Am so CRAZEE over 'em!!
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
December 16, 2010
December 07, 2010
When 'Lantaklah~' Becomes My Fav Word
I think d meds my rehab docs prescribed for me are finally digging in. I feel awkwardly happy sometimes [tapi ada jugak la menjerit marah tu sikit-sikit bila Kyra up to mischieve] and also boleh berkata 'Lantaklah' to things yg dulu always bothers me. So, Let it Be. Lantaklah. Biarlah. Sumone else will bother about it. haha~ I now learn how good it feels when I LET GO.
Best thing, if I pray, I feel so serene and near to Allah.
Good sign. Alhamdulillah...
Oh yes, a word of encouragement.
Thanks to Litchin, tadi dapat gi shopping beli baju sekolah Darjah Dua Jazzy... :o))
December 07, 2009
The Story Behind Twilight ~ by the writer herself
Sharing this with all Twilight fans, taken from :: Stephanie Meyers's Official Webbie
I get a ton of questions about how I came up with the story of Twilight and how I got it published. I may be killing my FAQ page by doing this, but here is the whole story:
(Warning: there are Twilight spoilers contained in the following; if you don't want to ruin the suspense, stop reading.....now. Warning #2: As you might have guessed from the length of my book, I can't tell a short story—this is going to take a while. You have been warned.)
The Writing
I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003. Up to this point, I had not written anything besides a few chapters (of other stories) that I never got very far on, and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier.
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.
Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description. (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn't want to lose the mental image.) Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering. But I didn't want to lose the dream, so I typed out as much as I could remember, calling the characters "he" and "she."
From that point on, not one day passed that I did not write something. On bad days, I would only type out a page or two; on good days, I would finish a chapter and then some. I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted. I started from the scene in the meadow and wrote through to the end. Then I went back to the beginning and wrote until the pieces matched up. I drove the "golden spike" that connected them in late August, three months later.
It took me a while to find names for my anonymous duo. For my vampire (who I was in love with from day one) I decided to use a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades. Charlotte Bronte's Mr. Rochester and Jane Austen's Mr. Ferrars were the characters that led me to the name Edward. I tried it on for size, and found that it fit well. My female lead was harder. Nothing I named her seemed just right. After spending so much time with her, I loved her like a daughter, and no name was good enough. Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter, who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point: Isabella. Huzzah! Edward and Bella were named. For the rest of the characters, I did a lot of searching in old census records, looking for popular names in the times that they'd been born. Some trivia: Rosalie was originally "Carol" and Jasper was first "Ronald." I like the new names much better, but every now and then I will slip up and type Carol or Ron by accident. It really confuses the people who read my rough drafts.
For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself. I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick. (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.
All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head. They simply wouldn't shut up. I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark.
During the day, I couldn't stay away from the computer, either. When I was stuck at swim lessons, out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. It was your typical Arizona summer, hot, sunny, hot, and hot, but when I think back to those three months, I remember rain and cool green things, like I really spent the summer in the Olympic Rainforest.
When I'd finished the body of the novel, I started writing epilogues...lots of epilogues. This eventually clued me in to the fact that I wasn't ready to let go of my characters, and I started working on the sequel. Meanwhile, I continued to edit Twilight in a very obsessive-compulsive way.
My older sister, Emily, was the only one who really knew what I was up to. In June, I'd started sending her chapters as I finished them, and she soon became my cheerleading section. She was always checking in to see if I had something new for her. It was Emily who first suggested, after I'd finished, that I should try to get Twilight published. I was so stunned by the fact that I'd actually finished a whole, entire book, that I decided to look into it.
Getting Published
To put it mildly, I was naive about publishing. I thought it worked like this: you printed a copy of your novel, wrapped it up in brown paper, and sent it off to a publishing house. Ho ho ho, that's a good one. I started googling (naturally) and began to discover that this was not the way it is done. (Movies lie to us! Why?! A side note: you will not be able to enjoy the new Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen when you know how insanely impossible the publishing scenario it contains is.) The whole set up with query letters, literary agents, simultaneous submissions vs. exclusive submissions, synopsizes, etc., was extremely intimidating, and I almost quit there. It certainly wasn't belief in my fabulous talent that made me push forward; I think it was just that I loved my characters so much, and they were so real to me, that I wanted other people to know them, too.
