Wall-e

I was abit put off by the minimal dialogue for this movie but it compensated that with everything else. Maybe also the trailer was shown quite early and the movie till now then came on screen.

Wall-e ( Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class ) was a robot, to be precise the last thing on earth that can moved by itself. His job was to collect rubbish and crushed them into a cube like object. His morning starts with getting itself charged by releasing its solar panel while it stand on the rooftop. Then he go to work, find rubbish and crushed them, he also collects garbage which he regarded as interesting.

He seem happy. Along the way, he seemingly tried to understand humans, through a video tape which he watched over and over again. Also through the garbage it collected.

Then ... some spaceship landed, dropped something and left. She was a little egg shaped robot which flies and very wary of its surrounding initially, shooting anything that moved. It was love at first sight for Wall-e who brought Eve ( Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator ) back. She was assigned a job and that was to find any life form on earth and protect it and wait for the spaceship to return.

Meeting Wall-e lightens up Eve and they seems to be having a good time till Eve found a life form among Wall-e collections of garbage, upon sighting the little plant, she retrieved it and kept it into herself and went into some "coma" mode. This worried Wall-e, thinking she might be "dead", he tried all methods but to no avail.

One day, the spaceship returned, Wall-e rushed back and somehow got on the spaceship and went into space. This spaceship owned by Buy and Large Corporation, was a project by them to save human lifes when earth was too have too much rubbish for human to live on. Thus, the company send people into space. living in a super duper huper kuper AUTOMATED life.

So automatic till you do not have to even standup or walk, etc. Everyone looked like SaMe, just bigger and wider, the part where the captain woke up in the morning and a cup of coffee was made for him which was on the table, he couldn't reached it and pressed the button that pushed him nearer to the cup.

This was the beginning of the space galatica adventure for Wall-e ...

Eve returning with the "life form" went through a series of checks before was send to the Captain. But it was stolen, so no choice, Eve was send for further checks as Wall-e tagged along. At the repair centre, Wall-e thought Eve was going to be brought apart, rushed to save her, accidentally brought down the repair centre defence system. All the malfunctions robots got free and so grateful to Wall-e.

With Wall-e help, Eve retrieved the plant but spaceship autopilot system had other ideas. It had already been told 700 years ago that earth was already too toxic for them to go back. Thus, it imprisoned the Captain and wanted to destroy the plant.

It will be Wall-e to save the day and earth as well. A delightful and heartwarming animation. 8/10

4bia

Four 30 mins movies that out to scare the shit out of you. Like I have say before, it is all about anticipating the moment that they are going to scare you. It seems like a automatic mechanism built-in that knowing that it is a horror movie, we will anticipate.
Happiness
A young girl cooped up at home because her taxi got into a accident which flipped over, though she escaped with only an injury thus having a cast on her leg. Alone and only with her mobile phone and internet ... she received an annonymous sms. It seems interesting as she need something to entertain her, ignoring it in the first place but after knowing it was a guy she began liking it. This movie had minimum dialogue and narration, it built up as we read the smses and revealed scary moments. She send her a picture of her but in return got back the same picture and telling her, he was just beside her !! This really gave her the creeps and as she keep getting invalid number while calling him ... he don't sms during the day ... SHE GOT REALLY SCARED WHEN HE TEXTED HER HE WAS WATCHING HER ... and was walking up to look for her !

Tit for Tat
This one was more straightforward. Bullies ... Gong Tau ... Blood ... Gory Deaths. A boy resorting to some black magic using a book against the gang who almost killed him. So they died one by one in a horrendous spate of scenes ... rushing through trying to hypen the pace. It finally slowed down when the girl survived ... brought to the police station. Though she was never directly bullied him, her friends who died won't let her off ......... forcing her to look at the book. So to escape that .... the only way will be ... no eyes !!!

In the Middle
Something more lighthearted among the 4 stories. Four friends went for a river rafting trip, this movie had plenty of attempted humorous dialogues and tried to be funny one liner. Most of the scenes are in the tent before and after the scary elements set in. After the river rafting, one friend went missing and the other 3 came back ... The tension starts to build up as they are more scared than worried about their friend. Though eventually the missing friend came back, it brings the suspense and scary level up. No prize for guessing this missing friend was as dead as he can be ... but in the end was a welcome added twist to it.

