Freedom at a price

Today Malaysia celebrates another independance day. You all might remember the little rant I did about all the reasons I was proud to be a Malaysian, well this year I got another one for ya.
I'm proud to live in a country where if you didn't take part in the Merdeka Day Parade, your not entitled to a holiday! What the Hell kind of BS is that? They announced on the news that tomorrow would be a public holiday for Kuching and any company that had representatives in the parade there. So the rest of the state gets shafted. I thought the independance day deal was suppossed to apply to the whole friggin' country, on not specific individuals who technically paid for their ride while the rest of us just sit by and watch.

On the plus side, today also marks the launch of the AniMax channel on ASTRO, and so far the only complaint I have is that most of the shows aren't sub-titled! Meaning we either have to listen to the Japanese dub and guess what they are saying, or listen to the usually really bad english dub jobs. Some of the shows have subs, but in Bahasa Melayu. Take the good with the bad I guess.

Silent Hill

BEST GAME TO MOVIE CONVERSION EVER!
You heard me. Silent Hill is the best damn video game to live action movie port I've EVER seen. And the simple reason behind that is because they followed the actual environment of the game, even if they did tweak the story a little. I watched this gem of a movie on Saturday night with Ling, and from start to finish I enjoyed every minute of it. Ling might have gotten a little fed of me saying how impressive it was and how I pointed out to things that were just like in the original game. You'll easilly recognise the monsters from the games (Red Pyramid, the Nurses, etc.) as well as the rusted, caged settings of the Hell world with the random corpses hanging about.
I think the only small complaint I have with the story was when the police officer, who could obviously fend for herself against the other "survivors", decides to just take a beating from them instead of trying to escape on her own when she obviously could have. I thought that was rather dumb and the only dissapointment of the movie.
But still, If you liked the game, you'll definately be impressed and pleased with how the movie turned out. Hats off to Sony and Konami, and hopefully they will make a sequel that follows the story of the second game next. It would definately be interesting to see how they tackle the darker story behind that one!

Extreme is Gokujo!

Last night I finished watching the anime series Gokujo Seitokai, a really fun series about a group of students who comprise the Miyagami High School Student Council, or Gokujo Student Council for short. While the story mostly centered around the air-headed Rino Randou, her puppet companion Pucchan, and the student council president Kaneme Jinguji, all the characters who comprise the council get good air-time to let their personalities shine. A impressive feat when you consider there are about 13 main characters who show up in every episode and none are left out, even if it's a short appearance per episode, they are all there.
The story isn't even your regular everyday school life story either, as Miyagami High School is not your average high-school, and neither are the council members. All sorts of crazy and hilarious situations happen to the council, and it's usually their job to fix things or make sure everything goes smoothly, from investigating the backgrounds of suspicious characters, to even using weapons of mass destruction hidden on the campus!
Despite some minor complaints with the low animation quality and color scheme of the series in certain spots, this really is one of the more enjoyable series I've seen so far this year, and highly recommend checking it out if your into light-hearted humour with a dash of insanity every now and then.

Wednesday me and Ling watched the 3D animated movie, "The Ant-Bully" at the cineplex. A "been-there, seen that" story about an introverted kid who gets bullied a lot at school and takes out his frustrations by tormenting ants. The ants take revenge by shrinking him down to their size and he has to learn about the ant-ways if he ever wants to become normal sized again. It was an ok story, but like I said, it's "been there, seen that".

Board, Biscuit, Black Lagoon and Hoodwinked

So last week I got so bored at work and since AOPW had closed down I decided to start up my forum site using a free invisionfree account. So if you've got some time on your hands, check out my new Rated-E for EXTREME! forums. It basically picks up where I left off at AOPW, and there's more to it than just pro-wrestling news and results. Most of the stuff I post there is really just for my own reference anyway.

Wednesday there wasn't anything to watch at the Star Cineplex so me and Ling went around Bintang Plaza window shopping. I did manage to buy a paperback book of Seabiscuit: An American Legend. You might be wondering what the heck I'd be doing buying a book about a race horse, but after watching the movie a few months back on TV as well as the documentary on Discovery Channel, I was rather interested to find out more, and the book is definately an interesting read thus far as it chronicles how life was back in the day when motorcars where first being introduced and how Seabiscuit, his owner, trainer and jockey all came together to become a near unstoppable team. Ok, I haven't really read that far in, but you just know that's how the story is going to go.

The latest in my anime watching schedule, I completed watching Black Lagoon on Saturday afternoon. Black Lagoon is a really interesting action adventure series about a guy named Rock who joins a group of mercenaries and goes on a wild ride of adventures. Rock has to deal with a blood-thirsty double-gun wielding woman by the name of Revy, who really stands out as far as anime heroines go. She's really foul mouthed and thick-headed, but when it comes to a gun fight, she's almost second to no-one. I say "almost", cause one of highlights of the series (and probably THE highlight of the entire first season) was Revy going one-on-one with Roberta, the killer maid! This was one of those rare instances where the heroes get outshined and Revy seriously got more than she bargained for in this one. Roberta herself is the kind of character that could probably get their own spin-off series.
Another thing I enjoyed about the series is the way they build up each episode. For instance, they'd use one episode to build up the back story, and the next episode will be a non-stop action packed shoot-out to close out the story. Doesn't hurt that there's a bevy of hot (but dangerous) chicks that come and go in the series either.

