Oh dear, I just realized this movie is 10 years old and I just got around to seeing it, thanks Bakor by the way . But if you’re like me, a little behind with Disney movies and trying to catch up, I must definitely, definitely recommend it. Funny, witty, full of really cool jokes for grownups and kids alike. Really, this is a movie for us all when we need a good laugh.
Long story short, spoiled and egocentric emperor Kuzco is turned by mistake into a llama by his ex-administrator, Yzma. You see, she was trying to kill him. Also, by a series of fortunate events he gets to meet Pacha, a sweet and kind llama herder who agrees to help him. Ok, so it’s a kids’ story, not an Oscar movie. However, the plot is incredibly well written, the characters are funny and charming, even the songs are kinda cool. I swear, after watching Avatar the day before, it was nice to see that there are still movies out there with a decent script. And Tom Jones is pretty cool too.

All in all? Highly recommended. Wether you have children or not, it really is worth your while if what you’re looking for is fun, lighthearted comedy. Oh, and you have some cute bonus games on the DVD,too! ❀

Oh, and if you were wondering, this is the first Disney movie in history to show a pregnant woman. Cool, huh?!

Hope to get 6/6 tomorrow

Yes yes, finally, I saw the movie. And of course, I couldn’t see the most talked-about movie of the year and not let you guys know how I feel about it. Oh well, mixed feelings, I tell you.

First, what I did like: the concept of a ‘whole new world’, where people (or blue people, whatever) are in total communion with nature, where there is no need for money, everyone is happy with the beauty around them and no one is looking for profit but is trying to become better and bring his/her contribution to the community. Nice. We definitely lack that in our real world. Then again, I highly doubt that any animal on this planet would ever bow its head and let you ride it while his other options include killing you and feeding you to its pups. But that’s just me, a little skeptical. I did like the idea of sleeping in suspended hammocks on top of the world (or so it seemed to me); however, I do move a lot in my sleep so I am not sure that this kind of height would help, should I fall… Anyway, the blue people are also likable, although maybe a tiny bit unusual at first. After some time though you get used to them and they become much nicer than humans.

Now, the “I didn’t really like it that much” part: first, the script makes no sense. They come and say that the avatars are going on the most dangerous place known to man, but the Na’vi turn out to be quite peaceful creatures. Then again, they can spot the humans, wether they have turned blue or not, so why bother with the DNA efforts? Then there are several times when you do not know wether it’s the biologists, the corporation or the mercenaries that are in charge. They seem to take turns in a very weird way, and, what is more, if they were determined to kill the Na’vi in the first place, they didn’t need some mumbo jumbo and humans becoming blue and infiltrating. It was obvious that the abilities of the population to defend themselves was close to 0, so I really cannot see the point. What they did manage to do was to get someone who knew the human  ways help the Na’vi win. Oh well, maybe it’s too complicated.

All in all? Definitely not an Oscar movie. A well advertised film with only one recognizable actor (that is, if you don’t count the guy that leads the corporation who is actually Phoebe’s idiotic brother, in Friends, or the sexy mercenary whom you may recall as Ana Lucia, in Lost), with plenty (and I mean, plenty) of special effects to compensate for the huge gaps in the story and lack of real acting. Yes, it was maybe entertaining (with a lot of useless killing too) but I cannot necessarily call it 2:42 well spent hours of my life. It’s good I can multi task. And as for the actors, I can see why there was no one too well known: it would have made no difference. Except for the evil mercenaries and a few shots of the guys who become avatars throughout the movie, for the rest they are tall creatures who have had way too much blueberry syrup for breakfast. And the acting, really, it’s like it’s not there.

Oh well, congrats to the special effects team, hats off really. Photoshop® was bragging about it, so was Autodesk®. I can see why. Awesome special effects. They got that Oscar. But for the rest, it’s just a pretty looking mess… 

Well, no connection between Career day and Earth Hour, but since the latter comes in 21 minutes, I have to remind you people to turn off the light for one hour, tonight.

Back to Lausanne and International Career Day. Impressed by the city, as always, not so impressed by the event. We went with high hopes and a ton of CVs, left with almost the same amount of CVs and no hopes whatsoever. For an event that was supposed to put together the world’s most important International Organizations, I say thank God for the freebies and the other companies that were present. UN, ILO has tiny little cubicles and usually did not offer any information whatsoever. What is more, were you to dare and ask for information, you would have probably got this precious little hint: check online, apply online. Gee thanks, thank goodness I came all the way here in order to hear that. NOW I know what to do.

Oh well, nice surprise though from the other companies that were there: Johnson&Johnson, Syngenta, Cartier, and many more. They would show you what internships are available, tell you when and where to apply and even take your CV. Nice.

