Tag: reviews

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Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive is one long drive full of twist and turns that become more and more bizarre as the movie hits the second part. The first part is actually pretty interesting. A woman escaped assassination because of a car accident. But in the process, she also lost her memory. Now it is up to her and her newly-made friend, an aspiring actress, to find out who she really is. It has shades of L.A. Confidential: something’s afoot in tinseltown. But there are also shades of Donnie Darko: strange scenes hinting that things are not as they seem, perhaps a dream or something. However, thing’s got really messy and confusing in the second part. It became a mescaline trip reminiscent of a much milder second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey (now that is one mescaline trip). At least in Donnie Darko, things gets tied together at the end, here it just gets an ending of sorts. I’d rate it two stars, but I’ll add an extra star for the scenes of the women leads making out :P

Rating: 3/5

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Infernal Affair 2 and 3

This is essentially just a follow-up to my review of Infernal Affairs as I don’t intend on going through it again here. The two other movies in the series follow the same formula as the first: a police drama with a lot of twists and turns and great acting. I don’t know if all three movies were planned beforehand, but it sure looked like it. Though each can actually stand and are great on their own, the experience would be even better if you watch all of them and in sequence. It would also be less confusing that way.

Infernal Affairs 2, is a prequel to the first movie. It follows the stories of the lead characters Yan (Tony Leung) and Ming (Andy Lau) as they rose up the ranks of Sam’s organization and the police, respectively. This is while they grapple with identity issues that plague moles. As a backdrop to this is a complex and sometimes bloody struggle between and within the police and a powerful crime organization.

Infernal Affairs 3, is a sequel to the first movie. The original cast returns and picks up where the first movie left off. It follows the story of Ming as he tracks down all of Sam’s moles while grappling with his worsening identity crisis all the way to the climactic ending. As the events unfold, there are constant flashbacks to put the current event into perspective. Needless to say, this can sometimes be disconcerting and this is the most confusing of the three. Here’s where you will appreciate watching the first movie.

Rating: 4/5

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Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

I was finally able to watch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. After failed attempts to watch it during the CineManga preview and the actual CineManga festival, I finally succeeded over the looong weekend. The movie is about robots going berserk and killing people. Batou, the main character, has to find out who is behind all these killings. This seems to be a rather common theme in robot movies. The movie actually reminded me of Blade Runner and I, Robot (which I would guess is based more on Blade Runner than on Asimov’s work). But why does it always go like that? Why not about people killing robots? Is it because robots are non-living? But what if robots also think and feel? Or if humans can be replicated into robots? Wouldn’t that blur the fine line? These questions are pose to you during the movie as it delves into the uncanny valley and other robotics issues. It’s a bit heavy. More so than Ghost in the Shell and it would help if you have seen the first movie and have an idea of robotics, cyberpunk, and other common anime themes. In the end, there really were no answers. But I suppose those are questions we don’t need to answer at least until several more decades. Thankfully.

Rating: 4/5

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Sony Ericsson K700i

My Nokia 6100 is now definitely dead. The repair guy said the board has been cracked. No surviving that I guess. It was pretty saddening. The Nokia 6100 is really neat no-frills phone in a small package. Worse is I wasn’t ready to buy a new phone yet. So I put off buying a new phone for several days. Thankfully, Jem lent me his old but still functional Nokia 3530 and I used that for for the meantime while I scoured around for good deals.

The best deal I found was Globe’s zero interest installment promos for existing subscribers where you can pay for your phone via credit card for up to 18 months. Supposedly this is at no interest. Of course the base price are a bit higher than your typical side-street mobile phone vendor. But installment payment sure is hard to beat especially if you have little cash on hand.

I’ve decided beforehand that I will be getting a Sony Ericsson. My first choice was the K750i. I’ve been lusting over this phone for some time. It has good features including a serious 2 megapixel camera. Unfortunately, it’s so good that it’s out of stock in most if not all Globe Centers. Besides, it was rather expensive. My next choice was a K300i. It is a lot less expensive but is a bit too shabbily built for my liking. So I settled for the middle-ground which is the K700i.

For a phone, this basically has everything you would expect: tri-band, hands-free operation, voice commands, SMS, MMS, etc. For connectivity, there’s IR, Bluetooth, GPRS, and USB cable. The only phone feature missing is a speakerphone mode which is rather a bummer but not so much as to earn it negative points. UPDATE: It actually has a speakerphone though it’s a little bit unintuitive to activate.

On the extras side, the influence of Sony is very evident as this is essentially an entertainment phone. It has a media player that can play MP3, MP4, 3GP, and WAV files. It also a radio that uses the headset as an antenna. Both the media player and the radio can be minimized and run on the background.There’s a Java engine for some pretty neat games. There’s a VGA-resolution camera that you can also use to record videos albeit lower resolution. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have external memory card storage which would have been great for music files as the internal memory is only around 40 MB.

And the design is pretty cool too: simple lines, subtle accents, and a silver, gray, and black colored casing. It has Sony Ericsson’s dual-front design: The front of the phone is your traditional vertically-oriented display and keypad but the back of the phone is horizontally-oriented and designed to look like a camera. I actually like the overall design better than the K750i which, although shares the basic shape and design, has a charcoal colored casing.

Definitely a good deal.

Rating: 4/5

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Run Lola, Run

Have you had a bad day? Don’t you just wish you can do it all over again? In this movie, Lola (Franka Potente) did just that, in fact she was able to do it three times. It started with Lola receiving a phone call. Manni, her boyfriend, had lost a bag containing 100,000 marks (it’s a german film) that he was transporting for a crime boss. If he does not deliver the money he is as good as dead. His solution is robbing a store to get replacement money. Lola has only 20 minutes to get replacement money to Manni before he proceeds with his plan. So she had to run and run and run. This is like three short movies rolled into one and the whole thing is exciting and hilarious at the same time.

Oh, and it’s got way cool techno soundtrack:

I wish I was a stranger who wanders down the sky
I wish I was a starship in silence flying by
I wish I was a princess with armies at her hand
I wish I was a ruler who’d make them understand

I wish I was writer who sees what’s yet unseen
I wish I was a prayer expressing what I mean
I wish I was a forest of trees that do not hide
I wish I was a clearing no secrets left inside

I wish I was a hunter in search of different food
I wish I was the animal which fits into that mood
I wish I was a person with unlimited breath
I wish I was a heartbeat that never comes to rest

Rating: 4/5