I finally found some time to address my backlog of movies to watch.

THE PLOT IN ONE SENTENCE

1. Pirates Mario and Luigi team up to rescue the princess kidnapped by the undead King Koopa.

2. Badass Jack Sparrow (Depp) and Goodass Will Turner (Bloom) team up to rescue the Governor's daughter, Miss Swann (Kneightly), from a crew of undead pirates who wanted her to be the sacrificial blood to remove the Aztec curse that befell them.


WHAT I LIKE
1. Johnny Depp as the crazy pirate captain "Jack Sparrow." That earned him a nomination for Best Actor in the Academy Awards.
2. Keira Knightley! The former aide of Queen Amidala never fails to get your attention.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE
1. Too much eye shadow! Which island did Jack Sparrow raid for his makeup supplies?
2. The movie is very long! I nodded off for a few seconds during the 1:47:00 mark.

OK. So I give this a 7/10. I can't wait for the G.I. Joe movie coming out in 2009! Yo, Joe!

"Business is over!" -- Pacquiao, in the post-fight interview.

In another highly-anticipated match, Pacquiao squeaked past Marquez to capture the Jr. Lightweight belt.

Marquez unexpectedly dominated the first two rounds but got tagged with a vicious left straight in the third that sent his head banging on the canvas. Pacquiao got the next round but Marquez rebounded amazingly in the 8th round. The later rounds were too close to score as they could have gone either way.

Pacquiao won on a close split decision with scores of 112-115, 115-112, and 114-113. In my scorecard, Marquez won 114-113. But what the heck, I could only score the fight with what the cameramen fed to the screen.

Pacquiao's newfound technical skills and patience might be his newly found weakness after all. He was a bit too methodical and very predictable. Anyway, the argument is only applicable to superb counterpunchers like Marquez.

It's nice for a Saturday night movie -- you don't have to think hard to understand the dialogues and you could doze off for a few minutes without missing a key scene.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays the lead role as Joe Kingman, a self-centered star professional quarterback. His daughter shows up one day and Joe's life begins a sudden turnaround. I think I've seen this plot before in a Baseball movie.

Things I learned from the movie:
1. WWE trains better actors than NBA, NFL, MLB combined.
2. WWE actors can't dance. Boxers can.
3. Sweet little kids are very, very manipulative.
4. The coach in a pro football team is just a puppet.
5. The Rock can join the Disney Channel.

David Rice (Hayden Christensen) plays the character of a boy who lived with his father in a small town just on the outskirts of Tatooine. His mother abandoned them since he was five and never returned. One day, he discovered a new talent -- he could install electrical jumper connections effortlessly!

That talent helped him to save a lot on electric bills and also earn a good sum of money from fellow poor neighbors.

However, a bill collection agent named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) soon found out David's jumper sites. Roland activated his team of engineers and electricians to track down the illegal jumpers. In the end, it's a battle between squatters (illegal settlers) and Meralco. The battle has been waging on for years because of poverty.

Daing na Bangus (PhP 132)

Contents:
½ daing na bangus (small)
1 mini cup of fried rice
1 tiny slice of tomato
1 tinier slice of cucumber
1 super thin slice of banana toffee cake
1 small cup of soda

For several years I've always liked the taste of Red Ribbon's daing na bangus plate. This morning I was shocked to see that the servings "grew" smaller. Especially the cake. Most especially the rice! Wow. I also noticed that the prices of bread loaves went up and the sizes went down.

You have been warned.

I was a Froot Loops addict before and look what I found while hunting for grocery bargains-- introducing Fruity Rings from Oishi!

This cereal comes in 180g packaging together with 35% RDA of Vitamins A,B1,B6,B12,D and a nasty pinch of Folic Acid. Wow! Did I mention it has lots sugar in it? Not so healthy indeed but who cares? It comes in 4 colors too!

Recommended for those who can't afford to buy foreign cereals marked with a naked toucan dude.

This is the best StarTrek TV series I have seen. I started watching Season 1 last May 2006 and I saw the last episode of Season 4 just a few hours ago. This incarnation is a prequel to the original Star Trek franchise headed by Capt. James Tiberius Kirk.

