New Moon

I've read the book, and I've seen the movie. I hated both of it. The movie was too long and to many mushy moments that made me rolled my eyes. But being a fan of the original Twilight movie, I forced myself to finish both the book and the movie.

Twilight defies all the typical traits of a vampire such as sleeping during the day and hunting at night, they become creatures that never sleep and that if they were exposed to the sun, their skin twinkle like diamonds. New Moon just takes the absurdity up a notch. Jacob turns into a werewolf, joining a pack of werewolves, who were to protect the area from vampires. Bella is so clumsy, you could not believe how a pretty girl like her is so dumb and weak. She is the typical damsel in distress, waiting to be rescued. She got both a vampire and a werewolf vying for her love, but she loves the undead even more. Bella's father, Charlie the Sheriff, is so clueless about Bella and what's happening with her life. On his defense, how was he suppose to know that vampires exists? Heh.

I am still a sucker for vampire stories/movies.

By the way, Taylor Lautner/Jacob Black is hot.

Go Team Jacob:)

My Sister's Keeper

Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper

I have just finished reading this book last weekend. Verdict: Awesome! Can't wait to see the movie version. I especially love the style of writing - light and fast paced, even though the whole book revolved around issues like family relationship, lawsuit, designer babies, organ donation, sickness and death. Yes, all in one book.

Contain spoilers.

The story is about Anna, conceived as a perfect DNA match for her sister, Kate who suffers from a rare form of leukemia. Anna, who is 13, wants to seek medical emancipation from her parents because she feels that her body was being used to save Kate without her total consent. She is torn between saving her sister and also saving her own life. She is torn between loyalty and love to her family but freedom to her own body. What brought her to this decision was because Kate's condition grew worse and the only solution is to harvest a kidney from Anna. Anna feels a violation of her own body but have no choice but to go along with her parents' suggestions. This is basically the premise of the story.

The story gives the reader a lot to think about. Saving a life is important but one must also think about saving oneself or should we put these selfish thoughts away and save the one we love selflessly and unconditionally? Perhaps Anna feels these things because she is young and felt that life had been unfair to her, all she wants is a normal childhood and that her parents would love her rather than just look at her as a cattle for harvest.

Being parents are hard. But being parents to terminally sick child is hard work. They have to make hard and unpopular choices just to save their child. But will this be a conflict of interest when they use their other child to save their sick child? Would you have another child just to harvest her organs to save her sister? Isn't that ethically wrong? I feel that this was not explored thoroughly in the book, but was covered by so much drama going around with the lawsuit, the complexity of the trial because Anna's mother, Sara was a lawyer and became the defence attorney against her daughter, everybody's emotion in the story, the subplot about the lawyer and guidance counselor, etc. I feel that Sara is concerned only about saving Kate but neglect both Anna and her oldest son, Jesse, who become rebellious and started to become an arsonist.

But read the book to find out more about the story and how it ends. It has a surprising twist , but still a sad ending. The ending is a convenient ending, I must say, because everything just falls into place. You either love or hate the ending. I did not like the ending, but I suppose it gives hope to something which feels impossible at first glance.

But Cameron Diaz as the mother??? I don't think she is suited to play a mother, but I might be wrong. I still want to see the movie and see if it is as good as the book.

Now reading another of Jodi Picoult's book: Second Glance.

The Merchants of Bollywood

http://merchantsofbollywood.com.au/aus/

Ms Fantaghiro, me and my sis were at Istana Budaya last Thursday to watch "The Merchants of Bollywood". Aku mati-mati ingat this is another hindustani concert like the ones that Shah Rukh Khan lip sync to but this is actually a musical theatre.

It is taken from the true life story of Ayesha Merchant (yes, its a family name), who is the granddaughter of Shantilal Merchant from Rajasthan. Shantilal was one of the great choreographers during the great film industry - those days of Bobby and Chalte Chalte. But he had retired and was preserving the Kathak, dance for the God. The family were to uphold the tradition. But Ayesha had other ideas, she also wanted to be a great choreographer in Bollywood. So against her grandfather's wishes, she left the temple for Bollywood. She became a great choreograhper, and decided to make amends with her grandfather. She goes back to Rajasthan, found her childhood sweetheart Uday, marries him and met her dying grandfather and finally decided to stay in Rajasthan.

That's as far as the storyline goes. Well it's not much of a storyline, I must say. This play is purely for entertainment, and boy, the dance moves are superb! It is Bollywood and much more. The dances are refined, and Uday, the lead male dancer, is excellent. When he did his backflip from the tempel stairs, that was hot! Very extravagant show, more than 30 dancers on the stage for one song and the costumes are glittery, sexy, flesh baring and all that. Aiya, susah lah mau explain thru writing. Best viewed to get accurate experience.

