep with this one.

And since the school holiday is imminent, another family trip to the movies would definitely be in the cards. IF he behaves, that is. :p

Nuffnang has given us a whiff of a new animation comedy adventure in 3D coming out soon, G-FORCE. G for Guinea pigs, that is, along with Gizmos and Gadgets. Trained secret agents, furry little James Bonds! Haha! (BTW, you can participate in the G-Force “The G-Move” contest to win exclusive movie premiums to the movie.)

Showed the little fella the movie trailer on YouTube and his eyes popped wide open (oops, and this was just before his bedtime, my bad). And yes, that “WAAHH!!”. Ever the obliging daddy that I am, I replayed the trailer over and over again as demanded.

Check out the movie site!

The voices cast would be interesting to look out for, among which are Nicholas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Steve Buscemi AND Jon Favreau (who directed and acted in mine and Aniq’s all-time favourite action movie, Ironman).

And in 3D! He’ll definitely get a kick out of watching the characters come to life.

So, Aniq, behave, ok!

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promo video for the olympus e-p1. i love the effects!

Posted via email from izadd’s pemalas posterous

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if you’ve been following our tweets (and if you’re not tweeting yet, get with the programme!), you’d have come across how we’d raved over the new star trek movie by jj abrams.

now this, coming from me, a total non-trek fan, is *really* something, ok.

before, if you mentioned ‘star trek’ to me (or ‘star wars’ or anything remotely remotely sci-fi), you’d be met with blank, glazed eyes, my mind already wandering off to rainbows and unicorns. cheesy tv geek cult classics, not exactly my cup of honey red bubble tea.

but when nuffnang offered us a pair of free tickets to watch the preview last thursday, i didn’t think much about the fact that i was going to actually sit through a show that i had little interest in as a child.

all i knew was, it’s free, it’s an excuse for an evening from kids, and it’s jj-freakin’-abrams, yo.

yet, so deeply-seated is star trek in our collective pop psyche that you cannot help but have a basic, fundamental trek knowledge – “beam me up, scotty”, the V-shaped hand greeting, spock’s pointy ears, klingons and vulcans, the starship enterprise, going boldly where no man has gone before, etc.

and nevermind the actual plots throughout the years or who’s who – we discovered that you don’t need to be a true-blue trekkie to enjoy the rollercoaster ride in space that is this movie.

mr abrams himself summed it up in one paragraph:

“Ultimately, though, I wasn’t making this movie just for the dedicated fans. I was making the movie for fans of movies. The final product, I think, doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the show Star Trek. I mean, almost anyone, if you stopped them on the street and asked who Kirk and Spock are, they’d know. I think people will typically have some sense of those two guys. And then there are fans who know every episode and argue about what the Star Trek canon is. This movie does acknowledge a world that has pre-existed off the screen for decades, but when you see it, it’s not going to be quite what you’d expect, and definitely not just a rehash of things you’ve seen before. It’s a very new take on the thing that it’s also beholden to. It’s a very interesting balance.”

some have touted this version as ‘star trek 90210′ for its hot young cast and high school hijinks. well hey, i’m not complaining. i’m sure leonard nimoy and william shatner had their share of teens lusting over them in their times. :p

dr spock and captain kirk – old version. blah!

dr spock and captain kirk – updated version. hot!

sylar from heroes fitted perfectly in the show, and i mean, he even looks uncannily like leonard nimoy, doesn’t he? in fact, i think he was vair sexy here. plus, he got to snog a chick. (oops, spoiler.) oh, and look out for winona ryder looking… old. (did i tell you she’s izad’s idol, circa reality bites? i did? ok.)

anyway, i can’t say anything about the movie without revealing anymore spoilers, but that it’s action-packed, with the right amount of humour and human drama, that even *i* was hooked throughout.

with someone like captain abrams at the helm, this franchise looks like it will indeed live long and prosper.

so thanks, nuffnang, for our movie date…

photo courtesy of raine @ nuffnang. and yes, i know who you guys spotted in here. lol.

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