ROCK

This photo is ROCKIN'!

So is this:
For some of you, you'll know I've posted this picture on my blog before (when I first got the GHWT set). But this photo recently surfaced in another public occasion: my Media in America lecture.

Can you believe it!? My lecturer actually went to dig out photos of us on our facebook and showcase in class! Talk about getting to know each other better.

And this wasn't even my FB display pic! (Which means he had to really dig to find it)

But it was all LOL-fun. I like this picture too, btw.

ROCK.

Recess week is here. My schedule is packed to the brim. And so the craziness begins...

Take care, people!

Birthdays and Basterds

[ warning: you might get very hungry after reading this post ]

Wowee~ September is really a birthdays galore! Let's just have one picture for one birthday celebration here. Or maybe a couple of pictures if there are pictures worth showcasing!

Jiamin's 21st (surprise by NJCSB members @ Hall8)
In the background, hanging on the window, is a pre-Hari Raya celebration deco =X =P
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Mark's 21st!
Attended by part of Pava, it was a day of fun-filled laksa, childhood photos and... durian cake!

Can you spot the one who doesn't enjoy it? LOL. I miss the cake already =(
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Valencia's 21st!
GYPSies! I just like using this word =P

And that day marked the unauguration of SPBA. =X Where's our t-shirt design??

And here's presenting to you a Life, Curious Paparazzi Special:
STUDENT CAUGHT ON CAM FOR GOSSIPING
by Wilson Ng

PASIR RIS, Singapore - Vanessa, co-founder of SPBA, was caught on camera for gossiping at Elias Green - a very uluated condominium - last Saturday evening, a Life Curious paparazzi revealed.

When she realised that a photographer was secretly snapping at her, the twenty-one year old student raised her hands in defense, and attempted to shoo the camera-man away.

Loy, a witness while attending a party there, said, "She was really animated in the way she talked. It sounded like she had something really exciting to say."

Vanessa, along with other members of the SPBA - namely CWJ, LLW and WN - were attending a 21st birthday party at the Pasir Ris condominium. Valencia, who is also a co-founder of SPBA, was the birthday girl.

Valencia said, "I really enjoy the presence of gossip at my birthday party. I'm looking forward to further sessions in the near future."
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LOL, I can't believe I actually was boliao enough to do that. But it is an exercise in practising my news-writing skills. Shall take it as COM204 revision =P No offense to the people mentioned. All in good fun =DD
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Huiying's 19th!
Chio right! Done by Luting and Huijun @ JP's icing house. Really impressive work =) It tastes great, btw.

PAVAs + Roomies! The tissues on our hands are the cakes.
~


Dad's Birthday!
@ Fo You Yuan Vegetarian restaurant. Am in love with Canon Camera's colour-accent function. No prizes for guessing what colour it's accenting here.

Coca-Cola should pay me. Such a nice pic! =P

Vegetarian Pig's Trotter. Yes, you read that right. The 'skin' and 'meat' tastes great, as contradictory as they seem.

The restaurant's signature self-made ice cream desserts!! So pretty right!

Mum and dad and the replacement birthday cake. Not using traditional birthday cakes seems to be the trend now. See below (Colin and Bernard's birthday).

The powdery chocolatey coating, with the soft, cold, creamy interior.... One word: YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
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Colin & Bernard's Birthday!
Celebrating at....

...Manhatten Fish Market! Taken using Bernard's DSLR worth thousands of dollars. Slurp.

Our replacement birthday 'cakes' (mooncakes). From Four Seasons. Durian flavour. 'Nuff said. I can almost smell it now.
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Grandma's Birthday!
At Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant @ Turf City.

A traditional must-have: 寿桃.

Crabs on ice. Not crabs ice-skating, but cold crabs.

Baby abalone.

Salted BBQ prawns - crisped to perfection.

Each family had send a representative to serenade grandma. I sang 屋顶 =P

Happy birthday mama!

*Sigh* kids.. But you'd be surprised. Some adults do that too.
~


PHEW. That's the end of Birthdays Celebration in September. Don't know if there's more coming. But anyway, here's a review of a great, great movie I caught with the army 'old men', Inglourious Basterds.

I give the movie:





The reason why you should be attracted to watch this movie should not be Brad Pitt - it should be its writer/director, Quentin Tarantino.

Trust the outrageous film veteran - he truly knows his stuff: how to thrill, engage and move the audiences to laugh, cry and maybe even scream. If those qualities are not what you're looking for in a filmmaker, I don't know what will satisfy you.

Basterds is indeed an utterly-satisfying movie experience. Kicking off the movie is a nail-biting sequence involving a Nazi officer (the brilliant Christoph Waltz) interrogating a French-man in his countryside home, attempting to dig-out the whereabouts of a missing Jewish family. The scene starts off slow, then tightens the clockwork of events to the point of suffocation, then ending with a shocking tragedy, but not without the escape of a young Jewish girl, who proves tentamount to the advancement of the plot.

The next chapter of the movie tells the story of a team of American soldiers led by hillbilly officer Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) - the Basterds, they call them - as they're are infamous for their missions to scalp Nazis. This plotline, along with an undercover German actress (Diane Kruger) working for the British, come together as three gripping stories intertwining to showcase Tarantino's extravagant reimagining of Hitler's assasination.