Anyway, it was cute when emcee of the night, Dato' Mahathir Lokman said at the beginning of the show "sit back and enjoy the show. Clapping and dancing are most welcomed". Some girls in the front seat were enjoying themselves so much that they were standing up and dancing to the songs. Very enjoyable, but for those with limited knowledge of Bollywood songs, might be disappointed that familiar mainstream Hindi songs from Kuch2 Hota Hai/Mohabbatein/Kabhi Kushie Kabhie Gham/etc were not in the play. But you will enjoy it nonetheless.
This I guarantee you.

*Strictly for those who loves hindi songs and dance moves.

Supernatural

I must admit that I've been possessed (pun intended!) lately with tales of the supernatural. Sure, I'm still scared of horror flick like the scream fest Carrie or the Exorcist or Friday the 13th. That's why I opted for a more tolerable one hour supernatural series or vampire movies as they are lest gory than the rip-your-body-apart-blood-everywhere kinda movie.

Right now I'm obsessed with Supernatural the series, partly because it is just an hour watch on supernatural stuff. I must confess...it because I so love Dean Winchester. Apart from his green eyes and smouldering good looks (Jensen Ackles is of Irish, British & Scottish descendent), he is a typical manly man, loves rock music, loves action and loves chick. Compared to his brother Sam, he is the ignorant one on manners and to a certain extent, the world. All he cares about is hunting evil in the form of "things you never dream about" and demons (it is the core of the series). But he does bring a certain humour to the show with his masochist attitude and the relationship with his brother Sam is fun to watch.

Am marathon watching season 2, I got seasons 1 - 4 on DVD. Got them dirt cheap in Batu Ferringhi night market last march. RM4 for one cd, and buy 5 get one free. Crazy or what?? For one entire season I'd spend about RM20 for 6 DVDs!! Ms Fantaghiro, I am so coming with you next time you go back to Penang. Spent more money on other DVDs - Cashmere Mafia, Confessions of a Call Girl, and some music cds.

Also, been obsessed with the Twilight series. Sure, it is not the best book in the world, in fact it got bad reviews in Goodreads. But I am a sucker for vampire movies, even if the female lead is very clingy and weak and sometimes stupid. Even bought the books to read and found out that Twilight have been the rage all over in the US and I've bought the sequel to Twilight: New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn. I agree with the reviews which have stated poor characterization, thin plots, and personally I think the story could be written in less than 500++ pages. Other books to read in this category: Anne Rice's Complete Vampire Chronicles, Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy.

Eye Candy: Simon Baker

Pics courtesy of IMDB

Introduction

This is Simon Baker, Australian actor. He is the reason why I must be at home by 7pm nowadays, in order to catch his performance in AXN as the brilliant but stoic lawyer Nick Fallin in the series "The Guardian". He is currently starring in the new series "The Mentalist" as Patrick Jane, which is about a mentalist/clairvoyant turned private investigator to help police solve cases. Of course this series haven't hit Malaysia yet, but I'm looking out for the DVD release from the ever resourful DVD supplier, Raja.

Where Have I Seen Him Before?
You may have seen him in Devil Wears Prada, where he played Christian Thompson, the character who seduces Andy (Anne Hathaway). He was also in the movie "Sex & Death: 101" as the lead character Roderick Blank together with Winona Ryder. And for horror film fans, he starred in The Ring Two as Max Rourke. Hmmm...he always got nice name to go with his characters.

Reasons Why He's My Eye Candy:
Obvious talent (won Logie Award for Best new talent, and nominated for AFI and Golden Globe awards), intensity in potrayal of character, puppy eyes, golden locks, hot bod, and seemingly intelligent persona. Although he was formerly a brick layer. 'nuff said.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Read the book, seen the movie.

I must say that the movie did follow the book closely, up to quoting direct words from the book. For instance, when Dr Juvenal Urbino was about to die, he uttered the words to his wife, Fermina Daza "only God knows how much I loved you". But to understand the movie, one must read the book. There are too many things left unexplained in the movie. Whoever thought that it is a good idea to translate the book into a movie, must have thought that the sexual contents in this book would make into a great movie. Not.

For one, there are too many things happening in the lives of the characters which I think is better left to the imagination of the readers. For example, the many carnal relationship of Florentino Ariza, the antagonist in this book. All his illicit affairs conducted in silence and from women who took pity on him. Even so, not all of his relationship was explained, or even featured in the movie - the precious friendship between him and Leona Cassiani, his employee whom he did love but never had any sexual relationship. Or his sexual relationship with a 14-year old charge, America Vicuna, when he is already 76 years old, and broke her heart, which ultimately resulted in her suicide. Also, not featured in the movie.

