RUSH HOUR 3 by obi

Lee and "7-11" (his mouth's open 24 hours) is back and crazy as ever.

A summit was held in L.A. regarding the key to the dissolution of the largest crime gang, the Triad. The Chinese Ambassador heads the exposition but there was an assassination attempt in his life even before the summit commenced. Lee, acting as VIP security then, chased the assassin and somehow Carter got tangled up with the ruckus as well.

Their investigations led them to a contact person in Paris and the duo flew to France to follow up with the case. They eventually uncovered an age old tradition amongst the members of the Triad - the Xie Chen(?). Whoever holds the Xie Chen, will have the key to knowing the important personalities involved with the criminal organization. But getting their hand to the Xie Chen wasn't easy as they discovered that Lee's brother, Kenji, was actually a member of the Triad and charged with looking after the Xie Chen.

The Xie Chen manifested in the story on a French stage actress Genevieve (the Xie Chen list actually tattooed on her bald nape). By some twists in the story, the duo was able to recover Genevieve and uncover another Triad big boss - their very own contact in Paris, Varden Reynard. Before totally sacking the case close, however, Kenji abducted the Chinese Ambassador's daughter, Soo Yung, and asked for an exchange with Genevieve.

Carter disguised as Genevieve and went with Lee to meet with Kenji for the exchange in the Eiffel Tower. Of course, fierce action scenes ensued and by the end, the L.A.P.D buddies were able to save Soo Yung and solve the case of the Triad's Xie Chen.

The whole film is basically short at almost only one hour and a half but it was packed with a fast paced plot and a hillarity that is a trademark of the "Rush Hour" series. I am a fan of the first two films and comedy-wise, this would top the second "Rush Hour". I was literally chuckling most of the time (as I refrain from laughing out loud in cinemas as much as possible).

One should be able to predict how or when some of the jokes will be delivered. This is a bad thing for most comedic movies, but the thing with Chris Tucker is that he can make an impact out of his delivery that no matter how you anticipate it, you'll still can't help laughing your arse off. With Jacky Chan, well... if a Chinese kungfu actor singing (or trying to sing) a line of "The Closer I Get to You" while riding a swing doesn't appeal to your funny bones, then I don't know what will. The overall hilarity of the movie boarders on what you've already experienced on the first two prequels BUT it's still so so enjoyable, nonetheless.

The plotline is fairly simple and frankly, a bit lacking. Lacking in fact that after watching the movie, I was like... "Eh? That's it?". My sis, bro, and bro-in-law was into the same reaction that I was convinced that yes, it's not because I enjoyed the movie so much that I was looking for more... it really was lacking more. The story's transition to its climax was flawlessly developed but the finale was so abrupt and out of synch with the entirety of the film.

On the casts, well it's a comedy movie with two of the main roles in focus for the entire film so you din't need much invest on casting bigger stars for the supporting roles. In that sense, Jacky and Chris proved that they still have the chemistry to pull off the old tricks they did on the first two "Rush Hour" movies. I observed, however, that Chris Tucker might have been given a bit more "air time" here in "Rush Hour 3" but the idea of the Lee-Carter team up was there all the time.

Don't set your expectations too high when watching the movie. As I said, it is your typical "Rush Hour" movie with those typical "Rush Hour" antics in that typical "Rush Hour" storyline. But one thing for sure: their same old formula will make you laugh.

Seven gulamans.

coming soon

the quentin tarantino experience and artificial versus natural beauty.

million sorries, guys. no time to blog since im only in batangas for this one sunday. see you next weekend.

more on morons

jagshemash! so as not to render this entry completely negative, here first is a positive poem which i wrote for layla:

longlove

stalactite-you,
stalagmite-me, together we will one day be.

i think it's good. she thinks it is. and i rarely come up with stuff like this so your comments will be appreciated much. please, 'cause ive got another one still baking in my brain. okay, now, on to the main event...

warning: profanity ahead.

dearly beloved, it is time once more for me to release the steam of my boiling insides regarding the philippines' largest rip-off network, gma7. ive witnessed the multiple accounts of rape/blatant plagiarism that the aforementioned tv station has committed and gotten away with scot-free. almost every new show they churn out is a cheap xerox copy of something else (examples: smallville = captain barbell? sailormoon = super twins? indiana jones + tomb raider = asian treasures?), stress on the word cheap. and now, they are at it yet again with another show that stinks of shit a mile away. their latest victim: shaider. fuck.