I subscribed to WritersMarket.com and compiled a list of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions and a few literary agencies. It was around this time that my little sister, Heidi, mentioned Janet Evanovich's website to me. In her Q and A for writers section, Janet E. mentioned Writers House, among a few others, as "the real thing" in the world of literary agencies. Writers House went on my wish list as the most desirable and also least likely.
I sent out around fifteen queries (and I still get residual butterflies in my stomach when I drive by the mailbox I sent the letters from—mailing them was terrifying.). I will state, for the record, that my queries truly sucked, and I don't blame anyone who sent me a rejection (I did get seven or eight of those. I still have them all, too). The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me. The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal, so it didn't bother me at all. I'll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher's Weekly, but I took the higher road.
My big break came in the form of an assistant at Writers House named Genevieve. I didn't find out until much later just how lucky I was; it turns out that Gen didn't know that 130,000 words is a whole heck of a lot of words. If she'd known that 130K words would equal 500 pages, she probably wouldn't have asked to see it. But she didn't know (picture me wiping the sweat from my brow), and she did ask for the first three chapters. I was thrilled to get a positive response, but a little worried because I felt the beginning of the book wasn't the strongest part. I mailed off those three chapters and got a letter back a few weeks later (I could barely get it open, my hands were so weak with fear). It was a very nice letter. She'd gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she'd typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming.
About a month after I sent in the manuscript, I got a call from Jodi Reamer, an honest to goodness literary agent, who wanted to represent my book. I tried really hard to sound like a professional and a grownup during that conversation, but I'm not sure if I fooled her. Again, my luck was tremendous (and I don't usually have good luck—I've never won anything in my life, and no one ever catches a fish when I'm in the boat) because Jodi is the uber-agent. I couldn't have ended up in better hands. She's part lawyer, part ninja (she's working on earning her black belt right now, no kidding), a pretty amazing editor in her own right, and a great friend.
Jodi and I worked for two weeks on getting Twilight into shape before sending it to editors. The first thing we worked on was the title, which started out as Forks (and I still have a teeny soft spot for that name). Then we polished up a few rough spots, and Jodi sent it out to nine different publishing houses. This really messed with my ability to sleep, but luckily I wasn't in suspense for long.
Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books, of Little, Brown and Company, read Twilight on a cross-country flight and came back to Jodi the day after the Thanksgiving weekend with a preemptive deal so huge that I honestly thought Jodi was pulling my leg—especially the part where she turned the offer down and asked for more. The upshot was that, by the end of the day, I was trying to process the information that not only was my book going to be published by one of the biggest young adult publishers in the country, but that they were going topay me for it. For a very long time, I was convinced it was a really cruel practical joke, but I couldn't imagine who would go to these wild extremes to play a hoax on such an insignificant little hausfrau.
And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication.
Things keep getting crazier, what with the movie deal and all the pre-publication attention that Twilight continues to receive. Though I've gotten impatient from time to time, I'm glad I've had the last two years to try to come to terms with the situation. I'm greatly looking forward to finally having Twilight on the shelves, and more than a little frightened, too. Overall, it's been a true labor of love, love for Edward and Bella and all the rest of my imaginary friends, and I'm thrilled that other people get to meet them now.
I get a ton of questions about how I came up with the story of Twilight and how I got it published. I may be killing my FAQ page by doing this, but here is the whole story:
(Warning: there are Twilight spoilers contained in the following; if you don't want to ruin the suspense, stop reading.....now. Warning #2: As you might have guessed from the length of my book, I can't tell a short story—this is going to take a while. You have been warned.)
The Writing
I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003. Up to this point, I had not written anything besides a few chapters (of other stories) that I never got very far on, and nothing at all since the birth of my first son, six years earlier.
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.
Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description. (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn't want to lose the mental image.) Unwillingly, I eventually got up and did the immediate necessities, and then put everything that I possibly could on the back burner and sat down at the computer to write—something I hadn't done in so long that I wondered why I was bothering. But I didn't want to lose the dream, so I typed out as much as I could remember, calling the characters "he" and "she."
From that point on, not one day passed that I did not write something. On bad days, I would only type out a page or two; on good days, I would finish a chapter and then some. I mostly wrote at night, after the kids were asleep so that I could concentrate for longer than five minutes without being interrupted. I started from the scene in the meadow and wrote through to the end. Then I went back to the beginning and wrote until the pieces matched up. I drove the "golden spike" that connected them in late August, three months later.
