The Zestful IcedNyior

Thanks to Fly FM’s Night Flight, I won four free tickets to watch Speed Racer at GSC, One Utama just now. So I brought along Aree, Pam and Jazzy (but Jazzy couldn’t make it and the bf is sick). The movie started at 9pm but we went in a bit late coz we had dinner at Zuup first (their New England Clam Chowder is to die for).

Synopsis from Yahoo! Movies : To Speed Racer, nothing says “family values” like barreling down a racetrack at face-flattening speeds. So when mega-mogul Royalton offers the young driver a corporate sponsorship, Speed turns him down. An enraged Royalton tells Speed he’ll never win a race again, and he’ll send ninjas after Speed to insure it. It’s up to Speed, his best girl Trixie in her pink helicopter, and the enigmatic and brilliant Racer X to ensure Speed’s victory in “The Crucible”: the same perilous cross-country free-for-all that killed his brother. Will Speed follow in his big bro’s tire tracks?

At first, I didn’t really have high expectations for this movie because I read a review somewhere that it wasn’t so good and I never did like racing cars stories. Plus, comic/cartoon series based movies sometimes are a flop.

However, Speed Racer blew me away. Directed by Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, the same people who brought The Matrix, it was a fast paced flashy movie combining well known and loved characters with a good story and fantastic effects. Not to mention a good lineup of actors and actresses namely, Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, Kick Gurry.

Edit : Oh yea, i forgot to mention that it’s Rain’s Hollywood debut as well. Rain (whose real name is Jung Ji Hoon) is a South Korean singer/actor. Rain’s role is a Japanese driver who teamed up with Speed Racer and Racer X to race in the Crucible - like an underground race thats very dangerous and full of cheating contestants. KInda weird how they never mentioned him in the synopsis tho.

I loved how they combined comic book/cartoon style drawings with real life. Its really like reading a comic book with the characters having flashbacks and when the hero looks at the heroin, the background becomes blurry with colourful hearts. LOL! The CGI of the racetracks and scenes were also fantastic. Not too outrageous that it looks so fake (like most Malaysian movies attempts at CGI) but very creative.

All in all, great movie, good storyline and plot (I think aree felt like crying at some point) and superb cast - like the very yummylicious Matthew Fox and cute, adorable rain.

Rating : 5 stars

p/s: Jules of FlyFm asked if it was the movie with the talking dog. Well there isn’t any talking dog but there is a cute monkey.

Yey! I don’t remember having a blog award ever since I moved to this zestful.org URL. I do remember evie giving me an award but that was on my old domain.

Thanks lots to Syura for the Special Friend award!

If you have been keeping updated on my pacmee (type ON COCONUTICE to 22700 - for maxis/hotlink users only) or noticed my SMS updates on the right, then you would have known that my bed broke this morning. Yea, don’t laugh!

No, I did not have a all-night sex marathon. I wish! My bed has been creaky, shaky and uneven for months now. Not only that, it has been broken slightly here and there and this morning, it decided to fall apart.

So this evening after class (which was yet ANOTHER waste of time), I went with mum to go and check out beds. We went to Courts then IKEA and finally Harvey Norman. Wow! They really did have amazing stuff there.

There was this really nice 6 seater dining table made out of black metal and a top of smooth black granite (like in the picture of the counter top from American Home Craft Inc. Come to think of it, there are many more nice stuff at AHCI like windows (with a lifetime warranty that it wont break) and gorgeous wood kitchen cabinets.

Anyway, I should be getting a new solid divan with a headboard and thick mattress soon. Yey!

Perhaps I should talk about my projects. Since its just about all I’ve been doing these few days. Except for a few instances that I manage to escape this heavy weight on my mind and shoulders (and fingers) and take breaks.

First is my major project which is a timetable kinda of system where it  generates a timetable to match students & tutors for extra classes (tutorials) to help weak students. Static website done, now just waiting for the database part. Got munak to  help me on this. yey! thanks! such a lifesaver

Next is my Character animation project which I have to design a character - the Lego Man which I wrote about a week or so ago - which will tell the short story of how Mr Lego tries to escape from his box. Finished the character already. We just learned about skinning in 3dsmax so it should be time for me to start doing movement for Mr Lego.

Finally is my virtual reality project in which I have to design an indoor scene. What you see in the pic above (click for a bigger pic) is one of the two ‘rooms’ I’m creating. It has two stories with stairs leading up to the upper floor and the rectangle boxes are actually tiang.

The perspective of the ‘room’ looks weird because I havent added textures - which are colours and patterns - on the walls so everything looks weird. My friend says it looks like a dungeon. Come to think of it, he’s right. LOL!

Still got 1 more ‘room’ to finish. Then have to create all the furniture in 3ds max, import into my ‘rooms’, adjust, resize and move. Then hopefully I’ll be done.

Yea, three projects to complete in a month. Die or not liddat?