you probably heard of it already, word came out some time ago that gma 7 acquired the rights to do a filipino version of shaider. sure, i think it's a neat idea but knowing gma 7, i was pretty sure it can only go bad. i bet that the costume would suck. i bet that there will be a cast of hundreds, with dozens more to be added along the way. i bet that the storyline will suck which includes that one of the characters is secretly the child of another character. i bet there will be awful acting. i bet that they'd boast about the special effects before it begins and then after a month or so, the effects will start to decrease in quantity and quality until the days when you're not actually watching shaider anymore and just a bunch of stupid drama storylines, their excuse for not using the once bragged-about special effects. in a nutshell, i bet it's a decrapitation of the superb series i'd loved in the past.

then news came that the smart japanese dudes who owned shaider have refused to let gma 7 to make an ass out of their brainchild. well, i actually have no idea why (maybe they didn't like the treatment that gma 7 sent for approval? waha! such wonderful writers) but it's good that they did. how did the network take this? no more pinoy shaider? wrong! they simply do what the do best: rip it off. they somehow manage to make that bad news (for them, good news for me) into something positive and now they're gonna do something entirely different but still based on shaider. and they want to call it, get ready for this... shaido. uh, what? someone even said that shaido was the brilliant title that the writer came up with. what? what's so brilliant about replacing a couple of letters with one?!? this is absolutely fucked up. why don't these morons just get a clue and not do it at all? forget piracy on the streets. there's piracy on tv right before your very eyes...

oh, by the way, the series will be directed by dominic zapata, again. you don't have to be familiar with the name, just the with all the shit he's made. he who said that they weren't ripping off sailormoon with super twins because he didn't know they were similar. oh, come on. complete bull. dude, fuck you. fuck you and all of your fellow idiots.

and finally, in celebration of the word "ginormous" and others that recently got added into the dictionary, i introduce to you a new hemorage feature: word of the day!

our word for today is "nosocomial" which means "acquired or occurring in a hospital".

used in a sentence: "our word for today is 'nosocomial'."

voila! another blog post off to take up space in cyberspace, be read by some and ignored by the rest, and fall prey to evil electronic entities such as gaypornphoto over there in the bloodboard (*shiver). thanks for the time and take care always, everyone.

p.s. happy belated friday the 13th!
p.p.s. watched harry potter 5 with my sibs and thought that it was really... [read review]

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX by jaiskizzy

the gist: harry potter et al are back for more wand waving and broom riding, now that lord voldemort, he who must not be named but i just did, has returned to do some dark deeds and get a nose. but that is not the case if you were to ask the ministry of magic because according to them everything is just a bunch of lies and that harry must be high on sniffing too much magic dust. as new laws are imposed in hogwarts led by the new ministry-assigned teacher, harry refuses to give the fight up and is determined to defeat the dark lord whatever it takes. does he stand a chance against baldie and his minions? cant emma watson be of legal age already so it wont feel wrong to think she's hot? but most importantly, will these actors ever get to do other movies? moviegardium reviewsa!

the reaction: ive never read any of the harry potter books and i dont think i ever will. i tried to, once in the past, but i wasn't even able to get past page one. i dont know. i just dont feel like it. so pardon me for any mistake i might make about the books. i'll shoot it to you straight: i didnt like this movie. it was very disappointing. there was a certain level of energy and grandeur that the first four had which this one lacked. it was mostly flat and uneventful scenes. well, of course lots of stuff happen. i just didn't find them as striking as, say, the flying car sequence in chamber of secrets and the map thing in prisoner of azkaban. except for that quick wizard wand fight near the end, nothing else stands out as special, yes, even the broom ride along thames river. just scene after scene of mediocrity. it wasn't boring, mind you. it just felt weak as if you're not watching a harry potter movie at all. that's probably why the kids behind me were so noisy and barely paid attention to the movie. it didn't capture your interest. it merely played on the fact that it is a harry potter movie and people would watch it, fan of the book or not, regardless of what they put in there, like dancing frogs or something. upon leaving the theater, the movie seemed like a filler episode.

the special effects were okay, cgi was okay, like i said, nothing new. well, maybe for dumbledore's water ball. that was awesome. i read somewhere about hagrid having a half-brother in the movie that was done entirely in cgi and that the technology they used was quite advanced. really? it didn't seem like so. plus it was dark so that's kind of a giveaway. then there are those cart-pulling creatures that can only be seen by people who've seen death. only she and harry can see them. then later harry and the whole gang are riding these beasts. wait, what? how did that happen? im sure the book has some explanation but i guess they forgot to include that in the script. what, did harry kill a squirrel in front of his friends?