Last Fright
About a flight attendent on the "Fright" of her life. Some royal princess requested her to be on board her private flight to Phuket. During the journey sees tension between the 2 characters but it started to reveal why ... Anyway, the plane landed safely but the princess passed away suddenly and her dead body need to be transported back at the soonest. The same flight attendant had no choice but to so call "escort" the body back. All the chance to scare the shit out of the audience was in the last 15 mins ... 7/10

12 莲花

Similar to the above expectations 881 which was popular and did well in the box office as well. This one has a strong 歌台 element also which is important as most part of the movie was delivered with melodic hokkien songs in MTV style.

Movie start off with 孙燕姿's debut cameo role as a 歌台 singer with some dialogue, no impression left behind though. Anyway, it is a movie about 刘莲花's pitiful life where she encountered men mostly treating her really bad.

Mindee Ong is 刘莲花, beaten when young by her father, by 黄奕良. Then conned by 阿龙 by 戚玉武 prior to her father's death. This is the part where I am still quite not sure, if the bad guys will just to want have sex with her, why go through so much hassle of getting 阿龙 to become a duet with her in the 歌台 scene.

And assuming her father's accident was actually masterminded by the baddie, even more addtional dirty work needed. Then she became mad, stuffing herself at home alone, only the grown up 小飞侠 visited her on and off, just to ensure she probably still alive. This 小飞侠 was sort of a partner of the duet 莲花 and 阿龙 was.

From she got mad which was protrayed by 刘玲玲 till the movie's next climax was quite long, as this portion of the movie was seemingly trying to add some slapstick comical moments, abit trying too hard. Then somehow, 阿龙 budged into 莲花's flat ... assuming he knows she was the one he conned years back. He was in debt and this place was somehow intime to be his refuge.

The ending left us clueless with no ending. 6/10

八月十日, 星期日

Saturday was a mahjong day, ended up $18 richer, should have been much more as in the last round, lost a fair bit. Seems like a lot of things to do today, the very much anticipated Olympics finally started, OR and WR getting broken as the clock kept ticking.

Italy v Korea, this evening, "Live" on ch 605. Looking forward to watch the youngster in play, montolivio, giovinco, aquaresca, etc. There is also Charity Shield at 10 pm tonight, not forgetting Spurs playing Roma in a friendly ... Same time !

It seems inevitable that it will rain as I write but I really need a run in the evening, please stay cool and cloudy ! Thinking whether should I make my way to ECP for the run or just do a few rounds at the park ... Hmmmm

Watching "Love Guru" now, hope to get a few decent laughs out of it. Expecting crappy one liner, tonnes of sexual innuendos, illogical 2 persons conversations, slapstick action and of course Jessica Alba.

钱不够用2

Another double movie weekend. After a disappointing Mummy 3, watching this 1.5 star "Life" rated sequel wasn't encouraging. In addition, J Neo's last 2 outings of the Ah Long show and Follow the Law weren't really good. And at 126 mins, very long consider it a local production.

A good start to the movie as "We are Singapore" was belted out in Hokkien and CGI style. It wasn't hilarous but a lively start to give a taste of what was coming ahead.

The main theme of this sequel revolved around the Yang family, a mother and his 3 sons, Henry, Jack and Mark. Typically, it will see the rise and fall of the 3 sons. Story was plain old same with a slight twist in the end. Henry, the eldest, married with 3 daugthers, was deem as useless with little education, worked in some company that he 打死不走. Jack, married with a ASK "bitchy" daughter, was the most well-to-do and made his pile in buying/selling properties. Mark, married to Vivian Lai tried hard to earn lots of $$$, did well when he was selling some pollen MLM way.

Henry, always wanted to strike it rich, was persuaded by Mark to join his company to sell pollen. But without any $$$, mother gave him $2K to start off, and seems everything goes well, Henry did very well, became top sales and bought a car.

When things goes well, everything are steady pom pi pi even though might not see eye to eye. Then things started to fall apart, Jack's plan to earn a few million through a enbloc failed, and even worse he used the company OD to buy the properties. And on hand, he bought a bungalow and drove a BMW. Mark's pollen had numerous people admitted to hospital. He has $500K of stocks on hand which was simply worthless and one of his sales, seemingly a Pai Kia was chasing for $100K. Henry was as bad, he loaded a lot of pollen and got stucked too.

