Bersih 3.0 Rally Possible Unpopular Opinion

Okay, look. I don't get why DBKL won't let the Bersih guys do their sit-in rally at Dataran Merdeka. Look at it this way. If you guys give them a proper place to do what they planned to do, then no one would be sitting around in the streets and clogging up the traffic. Then we can go about with our weekend activities. Even the Minister of Home Affairs said Bersih are of no threat to national security (and no traction, but that's not the point), so what is there to be afraid of? Yes, I get it that huge gatherings without proper authorization are illegal, but let me get to that.

I don't suppose people have forgotten the chaos that erupted last year, what with the police throwing smoke grenades into hospitals and launching tear gas into people's faces. I don't really know much about Bersih, but based on what I've read on Wikipedia about the Bersih 2.0 rally last year, it seems as though the people in Bersih are trying to resolve things with the Government as peacefully as possible. They asked for the streets, no. They asked for the stadium instead of the streets, which sounds pretty reasonable to me, NO. COME ON, and then you throw a tantrum when they take it to the public streets. Plus, it's not as if they were going all 21 Guns in the rally, they were just doing a peaceful protest march. But noooo, someone just had to get the police force and FRU involved.

This year, things may be a lot worse, no matter how much the riot squad are prepared to kamikaze their asses into it. The General Elections are approaching, and no doubt, the Bersih guys are going to want to make a huge ass impact this time around. Not that it's going to be difficult, the world is an open field, thanks to the power of the Internet (and Google's public DNS, WikiLeaks etc.). We have gotten to the point where the people with access to Internet hardly rely on print media anymore when it comes to political issues and have taken to the Internet to find out what the fuck is really going on. But seriously, as prone to exaggeration as some Internet articles may be, people would rather believe the Malaysian Insider than read The Star nowadays. Has anyone seen the 50 Cent (RM 1.50) thing? HILARIOUS.

Anyway. In simple terms, all I'm saying is this: Let the Bersih guys have a proper venue for their rally. I should think the people from Bersih would not be as stupid as to jeopardize the entire thing by starting a riot. If it's a peaceful sit-in protest, then let it be that way. Say what you have to say and don't incite anything that goes with the notion of violence. Let the rakyat judge for themselves who to listen to, and the Government should also listen to what the people has to say for once. You guys have gathered enough negative publicity from foreign media, don't make it worse. No, the whole "Don't give a shit about what others think, just be yourself" phrase does not apply here. You're not a 15-year-old teenage girl.

On a more personal note, why does Bersih always choose the *nicest* dates for their rallies...?! Last year, they did it on my birthday. Total buzzkill. This year, they do it the day before Avenged Sevenfold are slated to perform. COME ON. You JERKS.

War Horse

"Young Albert enlists to serve in World War I after his beloved horse is sold to the cavalry. Albert's hopeful journey takes him out of England and across Europe as the war rages on." -IMDb

Official movie poster (yes, it's a great Christmas movie, well done)

After about more than a year's worth of whining about "WHEN THE HECK IS THE MOVIE COMING TO MALAYSIA?", I finally watched War Horse. Even though the entire movie is centered on that ruddy horse, Joey, it still messed with my head and feelings for so many reasons...ugh, war movies. Remember Braveheart? FREEDOOOOOOOM....!...of tears. 

Jeremy Irvine plays Albert, Joey's human-half in life and is actually pretty good at it. Taking into account that the movie was based on a children's book, think of the love and unbreakable bond shared by Albert and Joey as would that between a child and his beloved pet. It's sweet yet impassioned in all the right ways. I think I just used a wrong word. 'Impassioned'. I hope you're not thinking of Daniel Radcliffe riding a horse naked right now. 

Bromance with a difference: Jeremy Irvine as Albert (L) and Joey. 

So is this movie worth watching? Yes, for entertainment, historical and moral values. Speaking from a mainstream viewer's point of view, well...let's just say the only love story here is the one between the boy and his horse. But there are loads of bombs and gunshots though. I may have lost interest at one point (same case as when I watched Inglorious Basterds but that's a story for another time), but I'm glad I kept watching. War movies reminded me of how much devastation can be brought to every single person. If watching it on-screen looks bad enough, imagine being there when shit actually went down. "The war takes everything from everyone." Politicians, take note.

