TV: Supernatural 7x09 'How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters'

I have been waiting for a Jersey Devil episode of Supernatural since I’ve gotten into the show. When I found out that this episode was it, I was excited. But then I started watching and I found it…lacking on the new ‘supernatural’ stuff the writers said would be in there. Sera Gamble had said in an interview a few months back that they wanted to introduce new things to Supernatural. But when you have a chance to play with an amazingly diverse lore such as the Jersey Devil, and make it fall flat to fit it into their Leviathan story line they way they did…I can’t be nice.

The episode starts with a camper being strung up upside down in the Pine Barrens and eaten. Before I continue, let me tell you a bit of the Jersey Devil Lore (or at least one of the most popular versions). In 1735 a woman named Jane Leeds had given birth to 12 children and wanted no more, but was going to give birth to a 13th. So in order to escape her marriage and gain back her youth, she made a deal with the devil. Her son for what she wanted. The creature, according to many versions, killed the midwife who witnessed the deal being made and flew out of the house in some way (some say up the chimney) and has roamed the Pine Barrens ever since. One of the roads heading to the Pine Barrens is called Jimmie Leeds Road, supposedly named after the child. Now anyone tells me this does not warrant a full episode of Supernatural then I don’t know what does.

So the Winchesters and Bobby Singer start the episode in an abandon house in Hammonton, New Jersey. They are toughing out being under the radar of the Leviathans while trying to hunt and find a way to kill them. Dean is beginning to wonder what’s the point of saving the world over and over again. So grouchiness is a plate served all around. They decide to look into the camper that died while strung up, finding out more people have disappeared over the last three weeks, realizing that it has to be something supernatural. While interviewing a ‘stoned’ local Ranger at a diner, they decide to see for themselves, what is killing people in the Pine Barrens after figuring out is isn’t the normal suspects or the Leviathans.

They find a body strung up in the trees, which ends up being the stoned Ranger, Rick’s, partner. Bobby ends up showing off his hunting skills by shooting the creature from the trees after it takes Rick. They take the creature back to the abandoned house to check the corpse. As Dean is pointing out that a single bullet brought it down, it just back up alive. Each hunter pulls out their gun and releases half-dozen rounds into it, finally killing it. Dean grabs the wallet from the creature’s pants, but seems to be distracted and not himself. Sam takes it and looks at the information, noticing the weight doesn’t match what they are seeing. The older hunter then finds goo in the bullet holes and that’s when he and Sam end up cutting into the creature trying to figure out what it is. While doing this, they figure out that Dean is acting oddly. Sam and Bobby discover all kinds of things in the creature’s stomach, including a cat’s head. A blackened and enlarged adrenal gland accounted for its superhuman strength. Dean interrupts to suggest they get dinner.

They are back at the restaurant, when Bobby and Sam realize that it’s the sandwich special that is making everyone so carefree, including Dean. Sam yanks the sandwich from his brother and they head back to the house. The older Winchester insists that he feels the best he has ever felt in the last few months, but stops when the sandwich starts leaking goo after Sam insulted the contents of the sandwich. In which Dean replies, ‘I think you made my sandwich mad’. This gives them the proof that whatever is going on, is in the meat.

A stake out for the delivery van begins that night. As Dean sleeps off the effect of the goo, Sam tries to talk to Bobby about Dean’s issues. Bobby then points out that because the boys spend all their time worrying about each other they don’t live their own lives. Soon the meat is delivered and Sam and Bobby follow the truck back to its warehouse. While Dean finally comes to, they see Edgar, a Leviathan that Sam and Dean squashed at Bobby’s there. They are taking Brandon, a server from the diner, into the warehouse.

Edgar tells Dr. Gaines, another Leviathan, that they their experiments are still having adverse reactions to the formula. He demands Gaines burn all of the subjects, stating that Dick Roman is coming. That named immediately send Gaines to get rid of the subjects like Edgar wanted.

The next day, Sam is check out the facility while Bobby and Dean are in the van watching the place. Bobby questions Dean about his new attitude. Dean explains that he’s tired of fighting because it doesn’t matter what they do, they keep fighting. The older man scolds the Winchester saying he’s not a person, he’s a hunter. Bobby tells him to focus on being a hunter before it gets them all killed.