The show was canceled after 4 seasons (the first time for a Star Trek series to be canceled before completion) due to poor ratings. Hardcore Star Trek fans were mostly to be blamed because they whined a lot in the discussion boards. Their complaints ranged from the inept cast up to the corny "love song" soundtrack. I don't know if they eventually figured out what that forward button was for in their remote controls! I just like good Star Trek stories and I feel bad the show had to end.

Summary by season:
Season 1 (3 stars)
- The first Enterprise with a Warp 5 drive was commissioned by Starfleet.
- Alien races like the Klingons and the Suliban were introduced. Vulcans were assumed to be working with Humans for several years since Zefram Cochrane successfully tested the first warp drive.
- The main characters also showcased their "characteristics."

Season 2 (2 stars)
- Plots were beginning to feel like your daily soap opera or fantaserye
- CRAP!
- Except for a great story arc late in the season about the Xindi menace

Season 3 (5 stars)
- The best story arcs are here! The season took off afere the Xindi attacked Earth without provocation.
- I hate the "Temporal Cold War" but well, I lived with it.
- Show was rumored to be canceled; turned out to be true. I don't know why Nielsen rated this season very low.

Season 4 (4 stars)
- The "Missing Link" between ST:Enterprise and the original ST series were explained
- There were good signs that Earth would spearhead a coalition among different worlds to form an alliance (later known as "The United Federation of Planets", patterned after US of A obviously)
- And yes the final episode was a disappointment!!! (partly because the writers were also disappointed of the cancelation)

The reason why I gave this series 4 stars:

1. Linda Park as Ensign Sato (Hot!)
2. Jolene Blaylock as T'Pol.
3. John Billingsley as the Denobulan Dr Phlox
4. Linda Park as Ensign Sato (Hot!)
5. Linda Park as Ensign Sato (Hot!)

Last night, I got hold of the DVD in Widescreen format. The CGI effects are superb! The 5.1 audio sounds good in my Bose Cube system *ehem*. The special features section contains lots of interesting stuff like the size of the trailer that housed actor Ricky Gervais.

About the movie, you ask? The screenplay is very good -- parang reading a storybook lang. It is so good to finally watch a movie without thinking a lot. My favorite parts:

1. The Dancing Ostrich
2. Robin Williams as Roosevelt (with a secret crush at Pocahontas)
3. Atilla the Hun has a soft side

Those three give this review three good stars.

Cupid no itazura

This is a funny Japanese drama that was originally released in Manga. The official website is http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/cupid/. My friend who has recently gone crazy about japanese dramas (and chinese songs), introduced me to the series.

It tells a story about Tomoya Mutsuki (aka Tomo-kun, Moo-chan), a young man who has a rare disease -- he can only have sex seven times in his lifetime. He has wasted some of his chances before the disease was discovered, and now he must try to use them wisely.

Hiromi Kitagawa plays Kiryuu Asami, Tomo's best (and sometimes worst) friend. She alone gives a +3 rating to the series! Add another +1 for the funny story and this series gets a 4 from me.

I love Hiromi!

Yes, I waited.

9.00AM. I woke to the alarm I set the other night before I went to sleep. The LCD flashed "ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?" to the tune of the Rocky Theme (actually it was really REM's Shiny Happy People, but c'mon let me add some drama here).

9.30AM. I finished off my breakfast with a banana and Yakult. I was waiting for AJ Banal's fight on Channel 2 to start. I hated the lenghty talks before the fight -- they made me impatient. *TOOT* I got a text message saying that Banal won by UD! Damn, I hate spoilers. I turned off my cellphone, set my landline set to MUTE, and locked myself up in my room.

10.00AM. They began to air Rey "Boom Boom" Bautista's fight starting with Round 2! Huh? What happened to Round 1? They corrected the sequence after some time. But what happened to Banal's fight. I learned later they were not going to air it.

10.30AM. RB won by UD 12! He had some scary moments there during the 6th when the ref ruled a knockdown on him even though he never lifted his feet off the ground. For a moment, I thought the ref was going to stop the fight while RB was ahead on my scorecards! The ref also took a point off RB because of repeated low blows. In the end he was just too good for Medina. He needs to beef up his defense though.