Plus, it's also really, really inspiring, It's like one of those Chicken Soup books that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, it's just a story about a horse's journey through World War I and how he found his way back home. A story of courage, of love, of an unbreakable friendship. Whether or not Albert survived the war, you'd have to see for yourself. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to talk about the acting in a movie review, yes? There are a lot of people involved in this movie, man, and they did a really good job. But the horses, ultimately, stole the show. That's some serious equine acting there and I can't for the life of me imagine why they weren't given a special Oscar. Seriously, what were you guys doing at the Academy?

Officer of the British Cavalry, from L-R:
Benedict Cumberbatch rockin' a 'stache, Patrick Kennedy
and Loki. Okay, no, Tom Hiddleston. And horses.

I vaguely remember learning in Film Studies class that Steven Spielberg optimizes the mise-en-scene technique in film-making, which in my terms means pretty things on screen all the time. Or whatever. I think it's supposed to refer to the way things are positioned and placed in each scene so that they correlate ...or something like that. What I'm trying to say is, War Horse is really pretty. I especially love the cavalry charge, the way the entire sequence was executed was just so...painfully and dramatically beautiful. Benedict Cumberbatch's incessant hollers of "BE BRAVE!" is a nice touch though.

I hope that's helpful enough. Damn, I really suck at doing movie reviews. That sounded more like a retarded commentary than anything discernible. So let me leave you with a nice picture of the sexy men of War Horse.

The men of War Horse, clockwise from top-left: Robert Emms, Toby Kebbell, Matt Milne, Patrick Kennedy, Tom Hiddleston, Steven Speilberg, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeremy Irvine, David Kross 

The Syndicate, a new British TV series

"5 poor workers in a supermarket in Leeds whose lives turn upside down after they jointly win the lottery." - Sourced from IMDb

Ah. Winning the lottery. It's the ultimate dream, isn't it? Millions of dollars waiting to be spent, to be lavished with...heck, I could even bathe in all that cash money. All the mansions and fast cars and clothes and shit that I could buy, right at my fingertips. Not just reachable, instantly available. Everything that I have ever wanted and craved for.  

The Syndicate is a new British drama TV series starring Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films), Lorraine Bruce, Matthew Lewis (the frog-turned-prince Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter films), Joanna Page and Matthew McNulty (Seth from yet another brilliant British TV series Misfits). 

The cast of The Syndicate (From L-R: Lorraine Bruce, Matthew Lewis,
Timothy Spall, Joanna Page & Matthew McNulty)

Drama is the right way to describe the pilot of the series (it was aired on the 27th of March 2012 in the UK). We are introduced to each character and a brief background detail so we know exactly where their lives stand before they'd won the lottery. This is one of the things I really like about British TV series, characters' backgrounds and personalities do not go over-the-top like some US ones do. With the British, things really do look 'real' and you don't just believe, you KNOW there are people like how they are portrayed as by the actors. I may be biased because I have always preferred British actors' training to the Americans' 'method' acting, but that's just my own (unpopular) opinion.  

The asthmatic Stuart (L) and Jamie (R).

In the first episode, the staff of the local Right U supermarket are faced with an uncertain future when the store is bought out by a larger corporation and threatened with closure. Desperate for cash and faced with the prospect of losing his young family if he doesn't get cash fast, assistant manager Stuart Bradley (brilliantly played by Matthew McNulty) and his younger brother Jamie (Matthew Lewis) decides to take matters into their own hands, resulting in unforeseen consequences for the store's manager, Bob (Timothy Spall). 

And baby makes four.

Fate doesn't seem to understand that it's a rhetorical question when you ask, "Can things get any worse?" Fate really loves a challenge. So what does It do? Fate (and destiny) dumps 18 million pounds onto their laps. Now, to answer the ultimate question: Is the money going to be the answer to all their problems, or is life about to get a whole lot more complicated?" 

The lottery syndicate
From L-R: Stuart, Leanne (Joanna Page), Denise (Lorraine Bruce) and Jamie.

