Just last week I decided to catch a movie downstairs at my place. It has always been ultra convenient having GSC cinemas located below where I live and I really do will miss that convenience the moment I move away.

Anyhow, I was stuck at work and busy working so when I made the decision to get tickets via my iPhone GSC app, I chose Prometheus.

A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

After reading a summary of the movie as shown above, I thought it couldn't have been such a bad show since it was directed by Ridley Scott, the same guy who directed Gladiator and Alien.

The story starts at the point where humans have already gotten used to space travel and now they are travelling far into space. But just think Star Trek with Jean Luc Picard exploring the universe but without warp speed. So yeah, they travel extremely slowly and with the usual "logic", we have to put humans into a stasis sleep in order for them to survive the ultra long journey.



Why are humans travelling into space this time around? Apparently to find out the true origins of humanity. Well apparently we were created by Gods hence through some historical find, we were created by aliens. Hence the whole super ultra long space travel to the distant stars to find our creators.



The movie was indeed action packed and the details and the graphics of the show was top-notch. Definitely an interesting storyline, of course there are certain weird questions that arises as the story progresses. Believe you me, you might end up having more questions after the movie.

At the end of the day, it wasn't too scary of a movie especially since somehow somewhere I saw the tag "horror" on the show hence my initial guess. But aside from the dark view of things, it ain't too scary and it does entertain you. Well, it did for me.

Also, I loved the ending! Made some sense to me.

Overall, I give this show a good 8/10 rating!

 

The Ping Pong in Hong Kong! A line from the movie which sort of stayed within the confines of my brain. Why is that? It's because "Real Steel" was a totally awesome show. I have actually heard of the show but because it really didn't garner as much marketing budget versus some other movies where they had the movie posters plastered over billboards across town, Real Steel was really a great movie in hiding. I guess that's why there are so many movie reviews written about this movie right now.



Most movies that have been hyped up usually target a summer launch in order to catch the crowd so by the end of the year, I never did expect a fantastic show such as "Real Steel" to really wow the crowd. I haven't read a single negative review about the movie yet although it garnered a 7.5 score on IMDB but personally, this movie deserves a 9/10 in my books.



Set in the near future, where robot boxing is a top sport, a struggling promoter feels he's found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father.

The story begins with a very washed out Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman) an ex-boxer who now has lost his livelihood since Robot boxing has taken the arena. As he struggles through life with mountains of debt and robots, him finding out that he has a 11-year old son really changed his life.



We have always known Hugh Jackman as a very tough man especially in his roles as Wolverine, this time, Hugh Jackman played his role very well and turns this movie into both an action packed story line as well as one that tugs on your emotional strings.

What I was thoroughly impressed was the amount of CG graphics (computer generated) used and how it blended in nicely with the story as well as the overall ambiance. It wasn't overly done but executed extremely tastefully. But hey, who doesn't like to watch two robots punching each other in a ring.

Overall, Real Steel is really an underdog movie which definitely is worth watching in the cinema for its awesome CG graphics and even for the story line. It's nice to feel that nice fuzzy warmth at the end of the show. Watch the show, and you will know what I am talking about.

Prior to the launch of this movie as well, a viral site was also launched in accordance with the move. Do check out http://www.wrb.com/

 



It all started when Mel suggested that we try eating lunch at this "char siew" restaurant in Shah Alam at a restaurant called Spring Golden. During lunch we toyed with the idea of catching a movie that night and at 5pm I received a call from BK and he said that there were tickets for the "Adjustment Bureau", I just said, "yes" without much thought.

Fast forward a couple of hours, the 7 of us went into the cinema and I had totally no expectations of the movie. I didn't read the synopsis and I thought this was gonna be some Bourne Identity style type of movie. Only did I realise that after a couple of minutes into the show, the story line did become a little weird.

The movie centered around a character called David Norris (played by Matt Damon) who was running to be elected as senate. He was deemed as the youngest one ever to run for office and just before he was supposed to deliver his speech right after the polls were in, he met a girl whom he fell head over heels over. But because he was a high profile figure with a promising career in front of him, there are people who deemed that this relationship shouldn't continue and are trying their all to keep them apart.

So basically, it sounds straight out of a bollywood plot. Rich boy from upper class meets girl of his dreams from lower class and everyone is trying to separate them.

Thats where it gets interesting. Trust me, it gets real interesting.

I shouldn't really spoil it for those who have yet to watch it. I personally thought that it was rather entertaining and I would give it a 7/10 stars.