Saturday night me and Ling had dinner with my parents as it was my dad's birthday. We had originally planned to go for dinner at the Hot Spot, but the plan was changed at the last minute and we had western food at a simple corner stall in town.
After that, we went home and we watched Hoodwinked, a rather funny and modern twist to the Little Red Ridinghood story. While it didn't have the best looking 3D-CGI, it was well animated and the story was really fun. Next week, we watch Silent Hill!

More of the SEM

Realizing that I've accumulated a backlog of over a hundred gigs worth of wrestling shows (both east and west), I finally started watching through some of the shows last week and posted a few reviews on my show review blog. Currently added are the first three SEM shows, and the first day of the 2006 New Japan Cup.
I probably won't review every show since it takes time to type out a review making the actual process of watching the show longer than it should be. Just check back for any updates. My lack of watching wrestling shows seems to stem from my renewed interest in watching fansubbed anime, and I tend to watch through those a lot quicker than my wrestling shows it seems.

Wednesday me and Ling went to watch the new Lindsay Lohan comedy flick "Just My Luck" at the Star Cineplex. Good to see that Lohan gained some of her hawtness back after going through the Paris Hilton Skin 'n' Bones diet. It was a fun show, though it could be noted that some of the bad luck situations could have easilly been avoided by some simple common sense. But than that wouldn't make it funny now would it?

Saturday me and Ling hung out at my place and watched some anime on my PC. We had a good laugh watching Magical Pokaan, Inukami!, and Muteki Kanban Musume. We might be doing this more since there's usually crap to watch on TV on Saturday nights these days. Hopefully that will all change next month when Astro officially launches a full AniMax channel, though I dread the possible censorship, and a new Asian movie channel featuring Japanese movies.

Brudda in da house!

So like I mentioned in the previous post below, I've had a long week, mostly due to my brother visiting from Singapore and the wacky adventures that come with it. On Wednesday, I took the day off from work cause since he was back, and my other brother was back from working overseas, my mom had the bright idea to go get our family portrait taken at a photostudio. My eldest brother brought his family, and I brought Ling with me as technically she's family also since we're engaged. The only thing I didn't like about the shoot was how the photographer wanted us to do his poses and not what we wanted to pose. And I might not be a photography expert, but it looked like he deliberately made the pictures where we didn't do as he say look bad. Heck, if I had the proper photoshopping programs and a good quality printer, we really wouldn't even need to go to an overpriced studio like that!
Anyways, after the shoot, we all went for dinner at the Boulevard Restaurant. It was the second time I'd ever been there for a meal, and thankfully the food service was much better. I still don't get how they could hire a staff that can't speak english despite being a Chinese restaurant.
After dinner, me and Ling stopped by Bintang Plaza and Ling got her ears pierced. Her ears hurting for a bit after, but she's fine now. Her ears only hurt if she touches them.

Thursday night we had a family get-together at the house for my Aunt Jane who was visiting from Australia. Other than one of my uncle's getting hammered and almost breaking our bathroom door, I'd say the night went off without a hitch.

Friday night Ling wasn't feeling to well, so we made a quick stop at Bintang Plaza again where I picked up the much anticipated Wrestle Kingdom game for PS2 before sending her home so she could get some much needed rest. I'll post my first look at the game in the video games blog soon so keep an eye out for it.
Saturday night Ling was working the afternoon shift and she still wasn't 100% after being sick the previous day. So I sent her home and than met up with my brother and cousin at the new Coffee Bean that opened up at Bintang Plaza recently. I don't drink coffee and can't stand the smell of the place, but it's definately a nice ambiance to the place, if only they had something on the menu other than coffee and tea.

Today my brother went back to Singapore, and me, Ling and my parents all saw him off at the airport this afternoon. Seeya again soon, bro!

Masters and Maidens

Been a busy week, but in that time I've been able to finish watching 2 fun anime series. First was Air Master, a martial arts/fighting anime about a girl named Maki Aikawa who's a former gymnastics champion turned street fighter. The fight scenes in this series are all nicely done, with plenty of "Ouch!" factor in the hard hitting critical blow department. The only complaint I would have is that the character design is really crummy. Maki looks ok, but alot of the character art for the show is just really bad. Read any review of the show online and that's one of the big flaws in the series. The only other small gripe I might have is that after the long build-up the series takes in building Maki's character, as well as the other characters in the story, it takes a long while before an actual plot is given, and at the end of the story is seems like the skipped over a few important battles. Two extra episodes to show what went on before the actual final battle would have been a good way to lead to the close of the series.

The other anime series that I finished watching was Rozen Maiden. An interesting show about a group of European looking dolls with Japanese names who battle it out in the "Alice Game" to earn "perfection", which I'm guessing is a Pinochio type deal of becoming human or something. It's actually pretty late into the series that a proper explanation of the Alice Game is given, but they actually did a good job of telling the story in a short 12 episodes, which included one of the funniest filler episodes I've ever seen! Definately going to have to try to get my hands on the second season of this series when I can.