Tag-Archive for » Reviews «

Mobile Suit Gundam 00
07
June

I’m not a massive Gundam fan, what with all the violence and destruction… I prefer the comedy or fantasy type Anime (I’m a girl after all). But Mobile Suit Gundam 00 was just there for my viewing pleasure, and I remember Gundam SEED wasn’t so bad to watch… even if I have forgotten most of it…

What I like most about Anime is that there are no limits. Anything and everything is possible. Completely up to your imagination. All the characters look fantastic no matter the situation. Even when they have a massive scar on their face like Sergei Smirnov and Graham Acre from Gundam 00.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - Celestial Being

The best thing about Gundam 00 is probably the fact that it’s only 2 seasons. Although they could have very easily stretched it out, they kept it short and sweet pleased-gry haHa! I think maybe the huge gap between watching Anime (it must be a few years since my last Anime fix!) has made a difference because I truly enjoyed Gundam 00, and that’s saying something! I find it hard for me to like 2D stuff nowadays!

oH! And I highly recommend the song they play at the end of each Gundam 00 episode in Season 2 called “Trust You” by Yuna Ito~!

So for those of you who don’t know, here’s the story for Gundam 00:

The year is 2307 A.D. Although fossil fuels have been depleted, humanity has obtained a new source of energy to replace them, in the form of a large-scale solar power generation system based on three huge orbital elevators. However, the benefits of this system are available only to a handful of major powers and their allies…..

….In this world of never-ending conflict, a private armed organization appears, dedicated to the elimination of war through armed force. Its name is Celestial Being, and it is in possession of “Gundam” mobile suits. With these Gundams, it begins armed intervention into all acts of war.

gundam00.bandai-ent.com

Yeah it’s another ‘war in space’ series… I guess I couldn’t get enough of BSG? haHa! Well at least we’re not dealing with AI this time around. Again the main issue is something we can relate to off-screen… Depletion of world resources is something which has been on the agenda for a while now, and war over resources is something we see everyday.

hrmm… the more I think about it, the more alike Gundam 00 and BSG are! Both are set in space, both about war and has lots of blood and things blowing up, both involve machines, the Cylons are like the innovators, both revolve around major issues we have today.

Eitherway I’ll be keeping my eye out for the Gundam Movie in 2010~

Category: Drama & Movies, Reviews  Tags: ,  Leave a Comment
BattleStar Galactica!
05
June

Battlestar Galactica Synopsis

An updating and re-imagining of the classic 1970s sci-fi television show, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA combines elements of STAR TREK, STAR WARS, and THE TERMINATOR. Human beings built the android Cylons to work as servants for them, only to have the robots rebel and disappear into space. A generation later, however, the Cylons returned to destroy their former masters, and succeeded in eliminating the 12 worlds that mankind inhabited.

Luckily, one group of people has managed to escape the genocide, lead by Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos), on board the massive space ship called Battlestar Galactica. But the struggle isn’t over, as the ruthless Cylons continue to pursue the ship and the last surviving members of the human race. This vision of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA features a darker tone and CGI special effects, and shares with other science fiction sagas a warning about the misuse of advanced technology.

Battlestar Galactica (BSG) has been around for quite a while now, but I never quite picked it up again after their hiatus during season 2… P convinced me it was worth finishing, but there I was wrapping up Gossip Girl, Heroes and The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC)…. I wasn’t sure I would have time to finish BSG between them all.

Battlestar Galactica

Anyway, never say never! It actually didn’t take too long to finish up BSG (all 4 seasons including webisodes, and movies) because there were so many familiar episodes that I just couldn’t quite remember (I’m convinced I watched more after season 2). It was a little tricky to get back into the story, especially when my mind was still fresh with TSCC (The Sarah Connor Chronicles), I had to remember that Cylons are not Terminators!

CylonsThere’s no way to compare BSG to TSCC because BSG doesn’t focus on ‘Judgment Day‘, the death of human-kind. Well it does have an element of human extinction, but it has a more religious theme and makes the Cylons out to be another species rather than just machines.

The constant war in space, running from Cylons, and finding ‘Earth‘ thing wasn’t always so exciting, but I really enjoyed how the whole series turned out. I especially liked how it involves issues which are very real off-screen, BSG makes me wonder if maybe we will repeat ‘history’. It seems to me that the Cylons had it right when they said: “All of this has happened before, and it will happen again… again… again…“… Humans have a love for conflict and drama, it’s as if we go out and find something if there isn’t any…

Battlestar Galactica: Caprica

So it’ll be interesting to watch the spin-off, Caprica . I hear it’ll focus on how the 12 colonies are living in the times of boom and abundance, they’re on such a high that they’re getting out of control… sounds awfully familiar?