It took me a while to find names for my anonymous duo. For my vampire (who I was in love with from day one) I decided to use a name that had once been considered romantic, but had fallen out of popularity for decades. Charlotte Bronte's Mr. Rochester and Jane Austen's Mr. Ferrars were the characters that led me to the name Edward. I tried it on for size, and found that it fit well. My female lead was harder. Nothing I named her seemed just right. After spending so much time with her, I loved her like a daughter, and no name was good enough. Finally, inspired by that love, I gave her the name I was saving for my daughter, who had never shown up and was unlikely to put in an appearance at this point: Isabella. Huzzah! Edward and Bella were named. For the rest of the characters, I did a lot of searching in old census records, looking for popular names in the times that they'd been born. Some trivia: Rosalie was originally "Carol" and Jasper was first "Ronald." I like the new names much better, but every now and then I will slip up and type Carol or Ron by accident. It really confuses the people who read my rough drafts.
For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself. I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick. (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ). In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.
All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head. They simply wouldn't shut up. I'd stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I'd get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin' sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I'd scrawled across the page in the dark.
During the day, I couldn't stay away from the computer, either. When I was stuck at swim lessons, out in 115 degrees of Phoenix sunshine, I would plot and scheme and come home with so much new stuff that I couldn't type fast enough. It was your typical Arizona summer, hot, sunny, hot, and hot, but when I think back to those three months, I remember rain and cool green things, like I really spent the summer in the Olympic Rainforest.
When I'd finished the body of the novel, I started writing epilogues...lots of epilogues. This eventually clued me in to the fact that I wasn't ready to let go of my characters, and I started working on the sequel. Meanwhile, I continued to edit Twilight in a very obsessive-compulsive way.
My older sister, Emily, was the only one who really knew what I was up to. In June, I'd started sending her chapters as I finished them, and she soon became my cheerleading section. She was always checking in to see if I had something new for her. It was Emily who first suggested, after I'd finished, that I should try to get Twilight published. I was so stunned by the fact that I'd actually finished a whole, entire book, that I decided to look into it.
Getting Published
To put it mildly, I was naive about publishing. I thought it worked like this: you printed a copy of your novel, wrapped it up in brown paper, and sent it off to a publishing house. Ho ho ho, that's a good one. I started googling (naturally) and began to discover that this was not the way it is done. (Movies lie to us! Why?! A side note: you will not be able to enjoy the new Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen when you know how insanely impossible the publishing scenario it contains is.) The whole set up with query letters, literary agents, simultaneous submissions vs. exclusive submissions, synopsizes, etc., was extremely intimidating, and I almost quit there. It certainly wasn't belief in my fabulous talent that made me push forward; I think it was just that I loved my characters so much, and they were so real to me, that I wanted other people to know them, too.
I subscribed to WritersMarket.com and compiled a list of small publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions and a few literary agencies. It was around this time that my little sister, Heidi, mentioned Janet Evanovich's website to me. In her Q and A for writers section, Janet E. mentioned Writers House, among a few others, as "the real thing" in the world of literary agencies. Writers House went on my wish list as the most desirable and also least likely.
I sent out around fifteen queries (and I still get residual butterflies in my stomach when I drive by the mailbox I sent the letters from—mailing them was terrifying.). I will state, for the record, that my queries truly sucked, and I don't blame anyone who sent me a rejection (I did get seven or eight of those. I still have them all, too). The only rejection that really hurt was from a small agent who actually read the first chapter before she dropped the axe on me. The meanest rejection I got came after Little, Brown had picked me up for a three-book deal, so it didn't bother me at all. I'll admit that I considered sending back a copy of that rejection stapled to the write-up my deal got in Publisher's Weekly, but I took the higher road.
My big break came in the form of an assistant at Writers House named Genevieve. I didn't find out until much later just how lucky I was; it turns out that Gen didn't know that 130,000 words is a whole heck of a lot of words. If she'd known that 130K words would equal 500 pages, she probably wouldn't have asked to see it. But she didn't know (picture me wiping the sweat from my brow), and she did ask for the first three chapters. I was thrilled to get a positive response, but a little worried because I felt the beginning of the book wasn't the strongest part. I mailed off those three chapters and got a letter back a few weeks later (I could barely get it open, my hands were so weak with fear). It was a very nice letter. She'd gone back with a pen and twice underlined the part where she'd typed how much she enjoyed the first three chapters (I still have that letter, of course), and she asked for the whole manuscript. That was the exact moment when I realized that I might actually see Twilight in print, and really one of the happiest points in my whole life. I did a lot of screaming.