some of the other reviewers were right though when they said that the chemistry between daniel radcliffe, emma watson and the dude who plays ron (nice hair btw) was great. they do feel like they've been friends a long time. no dialogue-ish dialogue to reiterate their bond, just plain friend language real world people use. however, there was a highly noticeable absence of humor that was present in little sprinkles in the previous films. here, i didn't laugh one bit. the usual comic relief ron wasn't in the mood i guess. dumbledore is starting to become lame. i think that he should have the same presence of gandalf whenever he's on screen. here, he's more like gimli sans comedy. except for that wand-off (sorry can't help it) with voldemort in the end, he's quite depensable. i think the first actor was better. the only other actors worth praising was the girl who played the unblinking luna lovegood, and of course, gary oldman. dude's cool. everything he does, he does with panache, especially the way he casts his spells. en garde!

like i said, i was not impressed. whoever this director david yates is, they should fire him and have someone else direct the next one to work some magic to put the flame back on and keep it burning (get alfonso cuaron again!). like magic show where the magician does tricks you've already seen a million times that you know how it's done already, this gig was a letdown. ugh, i wish i'd watched this online instead.

the good: the wizard battle and gary oldman. (and emma watson of course, sshh!)
the bad: the direction, the screenplay and the rest of the movie.
the ugly: the asian girl. like, what!?
the verdict: 4 prophecy orbs.


he who must not be tamed

DIE HARD 4.0 by obi

Detective John McClane is back with yet another showcase of his daredevil skills. In a daring attempt to sabotage the entire American economy, a group of cyber-terrorists lead by a sacked government computer head honcho Thomas Gabriel, executed what they dubbed as the "Firesale". "Firesale" is their term for a three-point economic cyber-sabotage composed of messing up with the traffic ways, blocking the communication lines, and shutting down the power grid. In able to do this, Gabriel's terrorist ring staged a competition among the hackers to program the software that will initiate the "Firesale". After the program was finished, the syndicate started killing all the hackers involved.

One hacker lived, as his assasination was foiled by McClane, who was under order to arrest the hacker - Matt Farrell. As the duo went along with their business, McClane eventually uncovered the reasons why Farrell was under attack and that it was tied up with the economic sabotages that was already hitting America (the start of the "Firesale"). McClane, who just won't die, kept on being the arse pain to Gabriel and company. In an attempt to sack the detective, Gabriel kidnapped his daughter and bargained for her life if he'll stop the crackdown to their evil plans.

With intense action scenes here and there, McClane finally saved her daughter and kill the bad dudes before help from the NBI arrived (how typical Pinoy film scenario!).

The movie's a very "guy film". True to it's title, it was jampacked with hardcore action scenes from start to end that it will make you wonder how the heck McClane survived all of that. The story was there and I pretty much like the concept of cyber-terrorism but take note that there's a whole LOT of exaggerations in the movie that certainly would never be possible in real life. So to appreciate the story, you'll going to keep in mind NOT to question the capabilities of the good guy... good guys should always triumph no matter how. Period. I also wanted how they emphasized the weakness of the American way of life brought upon by mucho dependence on computers. Props to whoever conceived of this idea for the prequel.

Overall, it's still your typical "Die Hard" film with a never-say-never cop who seemed to have challenged the world just to have his way of making criminals pay. They said it was a tad stylized than the prequels but I think it was mainly because of the presence of the organized crime group and the NBI officers (who have been visible all throughout the movie but wasn't really much of a help). I haven't watched Die Hard 3 (DH3) but I still can recall DH1 and DH2, and I can't see much change from the McClanes of the prequels. In this movie, McClane is still McClane. I'll have to give the credit to Bruce Willis and his charisma to carry on the charge of portraying the scruffy-looking detective again as he did years ago despite having aged to his 50's.

Hands down on the acting department. Timothy Olyphant (Gabriel) and Maggie Q (Mai Lihn) are very capable adversaries to McClane, with their merry band of computer hackers. Timothy has that sinister appeal on him while maintaining the "not-a-dumb-villain" look. Maggie Q, on the other hand, flawlessly fulfilled the role of the token Asian sidekick. She's still scorching hot on combat gears (as in MI:3) and although I find her resillience to McClane's attacks unbelievable (no matter how brutal they were and how wiry this chick is), I still loved her performance for the role. Cool martial arts moves too. Justin Long (Matt Farrell) did not look too geeky for his role. I'd rather prefer he portrayed the "geekiness" as exhibited by Warlock (Kevin Smith), but I guess that's what the director intended anyway.

