Transience

Recently, I acquired this book : much thanks to Ooi Kok Hin for delivering it to me from the states in a really cute little parcel. Appreciate it.  Firstly, I should probably state my biases : I generally prefer English reading materials, and very rarely do I actually purchase any reading materials voluntarily. I write primarily in English, and if you ask me to write a proper Malay essay right now I'd probably fail terribly.  Some of these articles were written by my friends, i.e. people I actually know in real life, or, I suppose, people I've known over Facebook that I have been in contact with over the years, or at the very minimal, have seen their names on Facebook due to their Facebook activities, ahem. There may be one or two that I really am not familiar with. Part of the reason I actually bought it is because it's a compilation of my peers' writings, and also, because I was curious, and sort of in awe they'd got their works published, something ...

I really wanted to like this movie, but there were some aspects that left me troubled. What caught my interest was this all-Japanese cast in all-Japanese medium movie was directed by an Iranian. I was not familiar with any of his previous works. So, without delving into the synopsis or any review beforehand, I just went ahead with the movie. The whole movie involves a lot of still camera, no soundtrack, a lot of ambient sounds, characters sitting around and talking, a kind of minimalism reminiscent of movies like Before Sunrise and Before Sunset that I really adore. The first scene was interesting because you hear someone talking but the person wasn't on screen, and the whole frame was just a slew of people minding their own business in a bar. It's as if the camera was shot from a person's point of view sitting at one of the tables in the bar and you're tuned in to someone's phone conversation. Much of the other shots were also composed of "close"...

Firstly, I should make my biases clear, but I'm pretty sure it's obvious. I've seen the Sam Raimi trilogy and of course, I will be comparing it to the reboot. After all, the reboot came a little bit too soon after the trilogy. Most of what follows will probably just be my personal preferences and gripes. Warning, spoilers abound. 1. Peter Parker I liked the doe-eyed Tobey Maguire more as the day-to-day Peter Parker. He's the nerdy, unsure of himself, normal guy. Andrew Garfield's cheeky boyish look doesn't make me buy the Peter Parker-ness. Andrew Garfield looks like he belongs to some teen series. 2. Mary Jane versus Gwen Stacy I hated Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. She's completely helpless like the traditional damsel in distress and sometimes her whining about her relationship with Peter Parker, seems, idk, petty, and sometimes she seems to not understand his predicament of being Spider-man and not being able to be there for her all th...

First ever anime review, and yes, it deserves a review, and I deserve a distraction lol. One more until I'm done with third year. Sheer fabulousness I've never read the manga, so I watched the anime without any background knowledge of what the gist was about. Instantly, I was captured. JoJo just pushes all the right buttons for a shounen anime and classic anime fan like me. I grew up with the likes of Dragon Ball, Speed Racer, as well as Western animations like He-Man and Conan the Barbarian, and this anime had it all going at the same time, with the story line and the characters, the art and animation. It was the very essence that I liked about old heroic cartoons that I held dear to my inner child. In terms of art, the bold lines and bulky men that reminds me of Rambo was something you hardly see in modern animes. Shingeki No Kyojin came close with the bold line style, but its characters were slim and never beefy. And that splash of color seems like a surreal work of...

Yesterday, I finished my CPU Final Physics exam! So, my girls and I went for a movie night. We wanted so badly to watch X-Men, but the seats were out, so we settled for Green Lantern at the first two rows. Oh my God, I will not be sitting at those front rows ever again, it was a strain on my eyes and a strain on my neck, and on my ears. Green Lantern started off kinda cheesy, with the "legend" background voice over of the story setting. It was like, lame, but layan je since it was from a comic book anyway, so it was supposed to sound cheesy. Then, yaddy yadda, meet Hal Jordan, aka, hot stuff. So far, all movies with Ryan Reynolds in it that I've watched just have him at least half-naked. The story started off quite badly in terms of plot, but the ending and the CGI doesn't disappoint. Go watch it for Ryan Reynolds and the spectacle. The villain does instill fear even in the viewers. Or was it because I was seated so up front with my peeps? Anyhow, 5/10 for stor...

Nope, not my name! It's another book I've read for my ISU. This time around, I was not organized as I was with Infidel. Although I didn't do a page-by-page log for that novel, but after reading it through once, I was still able to retain information and locate the quotes that I had wanted with quite ease. Ardalan's was a bit hard, as the flow was not as coherent as Hirsi Ali's. In terms of writing style, I was more comfortable with Hirsi Ali's. Hirsi was also more fiery when it came to her arguments, and her experiences were told in a matter-of-fact morbid recollections and sometimes an angry tone. Ardalan's was more affectionate and romanticized, and although she went through an internal turmoil, it had less of the articulated severity in comparison with Hirsi Ali. It was quite docile and almost akin to Nafisi's Reading Lolita. (I started reading a few chapters and I just couldn't bear with the flowery language). Basically, the book is an autobiog...

This is, I suppose, a pre-examination of the novel I will be doing for my English ISU. A sort of reader-response critical approach, or a collection of quotes from the book, if you may call it so. I've just finished reading it, and somehow, I don't believe in destinies (you know all those chosen one fairytale yaddyadda), although I do believe in fate, the selection of this novel felt "destined". I had given my shortlisted books to my lecturer and he had chosen this for me, and looking at the various questions I've had and my most recent posts both on my Facebook and Blog, somewhat relates to the questions Ayaan herself had in Infidel. My first impression of the book was, yep, it was hard. Because the setting was in Somalia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Netherlands, which I have never read books with settings such as these. Britain and America made up my staple reading materials, and recently, I've just added a few titles from Indian writers to my list. Feminism, ...