Exactly a week ago, me and munz decided to take up an offer by Canon Marketing Malaysia to attend an event for photographers where Simon Yam (yup, Canon's ambassador) would be there in person for a quick question and answer session with everyone as well as provide a couple of photo opportunities for the attendees. This was then followed with a free movie screening of "Echoes of the Rainbow" which helped Simon win the award for Best Actor in the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards.







The event was held in Pavillion, so by the time me and munz battled through the Monday evening traffic, we arrived there slightly late where we saw Simon entering the Gold Class Lounge at GSC Pavillion. There he was speaking to a couple of reporters while a huge crowd of 200+ photographers filled up the main hallway before entering the cinema.



Whilst the rest were waiting at the main area where Simon would be speaking, I tried to enter into the Gold Class Lounge but didn't manage to get past the guards!

So I decided to take a couple of shots of the folks I know who was there.


Yup that is camera shy Xavier in the photo above


A shot of Jason, he tried to get me into the Gold Class Lounge to get up close to Simon but the guards wouldn't let me


Jason and Mun Tzin

Once Simon left the Gold Class lounge, I managed to sneak in near the door to capture a couple of shots.







By the time he arrived at the main hall, there were so many photographers there that I could hardly get a glimpse of him so I ended up chatting with Jason. Most of the time I didn't know what he said because he was answering questions in Mandarin as well as Cantonese, so me being a "banana", I was just "lepaking" in front of the air con vent because it was getting a little hot in the hallway.



I even took a couple of shots of the people surrounding him trying to get photos of Simon.





After he has completed his Q&A session and adjourned out, everyone was ushered into the cinema to catch the show where they even provided free popcorn and a tin of coke. Not too shabby at all.

 

Overall I thought the movie was actually quite good. It was a proper serious type of show which depicted life in Hong Kong in the late 60's for a shoemaker and trying to make ends meet to send his two sons to school. The movie talks about how the sons went through life, private school (yes, the parents worked very hard to pay for their school tuition), bribing police officers with moon cakes and facing harassment all around.

My rating for the show is a good 3.5/5 stars!

p.s. Check out Jason's blog post as well with his up close and personal shots with Simon.

In case you have been living under a coconut shell lately, or haven't even caught up with the amount of movies you need to watch or if you have 2.45 hours to spare in your busy life, let me tell you what you should do. First of all is to head over to your local cinemas and buy tickets to watch this amazing show, Avatar. Why is it amazing? Let me tell you why.

My first thoughts about the show when I watched the trailer was that it was going to be a fully a computer generated film. That was my benchmark for the film. Only to be surprised that it wasn't fully (although it was considerably made with CG), but the storyline and how the plot was built up made it very very entertaining.

Directed by James Cameron (Titanic, Alien), the story talks about a marine by the name of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who is handicapped due to a previous combat experience taking the place of his deceased brother on an alien planet inhabited  by blue locals called the Navi.



In this show, the humans are depicted as the enemy (much like how I saw a tweet about the movie depicting America going to war against Iraq), where they went to this planet in search of extremely minerals called unobtanium. During their survey, the humans discovered a large  deposit of those minerals sitting directly beneath a tribal village of the Navi.



In their attempts to move the village/settlement away peacefully, the humans developed Avatar's which is a combination of the human DNA as well as the Navi where the humans will link up with the Avatar's and go undercover amongst the Navi and interact with them. Each Avatar could only be controlled by the folks whose DNA was used and when Jake Sully's brother (a scientist) died, he was then tasked to take over his brother's role.

The movie then talks about how as Jake Sully used his Avatar and learned the ways of the Navi and only to learn that they weren't the ones who are really savages.

The movie is indeed visually stunning and it contained enough action films to keep us at the edge of our seats. If you get the change to watch this show, please watch it in 3D! I missed that out so I am going to catch it again in 3D. Personally, the movie is indeed fantastic and I rate it only second to Star Trek (of all the 2009 movies).

Still don't believe me that it is worth going? This is a movie that was rated 83% by Rotten Tomatoes!

I managed to catch this show last week and to be frank it was a fantastic show because not only was it action packed, I always have been a fan of the X-Men. Note that I don't actually read much of the comics but coming from a movie fan (I never really liked how the shot the first 3 X-Men movies), this show really was a huge improvement.

The movie starts with how Logan was a boy and how he eventually ran away from home and the scenes move from him being part of the American Revolution, to world war 1 and world war 2 and eventually in Vietnam. The weird part about the beginning was that Logan started off with bone claws.

Anyway he was recruited by Stryker to join a team of other mutants where they went on missions around the world. Logan's real story begins when Victor (a.k.a Sabretooth) went on a killing rampage during these missions which made Logan decide to quit and head into exile to live a peaceful life. When things start to go wrong and Stryker entering back into Logan's life a few years later, Logan was then driven to avenge his lover's death (killed by Sabretooth).

