Merdeka!

Another quick post.

Today is the 52nd Independence Day of Malaysia, so Happy Birthday Malaysia!

Happy Merdeka Day everyone!

The Freaks are coming!

I love children and young adults novels. Some of the books that I own are from the Pendragon, Septimus Heap, and Artemis Fowl series. While some of the series that I would love to try are His Dark Materials trilogy, Inkheart trilogy and Unfortunate Events series. And as you may already notice, there are many books that were turned into movies. Some of them created interest for me to read the books like the Harry Potter movies and The Golden Compass; but some of them made me uninterested in the book series. So clearly turning books into movies can be quite a risk.

Another book series that had currently been turned into movie is Cirque du Freak. The movie, titled Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, will be released in the US coming October 2009. I had seen the books in stores several times now and wondered if it's as good as the series that I had. Well, even if I'm not interested, milions of others would beg to differ; the series are currently published in 37 countries and translated to 30 different languages. No wonder they made a movie out of it!

Here's the trailer to the movie courtesy of IGN. You can also click here to visit the official movie website.

Happy Ramadhan 1430!

A quick post. Just wanna say Happy Ramadhan to all Muslims all around the world, and happy fasting.

'Selamat berpuasa' everyone!

District 9 ~ review

Before I start this review, I want readers to forgive me for a post I made about this movie a month back. Obviously I wrote that post before the movie was out so there are quite a lot of errors regarding the story. I won't delete it though because there's also a trailer for the movie, so feel free to check it out.

Okay, back to business. From what I've read from the forums on the web, this movie had received mixed comments from viewers. Some love it, others hate it. But the critics sure are loving this flick as most of them gave the movie positive reviews. My review below contains a little bit of spoilers so please skip if you haven't watch the movie.

As you can see from the trailer, the film is shown in documentary-style format. There are several people interviewed regarding the arrival of the aliens and their impacts to surrounding society. The commentators not only giving the backstory for the main plot but also telling us the story as the film moves along. For me, this is quite a fresh approach in narrating a story for a movie, making it a little bit different compared to the handheld cam format such as in Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, or the documentary-style format that's only limited for certain scenes such as the plane crash scene in the movie Knowing.

A little back story for the movie. 20 years prior to the events in the movie, an alien spaceship arrived on Earth. Well, not execatly 'on' but 'floating' on the sky of Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans went on the ship to investigate as it just hovered in the sky with no sign to make contact. On the ship, they found a large group of malnutrished non-humans and helped them settled on Earth. Eventually, the government camps they were set in (called District 9) were turned into slums and a private military-based company called Multinational United (MNU) was contracted to watch a close eye on the non-humans.



The movie follows the journey of Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) as he was selected by his company (MNU) to head on an operation to move the non-humans, nearly 2 million of them, to a new camp called District 10. As he goes around the slum collecting signatures from the non-humans and asking them to evict their house, he come upon a device containing some kind of black liquid that accidentally sprayed on his face. From that moment on, he slowly falls ill and starts to take form of the non-humans. As he now has the hybrid DNA of the human and non-human, he is highly pursue by MNU as he is the key in unlocking the secret of the non-human weapons technology. Only non-humans are able to use the weapons (that had been confiscated by MNU of course) as they somehow can only be operated by those with non-humans DNA.

Refuse to be a lab rat, Wikus escape from MNU and seek refuge in District 9. He then makes a deal with one of the non-human; he will help the non-human and his little son escape to the mother ship and the non-human will help him change back to the human form. And the battle between the two-man team and MNU begins....




I really love this movie for it's approach in storytelling (as I mention before, the documentary-style) and also for the engaging story itself. I really LOVE the story a lot. It's thought-provoking and also quite touching nearing the end. I also like to mention that there are quite a lot of gory scenes involving exploded bodies (definitely not recommended for minors) which I think can be reduced. I'm also impressed with the acting, especially Sharlto Copley as Wikus. I can hardly believe the geeky Wikus that I've seen in the beginning of the movie can end up like...what he end up to be in the end. He's very good for a first-timer (he never acted in a movie before). The special effects were awesome too; the giant floating ship, the believable non-humans and the exploding bodies (yuck!).

In terms of plot, I think the writer should give more info as there are quite a few things that I don't understand about the story. Although the plotholes are quite understandable because there were quite many things that the humans in the movie do not know about the non-humans, but I would really appreciate if they could give some assumptions by the commentators on certain things.

Overall, it's a really good movie with an engaging story, it's fantastic! You can click here to learn more about the movie on Wikipedia.

God of War ~ review

I believe this game needs no introduction. But for those of you who don't know, God of War is a third-person action-adventure game with a story based on the Greek mythology for the PlayStation 2 console. It was released in 2005 and had been praised by the gaming critics and fans alike.

The game begins with our protagonist, the legendary warrior (or should I say villain) Kratos standing on the edge of a cliff with a solemn face. After a moment, he let himself fall in an attempt to commit suicide. Just before he hit the bottom, we are taken back in time, 3 weeks prior to the event to be more specific, to discover the truth about Kratos and his journey that leads to his attempted suicide.

To know Kratos's life journey, we are taken from one epic place to the next; from the Aegean Sea to the burning city of Athens, from the Desert of Lost Souls to the Temple of Pandora, and believe it or not, we even visit the Underworld; all in the name to defeat Ares, the God of War, who is causing chaos in Athens.

God of War is one of the game I've seen on Playstation 2 with such amazing graphics, and I'm not just talking about the full motion videos (FMVs), the graphics were stunning even during gameplay. And it does help in bringing the charm to the game as it was set in epic settings with an epic story. Yes, I know I keep repeating the word 'epic' but I can't help it; everything in God of War is epic. Even the music was hauntingly suitable for the tale.

Personally, I really love God of War for it's beautiful and breathtaking settings. The environments look majestic, and of course it suited the story about a warrior who are in service for the Greek gods. I would be amazed everytime I enter a new place. Some of my favourite places in the game are; the Aegean Sea in the beginning of the game, the challenge of Poseidon with all its water streams, and the challenge of Hades with all its scary burning fire. You will face both the challenges in the Temple of Pandora together with another one which is the challenge of Atlas. Athens also looks stunningly beautiful although some of the buildings are either in ruins or on fire.

As many of you would guess, God of War contains a lot of violence. Blood spraying, limbs flying, that's just a part of a day's work for Kratos. And there's nudity too primarily involving topless females. So I would not really recommend this game for minors.

As a conclusion, this amazing game should be in every house of those who love video games. To learn more, you can visit Game Trailers for the review of the game or just click here to go to the official site.