It's a little too intense for me but I'm actually looking forward to future episodes. I am especially excited about the next episode, [SPOILER ALERT] when the overweight Denise's husband leaves her and she screams, "I CAN CHANGE!" and then goes off for plastic surgery. Stuart and Jamie are also in some serious shit for taking matters into their own hands, coz the cop sure is one hell of a Sherlock. [SPOILER END] Also, why is Leanne so apprehensive about the media coverage? 

We'll find out very soon in the next few episodes, I hope.  

Everyday I'm Shufflin': Shit iTunes Spews

I can be quite a doozy sometimes, and this is gonna be one of those times.
If anyone still cared about Twitter TTs, this was trending worldwide yesterday, amidst the "#stopkony"s and "Invisible Children"s.

#20songsonshuffle

I thought it'd be very annoying for my followers if I were to spam my Twitter timeline and theirs with 20 tweets all at once (thought I do that all the time, like when I'm watching a movie and during the World Cup, HOLY SHIT that was so long ago) but I'm itching to do it.

I have got 2,563 songs in my iTunes (and it's going to take a total of 6.8 hours to go through it all), ranging from rock, pop and jazz to film score pieces, Broadway rock opera and...(hahaha) opera. Goodness, I sound like a music snob. 

So let's do it. 
1. Avril Lavigne - Remember When (from Goodbye Lullaby)
2. Daft Punk - The Game Has Changed (from OST Tron: Legacy)
3. Coldplay - Till Kingdom Come (from X&Y)
4. Dashboard Confessional - These Bones (from The Shade of Poison Trees)
5. Acafellas - I Wanna Sex You Up (from Glee)
6. Joe Brooks - Feel the Sunshine (from Constellation Me)
7. Coldplay - Up In Flames (from Mylo Xyloto)
8. The Script - If You Ever Come Back (from Science & Faith)
9. Henry Jackman - Rise Up To Rule (from OST X-Men: First Class)
10. Glee Cast feat. Gwyneth Paltrow - Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah) (from Glee: The Music, Vol. 5)
11. Glee Cast - We Need A Little Christmas (from Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album)
12. The Fray - 1961 (from Scars & Stories)
13. Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth (Wedding Version) (from OST The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part I)
14. HIM - Behind the Crimson Door (from Dark Light)
15. Brad Paisley feat. Steve Wariner - More Than Just This Song (from Play: The Guitar Album)
16. Avenged Sevenfold - Lost (from Avenged Sevenfold)
17. Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights (from OST Garden State)
18. Dashboard Confessional - Swiss Army Romance (from Swiss Army Romance)
19. Trivium - Inception of the End (from In Waves)
20. Reeve Carney feat. Bono & The Edge, et al. - Rise Above 1 (from OST Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark)

Well, that was fun.

I'm going to be reviewing the album where the last song from the shuffle came from, so...stay tuned (damn, that's so clichéd)! 

"Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck": The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

First of all: Why isn't the movie shown here yet? Wait, don't answer that.

Not for the faint-hearted

I read the books a couple of months before the movie came out in the US so I was SO excited for the movie. The first half of the book was a lot of financial mumbo-jumbo I had to read multiple times before I could actually get it but straight after that, WHOOSH. Finished all 3 books in 2 weeks. And yes, I've got the Swedish version of the movies too, I just never got around to watching them. 


So...back to the movie. I just filched a mini summary off of IMDb to start things off.

"Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for forty years by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a young computer hacker."

Sexy bespectacled Bond is sexy. 

Sounds simple enough. Not. The movie is, in actual fact, one hell of a roller-coaster ride with plenty of violent twists and brutal turns to churn the contents of your stomach into repulsive acid. Someone stop me before I exaggerate even more. 


The movie is about 2 hours and 38 minutes long and I think it's wonderfully paced (I don't know about non-readers, but hey, David Fincher did not read them either and HE MADE THE FRICKIN' MOVIE). I mean, yeah, it got a little confusing when (SPOILER ALERT) Mikael and Lisbeth started rattling off the Leviticus verses and their corresponding murders (SPOILER END) but other than that, I had no problems with keeping up with the plot. 