About a month after I sent in the manuscript, I got a call from Jodi Reamer, an honest to goodness literary agent, who wanted to represent my book. I tried really hard to sound like a professional and a grownup during that conversation, but I'm not sure if I fooled her. Again, my luck was tremendous (and I don't usually have good luck—I've never won anything in my life, and no one ever catches a fish when I'm in the boat) because Jodi is the uber-agent. I couldn't have ended up in better hands. She's part lawyer, part ninja (she's working on earning her black belt right now, no kidding), a pretty amazing editor in her own right, and a great friend.
Jodi and I worked for two weeks on getting Twilight into shape before sending it to editors. The first thing we worked on was the title, which started out as Forks (and I still have a teeny soft spot for that name). Then we polished up a few rough spots, and Jodi sent it out to nine different publishing houses. This really messed with my ability to sleep, but luckily I wasn't in suspense for long.
Megan Tingley, of Megan Tingley Books, of Little, Brown and Company, read Twilight on a cross-country flight and came back to Jodi the day after the Thanksgiving weekend with a preemptive deal so huge that I honestly thought Jodi was pulling my leg—especially the part where she turned the offer down and asked for more. The upshot was that, by the end of the day, I was trying to process the information that not only was my book going to be published by one of the biggest young adult publishers in the country, but that they were going topay me for it. For a very long time, I was convinced it was a really cruel practical joke, but I couldn't imagine who would go to these wild extremes to play a hoax on such an insignificant little hausfrau.
And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication.
Things keep getting crazier, what with the movie deal and all the pre-publication attention that Twilight continues to receive. Though I've gotten impatient from time to time, I'm glad I've had the last two years to try to come to terms with the situation. I'm greatly looking forward to finally having Twilight on the shelves, and more than a little frightened, too. Overall, it's been a true labor of love, love for Edward and Bella and all the rest of my imaginary friends, and I'm thrilled that other people get to meet them now.
August 01, 2008
Batman. Is A Dark Knight. Dat's y he's being chased.
I am a freaking busy woman who doesnt update her blog with good stuffs to read for decades.
But I never missed my Batman movies.
And I made sure I didn't, today. Kerja ke, kena tiaw ke, bz macam badak sumbu ke... aku tak kira. It's d last day before d semester reopens, I HAD TO WATCH IT TODAY.
So I did. So WE did. WE, the mothers in a row :: Me, Winny, IceT. Worth every penny. oh no, sen. In fact it was only RM7 in Alamanda.
I am so happy. Batman is my superhero for life. And yes, Christian Bale IS STILL D BEST BATMAN EVER. Arwah Heath Ledger, u're a legend. The Joker outshined ALL other Batman Criminals. Even Riddler is sucky compared to u.
Batman... Forever.
December 07, 2006
Bad case of Insomnia after a tiring CINTA day
title already sez i'm having insomnia, so pls dun make me explain y am i posting an entry at 3++ am in d morning despite every calls asking me to rest.
stubborn, i am. being dat, when mama said she's gonna watch 'CINTA' right after Mein's last SPM paper today i was dying to go. Promised to myself i won't walk much. Mission: watch Cinta, buy some stuff then if they wanna go shopping i'll find a place to sit. Lagipun if anything papa is an excellent typical dangerous-kl-driver, sekejap je leh sampai hospital mana-mana hehe.
So of we go!!!! All 6 beranak of us - Mom, Dad, Mein, Me, Jazzy and Ateem.
Wednesday - Half price day. sampai MidValley dah 1pm [pahamla ada anak dara tembel, siap berejam - Mein] for sure tak dapat tgk show pukul 1.30. hmm nampaknya abah kena makan sorang malam ni [later on abah ropanya ada event kat KLConventionCenter, lega] terpaksalaa amik tiket pkl 4pm, itupun baris DEPAN sekali, punyalah nak tgk jugak arini kan [akulertu, takut abah marah keluar lagi hari lain hehe].
