EmmaGoodEgg

New Moon Trailer

Much to the anticipation of many, New Moon the second part to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, is due for theatrical release on 20 November 2009. Here's the official trailer:

Let's hope New Moon the movie has more Mr-Edward-Please-Bite-Me-With-Your-Fangs-Cullen than the book did.

Star Trek Rebooted, Set Phasers to Fabulous : Emma's Point Of View

Bobby and I weren't the first ones in the queue to buy tickets watch the much anticipated latest Star Trek movie. We're not Trekkies, so a lot of our interest to watch the movie stemmed from reading rave reviews from those who have. And, I must say, the brilliant casting of Zachary Quinto, who plays bad hero Sylar in the TV series Hero, as Spock.

The movie, directed by JJ Abrams (he of Alias, Lost and Cloverfield fame), is simply called Star Trek. Apt I thought, this movie did a lot to enlist new Trekkies because it re-introduced the show with a spanking fresh, yet immediately identifiable in their new skin, cast that bowled us over in a plot oft seen in the best Star Trek episodes: The crew of the USS Enterprise saving the universe from Romulans.

With due deference to ol' Leonard Nimoy (the original and quintessential Spock and who also cameo'd in the new movie), after last night I can't imagine a better new Spock than Zachary Quinto. From the eyebrows, to the hair, to the face, to the body, to the ears. I read that Adrien Brody was considered for the part and while I like my Adrien, no way not with Mr Quinto around. Quinto also made Spock hot. Seriously. Pointy ears and all.

I thought the rest of the cast deserves high praise as well.

Chris Pine as James T (T for Tiberius) Kirk was played brand new. I remember watching the early Star Trek TV series in the 70s and thought the young William Shatner was a mildly attractive cosmic older guy. And then he started making records. Pine's Kirk is young-dumb-and-full-of-c*me, HOT, a nice mixture of Kirk, Han Solo, even Tom Cruise's Maverick and became perfectly saleable to this age youth (and their mummies).

Uhura was played by Zoe Saldana and Zoe played her black, lush and in Uhura's customary short short skirt (a wide belt really). John Cho (of Harold from Harold and Kumar Goes To Whitecastle, fame) although Korean, was casted as Hikaru "Sulu". John Cho provided the movie a lot of its comic turns and did a great job. The original Sulu was Japanese and the fact that Cho is Korean didn't really matter much to the movie. Maybe it made die-hard Trekkies throw up in arms, but I thought casting John Cho as the asian was enough to satisfy the universal make-up of the USS Enterprise. Karl Urban, who was bad guy/assassin in The Bourne Supremacy, now plays Dr Leonard "Bones" McCoy, all bad mood yet noble. Anton Yelchin plays Pavel "Chekov", the 17 year old Russian communications officer on the USS Enterprise who has difficulty in vocally inputing passwords because he says "Wictor" instead of "Victor". Simon Pegg comes onboard as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the scot who has skills in beaming people up.

And then there's Eric Bana as the movie's bad guy, a Vulcan called Nero. Another notable turn was Winona Ryder almost unrecognisable with new teeth and wrinkles, made a turn as Spock's mama.

With the help of kick-ass CGI, smart thrills and comic writing, Abrams acquitted himself well as Director, effectively repositioning the old Star Trek franchise to welcome the future. It made Star Trek and the crew of the USS Enterprise with Warp Factor 10, Shields and Photon Torpedoes ON, let's-save-the-universe vibe, well worth the price of admission.

Ps/ Also a must-watch, Leonard Nimoy delivering the Top Ten List Of Lines Never Before Said In A Star Trek Movie, on David Letterman!

Twilight New Trailer

For my sisters, cousins, friends and readers who LOVE Edward Cullen, I give you more Edward:

Lots of love,

Emma xx

Ps/ I heard whispers from reliable sources that Brunei cinemas will show Twilight the Movie on the 21st of November!

Co oo oo ool RIDER!

Dear Sisters,

I found it!

I heart you all muchly.

xx

Ps/ Apparently Michelle Pfeiffer is said to be embarrassed about her performance in Grease 2. She hated the film "with a vengeance and could not believe how bad it was".

Oh Michelle, we thought Grease 2 rocks and you singing Cool Rider on that ladder with the magic fingers move was your best role ever!!

Harry Potter Harry Potter

We're coming to September and running out of summer movies, so I was looking forward to the next Harry Potter movie instalment, Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, scheduled for release on 21 November 2008.  But now we'd all have to wait longer because The Guardian says although the movie is already 100% completed, execs decided to take advantage of extra earnings that could be earned during a Summer 2009 release.

So to Potter fans everywhere, here's an ode to tide you by. I give you the fabulous Potter Puppet Pals And The Mysterious Ticking Noise.

I apologise if the song is now in your head.

No not really.