Obviously, I didn't make this myself. [Source]

The film's opening sequence, an abstract tar-and-ooze 3-D animation of sorts, was amazing; beautifully haunting yet bizarrely brutal at the same time, thanks in part to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' version of 'The Immigrant Song'. The soundtrack is amazing, as anyone would expect from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (they won an Oscar for Best Original Score with The Social Network). Also, did anyone notice the hornets and flying dragons amidst the sculpted melting faces? Foreshadowing, guys. AW YEAH. 
Note: Someone's posted it up on YouTube here. GO SEE IT.

"I want you to help me catch a killer of women."

Daniel Craig was surprisingly...normal, I half-expected him to start shooting back when someone shot at him in the woods, and it was weirdly amusing when he began to whine about the bullet wound. Until Lisbeth decided to shut him up (weirdly good chemistry, by the way). The movie has quite a strong cast; there's Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music! That was so long ago!), Yorick van Wageningen and of course, Rooney 'thank-God-she-got-cast-as-Lisbeth-Salander' Mara. 

"Hold still, you f***ing pussy. Stop whining."

Rooney Mara brought the character to life with a perfect balance of intelligence, insanity and the straightforward, deadpan charm that is Lisbeth Salander. And man, is she tough. I especially loved it when she beat up the guy who stole her laptop and ran off just in time to get into the train. Talk about perfect timing. 

It's supposed to move. But the picture's not moving! 

(MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) But no one wants to know that. Everyone wants to know what went down in the infamous rape scene and the retaliation that followed. It was brutal, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. But I really respect the guy who played Bjurman. It must be so traumatizing (I heard he locked himself in his hotel room and cried for an entire day after shooting that scene, that poor man)! The retaliation is equally horrible, okay? The tattoo...the frickin' huge dildo and when she kicked that thing into his ass, OH MY GOD...I can't even talk about it without feeling a virtual pain in those regions. Owww. (SPOILER END)

From this...

What I love about Rooney Mara is how she gave Lisbeth Salander a kind of quiet sadness behind the tough exterior. Like, when she was waiting in the hospital coz her guardian had a stroke. In the train, all curled up. When she saw Mikael and Erika hugging and shit and she threw his gift into the trash and sped away on her bike. My poor shipper heart!   

...to this. Um. Okay. 

The book didn't really focus a lot on the emotional aspect of things (it was a lot of technical stuff and long-winded explanations, albeit useful to the plot) and I have a one-track mind, I don't over-analyze shit, I just read 'em. Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander exactly as I had imagined her to be. Noomi Rapace was too tall and womanly for Salander, to be honest.


Also, I gotta give props to whoever did the editing. I'm not one for technicality and stuff but the way the scenes inter-cut (SPOILER ALERT) to and fro between Mikael and Lisbeth when it dawned upon them who the serial murderers were (SPOILER END) was really clever, okay? There wasn't much dialogue, you have to actually concentrate and focus, it doesn't make you another product of the idiot box. Also, the flashback scenes were beautifully done, especially when Blomkvist was reading through the case files. 
Update: The guys who did the editing won an Oscar. =D

Shit's about to go down.

So, all in all, I'd probably give this movie...9 out of 10. I'm not giving it that because I loved the books and biased or anything. No, seriously, go watch it, especially if you have not read the books. It sucks when you already know what's going to happen next, coz all you do is watch it go down. So, when something shocking happens, you just go...meh. Not fun. 

WATCH IT. 

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

Testing 1, 2, 3...?

Yup, there you go. The most epic thing anyone has ever seen in their lives.

The ultimate superhero movie that will make you shit bricks until your underwear rips.

Every Marvel fan boy's fantasy wet dream...and fan girls all over are clamouring to save their exploding ovaries.

I'm actually crying so hard inside over the sheer perfection of that little bitch called Loki, in all of his Asgardian pirate glory. It's going to be interesting to see what Thor has to go through throughout the movie, what with his brother being the bitchiest villain of all time. Seriously, Loki, what the hell is your problem? So what if Odin adopted you? You should be grateful he didn't make you a slave or something. He treated you like his own SON. Geez.

Also, Cap's readjustment to the world is going to be an emo burst of flavour, I mean, look at his depressed little form. All the people he has ever known is dead and he only has the punching bag for company.

I don't know if I can handle all of those feels in the cinema.

The movie opens in 2-D and glorious 3-D on April 27 in Malaysia and...other dates in other countries.