Since show lambat gi makan n shopping dulu. adoi... perut yang dah boyot ni jalan gilerr macam Happy Feet hehe. masalah sikit bila dah bawak budak kecik dua orang tu, ESPECIALLY my youngest bro ateem, isk dia ni ada masalah attitude. spoilt brat. anak bongsu. masalah NEGARA. pandai-pandaila mama... aku ada anak aku nak kena jaga. luckily Jazz is in an excellent mood today, pegi jalan jalan maunya tak excellent.
pkl 4 ... kami mengadap skrin besar nak mampos tu at the front-most barisan. ok jugak, ada budak2 ekor tu kan, diorang bebas kejap duduk atas kerusi, kejap duduk atas lantai, ada jugakla sesekali berlari-lari depan skrin sebaik orang tak marah [tataula dalam ati diorang menyumpah kot]. ahhh... enuff bout dat now bout the movie...
10 stars? i'd give.... hmm... stingy as i am, I'd give 9.5!!!!!!!!!
it's not easy for me to LIKE/LOVE Malaysian movie. no no, not jest Malaysian, any movie, kalau sux, sux la. Bollywood ke, Holywood ke... SUX means SUX. but this one, it makes me proud to be Malaysian. Sayangnya.... the director wasn't EXACTLY Malaysian [Kabir Bhatia, the director, is an ACCOUNTS-course graduate from Bombay University. he worked in UTV India before producing and directing films n dramas in Singapore n Malaysia. Among his works? why haven't u watch Astana Idaman? aha dia punya la tu.], but as i browse through the crew, the 'bangga-ness' rises as the crew was fully Malaysian. and to those Actors and Actresses, thanx for good performance. although aderla cacat sana sini but c'mon holywood stars pun tak perfect.
i love the movie. why? go watch. beautiful cinematography. nice story flow. nice script and quotes. smooth transition. good camera angles. nice color treatment and mood. [fav scene: masa Lis tido kat kerusi dengan ayah dia Hariss, and scene tu tunjuk kaki comel Lis and Hariss sad face, bleh ngalir airmata] worth every penny though i didn't pay a single cent muahahaha [not even for those popcorns]. seriously, worth my time. and my letih mengendong Khayra di dalam perut ini dan menyeret Jazzy di sebelah tangan untuk ke MidValley GSC.
After all.... ganas ganas saya ni, i am a hopeless romantic osso. hehe. tapi taderla se-hopeless watak Rashidi [Hariss] in the movie. OMG dat's too hopeless. tapi if ever there's a man like dat on this earth, i lykkkeee hahahha.... no-lah, i dun count on it. ada ke? serious? mana? bak sini tengok? :op~
owh ya eh??? kalau betul suka naper tak bagi full 10 stars? because ahh... aiyer... i was tryinnngggg to find a twist. takdak. trailer dah la almost everyday kat tv, seriously if u watch the trailer, u'll know d WHOLE story already. straight-forward.
thanks to mama n papa for d movie. owh and jazz's new dress hehe.
December 28, 2005
I watched these last week
too tired to comment panjang...
The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, The Witch & The wardrobe)
5 Stars!!! awesome 3D+footage fusion, very very nice storyline (obviously it was a best-selling novel). it was like watching an epic like Lord of The Rings, but a bit lighter so dat kids will luv it too
King Kong
Urghh... i can't give stars. allll d adverts are misleading. mushy mushy story, even mushy myshier than the old version, d only reason i kept on watching was because of Adrian Brody, and to see how stupid King Kong looks like when he merajuk, and how buruknya perangai binatang sekor tu bile dia show off. harap CGI je lawa... ampehs. even Ateem pun boring tgk (kami pegi 4 beradik, dat reminds me, i havent posted about Azamuddin yet)
dah la dah ada 2 Azam kat umah nih... tapi personality, macam bumi dengan langit. God, give me patience & strength....
Next Movie target = PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEANS with orlando bloom and johnny depp again! and BAIK PUNYA CILOK with chief kodok, hans isaac, awie and AC mizal and lastly MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA must must must watchhhhh!!!!December 02, 2005
There are Some Games, We Never Play Alone.
