I feel compelled to ramble about all the recent fuss over piracy, SOPA, and the shutdown of major filehost Megaupload… specifically how the latter relates to the Japanese media fandom. (It’s almost 2AM at the point of starting this, so here’s hoping I make sense. haha)
*Edit; realised a line’s gone missing somehow: Well, SOPA and the Megaupload shutdown aren’t directly related but since they’re kinda sorta related it’s just easier to lump them all together in one rambly blog post. haha
The Megaupload shutdown affects me because, you see, a large segment of people who follow Japanese media rely heavily on filehosts like Megaupload (known as “MU” to fans). Fans in Japan who are kind enough to record and upload TV shows (often immediately after they air) – variety shows, TV dramas, etc. – to a variety of hosting sites, of which MU is perhaps the most popular. (Or second most popular at the moment, maybe. I haven’t exactly conducted a detailed study of filehost popularity amongst J-media fans.) Thus, fans like me who are not based in Japan have the opportunity to download and watch these TV programmes to which they would otherwise simply not have access.*
I’ve raved about it a little before, but let me rave again.
The BBC did a a really really good job here. I liked the first season a great deal and the second season was just as good – though I still feel having a second season rather detracted from the awesome ending of the first. (That may have been just about the only time I actually liked a hanging ending and thought it a great way to end.)
It feel a little pointless to review a show after its run is over but oh well.
Anna, Wei-ling and I managed to catch the last showing of Malaysian Girls at PenangPAC today. Synopsis from the page at the KLPAC website:
The musical pits two camps against each other. On one side you have Serenity Billion – the person who started the Malaysian Girls pageant to seek and define a uniquely Malaysian ideal of beauty. On the other side you have the flashy Ray Sanjay and the go-getting Jasmin Hibiscus who have bigger and bolder ideas. Just how ugly can it get?
Malaysian Girls was quite a decent effort, although as far as local productions go I prefer Broadway Parodies and its sequel. (Unfortunately, I never got to see the Lat musical or Secret Life of Nora, both of which were much larger scale productions and I’ve heard particularly good things of the former.)
Changed the theme (click on the preview images to see the full pics) and decided left the old posts from 2010/11 there, though those won’t have proper preview pics since I’m too lazy to create preview pics for all 365 from the last round and attach each one to its respective post. Anyway, it looks snazzier now!
URL is the same: http://365.elvenstar.net (clicking the screenshot above will also take you straight there)
I’ve only seen about half of the first Mission: Impossible, haven’t seen the second one (which is reputedly bad?) and though I did watch the third installment I don’t remember a single thing about it. Really. Except that Tom Cruise was in it.
So going into MI4 was a bit like seeing any of the MI series for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to expect, only that it ought to be decent at the very least since Brad Bird (Iron Giant, The Incredibles) was at the helm and Michael Giacchino was providing the music.
IMDb sums up the story in one sentence: The IMF is shut down when it’s implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization’s name.
I find it quite amusing that the previous Sherlock Holmes movie was the first film I watched (in the cinema) in 2010, and now the sequel is the last film I see (in the cinema) in 2011.
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.), still sarcastic and still eccentric, is caught up in the investigation of a series of bombings and is hot on the tail of one Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). Dr. Watson (Jude Law) finds himself somewhat reluctantly dragged into the whole affair (poor fellow has his honeymoon interrupted thanks to that). Holmes and Watson traipse around Europe – well, mostly France, Germany and Switzerland – with the help of a gypsy woman (Noomi Rapace) to stop Moriarty’s grand plan to cause another world war.
Square came up to Penang for the weekend early in December and we wandered around Georgetown a bit for photos. Our plans got a little derailed because there was a bike race which meant part of Georgetown would be closed off or jammed. Attempted to make up for it by taking her round a little on Friday night (the race was on Saturday) after she arrived.
Didn’t have my camera with me so the iPhone had to suffice. Got a couple of not-bad pics.
Seriously, do people really stay at some of these tiny old hotels? I suppose they must, if the places are still open…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than one local film production in cinemas in a year (because I totally ignore all those silly pontianak movies and whatnot). This year, I’ve seen two. That’s new. haha
I prefer to spend more time spewing my two cents’ worth of opinion about the movie than summarising the movie itself, so here is GSC’s synopsis:
Set in Petaling Street in 1908, it tells of a hokkien mee seller (Mark Lee) who finds himself entangled in deadly battles with skilled fighters. Little did he know that he is in possession of a lost treasure map linked to the Qing Dynasty and must refrain himself from consummating his marriage to master the “Virgin Kung Fu” skills to overcome his opponents.
This term I seem to have quite a number of er, amusing bits in my students’ final exams and assignments…
One student was obviously at a loss in the exam and resorted to drawing sad (un)smiley faces in place of an actual answer. Kid, you have my sympathy, but no marks, sorry.
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There were lots of spelling errors in the exam, like “over-the-showder” instead of “over-the-shoulder”, or “responsive” for “responsible.”
A couple of other glaring (but funny) errors were the acronym “V.O” being explained as “voice is over” (instead of “voiceover”) and a commercial being defined as “a objective oriented pain for profit organization.” hahaha
