________________________________________________________________ Quoteofthemoment: If you're going to live in a whorehouse, there's only one thing you can do: be the best damn whore around. -[The Bonfire of the Vanities]
(watched a quarter of that movie yest night but fell asleep due to exhaustion. looked interesting though.)
Ps: will not be posting for the next 7 days due to intensive training for the world choir games! yippee. till then, people :)
posted by edna at
5/30/2006 10:18:00 AM>0 comments
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posted by edna at
5/29/2006 09:29:00 AM>0 comments
In London lies a knight a pope interred
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"How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd."
--"Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope
for all those wondering what exactly does this poem mean, i looked up its meaning and this is what i found..
Eloise is a Vestal. In ancient Greece, vestals were responsible for keeping the sacred fire in the temple always lit. They were young virgin women. They were honored as half-goddesses but if they happened to let the fire die, they were sentenced to death. They lived retreated in the temple, cast away from the world. This is, I believe[the author, not me], what "The world forgetting, by the world forgot" means: a blameless vestal lives happily secluded in the temple, away from the petty realities of this world. She forgets what it is like, and no one comes to remind her. Her soul is therefore so pure and innocent that she is blessed from the gods ("each prayer accepted") and forsakes any human desire ("each wish resigned").Vestals could know no earthly love, much to Eloise's dismay, for she has fallen in love with Abelard, who was sentenced to exile (from what I understood) as a consequence. This peom is Eloise's plea to the Gods and to Abelard. On one hand, she wish she could forget about him and be devoted to God, yet on the other hand she admits that she is not sorry for what happened, and is in dispair, much more so because of her lost love than because of her guiltiness. She envies both the happily coupled woman and the "blameless vestal", but she is in between, not living her passion nor accomplishing her duty, and she is torn in two.
[extract below was taken from http://people.stu.ca/~gvqlh/engl3336/miracle.htm] The poem itself is a very historical one; Eloisa and Abelard are historical characters from the 12th century and their story was well known. Pope took the story[look above] that he knew and wrote a poem with his take on it; he seems largely concerned with the issue of love between people coming into conflict with the love of a person for God. The issues Pope highlights are indicative of perhaps the religious transformations that took place in the 18th century as well as possibly some emotional issues that Pope himself (and a lot of other people) may have had.
quiz: which movie did this poem appear in? *hint: look at the poem
posted by edna at
5/25/2006 10:32:00 AM>0 comments
Edward Scissorhands
________________________________________________________________ I've watched this movie about a million times already, but when it airs on tv i'd never fail to try and catch it. One of the best movies i've ever seen!
Directed by the famous Tim Burton ( He's my favourite director, i LOVE all his work- Beetle Juice, Ed Wood [i must watch those one day!], Nightmare before christmas, Corpse bride, Big Fish, Charlie and the chocolate factory..), he casted his two main leads very perfectly. Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. Their on-screen chemistry is undeniable(and off-screen too. They were attached for a while in real life but broke up eventually :( they were the perfect couple :( ). Their chemistry is not the sizzling hot kind, more of the sweet, subtle, understated kind. At the end you'd be dying for them to end up together, just by the way they look at each other. though sadly they didnt..
Edward scissorhands was some kind of product of a mad scientist of sorts, and the scientist died before he could finish edward. So edward only had scissors for his hands. He remained in seclusion in the scientist's house, until one day a woman found him and took him back home. At first he wins over the community with his fabulously weird hairdos and grass cutting skills. He was very popular. [one woman ( the slut in the movie) even tried to *ahem* edward, but he very politely and innocently refused, leaving her fuming and eventually maligning him] Edward discovers he has an aptitude for undoing locks and he is exploited for it. the girl he loves (winona ryder) mixes with bad company(namely her 'boyfriend' n his friends), and asks him to help break into house by opening the locks. Soon the community turns against edward because they are fearful of what more edward is capable of. It's a sad ending...well sort of. But edward gets his treasured solitude back and lives in obscurity for the rest of his life..