The result is amusing, suspenseful, and filled with the wacky director's trademark violence and humour. People might complain about the long running-time (153 minutes), but for those who appreciate a good movie, every single pivotal scene in the film is a delight for the senses.

While Pitt is a hoot to watch, and Kruger flexes her acting muscle to include substance in a side-character, it is Christoph Waltz's portrayal as the notorious "Jew Hunter" that steals the scenes from the two familiar faces. His command of French, German, English and even Italian (extremely apparent in one classic scene of hilarity) is impressive, so is his switch between cool-menace and cold-blooded insanity. Waltz, as you might note, clinched the Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for this role.

FINAL SAY: Outrageous, tense, funny and heartbreaking - Inglourious Basterds is a masterpiece, coming off as both startingly original, as well as a homage to old-style German war movies.
~

Oh my gosh. I haven't finished studying!!

To all CS fellas: All the best for our quizzes!

Take care, people!

Please Watch These Movies

Gosh, Jennifer Aniston movie alert!


If you don't think she's gorgeous, you're blind. Seriously.

Next up, Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes. 3 BIG reasons to watch it: Robert Downey Jr (yes, Iron Man), Jude Law and the understated Rachel McAdams.



Appealing to kids (but mostly the kid in all of us), the surreal Where the Wild Things Are.



And lastly, the revamped FAME (i'm gonna live forever~ ok, carried away). It looks like a slicker, tighter High School Musical. But I'm a sucker for musicals. This better be good!


Hollywood is producing too few musical-movies! When were the good ol' times of Sound of Music? The last good one was Hairspray. C'mon, do another Moulin Rouge!

Okay, I'm supposed to be studying :X

Please keep a look-out for these movies! And please watch Inglorious Basterds, thank you.

Take care, people!

Mariah Builds Excitement; Ellen on Idol

A big change is coming to American Idol (basically the only Idol show that Singaporeans bother to watch). If you didn't catch the news, scroll down pass Mariah to look at the Ellen video =)

Source: mariahcarey.com

For the first time, here is a cover-art of Mariah's music I'm not embarrassed to display (well, as you guys know, her previous album-arts are of her in infamously skimpy clothing).

But the point to make here is this: there is no ignoring the talent of Mariah Carey and her music, and I Want To Know What Love Is - a cover of Foreigner's 1980's hit - will prove that she's not just some narcissistic individual who likes to flaunt her figure.

The cover-art is decidedly toned-down, and aptly hints the style of the 1980's (which is the era the original song came from).

I've had the privilege of listening to the untarnished version on Youtube (thanks to Wei Long), before the website's management decided to tweak every single video of the song - which contains the original audio - to make it sound like Mariah has gone a pitch higher.

Go here -> http://mariahcarey.com/ to listen to the single-stream. Entertainment Weekly gives the best-worded review of the song: "Mariah + Gospel Choir + I Want To Know What Love Is = ECSTASY".

Mariah Carey's 12th and latest studio album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" will hit stores on 29th September 2009.
~


Watch this! If you haven't heard:

The weekend is filled with 3 birthdays! Wow. September is really a birthday-galore, man.

If I'm not wrong - and hopefully, I'm not - it's going to get real busy soon!

Take care, people!

RIP, Final Destination

Okay people, as promised, here is my review of that much talked-about movie The Final Destination (aka Final Destination 4).

I give the movie:





When it was made known that this was going to be The Final Destination, there was indeed a buzz in the air. Voyeuristic fans of the franchise would sadistically recall the horror of the trademark first death sequence, then that edge-of-your-seat feeling as Death slowly (and creatively) claims its victims one by one... all of them thrilling memories...

...that were completely absent in this film.

We should have noticed the signs. Although the trailer was available in high-definition on Youtube, a death by car-races just wasn't as horrifying as the graphic destruction of the airplane in the first movie. Also, what is with the totally uninspiring poster? It doesn't say anything about the movie. Maybe that was their motive - to make you not want to watch it.

This supposedly final installment uses a cliche-filled NASCAR sequence at the start to establish the familiar premise - young man has a premonition and he manages to convince his friends (along with some unwilling strangers) to leave the site just in time before the accident on the track occurs, them narrowly escaping a potentially-horrendous death.

But you all do know that the movie must go on, and in some kind of lazy been-there-done-that fashion, the paper-thin plotline unfolds as Death go claim back what was meant to be.

What made the first three movies watchable was the suspense they build up to the gruesome deaths, and especially in the first and second ones, that deliberately-prolonged moment whereby the victims suffer before taking that last breath. But in #4, people just die. In one second. Fullstop. If that was what the audience was looking for, they might as well watch a Steven Spielberg war-movie, and probably derive more satisfaction from the body count.

The final nail in the coffin for FD4 was the ending. The most inexcusable way to end an already groan-inducing movie is to kill-off your characters lamely. And that was what they did.

FINAL SAY: How do you define a waste of one's money? Short running time. Uninspiring. Bad storyline. Try not to be tempted by the 3D.
~

Okay, sorry if any of you guys did enjoy the movie while I shredded it into pieces here. But that's how I felt it should be (and judging by the poster, the producers agree, too) - it should be in pieces. =X

Coco before Chanel next week! Hope it's good. And Phobia 2! Fifi, start finding people to watch =P

To us freshies, work hard!

Take care, people!