The heroine, Fermina Daza, was played by an actor, which to me did not captured the essence of Fermina's character. In the book, the author painted her as someone rigid, beautiful and quite regal in the way she carries herself, from the time she was a young girl till the time she is widowed at the age of 70+. The actor did not potray the haughtiness that her character is suppose to be, and she is giddy with emotions and not restrained as according to the book. It is contrary to Fermina's character. The actor was also not beautiful in the conventional way, which Fermina is supposed to be, she looked older when she is supposed to be in her teens and she looked young when she is supposed to be in her 70s. Oh well, blame it on the makeup...

Benjamin Bratt potrayed Dr Juvenal Urbino quite charmingly in the movie. But then, it is a shame that the movie did not feature his relationship with Jeremiah de Saint-Amour as in the beginning of the novel as it would have been quite interesting to see the differences in both characters. Or that it didn't focus on their marital problems or Dr Urbino's diificulties on growing old and how Fermina helped her husband get through the day.

In the end, the movie that wanted to capture the love Florention Ariza felt for Fermina Daza for more than 50 years, failed to bring a credible emotion. I think it is better to leave it to the book and the imagination of the readers....

That is my humble opinion on the movie adaptation of the "Love in the time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel prize winning author.

Trivia: this book was also featured in the movie Serendipity, played by Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, on which it was written Kate's phone number and was later lost to John but he managed to find it again.

Criminal Minds Season 3 Marathon

Spent the weekend with marathon of Criminal Minds Season 3 - 6 DVDs in total of 20 episodes. I love Criminal Minds, I think the team is awesome and their cases are mind-blowing. Result after watching the complete 3rd season: so many insane people in this world, especially in America. Its not safe to go to America lest you become a victim of some psychopatch killer *shudder*


Criminal Minds the series is based on a team of profilers at the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU) in Quantico. Their core job is to profile serial killers behaviour and help the local PD to solve the cases, so there's extensive travelling in their ultra-cool jet by looking at the crime scene and basically try to be in the killer's shoes. They look at little details, "nothing is too small". It is mind boggling on how they can arrive at such deductions, but then, if I paid more attention to Introduction to Psychology back then, I would've understand it better haha


Anyway, season 3 started with the introduction of Joe Mantegna as the replacement to Mandy Patikin. One of the reasons that I loved to watch Criminal Minds initially was because Mandy Patinkin was brilliant as Jason Gideon, the head of FBI's BAU. He was also brilliant as the tortured doctor who sang and played the piano in "Chicago Hope" in 1994. I was a bit down when he left the show, and convinced that other actor couldn't play his part well. Enter Joe Mantegna as David Rossi, the original creator of BAU, who have left the unit for the past ten years. He is street smart and he also knows his psychology.

The strength of Criminal Minds is that the team of BAU are all powerful with the brooding Thomas Gibson (best known as "Greg" in the comedy "Dharma & Greg"), smokin' hot Shemar Moore, AJ Cook, Paget Brewster, Matthew Grey Gubler (as the bumbling Dr Spencer Reid) and Kirsten Vangsness (as Penelope, the tech savvy analyst chick).

Ending of season 3 was a cliffhanger with the serie titled "Lo-Fi", about a suspected group of terrorists who have been going around in New York, wearing dark hooded clothes and killing people at point blank range in the middle of the day on the streets and subways. The serie ended with an SUV carrying one of the agents to blow up, and thus the question, which agent was hurt/killed? I sneaked a peak at Criminal Minds Fanatic website last night to find out the answer, which was already commented in website sometime in June 2008. USA viewers are already watching season 4. Couldn't wait for the season 4 DVD to come out, I'm going to watch everything in one seating. Not generally patient with waiting for the series to play on air, which is now mid season 3 and air on 8tv at 10.30pm every Monday night. By the time which I may have accidentally slept or watched another DVD...

Weekend movies marathon

Weekends were meant to be for the movies, or in my case, catching up on my collection of DVDs. I think that my personal pirated DVD peddlar, Raja, is very, very happy with me. I spend at least RM100 to buy his DVDs every month. My choice for last weekend's movies marathon are:

Lars and the real girl
A story about Lars, an introvert guy who has a whole load of intimacy and insecurity issues that lead him to buy a sex doll for his companion. Lars named the doll 'Bianca' (who incidentally looked a lot like Angelina Jolie!) and brought "her" everywhere he goes. Because everybody in his town loved Lars, they decided to humor him in this delusion. Ryan Gosling is brilliant as the withdrawn Lars and notable supporting casts are Emily Mortimer who played the sweet and well intentioned sister in-law, Patricia Clarkson as the local doctor/shrink, Paul Schneider as Lars's brother Gus. The movie is slow at times and a bit on the dark humor side, but it showed the main character slowly and surely finds his own self. Only watch this if you are prepared to follow the story through because the ending is quite sweet.

