Zestful One

Review : Speed Racer (no spoilers)

Posted by IcedNyior on May 8, 2008  |  3 Comments

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. :X

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.

That rainy day..

Posted by IcedNyior on March 19, 2008  |  No Comments

Remember how heavy the rain was last Tuesday (yesterday)?

Well I didn’t go to class on Tuesday (4-8pm) because I was sick – sneezing non stop since Tuesday morning due to a bad cold. Then it started raining heavily in the afternoon. I mean like really heavily, cats and dogs. Even my mom asked me not to go to class beause the rain was too heavy to drive long distance. Very loud thunder and lighting thrown in.

At one point there was this really bright flash of light and loud thunder and there was a trip. Luckily my laptop wasn’t plugged in at this time. Had to flick the switch on the power box – whatever it’s called. Then everything went back to normal. Or was it? First thing I noticed was that the internet was down. Went back out of my room to check the modem/router and found out that the modem had no lights. Electrocuted.

Oh, then my mom got a call from my youngest sis. She (my sis) tumpang-ed her tuition teacher to Centerpoint and as she was exiting the car, the opened the door and a car langgar-ed the door. Yep, pure carelessness. She didn’t even look out for a car before opening the door. Typical of her. My parents were pissed! My dad was like “all of you is like that, always accident. Feli (my sis) doesn’t even drive also can have this kind of accident.”

Mom had to drive to go pick her up while G and I were bored at home. No internet maa. So we wanted to go down to watch TV. Went downstairs and tried to on the TV. To no avail, electrocuted also. *sigh* Which added to my mom’s pissiness (is there such a word?) when she came back. Because the TV is her only source of entertainment at home.

Well, we managed to get a new modem & fix up the Internet that night. So yey for that! If not, I’d have to resort to watching all my DVDs which i downloaded and never watched. LOL!

p/s: Zestful Eats has been updated (after being on a haitus for a while). Go check it out!