One of the scenes that made me raised an eyebrow (although I really can't do that raising-an-eyebrow thing) was when an F35 jetplane chased down McClane on a freeway, and the protagonist walked out of it alive. That's just pushing it too much! I mean, McClane was being shot at like hell by anti-armor rounds and payloads of missiles with only a truck - a HUGE truck! - at his disposal.

HUGE TRUCK = HUGE TARGET

And the fighter pilot kept on missing the damn thing like a three year old trying to pin the tail on the donkey, blindfolded! And when he finally hits, he was still dumb enough to stuck himself to ground where McClane could make an easy work of doing funky stuffs to it and send it to doom. Watdapak?

All just to give the viewers a good action ride. So yeah, you should get by now what I'm trying to mean by "it's a guy film"... sacrificed reality for more loads of action!

Seven gulamans.

RATATOUILLE by jaiskizzy

the gist: a rat named remy realizes that he's a rare rodent reared to round up rich recipes and not to rummage through rubbish. rrrr. his forbidden journey to the realm of humans leads him to the lanky linguini, a garbage boy who works for gusteau's restaurant and dreams of becoming a chef. i guess it was kismet that they met because soon their dreams come true as remy puppets linguni around the kitchen to make dazzling, delectable dishes, putting them in the suspicious sights of the two-heads-high head chef and the mean mouth of restaurant critic most cruel, anton ego. will the dynamic duo's cuisine reign supreme (iron chef! hah!)? will rats and humans finally have a mutual coexistence? wait a shit, a cooking rat?!?! hello, leptospirosis?!? [insert horror tune]

the reaction: i can't cook. gusteau is wrong when he said anyone can cook. anyone but me. i was anatomically assembled to consume, and not produce, food. and part of that process was probably to stay thin no matter how much i eat. anyways, this film focuses less on the food, more on the characters which is a good thing. just like in the incredibles, brad bird and the pixar peeps have once again taken a very absurd impossible idea and gave it a heart and made it believable. i totally dont dig the whole concept of a cooking rat but then when i watched this movie, that skepticism seems to have been switched off. i never actually thought i'd find rats endearing (im not scared of them like layla, but they are icky), but this film just makes it work. not only because it's animated, but the way the rats, especially remy, were presented with such personality and no forced cuteness, kind of like human beings in rat suits. in the slightly similar live-action movie willard, they made you hate rats even more than you already do. here, they managed to get you to be fond of them, or at least hate them less, for the duration of the movie. but afterwards, did i go home and start treating rats as friends? no, sir.

i liked the story, the classic reach-for-your-dreams-and-follow-your-heart, or in this case, follow the ghost of your idol chef. nice little love arc too. well, they are in paris, right? but the bestest best part of this movie is the cgi. pixar has come a long long way since toy story. every film is like the next step in cg animation, continuously raising the bar for the genre, but breaking that bar themselves. yes, shrek also has superb cg but the story aspect has deteriorated. here, the stars of the show are the rats. they look and move just like real rats. sure, they're also a bit cartoony but the details of realism are amazing. the way they scurry, get wet, sniff, very real. i read somewhere that the rats were supposed to look less real at first but brad bird decided against it. good call, mr. bird. as a paradox, the humans look very cartoonish. accompanied by great voice acting, most notably peter o'toole's anton ego, and you've got a spectacular treat of a movie.

they couldn't have picked a better tagline: a comedy with great taste. it's a fine funny family film that will definitely delight young and old alike. well, that's kind of a no-brainer since pixar hasn't failed the audiences' animated appetite. can't wait for their next serving (which is wall-e).

the good: the cgi. wet, cgi hair never looked so real.
tha bad: the whole idea. yeah, it's cute. but for crying out loud, a cooking rat?!?
the ugly: the kitchen filled with rats. now, imagine that's your kitchen...
the verdict: 7 lightninged mushrooms.


skizzy a la king

long story short

hi-ho. i was gonna post an entry last week but i had to cut short my stay in batangas for i had to return to boni immediately. we were being thrown out of our apartment. [fast forward] we've moved to a bigger place and everything's peachy. for now.

here then is what i was able to finish there: my transformers movie review.

okey dokey. we're off to watch live free or die hard. auf wiedersehen.