Penelope
The overall feel and theme of this movie is a lot like 8tv's series"Pushing Daises". In Pushing Daisies, the main character have a special gift in reviving dead people and like Penelope, regards this as a curse. Penelope's curse is that she was born with ears and nose that looks like a pig! Not until she finds true love with "one of her own kind" i.e. the blue bloods. So her mother tries very hard to match make her with all the blue bloods that they could find, right until they meet with Max Campion, played by James Mc Avoy. This story is very fairytale-like. I would've like it better is James McAvoy used his scottish accent rather than using an American accent, sorta losing the romantic factor in my opinion and he was suppose to be play a blue blood. I've yet to watch him in "Wanted" (Angelina Jolie is so overrated!), but he was very intense in Hallmark's remake of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Juno

This is a really cute movie in terms of dialogue and humor but the issues faced by the main character in the movie is heavy and real. It's about teen pregnancy and giving away the baby to a suitable adopting parents. I really love the characters dialogue especially between Juno, her dad, step mom and best friends. I doubt it in real life you can talk as cool as that. Like when Juno's dad and stepmom (played by Allison Jenney) referred to Juno as " stupid and irresponsible daughter" not in an angry tone but rather resigned. I have to say that I'm a bit dissappointed that Justin Bateman's character turned out to be an ass (spoiler alert!). I loved him in Arrested Devlopment, always trying to be the responsible and sane person in the series.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Either you'll love it or you hate it, that's what the reviews said. And it's not because of the Israel-Palestine factor (don't wanna dwell on that). With all the hype about this movie, I expected more from Adam Sandler's movie but I was dissappointed with Mr Sandler. For one thing, his accent in the movie is really atrocious - you can tell that the script are American words but spoken in bad middle eastern accent, nothing much on the storyline, the slapstick comedy is just stupid (banging old ladies in hair saloon!?!!) and what's with his crotch bulging out of propotions??!! Don't expect too much from this movie.

Other DVDs that I plan to watch this coming weekend: Hancock, Wanted, Sex and the City.

Ladies with Soul

Last month I went to the KL International book fair with the hope of buying some great works of literature, I have even searched thru the web in “1001 books to read before you die” and in Oprah’s book club. Some of the interesting titles that I had found were Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity & Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Hard covers like Nigella’s Express costs well over RM100.

Of course being a thrift shopper, I like my books cheap even though it’s not a Booker Prize winner or a Times best seller’s list. My preference with novels are those with lots of dialogue. But I always buy books which have good recommendations, so if it happens to be a bestseller than I’m lucky. So I went to Payless Books to get discounted paperbacks novels. This time around I was looking for a specific writer, Anne Rice. Inspired by her novel, The Body Thief, following the adventures of Lestat, the vampire from Interview with the Vampire. I was excited to find two of her other titles, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned and The Witching Hour. The other author that I was lucky to find was Amy Tan’s Hundred Secret Senses and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. I’ve read Joy Luck Club, but I didn’t remember the book having a huge impact on me.

I find that even though Anne Rice’s story in with The Body Thief was intense and exciting, The Mummy was a bit flat and ludicrous. Its like watching a B-grade movie, except I was reading it. I mean how ridiculous for a mummy (Ramses) to be resurrected after thousands of years and then falling in love with the first person that he sees. And Ramses being able to accept the world so easily. I would’ve expected that he turned evil like that dude in “The Mummy” movie. Another painful book by her, is the Witching Hour which was said to be her most ambitious novel ever (haha I’m a bit outdated as she’s written this sometime in the 90s). It’s a terribly slow read as she painfully describes each character with unnecessary details, which I couldn’t care less about. I’ve yet to finish the book, but probably I’ll come round to it once I’m out of reading materials!

Amy Tan’s books are just wonderful! Both of her books are about family relationships and Chinese traditions or rather, superstitions. I feel like, being an Asian and having some Chinese blood myself (albeit several generations removed), I was able to identify with her Chinese characters. Her writing is both funny and informative and the descriptions of Chinese traditions are quite vivid. Its both believable and entertaining. In the Bonesetters Daughter, the story revolves around several decades where once upon a time dragon bones were collected for medicinal purposes. It’s a really touching story about a mother and daughter and the way Chinese families function. In The Hundred Secret Senses, its more funny and lighthearted as the second main character’s sister can actually communicate with Yin people (the dead) and having conversations with them which spooked her half sister (the main character). Amy Tan is now one of my favourite writers, as long as she keeps writing about Chinese family living in America (which is her recurring theme in both novels). This is her forte. I think she will suck if she writes about something else because this is her life, being a Chinese heritage living in America.