I love edward scissorhands. he's so innocent. edward cant tell right from wrong, because he's not really human, but he does know one thing - love. one scene in the movie went something like this: The family was having dinner with edward. the father asks: look edward, let's say one day u were walking on the street and u found a bag with five million dollars in it. What would you do? one, keep it for yourself. two, take it and give it to the nearest policeman you see. three, take it and give it to your loved ones. edward[innocently]: ...give it to my loved one? There was another instance when edward had just helped winona's character(kim) to break in:-
Edward: I knew it was Jim's house. Kim: Then... why did you do it?
Edward: Because you asked me to.
sigh :). okay, not that breaking into someone's house is a good thing, but....ain't that sweet? sweet things aside, there was one ugly fact portrayed in the movie. people fear what they dont understand, and more often than not, choose to shut it out of their lives. hence leaving it forever a mystery. It's the same applied to edward and the community he lived with. The minute something went wrong, they chose to blame it entirely on edward, simply because he was the obvious outcast. They even went to the extent of hunting edward down to eliminate his threatening presence forever. As to whether they succeeded, watch the movie to find out! haha. should be pretty easily available, even though it was 16 years ago(can u believe that!) Anyway, that part was disturbing for me. It made me wonder, if i was living in that community at that time, would i have also reacted the way they did? I probably would have..and maligned an innocent man. So to avoid that from happening in reality i am learning and trying to be more discerning . Sometimes, you just have to trust ur intuition because not everything you hear and see is a reflection of the truth. Just as said in my previous post, men have an extraordinary ability to distort facts. okay i feel my cynical bitchiness coming up again. apologies.
If i'm not wrong, this movie shot johnny depp to fame. And deserve it he did. Kudos to tim burton for having such foresight and the knack for spotting talent! truly. Especially when johnny was just a small-time actor then who acted in the -nightmare on elm's street- series before. Anyone who has seen this movie will never doubt johnny's acting ability. He is soo talented. I cant think of anyone else who could pull off edward scissorhands like that, except for maybe......................................................................nahh, there is -nobody else- :p It's because of this movie that i got to be a johnny depp fan. Each of his movies serves something different, and showcases yet another side to johnny's versatility. He carefully chooses what kind of movie he does, and rarely makes a wrong choice. He has my utmost respect as an actor, man.
In all, i'm sure you can see that this movie is one of my favourites of all time(right column) so the naturally i would say, go catch it!!! it's never too late (16 years and counting...). This movie will strike a chord in you no matter how old you are. Watch it, and you wont regret it i promise.
Original sketch of edward scissorhands by the genius tim burton himself:
adios muchachos!
posted by edna at
5/24/2006 11:22:00 AM>2 comments
The Da Vinci Code
________________________________________________________________ As this is one of the most anticipated movies this year, i just had to catch it. i even hurried through the book so i would know what's going on. Never did i read a seemingly thick book so quickly. But of course, i must also attribute that to Dan Brown's writing. quite quite exciting. Those who only watched the movie should read the book too! The book's better. Although i must say it'll have a different effect as opposed to those who read the book first then watched the movie.
Actually, contrary to all the critics who dissed the movie, i found it quite okay. if i was a critic i'd rate it 3 stars. Pretty neutral. The plot followed quite closely to the book, except for a few minor changes here and there. The acting was good (naturally, with actors like Ian Mckellen..), though i didnt really enjoy Audrey Tautou's performance. Maybe it's coz i didnt like sophie neveu's character from the start, even in the book. she was too dramatic for me( but yes..i admit she saved tom hank's ass). lol. Honestly the movie didnt leave me with much thought, that's why i'm glossing through everything. Reading the book actually took the fun out of watching the movie, coz i knew everything that was gonna happen before it did. poo.