If u happen to be in a war with your siblings, or u're a parent who happens to haf children who fight 24-7, Zathura is a movie to watch, bring d whole family in d cinema (uhmm, but if ur kid happens to be an aggressive monster who will scream n run around in d cinema, do consider to watch it at home). it's my last day to fool around before i dig into my work, and i get to watch this claimed to be written by d author of Jumanji, which to me, it turned out to be jest another spacey version of Jumanji.
but dat doesn't mean d movie was bad. i would say it was OK. oklah, kasik canlah.. it was hillarious!! especially if u're young at heart. it does get touchy, when they found out dat the astro turf, i mean astronaut (he he), is actually sumone who came back to rescue sumone (haha i hope i jest get u guys to at least feel like watching it!). those two boys, Danny (starring Jonah Bobo) and Walter (starring Josh Hutcherson) were such darlings
the story actually started very slow, i was already thinking, 'uh-oh, did i pick d wrong movie?' but right at d point Danny found Zatbura, d story picks up. but i won't label this film a thriller, maybe it is a thriller, but for 10-14 years olds. but for adults, nope. and dat Zorgon thingy, why does it look so much like a raptor??? does every monster hafta be a raptor? a t-rex? so streotypical.
technically, the movie wasn't too bad. and d best thing is, I KNOW HOW TO DO DAT TITLE SEQUENCE!!!! hahah there was a lot of position-keyframing, and not much of effects, sumthing like wat i did for My Fair Lady title sequence project. onto the Zorgon creatures, ok, one thing it looks so like t-rex,another thing, it moves so human-like, maybe because they are humans!!!. they actually have 4 actors to act as those Zorgons (so make up was pretty good :p).
the best thing bout d movie is definitely d scripts. owh i luv d scripts, and those 2 boys were excellent at it. my fav part was uhmm lemme recall... i dunno there were many funny lines and i luv d way the boys say it he he. aiyoh u're reading a-girl-who'd-became-a-mother's blog, so u hafto expect this, i luv kids stuffs so much :p
well it was a great day after all, not jest d movie, d whole outing was. we went to kl wit azam (to save money on erl) and get some mamak roti canai (at dat building beside klcc, forgot lah wats d name) as early as 8.30 (well not too early for werking ppl he he) and lepak at signature food court reading hot magazine until the doors to TGV opens he he. after cinema we went shopping like crazy, tho we didnt buy much. there MANY books in Kinokuniya dat i'd lurrveee to buy, but i was like, rambang mata, and budget ada tapi tak banyak so i ended buying nuthing but raimy's and oja's pwezens.
but i did buy fruit tarts, again. he he so hard to slim downnnnn
December 01, 2005
of Harry Porter and the Goblet of Fire and sakit gigi
yes!!! finally get to watch Harry Porter!!! actually i planned to go yesterday but due to dat blardy headache and toothache, i was not up to it. today, i was determined. d 1st tot came into my mind as i open my eyes, I MUST WATCH AT LEAST ONE MOVIE TODAY!. he he.
so i called up mein after azam went to werk. asked her wat's her plan for d day, and she said nuthing (she jest woke up i think, took her so long to answer). so i told her to feed her pockets (from mama's wallet) and LET'S GO WATCH MOVIEE!!!
had a few options, Harry Porter n d G.O.F. (1st choice), Chicken Little, Cello or Zathura. i can't watch any 18 rated movies cus mein is wit me (sucker ratings!!). it all depends on wat time we reach TGV KLCC, and dat blardy bus was late, we missed one ERL train and hadta wait for 27 mins for d next train. ahhh movie punya pasal takpe!
luckily, altho we missed d 1st show of HP n d GOF, there was another show starting @ 12.15. and luckily again, d line wasn't long, so i get to get an early lunch and dump in my pills into my throat (or else i would've suffer a damn toothache while watching).
ah... i must say... this sequel, is d best Harry Porter movie ever. i really hafto agree wit oja, who claimed dat first, as she watched d movie when it 1st came out despite our bzness wit assignments (die hard HP girl!). the storyline, actors/actresses were more mature, as they were suppose to be, their 4th year in Hogwarts, real teenagers now, and the CGI was... SUPERB. congrats to Mike Newell and Steven Kloves. well.. maybe i am a li'l bit bias, for i like dat kinda depiction - dark, rusty, messy, dragons, imaginations... u know.. he he i am a dreamer and i lurrveee to imagine. but i dunno y, i couldn't put all these into my style while composing, things dat always come out when i compose is flower flower flower and cartoon cartoon cartoon... like eugene said (to my title sequence project), this is so... YOU. ok back to Harry Porter. yeah storyline is more mature but uhm.. it's still playing safe. well maybe it's because the original novel (JK Rowling, of course) was meant for teenagers. but on top of dat, Cedric's death is definitely a good climax for i almost cried because he's sucha cute guyyyyy!!! hahaha *sempat menggatal*.