X-Files: I Want To Believe

Another X-Files movie coming out this July.  Remember the series in the early 90s?  I was a fan of Mulder and Scully, TV's buzzy couple at the time.  Although the science fiction that laced throughout the story was engaging and was helped by weird characters like The Cigarette Smoking Man and the geeky trio called The Lone Gunmen, the thing that got to most our goat was the unresolved sexual tension between David Duchovny's Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully.  Too much talk and no action made the series drag on a bit.  Then the producers released a movie.

We waited with bated breath for the kiss that never came.  A kiss that was foiled by a bee.  Yes, BEE.

So if the next X-File instalment I Want To Believe doesn't have a Mulder kissing Scully scene, I'm going to have a hissy fit.

Twilight

I read Twilight, Stephenie Meyers book about teen vampires at high school, sometime last year at the behest of Inny Pooh who just KNOWS that I would enjoy the story.  Being my sister and all, she is of course right.  I like my high school quirky love stories, and if they happen to involve vampires, even better.

[*WARNING: SPOILER ALERT] Twilight is the first in a series of young adult vampire books by Ms Meyers, who obviously cottoned on to what got girls going.  The series evolves around Edward Cullen, vampire who was made one at 17 and currently acting high school teen boy in a sleepy rainy town called Forks.  The vampires in this series can stay out during the day time as long as the day is overcast.  Forks is also known as the rainiest town in America so the gloomy rainy weather there works for them.  Love interest 17 year old Isabella Swan, is the daughter of the town's sheriff, who decides to come live with her father when her mom remarries.  Bella and Edward meet in high school and begins a strange love affair.  Edward, whilst still a vampire, comes from a vampire clan that doesn't (anymore) drink the blood of man but animals.  Bella has a penchant of attracting weird males because her best friend Jacob Black is a werewolf.  The book is not going to win any Booker Prizes I know, but its a good yarn. 

Hollywood has decided to cash in the Twilight appeal and made a movie of the same name, set to be released in December 2008.  I've just watched the teaser trailer and I must say Kristen Stewart (Jodie Foster's daughter in the movie Panic Room) as Bella and Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter: The Order of The Phoenix) as Edward seemed good choices.

Twilight, coming to a screen near you (hopefully) 12.12.2008

Ps/  I didn't quite fancy the next two books of the Twilight Series, New Moon and Eclipse, because Bella was getting annoying.

 

Iron Man

A while back when we heard that there's an Iron Man movie in the making Bobby gets all excited and tells me that he has always been a fan of ol' tin can, not to mention comic master Stan Lee and his league of tortured superheros.  Having not read the Iron Man comics in my youth (I preferred my X-Men and Swamp Thing) I must admit to not knowing who Iron Man really was.  All I knew was he donned a stiff looking metal suit.  I was just happy to hear one of my favourite actor and Golden Globe winner Robert Downey Jr got a chance to work.  After reading the stories of him in and out of drug rehab and how directors were scared to work with his addictions, I was hoping that he'll get back on the saddle again.

So really, it was a stroke of genius (and irony haha) on the part of director John Favreau, that bad-boy-oft-seen-combating-blow Downey Jr be casted as Tony Stark, the hip and highly intelligent engineer who loves the opulent life (booze, women, machines and a press conference) a little too much.  Incidentally the lifestyle paid by by the good ol' US government who buys bad ass weapons from his company, Stark Industries.  The comeuppance for Tony happens when he gets badly injured by one of his own weapons, unbeknownst to him sold to the enemy by his business partner Obadiah Slate, played deliciously evilly by a bald and bearded 4X Oscar nominee Jeff Bridges.  Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow came out of yummy mummy/Coldplay's band-aid sabbatical to play Tony Stark's Girl Friday (the rather unfortunately named Pepper Potts) in a manner reminiscent of Maggie Gyllenhaal's perverted character in the S&M movie The Secretary in tight pencil skirts and sky high heels complete with a geeky, yet restrained tart, demeanor.  Terrence Howard, also an Oscar winner, plays Stark's confidante, and whilst his role was rather sparse, you can expect more from the sequel when he too will don the suit.

After being badly injured and kidnapped by the enemy terrorists Tony Stark is forced to build his latest super weapon the Jericho Missile from the broken down parts of the terrorist's Stark Industries weapons cache.  After some soul searching, Tony Starks plans his escape and builds his Iron Man Suit Version 1.0. instead.  He is greatly assisted by Yinsen (played by Shaun Toub), another captive who is not too shabby at engineering himself and who also saves Stark's life by embedding a magnetic device in his chest that will keep the bomb shrapnels from entering his heart.

Even with the top notch supporting cast (including Tony Spark's Robotic Arms assistants), almost perfect CGI and witty dialogue, the movie belongs to uber talented Robert Downey Jr and his past.  When Downey Jr/Tony dons the Version 2.0 of the armoured suit for the first time (after inserting a flashy red to its golden exterior and some pretty cool gadgets within) past middle age and thankfully un-Botoxed, you get a feeling that he's giving himself another chance to contain the demons.  Even though at the end, Tony Stark (and Downey Jr), remains just a little bit flawed.

Well played Robert, well played.

(because I am rooting for RBJ)

Ps/ If you're in Brunei, you should go watch Iron Man at a cinema near you.  For movie schedules until the end of the month click here.

PPs/ If you watch the movie, stay right until the end credits have rolled because there is an extra scene with Samuel L Jackson.  A bunch of us watched the movie at the Empire last Saturday and I can't believe the Empire Cinema stopped the movie in the middle of the end credits so we did not get to watch the extra scene!  Thankfully, we have YouTube (and people with video recording capabilities on their phones):

And if you can't make out what they are saying, here you go:

Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury: Think you're the only super hero in the world? You're starting to become a part of a bigger universe.

Tony Spark: Who the hell are you?

Samuel/Nick: Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm here to tell you about the Avengers Initiative.

P.S. I Love You

When Bobby was away in Singapore for work 2 weeks ago I thought I'd watch me some romcom (romantic comedy) to combat a tad of loneliness.  I found a good copy of the movie P.S. I Love You, a (you guessed it) romantic comedy starring 2 time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Gina Gershon, Harry Connick Jr and James Marsden.  The movie is not new, having been released in 2007, and it didn't have great reviews so I wasn't hankering to see it.  Not to mention I couldn't imagine Swank in a fluffy romantic comedy after her dramatic turns in Boys Don't Cry and  Million Dollar Baby.  But it was a good  DVD copy and you know, I had some time on my hands.

The movie is based on the book by Cecelia Aherns, although according to Beloved Sisters (who watched the movie at my behest) the movie didn't quite stay true to the book.  The summary of the movie at IMDB written by Orange goes like this:

Holly Kennedy is beautiful, smart and married to the love of her life - a passionate, funny, and impetuous Irishman named Gerry. So when Gerry's life is taken by an illness, it takes the life out of Holly. The only one who can help her is the person who is no longer there. Nobody knows Holly better than Gerry. So it's a good thing he planned ahead. Before he died, Gerry wrote Holly a series of letters that will guide her, not only through her grief, but in rediscovering herself. The first message arrives on Holly's 30th birthday in the form of a cake, and to her utter shock, a tape recording from Gerry, who proceeds to tell her to get out and "celebrate herself". In the weeks and months that follow, more letters from Gerry are delivered in surprising ways, each sending her on a new adventure and each signing off in the same way; P.S. I Love You. Holly's mother and best friends begin to worry that Gerry's letters are keeping Holly tied to the past, but in fact, each letter is pushing her further into a new future. With Gerry's words as her guide, Holly embarks on a journey of rediscovery in a story about marriage, friendship and how a love so strong can turn the finality of death into a new beginning for life

I know.  Pretty gooey stuff right?

I had expected to watch the movie with one eye on the TV and one eye on my computer screen.  So I don't know whether its all the MissBimbo action I've been partaking that possibly helped increased my estrogen levels, but even before the opening credits rolled, I was hooked.  Quite unexpectedly.  I must say that the movie has a first scene that catches your eyes (and breath).  Hilary is without a doubt a good actress and she pulled off a romantic part in an endearing way.  Hilary too has a kick ass body after playing a boxer in Million Dollar Baby, so when she leapt off the couch and into his arms, her legs clasping her torso, he in a white singlet, made me press the rewind button.  The sight of Gerard Butler, fresh out of being King Leonidas in that highly testosterone charged movie called 300, a little less buff than when he was sparta, wearing nary a loin cloth but some adorable manly boyish (yes there is such a thing) clothes, is arresting. 

The movie also has very funny moments.   Supported by a good cast, I thought Holly's girlfriends were right for her and well played by Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon.  Harry Connick Jr acted like a moron.  And looked like one.  James Marsters (previously platinum-haired Spike on Buffy) played his role adequately.  Kathy Bates played Swank's mother in the film and did so briskly.  Jeffrey Dean singing and playing the guitar is definitely pleasing to a girl's psyche.

But back to Gerard. 

Ladies, if you haven't watched the movie, it would be remiss of me not to ask you to find a copy and WATCH HIM, I mean, THE MOVIE.

Gentlemen, go surf some titillation or something.

The poster doesn't do him aaany justice.

eggs out of 5.  Two of which belongs to Mr Butler.

Have a happy weekend everyone.

I Am Legend: Alternate Ending

This ending (which is now unavailable due to Warner Bros stingyness) to Will Smith's "I Am Legend" is truer to the book. I quite liked it except for the affected gaaasp of the monster lady. Which was quite unnecessary. As was the look between the two in the car...

Now I feel like barricading my house again.