Instead, i started thinking about the direction of the movie, as in, how it was directed. The director in this case is Ron Howard, and i think he's one of the more famous directors in Hollywood, though i dont know much abt him (except for the fact that he keeps cameo-ing on The Simpsons) The direction, i feel, was pretty classic. It was not brilliant, but kept simple and...lets just say, used a lot of old tricks. I suppose that was good in allowing the audience to follow the movie, but it turned boring for me after a while. If the movie was shorter, it would have been a bigger success. Because everything was fine for the movie. The actors, the script, the director, the plot... The few things i can complain about are:
-the duration -the chemistry between the two leads ( a little romance never kills!-but i'm Very positive they took that part out because tom hanks is significantly older than audrey tautou.) -there was too much hype so everyone's expectations rose too high. -Tom Hanks' bad hair ( i love him all the same though) - Hans Zimmer was the wrong guy to be in charge of the music..the background music didnt really suit some parts. haha. i know of a certain someone who disagrees :p
One special mention i'd like to make : Paul Bettany. He has pleasantly surprised me. From playing an average everyday funny guy (wimbledon), to baddie (Firewall), to tormented yet innocent soul (DaVinci Code), he's actually shown himself to be very versatile and worthy of praise. He will certainly have a good acting career in the future i think :)
To end off i would just like to remind all that Da Vinci Code is fictional and should not be taken seriously, no matter how realistic the author wrote it to be. Hell, he teaches creative writing! And i believe, even if the Da Vinci Code or any other conspiracy theories are true i would still have trust in God because my faith lies with him, and not the people who carry out his 'orders'. Man is imperfect. we have the ability to twist and turn things into the most distorted way possible and still be self-righteous about it.
Here's a newspaper clipping of the Vatican's response: click here!
posted by edna at
5/23/2006 11:02:00 AM>2 comments
The Return of the King
________________________________________________________________ i recently borrowed the LOTR : The Return of the King (the special extended version) from a good friend, and i'm so glad i did!! I'm quite a fan of LOTR, so initially i was hesitant to watch the whole 3 hour movie again (i've already watched it many times before) as i can remember almost everything that happens. Plus, the extended version was actually 4 hours plus, so yea =I But then i thought to myself, hey if it's 4 hours now that means 1 hour of unseen footage etc! that sounded so exciting, so i borrowed the vcd. =D
Those who have not watched the extended version should watch it! because most of the footage cut was actually my favourite scenes. haha. I think peter jackson wouldn have cut them out if he thought the audience could stand to sit in the cinema for 4 hours plus (stupid mainstream audience. wat's one more hour of sitting down as compared to experiencing the magic of LOTR? rawwwr. i certainly wouldnt have minded :( if you get restless you can always stand up and go to the toilet or someth.)
I thought the extended footage actually made the film more complete. Some incomplete parts:
If anyone remembers, the movie showed the most powerful member of the nazgul(or dark riders) say in his raspy voice: I'll break him. 'Him' referred to Gandalf. Later in the movie, there wasnt any scene showing him and gandalf fighting or anything, but only eowyn killing that dark rider. I thought that was pretty weird. And there's another part, where gandalf and co reached isenguard, which had been taken over by Treebeard. Saruman was locked in his tower(according to Treebeard), and there wasn't any scene with saruman at all. Peter jackson cut that out too (and apparently because of that christopher lee(who played saruman) didnt go for the premiere of that show). And lastly, in the end of the movie, everyone could see that eowyn ended up with faramir. First thing that came to everyone's mind was: how?
So yup, the extended version addressed all of that. There was a scene where the nazgul confronted gandalf in the midst of the war in Minas Tirith, and his staff was even shattered to pieces by the rider. poor gandalf!!! he was defeated by the nazgul (though i have no idea WHY since gandalf is a WHITE wizard - the highest order a wizard can attain) but before gandalf could be killed, the rohan horn sounded - which meant, reinforcements are here!! so the nazgul was forced to take a step back and go back to fighting the war ( though i'm sure killing gandalf wouldnt take more than a minute since the rider was more powerful....) oh whatever, i'm just glad gandalf wasn't killed nor injured. The extended version also showed saruman in his tower being interrogated by gandalf about sauron's next step to overtake middle earth. :D i love the wizards. But anyway saruman was eventually killed by wormtongue, who was also stranded on the tower with him. They also showed how eowyn and faramir met, and the song eowyn sang is also featured(this song was omitted from the official soundtrack). It's haunting and sad, as with most of the soundtrack..