another thingy, i had always like'd the fonts, haha yeah, i lurve those fonts. it's suites the movie so much and this time, at the beginning of d movie, the fonts was created as a 3D object when d camera pans passing the title, it was awesome. you can see how detailed d 3D was and d texturing was smoooothhh. william would've gone crazy looking at it. but there was one funny scene he he this might not be noticeable, but ahhahah I saw it. d scene was in a classroom where Prof. Moody was teaching, the writing on dat chalkboard kept on changing from his name, to the 3 curses between shots. if u haven't watch or gonna watch again, try to look for this. he he, u know, shooting films ain't easy. simple things like this could easily overseen.
planning to go for another movie tomorrow. dunno wat will it be yet. but one thingy for sure, i'm gonna catch NARNIA when it comes out!! watched d making, superb 3D and awesome camera angles!!
p/s: ala.. nak gi MVA... :o(( susahnya status 'berkahwin dengan anak satu' ni...
November 25, 2005
on Willie Wonka and Resubmission Bad News
d guy i'm in luv wit
d guy i'm NOT in luv wit
d hotty i liikkkeeee
Spent my 2nd indipendence-day watching movies dat i've longed to watch (while ironing one bakul of laundry, 2 more to go)- 2 in the half movies, Charlie n d Chocolate Factory, Stealth & Gol n Gincu. many more to go, including chicken little, harry potter...
won't comment on stealth yet, i didnt concentrate watching, gonna watch again.
gol n gincu is pretty much iklan hotlink and a bunch of comel girls screaming around playing futsal. appreciate d new approach of a Malaysian movie, but to me... the content's not too strong and d girls are just too girlish (except of course, Juita's character). and i also appreciate the violence against woman msg-sending attempt but... it could be depicted, in a different way, a better way.
and finally... WIllie Wonka!!! owhh so sweet! (ok NOT dat i LIKE MICHAEL JACKSON!) but i jest luvvv the way he say, "occay" alah so cute. i've read many critiques, reviews and comments on this particular Tim Burton movie. i couldn't agree more wit sum critiques dat say the 'adjusted' storyline is slacking sumwhere. it's like there's sumthing missing. it's not an easy movie to connect 2 n 2 together, thus it's not a movie for kids, it's meant for adults?! Tim's attempt of giving different approach to the original cheerful storyline is indeed a creative idea, but like i said before, sumthing's slacking, sumwhere. Like he didnt explain y was the other kids got into mischiveous troubles, although to our adult minds maybe it's easy for us to conclude dat those kids are so naughty so they ended up in trouble, but too the minds of a 7-9 years olds... uhm... i'm not too sure... hmm....
and there are also reviews dat says Wonka's character is a mock of Micheal Jackson and dat choc factory is his Neverland, well... he he... it does sumhow relates, wit those pales make up and that hat... but however, i luv d way johnny darling depp says occay, i bet micheal DONT talk as sweet as he does. he he.
now... onto the BAD NEWS. yanna called senja tadi telling me dat my group for concept development haf to resubmit. since i wasnt there to look at the list myself, i couldnt tell whether itsa major resubmission or just minor adjustments. i heard one group hafta change d whole blardy concept, dat really mean doin all over again. if my group's concept is gonna change, i'm gonna complain, cus weve done progressions with mr chee, at least 3 times. if its d animatics dat he doesnt like, then i'll understand. it was indeed a last minute thingy and i admit, it isnt dat good, but i've seen 4 times worst than mine passed up. well, i shouldn't put dat as a benchmark, should i??
so... back to my projects again... i guess...
June 26, 2005
-: Senario XX :- credits to all crews
watched senario xx wit darlingz today, jestt d 3 of us, ignoring d fact dat i hafta werk @ mom's today. he he. it was already 10,
and hubby said
eh y not watch senario now?
i said
eh crazee, 10 o'clock already.
hubby said
alah yesterday osso u went late, 12 o'clock baru sampai butik
i said
ah wuteverlah nak pasang pasanglah
and so dengan segala sikap pemalas i gathered all my strength to lepak lepak in front of our 21" tv (bila nak 29" ni ekk..) and hubby told d player to play d senario xx vcd.
bukan tanak support filem melayu, but takdak chance nak gi TGV watch it there, so beli VCD lah.. ORIGINAL ok!!