P.S. Wiki has a very condense synopsis-review for those who are curious, but be warned as it contains spoilers!

Category: Drama & Movies, Reviews  Tags: , ,  Leave a Comment
Weekend movie nights
07
March

whistleJ and I were supposed to catch up and work out our flight plans to book online, but instead we ended up going to Carousel for the $8 movie promo Hoyts is having. We decided to take up the Hoyts promo to catch Watchmen… it looked cool and potentially mind-blowing. And because we were left so dissatisfied with Watchmen (read below to find out why), we had to go back and watch He’s Just Not That Into You.

Watchmen

We walked into the cinema expecting Watchmen to be something along the lines of the typical superhero kicks bad-ass line. Let’s just say we really should have prepared ourselves better. I don’t have anything against comic adaptations (X-men was pretty entertaining) or comic-like storylines (Killbill and SinCity turned out to be surprisingly good too).

I watched the trailer AFTER watching the movie, seems to me that the trailer can be a bit deceiving? Anyhow, when they say graphic novel, they mean graphic novel. My gripes aren’t against the movie per se, it’s more against the graphic novel which the movie is apparently closely following.

Anyway there were two major issues I had with Watchmen which makes me feel bleh yuck

**Spoiler Warning**

The first being that the girls in Watchmen wearing anime-like costumes (body hugging, extremely suggestive) are OK with me (I do love my anime), but random nudity and sex scenes just aren’t cool. If they developed the characters more, gave viewers something to relate to, it might not have felt like they threw in the relationship between Laurel and Dan just for the sex (wasn’t she getting it on with Dr. M only a few frames ago!?).

I also didn’t appreciate the way Watchmen made all the female characters whores, and it definitely didn’t improve my opinion when they threw in the kinky twists (I’m guessing Watchmen was created by lots of testosterone). AND if they didn’t show so many frontal shots of ‘Mini Manhattan‘, it might not have made viewers feel so… disturbed…. or distracting! Seriously, it felt like the first half of the movie was blue-penis-free and then suddenly all you see is very naked Dr Manhattan frontals.

It’s something I would expect from a Japanese anime NOT a hollywood film yuck

The second thing which irked me is more of a personal preference because I like my heroes to stay as heroes. Watchmen are allowed their off-days and hissy fits, but in my world, they shouldn’t be humanised. What I mean by that, is that they killed the heroic characters and turned each and everyone of these Watchmen into pathetic reflections of the faults in humanity.

Where’s the logic in turning a superhero into a wuss? an obsessive freak? an emotionally stunted child?

Is Watchmen trying to suggest that we’re all twisted, even our heroes? Are they trying to rob us of our hope and our naive ideals?

Anyway, Vic at ScreenRant did a detailed review of Watchmen. And after reading the review, I’m positive that I would have enjoyed Watchmen a lot more if I had read the comic…

I do have something good to say about the film though, the graphics are very very impressive! I enjoyed the graphics so much so that I might even watch it again (not in cinema though).On a side note, the only characters I liked were Rorschach and The Comedian.

**End Spoiler Warning**


He’s just not that into you

I’m a huge fan of romantic comedy and He’s Just Not That Into You fits my criteria perfectly. It’s the type of movie which makes you laugh and pulls you right into the plot like you’re right there with the characters. Well, relationships is a topic which we can all relate to after all shylove

Thankfully it wasn’t a let down like P.S I Love You which I didn’t think lived up to it’s expectations (Love Actually). I won’t be going into detail because I would definitely recommend you to go watch He’s Just Not That Into You! It’s most probably one of the best movies I’ll ever watch in 2009… but it’ll come second to Star Trek which will be coming out in May!! Watch the full trailer at the official Star Trek site. I think that I’m going to like this movie no matter if they mess it up , just like Transformers =P

Category: Drama & Movies, Reviews  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
Chinese Characters in WordPress 2.7
04
January

Every single time I have to upgrade WordPress, it messes with my Chinese characters! The characters (be it Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai etc) show up as question marks ‘??? ‘or funny symbols ‘所‘. It’s not too much of a difference to me since 99% of my posts are in English, but it still bugs me if I don’t have the choice to write with Chinese characters.

Broken img As you can imagine, I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and the upgrade messed with my Chinese characters again. And again, I forget how I fixed the problem…

I thought I better write this post for my own sanity. And hopefully it’ll save me a whole lot of time and tinkering!

bakaAs per usual, I went to WordPress > Support to look up the … erm, I had trouble with logging in because I forgot my password again (but you can still view the topics without logging in). I could also write up another rant about how crappy (navigation-wise) WordPress Support Forum is, but I’ll leave that for another day.