[children chanting] ..One, two, Freddy's coming for you!
Three, four, better lock your door!
Five, six, grab your crucifix!
Seven, eight, better stay awake!
Nine, ten, never sleep again..
;)
posted by edna at
5/18/2006 01:34:00 PM>0 comments
Awfully bad movies
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It has always boggled me as to why people would want to make B-grade (and worse) movies. I mean, why waste the effort and time when u know it's not gonna be a big box office draw? with mostly obscure actors and lousy scripts, you cant blame me for wondering why. Maybe it's because they all hope for some sort of miracle and *tada! the movie is a huge sleeper hit. like Jaws. but remember, behind Jaws there was a brilliant director at work. who is, none other than, Steven Spielberg of course. so if you're not him, dont even try! waste of money. and money's veryyy important ( at least to me right now :p) so do try to understand my rage. oh yes, and B grade movies usually (note that i dont say all) SucK. like big time. stinkers. you watch them and u feel stupified.
What inspired this post actually? perhaps it's the awfully bad movies that keep showing on cinemax. well, okay, it's granted that cinemax is not as 'good' a movie channel as HBO or star movies, but cinemax shows some good movies from time to time too! i love all the old movies that they screen, which will never be found on HBO or star movies (because they only show recent movies :( ) However cinemax also screens lots of B grade movies, and in my opinion, those are movies which have been discarded and abandoned by their companies because they were such flops. And cinemax screens them because they were cheap to purchase? hmm. well anyway what exactly are these bad movies? They are those with usually large, or genetically mutated animals/insects. Has anyone realised yet that there is a plethora of such lousy movies?? you just have to watch one, and you can pretty much guess the endings for all the rest. They are soooo predictable and the 'creatures' are usually poorly computer generated, which makes it worse. a common question in my head is why do the scientists in the movie even create such monsters? why not do something more productive than say, making locusts reproduce faster and eat twice as much as they should? I'd rather them make factories release half the amount of pollutive gases they do now and patch up the hole in the ozone or something. An utter insult to our intelligence. Examples of such movies:
Anaconda (1997) Bats (1999) Deep blue sea (1999) Eight legged freaks (2002) Locusts (2005)
get the idea?
posted by edna at
5/18/2006 01:04:00 PM>0 comments
Pleasantville
________________________________________________________________ Watched Pleasantville on cinemax(channel59) yesterday. it stars Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen and William H. Macy. It's briefly like this: Tobey and Reese are siblings, and they get sucked into a tv show called pleasantville, where everything's well, pleasant. it's a 1950's show, so it's in black and white. When the pair reach there, they also inevitably appear only in black n white. After the intial adjusting to their new surroundings, something happens, and colour starts to appear in the town. It starts spreading, and objects and people all start getting colourful. The original townsfolk are very adverse to this change in colour, and write out a set of rules that bans all colours except white black and shades of gray. In the end, predictably, tobey fights for the 'rights' of the 'coloured' people. He wins-because everyone else changed colour(so the people have no choice but to accept colour), thanks to tobey's touching speech. Apparently you will change into colour if you express real emotion, and not just be 'pleasant' about everything. It could be feelings of anger, love, sadness or joy...
Personally i found the movie a tad too bland for my taste. I loved the black and white, plus the little colour here-and-there effect. Colours can do magic. But this time, it was not enough. the lead, was not that good (i say again, this is only my opinion). Tobey Maguire was just a little too..plain. No wonder the role Spiderman fitted him so perfectly, since peter parker was supposed to be a most unlikely hero-an average(until he got bitten by a spider, that is) young adult with problems. Honestly if i were to walk down the street and saw Tobey Maguire, i wouldnt give him a second glance. oh well : p But on the other hand, Reese witherspoon was funny. Her words were cutting, to the point, and witty. it's a pity that she had so little airtime in the movie. All in all, the movie was a letdown. It had looked so promising when i saw the trailer. poo boo.
posted by edna at
5/17/2006 03:50:00 PM>0 comments
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
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Anyone with HBO should know this movie. Coz it Rocked my socks off. It's the....legend of ron burgundy!! Starring will ferrell and christina applegate. Basically it's about a news channel and it's main primetime news team. Absolutely hilarious i tell you. I'm not a will ferrell fan and neither did i know christina applegate was starring but it was airing on HBO so i decided to give it a shot. Boy was i pleasantly surprised. Will is undeniably likeable here and so is the very classy christina applegate. The humor is heavily peppered throughout the movie, and although it is usually silly and said in a matter of fact way, it is very funny. Let's give a few examples of that:
1)Brick Tamland: Excuse me, Veronica?
Veronica Corningstone: Yes? What is it, Brick?
Brick Tamland: I would like to extend to you an invitation to the pants party.
Veronica Corningstone: Excuse me?
Brick Tamland: [struggling] The... party. With the... with the pants. Party with pants?
Veronica Corningstone: Brick, are you saying that there's a party in your pants and that I'm invited?
Brick Tamland: That's it.
(sidenote: Brick tamland is supposed to be a retard in this movie)
2)Bill Lawson: [narrating] Brick Tamland is married with 11 children and is one of the top political advisors to the Bush White House.
3)Ron Burgundy: You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron.. Burgundy?
Ed Harken: Dammit! Who typed a question mark on the Teleprompter?
(Ron apparently reads EVERYTHING reflected on the teleprompter ;) )
yup, so that's an example of the kind of humor you'll get. Not only do they say silly things, but there were two absolutely uproarious scenes in the movie. One was the 'showdown' between all the news teams from the various channels, where you had cameos from luke wilson, ben stiller and tim robbins (among others, i'm sure). damnn funny. especially when there was a brief scene on luke wilson's arm getting cut off. Later in the movie, his Other arm was cut off too. lol. okay shan't elaborate too much on that. The second scene was when ron's news team were in their newsroom talking.... when suddenly. ron breaks out into song - afternoon delight, an oldie (nice song) and what ensues is the rest of the team sings along, acapella style! A huge pleasant surprise it was because it was quite quite good acapella, and very funny because it was all so anti-climax. And at the end of the singing, they stopped, paused, then went back to talking normally as if nothing had happened. I Had to laugh out loud. i just had too.
Some of the actors should be pretty recognisable, like Brian Tamland, the retard, was the guy who starred in 'the 40 year old virgin'. there's also vince vaughn!!! (SIGH :D) oh i just Loveeee that guy. He's mosttt hilarious and i just adored him in the Wedding Crashers. Anyone caught that one? i'll probably do one post on that in the near future. hahahahaha. okay the laughing was random. Just writing abt the ron burgundy movie makes me wanna laugh at everything, and anything. : ) it's good to end on a happy note. In short, the movie is slapstick at times(or most of the time :p), but hugely entertaining. a mustttt watch for everyone. and lastly.....
You stay classy, san diego. :)
