Loopie - Joop

We went to watch "That Girl in Pinafore" last Sunday .  It was entertaining reminiscing our childhood/teenage memories growing up in Singapore in the 90's.  Yeah, do you remember the good old days where MRT trains were not crowded, children's playgrounds were huge sand boxes and life was a whole lot less hectic and simpler?   The director of this show is a few years older so there was a lot of xinyao in the show.  I must admit I recognized all the tunes in the show and was humming and singing along with the subtitles, even though I grew up in the late 90's.  Didn't like the story or the cast, but they sure do look and speak local and the songs were nice enough to blind me to all their flaws.   If you grew up in the 90's and listened to cpop/933 while studying for exams, you will relate very well to this show.  If you're part of the "ang-moh pai" that snubbed all things local, you might recognize some of your snubbed friends in it.   ...

Watched the new bond movie last Saturday. i cannot profess that i enjoyed it much, even daniel craig's brooding charisma couldn't save it for me. it was action-packed of course, as expected of a typical bond movie, but really, where was the story? it started off with a hi-speed car-chase scene with his black aston martin (what else?). lots of near-crashes... for what? don't know . bond had a man in his boot. who's that? don't know . scene jumps to siena in italy where the town was holding a horse race. apparently even "m" didn't know anything about "the group". so why catch the guy? don't know . no explanation. then bond goes on a hunt for Dominic Greene in haiti (french man of course) and meets the half russian girl Camille (the bond girl). high-speed boat chase ensues, of course. then bond follows him to Austria to an opera. bond manages to take some pics of those involved. that was a pretty cool scene. bond indirectly kills a b...

Have you guys watched painted skin 画皮? I watched it early on this week and i must say i enjoyed it. Of course there's always a kick in watching a movie that has just been released. (it's just been released end-sept, if you want to know where i found it, send me an email...) It is supposedly based on a 聊斋 story - you know those stories with the supernatural elements - fox spirits, snake spirits, rock spirits, ghosts, etc. 陈坤's character has been compared to 张国荣's 宁采臣 (remember that? 王祖贤 was 小倩 the ghost, they fell in love blah blah...), but this time it's a foxy spirit 周迅 we're talking about, who's infatuated with 陈坤. 赵薇 is the wife who knows of 周迅's real identity, but guess what? no one believes her; not even her husband! so she turns to 甄子丹 for help to prove that she was right. 赵薇 gradually loses trust in her husband as she senses him being bewitched by the fox. 陈坤 finds himself being tempted but tries so so hard to stay true (aww..); he even rejected 周...

We are movie buffs. period. No question about that. Caught 2 shows while in Iceland - one is the much-anticipated-long-awaited-well-reviewed-box-office-hit-chick-flick SATC the movie. I know EVERY person claiming to have an ounce of estrogen in their bodies have hit the theatres to catch this. (Psst.. if you haven't, it's time to consider whether your soul is truly female or not.)Of course i thought it tough to turn this great TV series into a 2.5 hour movie, i mean, c'mon, it wasn't written for the big screen. so i will only concede i love the bags, clothes, and shoes. i especially like the mexico part and the asian girl acting as Lily learning the 's' word. story-wise, it was everything as expected - no biggies- so the fans remain happy and loyal. truly enjoyed looking at the fashion displayed. The second movie we caught was nice- because of Ben Barnes, Prince Caspian (with weird accent). heh. thought it was a kiddie show -it is! - but he helped sav...

My dear folks who never leave messages for me - hey people! you are reading this aren't you? - just a short note on a show i enjoyed on the way back to Bermuda... The Bank Job. Brit flick, fast-paced, conspiracy theory-laden, burglary. Go rent it. it's pretty good.

We watched this movie yesterday afternoon after breakfast at Specialty Inn and shopping in town. This 2nd installment of National Treasure was still filled with excitement and humour, not unlike the first, but it was slightly less entertaining i think. there are less riddles to solve here, and Benjamin Franklin Gates ( Nicholas Cage) got away too easily from the FBI at each step of the way. The baddie isn't a mercenary British man this time, it's a man who wanted to leave a mark on history by discovering the legendary City of Gold. The car chase in London was pretty alright, the banter with french policemen near the Statue of Liberty in Paris was cute but it was the ancient trap inside the City of Gold that is awesome. Trust the movie people to think of such a majestic trap - a 2-d square piece balanced in the middle. perhaps the 2 movies were too much alike, following the same formula of heroism, honour and adventure. it was entertaining, but still a little disappointing...