11.00AM. The Rocky Juarez fight was long and boring. I took a shower by the sixth round and found something to read.

11.30AM. Michael Buffer's voice boomed to announce the main event -- the WORLD AWAITED! The hype for the PPV was tremendous. Golden Boy against the Pretty Boy -- I had a pen in my hand ready to score the battle.

12.00PM. Round 6 - I was getting bored with the way PBF ran the fight. ODLH was also throwing those ineffective flashy potshots to the body. Looked a bit like FPJ's style. The lady commentator was also irritating. It was clear the she had biases for the Golden Boy (because of his good looks?) and kept on calling the wrong shots (left hooks for left crosses, etc.) that might have confused some viewers. She really needed to control her excitement when covering a sport event such as boxing. She sounded like a fan!

12.30PM. Round 12 came and went without excitement. I had PBF winning 116-112 in my scorecard. Pretty Boring Floyd employed his "hit and don't get hit" tactics to boot. He was definitely the winner, no question, except that he promised to "massacre" the Golden Boy.

This event gained ONE STAR for Boom Boom's win.

Yes, I waited. Yes, I was disappointed.

Nothing beats the promise of heaven -- especially to the ignorant.

In this "best film ever" by Michael Bay, two futuristic factory workers, LINCOLN 6E (Obi Wan Kenobi, Trainspotting), and JORDAN 2D (Scarlet Johansson, Lost in Translation), try to escape a facility where humans are being put into boredom by being robots in a manufacturing chain.

The employees are given a chance to win a trip to an island paradise by winning a random raffle. The island paradise is pictured as the only livable place on Earth after the nuclear holocaust. The lady wins but Lincoln 6E uncovers a secret of the facility and tries to stop her from winning!

The plot is okay at first until it becomes a remake of Trading Places (1983). I love that movie! Lincoln 6 Echo summarizes the movie by shouting, "I'm the real one! He is the impostor! Shoot him!"

I like Scarlet Johansson and that alone gives the movie a 3 out of 5!

Lessons from the movie: Take your vitamins everyday and keep the doctor away!

This is the first book in the Xanth Series. I just finished reading the book for the nth time and the story was still good he he.

Bink was a citizen of Xanth. All Xanth citizens should possess a magic talent. Bink had none and he was ordered to be exiled to Mundania, a land where no magic exists. Bink wondered why a good citizen like him could not be spared from exile -- even people with useless talents (like making red spots appear on the wall) were considered better citizens than him!

On his way to Mundania, he met several characters who led him to an extraordinary adventure!

Oo nga no? Paano kung ang talent mo ay predicting the future? Pero ang catch ay 5 seconds into the future lang? Or turning green light to red light? Ikaw ano ang gusto mong talent?

Another search for the mythical Fountain of Youth finds the crew of USS Enterprise (NCC 1701 E) waging war with a corrupt Starfleet Admiral who have joined forces with the S'ona, an alien race pretending to gain membership in the Federation.

It's the 24th century and still the plots never change! Corrupt politics, revenge, and the desire for facelifts, botox, and so on are all in this mediocre movie. Tingnan nyo naman ang mukha ng aliens -- parang si Madam Auring ang kanilang patron saint.

If you are new to Star Trek, I recommend Star Trek: First Contact as your entry-level movie. It has a good storyline and you get to see sexy Vulcans playing cameo roles.

Do you believe na may boyfriend nga si Madam Auring? E si Mahal? Nye he he.

Another newcomer from RFM, I shelled out P20 to try it. It's quite bad. Tastes like acid more than tea! I was drinking it chilled so it shouldn't be that way. It has more sugar and corn syrup than tea to irritate your throat! Add 130 calories if you are lucky enough to finish the whole bottle.

Advice: Leave it on the shelves.

The pages of Heavy Metal -- alive! Weird characters, gore, and endless violence in one movie. The last movie I saw (before this one) on the big screen was Superman Returns. The narrator surely added some exaggeration to the story because he was so excited to return home from the battlefield.

The movie also reminds of me of the similar adventures of Gideon and his 300 men and how they defeated the Midianites. So 300 is a good number huh? I spent 300 pesos to watch this movie too.