This time around I stumbled across a blog post, by boringest, detailing the steps I should take to fix this problem. um… it didn’t take me long to give up and realise it wasn’t working the way I wanted. I think this post is about changing the admin dashboard into Chinese characters (I’m not sure because I gave up when I couldn’t differentiate between my brother’s database and mine …)

Anyway, the easiest and only effective way which I found time and time again (I did exactly the same thing the other times) is to:

  1. Find your wordpressconfig.php file
  2. Open it up (to edit it)
  3. Find and delete:
    define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8?);
    define('DB_COLLATE'=, ");
  4. Save

It’s probably one of the most common things that happens, and I don’t understand why WordPress doesn’t just leave those lines out? Then again, everyone probably already has the answer to this problem, and I’m the only one complaining because I’m just too much of a noob…

Category: Observations, Reviews  Tags: , ,  11 Comments
Ciao Italia > Il Ciao
30
November

ciao-italia-dining.jpg I’m sure most people in Perth know about the popular Ciao Italia Restaurant which doesn’t take any bookings. Now, don’t get Ciao Italia in South Perth on Millpoint Road confused with Il Ciao in Applecross which is found on Canning Highway…

I’ve been to Ciao Italia and Il Ciao a couple of times now, and I found them to be quite different from each other. Where Ciao Italia is small, buzzing and friendly, Il Ciao is big, busy and not so casual.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown up on the buzzing and crowded atmosphere, perhaps I like South Perth better than Applecross.. There’s a lot of ‘perhaps’ but at the end of the day, you can’t go wrong at Ciao Italia if you want amazing Italian food. And yes, I am saying that Ciao Italia’s food is better than Il Ciao!

  • ciao-italia-food.jpgThe smoked salmon pizza had slices of salmon which you could actually SEE (unlike some other italian restaurants)
  • The cream sauce in their Ciao Italia Fettucini had the perfect texture, not too runny and not overly thick either. Not only that, it actually had flavour.
  • Garlic bread is always good at Ciao Italia. Hard to believe but I’ve had some pretty crappy garlic bread in my time (rock-hard, stale, soggy).
  • I can’t say much about the Risotto because I rarely order this when I go out, but their Risotto Marinara has got to be the best around. It sure beats the risotto I had at Dome though, both by the portion and the taste.
  • Staff there is always friendly and easy going, no matter how busy they are.
  • Portions are always more than enough and the atomosphere is always buzzing

ciao-italia-restaurant.jpg

There’s a lot more on the menu which I have yet to try, you can view their take-away menu on their website here.

    I took my Lumix FX36 out and was pretty pleased with the camera.

  • First of all, I forgot to put in an SD card (I haven’t received the 4GB SD, extra battery and warranty yet) but could still take photos because of the 50mb internal memory!
  • The food scene setting worked like a charm
  • Intelligent Auto mode is AMAZING!!
  • I totally love the 24mm wide angle lens because I regularly take photos by holding it an arm length away. Usually I can only get 3.5 heads in the picture but now I can fit 4 heads with shoulders as well as some background!
  • Downside would have to be the noise, I need to take more photos to clarify but I fear that there’s a bit more noise found on the images compared to the canon ixus (when taking photos at night).
Category: Food, Reviews  Tags: , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
SWF Video Converter
08
November

I never knew how hard it was to convert a flash (.swf) video until I wanted to do it myself. In the process of finding the ideal .swf video converter, I also realised that .flv and .swf are very different even though both are “Flash”! Did you know that FLV files are Video files and are completely different from SWF files which are Animation files?? Well now you do =)

Below is a table of the various video converters I’ve tried out.

VIDEO CONVERTER
 PROS CONS
WinAVI - Easy to use
- Converts multiple formats including flash (.swf) files!		 - Can’t define flash animation dimension, it automatically cuts margins.
- Frequently crashes and has bad audio-video sync
WinFF - Converts multiple formats including flash files
- Fast, simple design		 - Can’t convert video, only seemed to do audio?!
AVS Video Converter - Simple to use, converts multiple formats including flash files
- Also a video editor, great for replacing Windows Movie Maker		 - Does not convert from flash even though it converts to flash
Xilisoft Ultimate - Fast and efficient
- Converts multiple formats including flash files		 - Only the audio is converted
SoThink SWF to Video Converter IT ACTUALLY WORKS! - Only works for SWF files…

I think that Xilisoft and AVS Video Converter would actually be pretty cool to use if I wasn’t looking for a SWF converter, they sure look a lot cooler to play around with compared to SoThink. There’s a lot more functionality with the other programs compared with SoThink, perhaps to the point that it may be a bit unnecessary.

So if you’re looking for a video converter, especially one that converts .swf files, I hope this helps you out and cuts down a bit of your researching =)

Category: Reviews  Tags: , , , , , , ,  2 Comments
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »