Thursday, February 10, 2011

Movie Review - Teaser Images for a couple of the upcoming Marvel Movies

 

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Movie Review - The Green Hornet

Movie Title
The Green Hornet 
Year
2011
Genre
Action, Comic Adaptation, Comedy 

Story
Rebellious playboy & party animal Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), the son of LA’s most prominent and respected media magnate - James Reid (Tom Wilkinson) publisher of the Daily Sentinel, quickly grows up after James dies under mysterious circumstances. 

Britt inherits his father's vast media empire & estate but fires his father's entire staff except Kato (Jay Chou), who was his father's mechanic/techno wizard, who secretly is a martial artist of the highest degree and makes a mean cup of coffee!

Britt and Kato decide that they become crime-fighters (but with a twist as they pose as bad guys) after they had an accidental taste of heroism during an escapade of vandalism. They see this as their chance to do something meaningful for the first time in their lives. Kato makes them an indestructible super-car loaded with weapons and gadgets - the Black Beauty. 

The Green Hornet and Kato quickly start making a rep for themselves on the streets. Inadvertently, they attract the attention of Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), whom Britt’s father was trying to expose before his death. 

To get Chudnofsky’s attention, Britt, with the help of Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) as a criminal researcher and personal assistant, publishes Green Hornet articles in the Daily Sentinel regularly to raise the Green Hornet's profile. In his pursuit to do the right thing, Britt uncovers the truth about his father.

Acting
If you have seen any of Seth Rogen or Jay Chou's movies, you know what you expect. This is not a movie you'd expect to be listed or nominated for the Screen Actors Guild or Oscars. However, with that being said, these 2 guys ham it up enough to make it fun for audiences to go along for the ride. I must say, it was quite a fun ride!

However, I must say that despite his role as the hero of the movie, Rogen pulled off the extreme slacker look with or without his mask on! That was unfortunate.

The really excellent Christoph Waltz (who was so extremely effective and scary as THE villain in the Inglorious Basterds) had not much to really work with here and hence, despite his efforts, his character as Chudnofsky was not really memorable (or if he was, then it would have been for all the wrong reasons...)

Overall
Based on a comicbook (and tv series - starring the one-and-only BRUCE LEE as, who else - Kato, to boot! OK, go ask your dad or uncle about it.)

Having never watched the TV series or read any of the Green Hornet comics, I had not idea what the story was about and thus I had almost no expectations. Perhaps that's what made it work for me.

Hence, despite the grim tone and origin, the movie takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, which would not have worked for the Marvel (remember the Fantastic Four? Nuff said.) or DC characters (OK, we'd need to watch Green Lantern later this year to validate that)

Of course there are quite a number of plot holes big enough to drive a Kancil thru' such as:
- How did Kato or Britt manage to move at super speed during fights seeing as both of them are just ordinary joes (OK, filthy rich ordinary joes).
- Why would Kato follow Britt so loyally eventho' he was obviously not a very nice guy at the beginning, middle and pretty much throghout the whole movie.
- etc.

Not the best superhero movie out there but not the worst either (Remember Catwoman or Elektra?). However, it does make for a fun afternoon watch if you have nothing better to do (or you're stuck with a Twilight movie...).

Rating: 5.5/10

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Food Review - Jun Kee Restaurant

Getting there
Located within the commercial area of Taman Midah. The restaurant is right next to an Open Air Car-Park along the shops facing away from the main road.

Parking

There is ample parking spaces along the road or at the parking lot mentioned earlier.

Service
Service is prompt and hassle-free. Just the right level of service for those who don’t want the fuss or attention, but for those who want to be pampered by the restaurant staff, this is not the place for it.

Diners are even given snacks (salted peanuts) while waiting for the food to be served.

Ambience
The restaurant has done well over the years, graduating from a single-level operations at another shop-lot within Taman Midah a few years earlier, to a 2-level quad shop-lot that it is now! The entire place is now air-conditioned, brightly lit and very clean.


Diners would feel very comfortable with the ambience although they have not invested more to turn it into a high-end fine-dining type of place (but they do have nice chandeliers adorning the upper level dining area). This would also be a good place to introduce foreign friends to local Chinese cuisine as they too would feel comfortable and have no qualms eating here.

Taste
Of course, this would depend on the type of dishes ordered but overall, they deliver pretty good taste from almost anything that you might order from their menu. You might also want to check with their MaĆ®tre d' for their recommendations.

You may notice that the seafood are fresh as they have aquariums on the ground floor as you walk towards the entrance.