When Sam returns, Bobby recognizes the Billionaire CEO, Dick Roman arriving. He realizes that they have advantage of surprise, but need to figure out what the Leviathans are up to. So Bobby gets out a parabolic mike and decides to listen in on the creatures.

As Gaines is showing Dick the results of the formula, Dick congratulates him then asks about the failures. After making it clear that they were suppose to stay out of the papers, Dick uses Gaines as a lesson to the others. With Bobby listening in, he has Gaines eat himself after informing him that they are shutting down the project. As he watches, a worker finds Bobby and knocks him out. Sam and Dean soon realize Bobby is taken and make plans for a rescue, when they see an industrial cleaning van pull up.

Inside, Dick ends up talking with Bobby explaining about how they could have anyone while showing off a pair of revolvers he bought in a recent auction. As he loads one of the guns, the Leviathan compliments Bobby on humanity’s invention of the gun and tells Bobby he’s going to eat him. However, as Sam and Dean run in using the chemicals to spray down Dick’s bodyguards, he leaves to investigate. Bobby is left in the room with the distribution plans and the other revolver. Loading the gun, he takes the plans and starts to leave only to be attack by Dick’s assistant Susan. Shooting her in the face, he runs as she regenerates.

As Dick confronts Sam, who is out of chemicals, Bobby arrives and shoots him in the back. This gives Dean enough time to soak the Leviathan with the rest of his cleaner. They are able to get into the van and speed away as Dick shoots at them, only to realize that Bobby has been shot in the head. It bleeds to black with Dean shouting for Bobby.

Now, I understand them want to stay with the whole Leviathan manipulating the world storyline, but there was so many different ways they could have taken the lore of the Jersey Devil. Inside its down played as a side effect from the goo the Leviathans used in the local diner. I was highly upset with the whole thing. Not only that, but it seemed that are going to be pushing the whole Castiel issue away, like an out of sight out of mind deal. This frustrates me because this is one of the reasons Dean’s attitude is the way it is this season. To not touch on it as much as it should be is a bit weak. Not only that, but Sera Gamble said they were going to go back to the two brothers theme of saving people and hunting things. In this episode it clearly shows that the Leviathan plot will trump that. They had gold here with the Jersey Devil storyline and I feel like they dropped the ball.

3 trucker hats out of 5

TV: Leverage 4x09 'The Cross My Heart Job'

The opening to this episode was a bit different than other episode which is a good thing. Instead of seeing how the client gets in trouble first thing, you see the team coming back from their recent job. While coming through the lobby of the airport, Nate Ford scans the crowd and sees a con in progress. In the process, he sees a woman looking a bit out of a place who because the new client. She is a nurse, transporting a heart to a child in the Cincinnati hospital. The team finds out that someone took Linda’s daughter in order to force her to give them the heart.

The team finds themselves with 108 minutes to rescue the daughter, the heart, and get it to the hospital before the boy dies all without their standard equipment. With all these handicaps, things also start to get a bit personal for Nate when he remembers his son in the hospital. They find the daughter in the local airport restaurant and quickly set up their base there. Eliot and Parker steal a few pieces of equipment, despite the area probably being surveillance and there were too many people around. While Sophie makes a call to get the heart transplant registry sent to their email. Hardison finally gets a computer, an early to mid 90’s one, in order to slowly (I mean slowly for his speed) download the list and filter out the genetic matches for the heart. Nate flags the name Dean Chesney, a CEO of defense contracts who is dying.

So they steal the airport!

They got through a series of mini-cons in order to get the different access cards to the different levels. They find out that the thieves are not in their private hanger, but are boarding a public plane. In order to get them off the plane, Nate and Sophie call in a tornado warning forcing everyone to evacuate the airport and any planes that have been boarded. As the thieves get off the flight, Parker steals their bag and leads them on a chase to Eliot, who beats down the thugs. While this happens, a transatlantic flight comes in and Hardison needs to help it land. Not knowing what to do, he pulls up Microsoft Flight Simulator X on the other computer and uses that to navigate the flight down.

Everything comes to a close when the thief finally gets caught up with Parker after she runs into a cart of suitcases and takes the cooler away. But this is Leverage and Parker is a professional. She pulled the old switch-roo with the coolers! Nate has the heart and everyone rushes to the hospital just in time to the save the young boy. It’s later that Nate receives a call from Chesney and they have a heart to heart about what would happen if he tried to steal another heart for himself.