We rented 2 movies last evening. i chose Amazing Grace while Hao-e chose a B-flick Shanghai Kiss. i know, "what the..." must be flashing in your mind now. Shanghai Kiss has the cheerleader from Heroes (the NBC serial)... that's about all... you can google it and find it on imdb. (i ain't gonna say much about it, cos it's not worth the effort.) but anyway, i digress. Amazing Grace is what this post is about. if you are bored like i am and you are taken by grown men in tights and wigs with thick english/scottish accents and girls with huge skirts and heaving breasts, i mean chests, in plunging necklines... OR just simply, you would like to be amazed (pardon me!) by the abolitionists who worked tirelessly in the late 18th and early 19th century to stop the British slave trade, and marvel at the origins and power of this hymn, then this movie is perfect for you. The protagonist William Wilberforce (acted by Ioan Gruffudd... just the name is enough to intrigue....

If yes, my condolences for enduring 2 hours of an absolutely absurd and thoughtless storyline. Can you imagine a bald guy dodging bullets, jumping out of cars, getting bashed around, getting shot at by an F35 and not get seriously hurt until the very end when he shoots himself in the shoulder? Sigh... he really is finding it very hard to die. If not, please take my word for it. DON'T WATCH IT.

We just came back from watching the show at Little Theatre. Hao-e was droning on and on about wanting to catch the movie asap. He woke up from his nap at 2.10pm and made us rush down for the 2.30pm show. I very nearly killed him for it! (You know how i value planning etc.) Anyway, the show was entertaining, though without subtitles, and the sound system being not so top-notch, i found it a little difficult to catch about 10% of the conversations. Didn't ruin the show for me. But Hao-e found it least entertaining of all the HP movies. Yeah well, there is no happiness unlike the Philosopher's Stone, no thrill unlike the Chamber of Secrets, no kinship unlike the Prisoner of Azkaban and no suspense unlike the Goblet of Fire. All it has is darkness, death and a general feeling of dread, as if everyone's just preparing for the inevitable. I suppose, for people who haven't actually read the book, the movie being only 2 hours long is tad short when the entire book is l...

watched shrek 3 after getting home at 9pm last evening. certain parts were funny, but i still thought the first 2 installments were funnier though. a bit disappointed cos my hopes and expectations were quite high after c told me she really enjoyed it. i didn't really like the high school part which i thought was pretty unnecessary, and would have preferred it if they stayed with the fairytale character thingamie without having king arthur and the worcestorshire people put on an american accent.

Total waste of time. the 2nd installment for Fantastic Four sucks big time. Corny-to-the-extreme storyline, bad effects, worse acting. Even Jessica Alba's bare body couldn't save this show. Thank goodness we didn't pay $$ to watch it. a real flop.

"More than meets the eye" How many afternoons did i spend in front of the tele watching cartoon after cartoon? There were smurfs, sesame street (not quite a cartoon but still kiddy), he-man, and of course transformers. of course then, i wasn't particularly happy watching transformers , he-man was much more entertaining i find, but it was on channel 5, so i watched it. i recall finishing up my sums and whatever homework i had in front of the tele while waiting for mum to (hopefully) not burn dinner. ( in those days, my mother's cooking left a lot to be desired. hee...) Hao-e and i watched transformers last friday evening at liberty theatre. a proper cinema i might add, for this island's standard at least. he was the fan, and i was just there to have fun. it was pretty entertaining, and i absolutely dig the visual and sound effects, my gosh, the screeching metal-sliding-over-metal sound, so shrill, so grating, yet way COOL . leaving out the storyline, and the...

Have you guys seen Evan Almighty yet? I think it is the feel-good movie of the year! made me laugh so hard i had tummy spasms after. yet certain parts of the movie were quite touching and thought-provoking, cos well, who has never thought of what God's plan is for us, what the meaning of our life is, and how do we "change the world"? Morgan Freeman played God again (our generation and those younger would probably think that God is indeed a black man!!), and in the show he said something to Lauren Graham's character Joan Baxter. the conversation between God and Joan in a diner went something like this, God: When you pray for patience, what do you think God gives? Patience? Joan shrugs. God: No, He gives you the opportunity to be patient. When you pray to be brave, does God give you courage or the opportunity to be brave? Joan shrugs and looks puzzled. God: It is the opportunity. And when you pray for the family t...

You guys should try this: http://www.superfate.com.cn/channel_fortune/index.php For those who would like to watch the feel-good show, it's quite good. Earns a 8.5 out of 10 points for me. Spoilers below, so don't read on.... The gist: the movie was about C hris Gardner , who was a high-school graduate, working as a salesman peddling some scanning machine. Business was slow, and the family was behind in their rent and tax payments. That was in 1981. Chris had a 5-year old kid, Christopher, who went to day-care at SF's Chinatown, ran by Mrs Choo. Outside his day-care was a wall mural with the word "happiness" spelt wrongly as "happyness". The wife got too stressed working double shifts to pay for their bills, that she left Chris pretty early in the show. (That's not to imply that she wasn't a good mum. She left rather tearfully and reluctantly cos she couldn't take the stress.) So one day, Chris saw this man with a red ferrari and asked h...