Mother gave each some $$$ to tide them over though too little. The Pai Kia was breathing down Mark's neck and out of desperate V Lai took $$$ from her company without Mark knowing. Mark thought the $$$ was from V Lai's father. Eventually, she was jailed for a year. Her suffering wife character was vividly depicted in several scenes.

Then things got worse when mother was diagnose with diabetes and have 老人痴呆. The 2 scenes that depicted her 老人痴呆 was quite hilarous. Then taking of the mother take its toll on the bros, J and M decided to send mother to 老人院, and of course H will be the "baddie" to take her there. Though 老人痴呆, she was clear that the place was a 老人院 and couldn't take it and fainted.

Mother was in critical condition, staying at a $8K a day private room in Si Ren Hospital. It came that she need to be operated on, then came another horrifying news when Jack's wife and daughter was in a car accident when they were trying to shuffle between 七月歌台 shows. The daughter was in critical condition, needing O- blood but the only O- blood was to be used on his mother.

Then a O- blood physical grab and snatch started, J wife ran to try to secure the blood for her daughter. H and M were there as well, and they questioned J on who to give this blood to. It was just infront of mother's bed and she somehow heard it and ended her own life by unplugging whatever cord that was attached to her. This allow J daughter to be saved.

The movie tries hard to put in jokes and funny elements into scenes that linked the story together or even scenes that seemingly was slotted in just for the laughter rather than the story. The catchy hokkien dialogue, P*P slamming, Gahmen policies, quick witted lines and MTV style scenes to induce the melancholiness, somehow still able to make it an enjoyable 2 hours. 8/10

The Mummy 3: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Although I do not remember did I watch Mummy 1 and 2, or how good it was ? This instalment is truly crap. The idea sounded great but somehow when we are watching it, everything was just so ... so ... so ...

It started with a too lengthy introduction on how J Li, the ruthless Emperor on how he was being cursed by M Yeoh. Then it flashed into the movie present where Alex, the son of the great adventurer, Rick O Connell founded the Emperor tomb. He was supposing to be studying somewhere, no mention how he founded J Li.

He did it seemingly with some professor help which was in cahoots with some General, by Anthony Wong, which looked like have much more screen time than J Li where most of the time he was in CGI. The general on the other hand also tricked Rick and his wife Evelyn to escort the "Can't remembe what Shangri-la jewel" to shanghai.

Thus, letting Rick to find out that Alex was there. With J Li dug out at the Museum and Rick bringing the jewel to the Professor, It was time that the General appeared and use the jewel to revive J Li. This sparked off the action trail to stop J Li to get his eternity back ( *Just only because you still can kill him by piercing his heart with some dagger ) and also revived his so called invincible tarracota army.

J Li need to go to some temple in Himalaya to put the jewel on some structure, this will show the obvious route to the fountain of "buay si". So Rick and company were out to stop him, he got his friend to fly them there. AND J LI AND GENERAL ALSO GOT FLEW THERE, IN A SIMILAR PROPERLLOR PLANE, ONLY DIFF WAS IT SEATED AT LEAST A PLATOON OF SOLDIERS !!!

A quick mention of the beautiful Isabella Leong, daughter of M Yeoh. She was with Rick and with her help, she yelled some "Yetish" language and a few Yeti came along to help out at the temple. But of course, Rick and company couldn't stopped J Li yet and Rick even got injured badly.

So they now need to go to find fountain of "buay si" to stop J Li and to save Rick. They did manage to save Rick with M Yeoh's help, but couldn't stop J Li walking into the pool of water then from there the screen showed 3 of this face and this morphed into a 3 headed gigantic dragon.

Then came the final showdown, at the tomb where J Li revived his crappy army, which in the movie present context, it didn't seem the spear wielding army was that invincible, as they fall into parts and break easily with slashes or from the gun shots.

M Yeoh also revived those "good brothers" who was killed by J Li and they came in the form of skeletons, somehow also have the upper hand when they fight. One even tried to help the other to put back his head when it was chopped off ... *Dialogue was in chinese*

J Li saw that his army was losing, shapeshift into some monstrous creature and sped across and into his tomb where he tried to use his elemental powers to destroy them. But Rick and Alex was there to pierce him .... 6/10