All in all I liked this episode. What really got me were Nate personal feelings getting in the way of his mastermind plans. His memories of his son kept coming back to him throughout this episode. Eliot had a bit more play than usual because he was explaining about the thugs and how the CEO was using local thugs and not professionals. Hardison got to be a woman who had a sex-change, which made for a very comedic scene while Sophie and Parker got to play off the guy’s cues. Lastly, I immensely enjoyed how Nate explained how he was keeping tabs on this guy, which makes you wonder who else has Nate been keeping tabs on?

5/5

Movie: Burlesque (2010)

Two singing sensations come together in this take of a neo-burlesque nightclub. Christina Aguilera stars as Ali, a small-town girl who escapes her small-town life at a shot for fame in the City of Angels, Los Angeles. When searching for a job, as most of us would after moving to a new town spontaneously, she stumbles across the ‘Burlesque Lounge’. She walks into the building just in time to catch Tess, performed by Cher, suitably performing the number “Welcome to Burlesque”. In typical fashion, Ali decides that she wants to perform in the club. She manages to snag a job under Tess’s nose with help from the bartender Jack (Cam Gigandet) and is able to work in the club secretly learning each of the routines while serving her customers. Jack, the bartender who wears eyeliners and is not gay, allows Ali to stay at his place after hers got broken in to. Again in typical cliché fashion, boy falls in love with girl despite having a fiancée in New York. And despite the heat rising between them there is no sex scene because of the PG-13 rating (what they can curse like hell but can’t see a bit of nudity, you hypocrites!).

As the movie progresses, you learn that Tess’s ex-husband Vince (Peter Gallagher), who co-owns the club, wants to sell it off to Marcus (Eric Dane) who wants to tear the club down and put up condos. Though a background plot, Marcus seems to take a shine to Ali’s character when she finally gets her wish to be in the Burlesque show.

When Ali is given her fame, she finds herself spending more time with Marcus and less time with Jack. At this point it continues in typical love savvy way, and eventually a happy ending is given to them. But not before Ali steps up to Tess and helps her save her club.

In my opinion, I enjoyed the musical numbers, everything after that was pretty much forgetful. The characters weren’t memorable except for the two leading ladies, and even that was only because they are the main singers in the movie. I did enjoy the witty banter you got from Stanley Tucci’s character who is the stage manager for the club and the minor funny performance from Alan Cummings, but the rest was lacking depth. It is a good movie to watch ON DEMAND if you have nothing better to do, or you are interesting in seeing how remarkable Christina acts for her first time.

2/5

Video Game Review: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Xbox 360 - Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Review

WARNING SPOILERS!

Once again you take up the role as the assassin, Ezio Auditore da Firenze in this sequel of Assassin’s Creed II. Brotherhood takes place immediately after its predecessor, starting in the vault after the talk with Minerva. After escaping Rome with a little help, the gamer is taken back to Monteriggioni where Ezio tells his family, Mario, Caterina and Machiavelli about what happened. The next morning, the villa is attacked by Rodrigo Borgia’s son, Cesare. He defeats Mario and kidnaps Caterina, but not before one of his soldiers shoots Ezio. In revenge, after getting his mother and sister as well as some villagers out of there, Ezio rides back to Rome where the game takes place. While in the present day, Desmond and the other make it to modern day Monteriggioni to hide from Abstergo.

While the other Assassin’s Creed games have you traveling between cities, this one takes place strictly in large Renaissance city of Rome. You have three modes of travel: on foot, on your trusty steed, or through a fast travel tunnel system. Now everyone knows that on foot consists of running or walking and scaling buildings. That’s fun if you want to screw around with a few of the roof guards or avoid unnecessary circling around the city. The tunnel system can only be used when you find the tunnel entrance in the area and pay to have it renovated. It can be a great help when you are going from one side of the map to the other. But the fastest way to travel that is in between them is riding your horse. Now you can basically steal any horse you want or get them from the stables and whatever horse you were on last will be the horse that is called to you when you whistle. The best thing this time around with the horse, is that you aren’t getting a notoriety raise every time you run someone over. Major plus in my book.