Presentation
They have a white theme for the restaurant which works very well. The tables are all covered in white linen while all the food is presented on white china, from food dishes, to tea cups. This adds to its ambience of being very much like a fine dining establishment. Very nicely done.

The chopsticks also have a very classy embedded metal piece with embossed Chinese characters on them.
Variety
There are so many items on their menu that despite having been there several times, I have yet to make a dent into the number of dishes that they actually serve. Too many good items to choose from.

Value for Money
It’s fairly priced for the ambience and taste. Just to give you a clearer picture, they provide MUCH BETTER value than Esquire Kitchen. The last time we ate there, we had garoupa (and pomfret on another occassion), pork ribs, house specialty tofu, fried lotus root, egg noodles, calamari with salted egg & bitter-gourd with salted egg. The bill came to about RM240.

Overall

Good taste, good variety, nice ambience & at good value! I have no reservations in recommending that you give it a try and see what the fuss about this place is all about.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Comic Review - X-Force 1-6

Title/Storyline
X-Force
Publish Date/Year
2009
Creative Team
Christopher Yost & Craig Kyle
Clayton Crain
Issue (s)
1-6
Publisher
Marvel
From the same acclaimed writing team of New X-Men - Christopher Yost & Craig Kyle

Cyclops (Scott Summers), leader of the X-Men has put together a new covert team comprising the most deadly & vicious members of the merry mutants:
- Wolverine (Logan) - Field Leader
- Warpath (James Proudstar) - in-your face attacks
- Arch/Angel (Warren Worthington III) - Recon/Aerial Support
- X-23 - Killing machine
- Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair) - Werewolf
- Elixir - Healer

Their task is to perform pre-emptive strikes against mutant enemies black ops style. Their first mission was to eliminate the Purifiers' (Mutant Hating Human Group) new leader - Matthew Risman (the successor of the late William Stryker, who founded the Purifiers), who, with the help of his lieutenants - Eli Bard & Rev Craig, revived & merged 2 mutant killing robots from the future - Bastion & Nimrod!

They've captured Wolfsbane and pumped her fullof heroin. The heroes managed to save her but find it unusual that the Purifiers didn't kill her as is their general MO.

They soon discover why as she rips Angel's wings apart as soon as she awoke. Somehow she had been programmed to do that at the sight of Angel - specifically to acquire his wings' DNA (still containing the genetic material imbued into him by Apocalypse a looooong time ago when he made Angel into Archangel - Apocalypse's horseman, Death). This was so that they could create an winged army of loyal Purifiers with Archangel's deadly wings, a group called the Choir! With his wings ripped off by Wolfsbane, Angel heals
but reverts back into his Death persona - Archangel, and regrows his pair of deadly metal wings!

Meanwhile, the Purifiers had been busy gathering the X-Men's most dangerous foes so that they can wipe out the mutant threat once and for all. They have gathered the likes of:
- Graydon Creed (Sabertooth's Son)
- Magus* (New Mutant Warlock's** father)
* & ** - these 2 characters have nothing to do with Adam Warlock or his nemesis the Magus.
- Leper Queen (mutant killer)
- Cameron Hodge (Leader of the Right)
- Bolivar Trask (creator of the Sentinels)
- Donald Pierce (Cyborg member of the Hellfire Club & Reavers)
- William Stryker (Purifiers' founder)

However, Matthew Risman and his loyal lieutenants soon realize Bastion's plan goes against their own and soon mobilize contingencies (the loyal Choir) against Bastion.

In fulfilling thier prime objective of eliminating Matthew Risman, the X-Force enter the fray in time to contribute to the body count - taking down Matthew Risman, but were unable to apprehend Bastion or any of the other revived X-Villains!
Donald Pierce & the Reavers
Leper Queen

Cameron Hodge & the Right 
Magus

Art
Crain does a fantastic job in conveying the gritty black ops feel with his painted art. Did I say painted art? Yup! It's a pretty rare thing these days to get painted artwork in a regular monthly series!

Overall
I know that this book didn't get rave reviews from many critics but as a longtime fan of the X-Books, the revival of the X-villains really got my blood pumping - making it almost impossible to wait for the nest issue just to see how much worse things would get for the heroes.

However, this is one of the bloodiest titles I have ever seen from the House of Ideas. I mean, you can kinda know that it's not going to be pretty when you put the likes of Wolverine & X-23 into a black ops team, BUT, the degree of bloody massacre depicted in the pages does seem overboard and even unnecessary.