With revenge in his mind, Logan then decided to join the Weapon X program under Stryker and then received his adamantium skeleton and claws.

The movie was interesting to me because it also showed other heroes from the Marvel universe in the forms of Blob, Gambit, Wraith, Agent Zero, Deadpool and many more. From my discussions with some of my friends who were real avid fans of the X-Men comics, they have mentioned that the storyline is very different compared to the that of the comics.

I guess this argument holds true for the most recent movie, Watchmen, where the movie was created to reach audiences who were more unlikely not to have read the comics. The same goes for our Asian creators as well in the forms of Anime vs Manga where both have different views but of the same character.

My take as a viewer who never really followed the comics:

3.5 out of 5

Ok, the movie is not pronounced as "ai-pee man" but rather "eep-mun". It is a dude's name and not a movie about IT geeks gone wild or crudely put it as the next geek flick. On the contrary, this movie reminds me of the good old kung-fu flicks that I watched as a boy and this movie does not disappoint.



"Ip Man is adapted from the life story of Ip Man, the grand master of the Wing Chun style of kung fu and sifu (master) of legendary kung fu superstar Bruce Lee. This movie will be the first important record of the master's life. Ip's persistent devotion to Wing Chun is a classic example of the love and respect shown to wushu and the freedom and spirit it represents. Ip Man is a concept, a spirit, a way of thinking - and it represent a new peak in Hong Kong's wushu movies. "

Based on a true story and coupled with realistic fight scenes, like I said earlier, this movie does not dissapoint. Everything about this movie was excellent and I figured that I would enjoy this show.



The movie brings us back to China just before the Sino-Japanese war, a city called Fushan which was famed to house many martial arts practitioners. With martial arts being popular and people wanting to show that their own style of martial arts is popular, the scene portrays a city where martial arts dojos are the cash cows of the city's economical height.



Ip Man was not one of those who set up a training schools and teaching disciples but his reputation of a skilled martial artist precedes him and his humility reminded me of how Jet-Li portrayed "Wong Fei Hong" in the "Once Upon a Time in China" series.



The supporting casts of Simon Yam, Fan Siu-Wong and Lynn Hung added the much needed sense of drama, romance and friendship which makes this movie complete. If you thought that "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon" was a real kungfu flick, you are sadly mistaken. This is as real as it gets, there are not fancy flying about waving your swords through the air. This is real down to earth martial arts at its best.

I give it a 9/10 rating. If you haven't watched it, what are you waiting for, catch the next available show!

Last Saturday I did something which I haven't done in a very long time, I watched two movies in a day. Well this post will be dedicated to the first one I saw on Saturday.



Basically the movie is placed in a completely different timeline as the first movie. In the first movie, the kids grew up and became adults in the magical land of Narnia but when they returned back to the real world, a.k.a London, it was as if not a single second had passed.

Now forward that a couple of years in the real world (a.k.a London nearing the WWII era), the kids have grown up a little (but they are still kids) and they are carrying on their lives as usual in wet London whilst back in the magical land of Narnia, thousands of years have passed since the kings of old (the kids) left the magical kingdom and Aslan is no where to be found.

In this era, the Telmarines have conquered Narnia and strived to wipe out every single creature of the Narnian kingdom and they have thought to have successfully done that. The current king, King Caspian fled his kingdom from his ruthless uncle who wants the throne of Narnia to himself.

In doing so, Caspian managed to receive a magical horn from his mentor (who is a descendent of a Narnian) and when Caspian was being chased by the guards, he blew the horn. By blowing this horn, it triggered the kings of old of Narnia to come forth to save Narnia from impending extinction.



This very action of calling the kings of old brought the kids back from London to the magical land of Narnia but they still remained in their current day form or age. As the story unfolds, the movie proved to be rather interesting and at the same time managed to outgrow the previous one.

Yes, this movie was targetted for kids or youth but I can't help but notice that the plot and the action scenes were slightly improved whilst maintaining the non-bloody violence type scenes/scenarios. You can't expect it to be such like the movie, 300, and yet also maintain the general viewing status right?

Its obvious that the fight scenes were beefed up a bit and together with a tad bit of digital effects, one can expect a high level of cinematography. The one thing which caught my attention the most was that the kids had no qualms about killing their enemies or their fellow men. They shot arrows like nobody's business and they sliced anyone that got in their way. Sounds a little bit like Anakin Skywalker in the making.

Personally I liked the movie and I would give it a 7 star rating. If you haven't catched the movie, I do advise you to have a go at it.

p.s. I never did mention about Aslan that much did I?