Ubisoft also took the idea of building your finances with the construction of the villa and took it a step further in Brotherhood. In this game, you have to unlock the doctors, merchants, landmarks and aqueducts in order to rebuild Rome from under Borgia’s rule. To do this you must destroy each Borgia tower in the area and its captain. Once that is done you are able to unlock everything, including faction buildings for your allies.

Yes, the factions are back in this sequel. The courtesans in Rome are left without a leader. Claudia, Ezio’s sister, steps up as an Auditore and decides she will help her brother by leading the courtesans in Rome. Along with her, La Volpe is back with his thieves and so is Bartolomeo with his mercenaries. With the help of fellow Assassin allies, Ezio is able to rebuild the Assassin’s brotherhood back to its full strength.

Rebuilding the Brotherhood is one of the most interesting parts of the gameplay. Ezio saves citizens from the Borgia guards, who in turn give their skills over to the Brotherhood. As the guild grows, you are able to send Assassins out on missions in order to gain money and objects needed for shop quests. These shop quests allow you to gain better armor, more room on your belts, and better weapons. Not only that, but when you gain a certain amount of members into the guild, you are able to summon them to assassinate your targets for you. They literally come from nowhere to help you. There is one move called the Arrow Storm. This move brings in a barrage of arrows from the sky killing your target and the surrounding enemies. The best thing about this move, is that when you use it the kill is not linked back to Ezio in anyway. So you can move through the fight without getting anyone suspicious, unless you join in on the slaughter of course. But you must beware when you send your assassins out on missions and against guards. If they are not strong enough, you will lose them permanently.

One thing Ubisoft added that made this a really unique Assassin’s Creed game was the multiplayer aspect. And this multiplayer is not something that was just added on to the game. Ubisoft explained that the multiplayer is the Abstergo operatives training themselves to be able to catch Desmond and his assassin friends. There are three different types of multiplayer games. First you have the normal free-for-all which is labeled Wanted. You get a target, while trying to stay away from people targeting you. The second is called Alliance. This game is three teams of two people. One team hunts the other while being hunted by the third. The last game-type is called Manhunt. In this game there are two teams of four and you take turns hunting each other. Now the multiplayer in this game isn’t just focused on the quantity of your kills, but the quality of them. This is an assassin game and Ubisoft really embodied the game in their multiplayer. The only thing that bothers me is that it takes a bit long to find and start a match.

The Brotherhood is an excellent finish to Ezio’s story and a nice bridging gap to Assassin’s Creed 3. Desmond’s story also continues when he finds out where Ezio’s Piece of Eden is. Not spoiling the end, let’s just say that you will need to play Brotherhood to understand Desmond’s story in AC3. Overall Brotherhood is a game where Ubisoft took into account what the player liked and what they knew they needed to fix and did just that. There might be minor repetitive missions, but you will always have that in almost any game. The gameplay takes a new violent and enjoyable twist. For example countering with your sword is libel to get the guards head blown off with the gun in Ezio’s gauntlet. The added aspect of managing your own Assassin’s guild was unique and enjoyable. While the story gave you side-missions, you could easily bypass them for the main story which really rounded out everything for Ezio and those associated with him. Even if you don’t like Ezio or his story, I definitely recommend this game for the intricate gameplay and guild order.

9.8/10

Video Games | Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood | E3 2010: Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Movie: Tekken 2010

Going into this movie, I wasn't expecting it to be like the game. Video Game Movies hardly ever are. So I entered this with the basic knowledge that has always been consistent. Jun Kazama has a son named Jinn who is Kazuya Mishima's son. I told myself if they messed that up, then this movie wasn't worth the trouble. Luckily they did not disappoint me.

In this movie, the world's governments fall and eight major corporations take over dividing the world up. North America was taken over by the company known as Tekken, which is the equivalent of the Mishima Corp since it is run by Heihachi. All together these companies are known as Iron Fist. They hold a competition called the Iron Fist Tournament.

After Tekken kills his mother, Jin Kazama enters the open call in order to gain revenge. He ends up in a 1v1 fight with Marshall Law. Now I don't know about you guys, but in the game this guy is a Bruce Lee knock off and annoying as hell to beat. This first real fight scene is pretty good. I'm even counting when he flashes back to when Jun was teaching him as a young kid. Well as we know he beats Law and goes on to be Jin, the people's choice, for the Iron Fist tournament.