posted by edna at
5/15/2006 12:06:00 AM>2 comments
Daisy
________________________________________________________________ Okay first movie review of the blog!
watched Daisy a few days ago. you know, that korean show. It stars Jeon Ji Hyun, who starred in 'my sassy girl'- a movie i'm sure many would be familiar with ( though i didnt watch it :p) Honestly speaking, korean sappy love movies have never been my thing. if not for my company that day, i would never have agreed to watch it. But anyway, watch it i did, and it was................well, OKay. The storyline was kinda weird. Nothing in the movie really sank in for me, so no emotional impact there. And if a supposed love story cant do that, i would say it's a failure. There were parts which i found amusing actually. (There may be spoilers from here onwards!) Like when in the beginning, the movie was supposed to portray the assassin guy's (aka secret admirer) strong affections for the leading lady in a sweet romantic way ( i assume). But what turned out was tending more to the psychotic side if you asked me. I couldnt help but sniff a giggle somewhere there. The drama was average, it wasnt very suspenseful. Some parts shocked me (sudden loud gun shots), but that's about it. I didnt feel much love between the girl and the assassin, although he was originally supposed to be who she loved. The whole love story is funny actually. Okay, a small summary first. There is -pretty artist girl-(Par). There is assassin guy (Ag), and Policeman (P). Par went painting in the fields one day and caught the eye of Ag. He fell in love with her (somehow) because she made him feel happy and innocence-that-he-has-lost again. So after that day, Par starts receiving flowers from her mysterious admirer at her doorstep every 415. then one day, P shows up at her artist booth, requests for a picture to be drawn. He has daisies in his hand, the same type she gets every other day at her doorstep so she kinda assumes he's the one. Falls in love with him. To cut the story short, she found out at the very end who was actually sending her the flowers and said something along the lines of, ohh the one i love has been you all along. So i thought very calmly to myself, then wat about mr policeman!?!? all this while she has pined for him and turns out he's not the one she loves. she loves flower man. Whoever could fall in love with someone you've never met? just flowers (okayyyy, and a bridge) is enough pull at ur heart strings? i think not. but in korean-movie world, oh yesss it can. that's why i say korean movies are so not for me. Cynical skeptical mean biatchy me. Oh yes, and is it just me or do the two male leads look alike?? Lol.
Overall, the movie is quite watchable lar. haha. kinda crappy, but watchable! i theezk it's the eye candy. I would not suggest watching this movie unless you have money to spare. But if you're a korean manic or a sucker for love stories ( all kind, good or bad), then go ahead, by all means! An alternative is subscribing to the chinese star movies channel and wait for 'Daisy' to air there. haha.
As for the soundtrack, nothing particularly striked me. The song that kept playing throughout the movie is a classical piece by Beethoven. One of his classics i think. It's a very nice moderately heavy piece, but it didnt connect with the movie as much as it should have. Listening to the Big Fish soundtrack now, composed mainly by Danny Elfman. I think this guy is a real genius. Every piece of music he composes for any movie works magic. For example, listen to the desperate housewives theme. Also composed by the genius, it conveys the sense of mystery and intrigue that we feel watching the show. okay im sidetracking! but that's all for now anyways.
adios gente!
posted by edna at
5/10/2006 04:55:00 PM>1 comments
Randoms
________________________________________________________________ I just realised that loud heavy music makes me sleep. Whenever i listen to rock i'll start to yawn, how sad! Perhaps that would also explain why i'm very prone to sleeping on the bus and when tour guides talk. haha the droning of the loud traffic sounds and tour guides' voice is very sleep-inducing. On the contrary, soft light music makes me sit up and listen. like New age and choral, my two favourite genres :D i also very much love soundtracks. No particular type on that one, but i do prefer melancholic songs with good bass support.
posted by edna at
5/10/2006 02:49:00 PM>5 comments
First entry
________________________________________________________________ first entry to my third blog! two others have been absolutely disastrous. My first was a gp blog - as in, a blog dedicated to gp. yes, general paper. thus the failure. the second was just a spur of the moment thing, and i only posted one entry. hope the third attempt will end up much better!!
Favourite actors/actresses of all time
(not in any order):
Kevin Bacon
Tom Hanks
Vince Vaughn
Johnny Depp
Mel Gibson
Jack Nicholson
John Travolta
Colin Firth
Cary Elwes
Winona Ryder
Favourite movies of all time:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Ever After
Forrest Gump
Castaway
Edward Scissorhands
Exorcism of Emily Rose
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
The Breakfast Club
The Nightmare before Christmas
The Wedding Singer
Sleepless in Seattle
A blog dedictated to movies :) as long as i work, i will blog! plus i would appreciate it very much if you readers leave a tag so i'd know who has dropped by. merci !