if u expect me to tell d story here, i won't. i want u guys, Malaysian, to buy d vcd, support sikit industri filem negara. because this particular film, IS WORTH IT. I never knew aziz's crew pandai 3D, because before i was ignorant about 3D, now, learning deeper multimedia, i come to appreciate films very much, and understanding it very well. although Senario XX's quality isn't as good as MIB/MIIB, or maybe star trek, star wars or any film yg berunsur alien yg lain, but at least to have sumone like aziz in our film industry, is a great relief. yes, there are definite room for improvement, but it was a good execution. also credits to azman abu hassan, the man behind sound effects and bg scores, it was good and synchronized with d whole film's concept.who am i to talk much? i merely done shootings myself, but i understood wat aziz tried to portray and i appreciate his (and his crew's) efforts. bravo! I'm proud to be Malaysian.
June 04, 2004
it's friday and i've got time till 4... i actually didnt bring any other homework/projects to skool cus i was thinking of finishing my Islamic studies project which was suppose to due today but..... dateline extended to NEXT WEEK!!!! so here i am... wasting my time surfin around in this beautiful mac lab (this is a good lab, normally it's full or got class using but today luckily i could get a whole of a mac in here and i like it!!) and i get to write to my dear bloggie.
this is my dear Hector, Prince of Troy :: Eric Bana ::
the first group of presenters for communication studies had to present today and one of my classmates was presenting about Odysseus, King of Ithaca. till then i didnt know the war between Greek and Troy actually lasted for 10 years. after Greek was defeated once, after King Menelaus died, the soldiers f Greek actually stayed at the beach (conquered ONLY the beach) for the next 10 years!! Odysseus actually came out with dat lion idea 9 years after dat, not overnight as shown (or i mistakenly took it as overnite) in the movie. i think i'm gonna indulge in this Greek mythology thingy after i pass up all my final projects. i've got two more painting to go, and one written project (islamic studies) and one final presentation for communication studies. final presentation thingy's gonna take quite much time to prepare, i'm gonna talk bout chocolates, i've got this chocolat movie ready, i hafto edit it tho, gonna pick some scene from it to show how sensuos chocolates could be. then i'm gonna give up cute chocolate presents. i've actually bought a cute small paper bag, gonna paste some ribbons and small flower to show how chocs make a great gift. just now the presenter who talked about Odysseus wore a Greek dress (like Queen Helen of Sparta/Troy), and one boy actually showed us how to make flower tea and we get to drink a small cup of hot flower tea, one guy talked about bad breath and gave out listerine strips... well yeah that's how rajin LUCT students are. i mean i've always thought students in private colleges take their studies easily but i'm wrong, well at least not most of LUCT students. uh oh!! it's 3.45, need to go to class! bye!
May 27, 2004
Honour God, Luv Your Woman, Defend Your Country
Hector, Prince of Troy
Hector, Prince of Troy
haf to admit Troy was one of the best movie i've ever watched. Greek n Trojans mythology, was never interested in dat till i watched troy last nite.
best nite ever, worst day afterwards...
to some people who should be luvin me, be around me when i need em... do i look like such a bad person to u?
to those people who are suppose to be d closest to me... am i dat bad?
i dunno wat craps am i typin here but i sure do know how i feel. i feel tormented, unwanted, stupid... i'm lazy to u guys but i feel very tired doin things for all of u. i'm spenthrift to u guys but most of my money wasn't used for things that are only mine... wat is it, or how much more u want me to sacrifice? why do i haf to be the perfect person u guys want me to be? why do i haf to do everything and anything at d same time. i haf to be a student at d same time i hafto werk, at d same time i haf to mind d chores... i haf to find money at the same time u guys want me to be at home. JUST ONE NIGHT i ask for a break and this is what i've got. i was blamed for wasting 7 bucks on a movie that's worth the while, i was blamed for not being there for my child when i was the one who carried her in my wombs for 9 months and had my belly cut off to get her out of it safely, i ask just for a favour, one night to relax after all these tormenmts and suddenly everybody turn their back on me when i have been trying to serve everybody sacrificing my sleep energy and everyhting else WHY????? why everybody wants to take my freedom away from me? why am i forced to sell sumthing that i cant because i'm fat enuff to sell a slimming product?! when i'm in the middle of final artform execution, when i'm tense, when i'm stressed??? do u want me to die dat fast??!!!!! damn it parents and hubby just for once, GIVE INNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK, u guys hate to see my face then SO BE IT
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