Well the fight manager who then become Jin's manager is actually Steve Fox. Now in the game, Fox is a boxer who is an attention whore, so seeing this grunged down version really made me enjoy the character more. When they enter Tekken City and the tournament they meet the other fighters. Among them are Raven, Eddy Gordo, Nina and Anna Williams, Yoshimitsu, Dragunov, Rojo and Brian Fury. Now when I first saw this line-up I looked at the other characters in the game and shook my head. Really...they could have had a better lineup in this game.

The first fight in the tournament is with Raven and Eddy Gordo. Now I got to give props to the actor for Eddy, because he did his capoeira fantastically. But Raven...he is suppose to be a ninjutsu master, and damn it I would have liked to see some of the ninjutsu moves. I mean hell in the game he has this vanishing trick he does, can a brother at least get some nun-chucks in here? Some ninja styling please? All I saw from Raven was a bit of kicking and blocking up until he pinned Eddy and just whaled on him.

Next was Rojo and Jin, this was a little more exciting. Steve Fox gives Jin a bit of advice, but it doesn't help that much. It is only when Jin gets his ass beat and remembers his mother's training does he come out on top. And Rojo's whole two liner about about 'Do you know where you are, this is Iron Fist!'...this was totally unnecessary. I suppose at the end of this fight is when we see what the game considers 'Devil Jin' where he gets so pissed, he can almost not control himself. But unfortunately that's all we get, his anger not the full package.

Jin then gets close to his fellow competitor Christie Montiero. Now there is nothing wrong with Christie's character in the movie except for the fact that she is labeled a capoeira fighter and when she fights Nina...she does none! That was about my only complaint with her.

Now before Jin came to the tournament it was alluded to that he was intimate with a girl named Kara. What pissed me off was that they totally forgot about Ling Xiaoyu, who is supposedly Jin's love interest and childhood friend in the game. If you are going to focus the movie solely on Jin Kazama, you have to bring in the people that will build up his character development and Xiaoyu is one of them. The other being his rival Hwoarang...but I'm not going to get into that.

Now after all the bull, Kazuya takes over Tekken right out from Heihachi who is played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. I suppose they needed one famous person in there and they thought 'Hey, let's get the guy who played Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat. I mean he played a villain in that movie why not this one?' He didn't even need to act in this one. It actually looked like he was pissed he was put in that role, like they had promised him the roll of Kazuya or something then said sorry but we got this other dude doing it. But the role of Kazuya was so underplayed. All you saw of him was he was either screwing the Williams whores or being a douche in general. Kazuya is a man of action, he would be in the tournament not sending whore-class assassins and Jack-units to do his dirty work, he'd do it himself. Especially if it was to go after his son.

The martial arts in this movie is really as played up as it could be. The only time you see it is in the ring of the tournament. But I suppose in a society like that, that is the only time you would do any real martial arts. The other times it is like 'Holy shit they have guns run for your lives!'. And I'm not saying that it was bad, when they did have martial arts it was good...but it could have been better.

All in all, the grunge feel of the whole scenario was a pretty good play on how the corporations rose up and how they got this tournament, but the character development was terrible. For a movie based off the a Fighting Game, it lacked a lot of fighting. I would have enjoyed a bit more fight scenes than the club scene where Jin gets it on with Christie. I mean other than Jin's abs, Christie's ass, and some of Steve Fox's mild wit...I can say I'm glad I didn't buy this movie.

Movie: Hard-Boiled

Hard-boiled, probably one of the most epic movies I've seen Chow Yun-Fat in. Everything from the cinematography to the action and the background plots for the main characters was stunning.

It starts off with Chow Yun-Fat's character, Tequila, getting into a shoot-out in the local tea-house. It ends badly when he kills the the man he was suppose to arrest alive. Later you find out that his captain is taking him off a case, in which he wants to handle because the crooks killed his partner. He continues with the case anyway, despite the threats for his job and whatnot. As the story progress you come to find that the captain has a deep cover operative within the gang that Tequila is trying to take down. This part is played by Tony Leung (coincidentally the character is named Tony also). He warns the captain to take Tequila off the case before the man blows his cover, but Tequila doesn't listen. Despite butting heads numerous times Tequila and Tony end up working together to bring the crime lord down.

The most memorable part of this movie was in the hospital scene in which Chow Yun-Fat is killing guys, while holding a newborn infant in his arms while the hospital is on fire. Though very unrealistic, it was an awesome scene to watch. His character Tequila had some major mood swings. It seemed that he would go from angry serious one minute to goofy happy the next. I thought he was on drugs. All in all, it was an amusing thing to watch when he did that. Tequila was out for revenge and had a good sense of humor along the way.

Tony Leung's character was good too. He was the typical brooding angst character. I was a little disappointed with him in the beginning thinking he was just another bad guy, but after finding out he was a deep cover cop, it kinda made sense. He too had an epic fight scene in the hospital with a 'former friend'. Though it ended sadly when the crime boss came in and killed all the innocent patients, which caused his own henchmen to turn against him. Pity...(note sarcasm). In this scene, Tony had pieces of glass sticking out of the side of his face which made him look more badass as he fought with the enemy. And let me tell you...glass in your face hurts like a mother...

Again, this was a beautifully made more and one I would recommend to all Martial Arts and Action fanatics.

Manga: ZombiePowder

<WARNING: A BIT OF SPOILERS>

In order to get Zombie Powder, one must collect all 12 'Rings of the Dead'. With the Zombie Powder, you can either become immortal or bring someone back to life. The trick is the rings are dangerous and if touched by flesh it will devour the life force from them.

So enter Elwood, a 14 year old pick pocket and knife thrower, who happened to feed the wrong person at the wrong time. Gamma Akutabi, the man who was fed and also has a 960 million nit (the currency) bounty on his head. When Elwood's boss's get wind that he had Gamma at his home and didn't tell them, they come to collect. In the crossfire, Elwood's ill sister, Sheryl Ann gets killed while trying to protect him. Gamma comes and saves Elwood from his former bosses, and the young boy ends up following the man in order to get the Zombie Powder to resurrect his dead sister.

The manga is only 4 volumes long due to it being canceled. The reason I first got into it was because I saw it was by Tite Kubo, the man who had done Bleach. Apparently this is his first manga series, and Bleach his second. Go figure the US would get it backwards. No wonder Gamma has a Grimmjow vibe to him (heh).

ZombiePowder is reminiscent of Trigun. In where as the main character holds immense power, a dark secret, and wants to help the weak. And like Trigun, the main character has an upbeat partner who is known as C.T. Smith. This man dresses like a Londoner and I wouldn't be too surprise if this was an anime, that he would have a London accent too.

Not only that, but you also have other minor characters such as Wolfina and her brother Emilio, who had one of the rings nested inside his body. And last you saw of anyone was Gamma had taken everyone to a mad scientist known as Nazna Gemini, who would perform surgery on Emilio if Wolfina would be her test subject for a year. Furthermore, Gamma and Smith left Elwood to see what kind of path he would choose. And that's when it was canceled.

Due to the blantant ending, nothing is known for sure about what happens to the characters. But then again...that's what fanfiction is for. I would not mind seeing this series picked up again, just for the shear fact that in the last chapter of Volume 4, Kubo gave you a lot of hints to some very interesting facts about Gamma's past as well as Smith's. But I highly doubt that would happen anytime soon.

AFO 2007 Mention: Breakdancing

Okay two posts in one day! Woo. Now here's the thing about Anime Conventions. If you know me, you know I like to photography/video a lot of things especially if I go out. For those that don't, my camera was full of pictures at one point or another.

While surfing the internet about stuff that happened at AFO, Anime Festival Orlando, since I'm going to be living there soon. I found this skit with a guy named Chuck breakdancing. Now being a former dancer myself I'd have to say it's a mix between hip-hop and breakdancing, but because of this performance he got his famous name and got recruited by a group called 'Concept Galaxy'. Now I thought this was an awesome video. And being a woman, I thought it was very hot (abs....). But in a professional stand point (dancer), He did very well. Chuck stirred up the crowd and teased them in a way I haven't since I was in my teens dancing in high school. His costume though only consisting of a few things to label him to the character was very good considering it was jeans and a tank top with a vest and mesh shirt underneath.

Now I know some of my friends are going to be like 'Oh god what have you been doing?' But when Regina and I get bored, we tend to surf youtube for this kind of stuff. So without further ado, I bid you to watch Chuck as 'Breakdancing Kakashi!'

Movie: Chocolate

Chocolate is about an autistic daughter who has developed uncanny martial arts skills from the Muay Thai house next door and from watching TV. She is also the daughter of a former gangster woman Zin and a rival Yakuza heir Masashi. When both Zin and Masashi part ways after Zin’s boss forbids her to, Zin is left with the task of bringing up their autistic daughter Zen. After some trials and adopting a son named Moom, Zin finds out that she has cancer. With no money to pay for it they find a list of debtors in the ailing woman’s diary.

Zen and Moom attempt to make money to pay for these treatments by having people throw balls at her as a street performer (in which she catches with amazing skill). Unfortunately they are not able to earn enough to keep up with the treatments. One day, Moom discovers a list of debtors in an old notebook, from the days when Zin was a high-interest moneylender under the Thai gangster known as No. 8. Things then turn a bit choppy when Zen decided she wants that money. In collecting all the debts, they collect the interest of No. 8. Various battles ensue and Zen must fight for the money that could help her mom.


This movie in my opinion was interesting. I bought it for the martial arts. And it delivered. I like how the director was the man who did “Ong-Bak” and “The Protector”. He had a vision after working with Tony Jaa that was basically like this: ‘Hm….let’s have a movie where a woman does all this martial arts badassery!’ It came out pretty well. I wasn’t too sure on the autistic part of the movie, but that was integrated in seamlessly. Personally, if he didn’t put it in there, I don’t think it would have been as badass as it was.

The storyline was much to left desired. I think they could have developed that a bit more, but the martial arts makes up for the lack of. I think it’s pretty interesting that they forced the actress Jeeja Yanin to go through two years of training before hand, and then two years through the whole time of shooting. That must have been difficult. And from what I saw, she did her own stunts. That’s amazing. I wish I could do stuff like that.

Epic Fan-Trailer for Green Latern

So this guy and his crew made a Green Latern Trailer basing it around the actor Nathan Fillion. Now most of you Sci-fi fanatics will know Nathan as Captain Mal Reynolds from "Firefly"/"Serenity" or as Richard Castle from the new ABC show "Castle". Take a look at it and be amazed. I was.

Cirque Dream Pandemonia

So my dad's work, the Jitney Association, gave him two tickets to the Cirque Dreams Pandemonia that is playing at the Taj Mahal. Since my dad didn't go I took my cousin Stephanie.

Though short, it was an amazing show. Don't get it confused with Cirque De Soliel because it's a similar, yet different show.

The abilities the performers had was wicked. To be able to move your body like that and to bend like the women did...makes me wish I was still in gymnastics. Everything from the music to the painted backdrops to the spectacular costumes were simple fantastic. There was like 6-7 different acts not including the ending act. They had some damn amazing skills to pull off some of the things they did.

All in all it was a short show, and I wish it was longer, but beggars can't be choosers. After the show the actors went out into the lobby so people could take pictures. And there was this one really old couple that kept getting in the way. Rawr...

Afterwards, we walked the boardwalk and I wish I had someone other my 12 year old cousin to do that with. Someone around my age and preferably male. Ah, it is nice to dream.

J-drama: Gokusen Movie

I am seriously syked about this movie. It looks so much epicly awesome than the actually series. Students from all three seasons come back to help or give advice to Yankumi or so it seems. Apparently a student from her last 3d class (the third season) gets mixed up with drugs and gets framed. Like Big Time. Something that only happened in minor details in the series.

Some of the guys from her former classes have all gotten better in life. From punk to respectable citizens. What a shock after seeing Yankumi beat the hell out of people who messed with them. I wouldn't want to piss her off by continuing being a punk either. Anyway, some of the more popular ones among fans appear back in the movie. You can only guess why. Maybe cameos or maybe important parts of the movie. We won't know until 7/11.

This is not really a review, just a comment on how I feel about this. I hope it turns out really well since this is Nakama's last time playing Yankumi. And from the trailer it looks like she'll go out with a BANG.


See for yourself:

June 26th

I've conformed. Rawr.