With that being said, the weather in Lausanne was really nice, we had some awesome pizza ‘Chez Mario‘ and of course, a Starbucks cup (2nd one with the flowers) for my collection. Nice!

Now I have to turn this off. See ya!

Yay, finally! I’ve waited for so long to see this movie and FINALLY, my wish was granted. Hooray! I bet you wanna know about it, don’t you? That is, if you managed to stay this long without watching it, which I doubt. But anyway, I am so excited I’ve seen this movie that I can’t stop myself from telling you about it.

So, here it goes: Carl and Ellie Fredericksen have know each other since…well, forever. They’ve been united by their love for adventure and been in love since the day they met. They were perfect for each other, they had a full life with joys and troubles and everything…Sadly, Ellie passes away (what is it with Disney stories: someone always has to pass away at the beginning of the movie so you can almost cry). Carl is left alone, determined to grant his wife’s lifelong wish: that of visiting Paradise Falls, in South America. After the community decides it is time for him to move to a retirement home, the 78 year old man considers a more original plan of spending his retirement: He inflates thousands of helium balloons and uses them to ummm…lift up his house and fly. I never said this was a true story . Unfortunately for him, he ends up with Russell, a boy scout trying to win his last badge for “Assisting the Elderly” that got on to his porch before the whole house started flying. And as you can imagine, a whole adventure starts.

After landing in South America, they find ‘Kevin’ a beautiful bird (that is actually a female) which Russell wants to adopt. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. A great explorer, himself hunting for Kevin since…forever, has established himself in Paradise Falls for years, while gathering a whole army of um, err, talking dogs. Since Charles Munz (the explorer I was telling you about) finds the two as intruders who want to capture ‘his’ bird, a whole chasing situation takes place, endng, as you might expect with the good guys winning over the bad guy, blah blah.

The animation in this movie is absolutely gorgeous. All textures, colours are drawn beautifully, which adds a whole lot of magic to the movie. In my opinion, the script could be a little bit better, but  overall the story and characters and all are fantastic. Really, really recommending it

Cheers!

Note: I specifically mentioned ‘the movie’, since I am planning to read the book very soon and I am sure I will want to post about that too.

There are fewer than 4000 Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than 6000 descendants of the Schindler Jews.

Schindler’s List is one of the movies you have to see in a lifetime. Maybe more than once. It is an incredible film. It’s not very original, though. It’s about the Holocaust. The Jews. Auschwitz. Death of millions of people. But the way this movie is made…no other can compare to it. The fact that it is all black and white, with just a hint of colour now and then (to emphasize a particular red coat) gives it more depth. And the fact that great actors are in it, including the ever surprising Ralph Fiennes and the incomparable Liam Neeson just adds so much more to the movie as a whole.

The story? It’s the true story of Oskar Schindler (beautifully portrayed by Liam Neeson), a Czech born Nazi who sees the war as an opportunity for fast profit. He therefore hires Jews as cheap labour force for his factory in occupied Poland and aims to get as rich as possible. Time is passing by and the Jews are first evacuated from the ghetto in Krakow and sent to labour camps. A while later, Auschwitz concentration camp was established and thousands of Jews were gassed and incinerated afterwards, in an attempt of ‘race purification’.

But Oskar Schindler was different. He was a womanizer, a party man, he liked people to work for him and he liked making profit. However, he also had a heart. And when he saw the horrors that were happening around him, he thought his money could be put to better use. It is how he decided to ‘buy’ more than 1100 Jews from the Nazis as workers for his factory. He even promised to make ammunition instead of pots, but no decent missile ever came out of his factory. Together with his loyal accountant, a Jew himself (Ben Kingsley acts superbly in this role), they made a list of people who were to come to work for him instead of going to Auschwitz. The list, itself, was life.

The plot itself however is not the essence of this movie. Else way, there wouldn’t have been necessary 3 hours and 9 minutes of film. It’s all about the Holocaust: the terror, the pain, the merciless nazis. And this is where Ralph Fiennes comes into the movie. He portrays Amon Goeth, a commandant of the Nazi army, thirsty for blood and death, killing for his own pleasure, hating everything in relation to the Jews. He likes Schindler, develops a friendship with him, but never once does it occur to him that Oskar is trying to save the Jews instead of killing them. And here, Ralph Fiennes portrays one of the most loath-able characters ever. Cold, purely evil, Amon kills for pleasure. He adores the fact that he can kill anyone for no reason. He feels powerful through other people’s tragedies. He was, unfortunately, real.

There is more about this movie than the story of Oskar Schindler. There are the horrors of the Holocaust: the killing, the humiliation, the cruelty, the torture, the horrible feeling you get when you’re watching that all of this is true and once happened. That the extras that are being killed every few minutes actually portray real people that din nothing wrong except being in the wrong place, at the worst of times.

To see this movie, you need to prepare. You need to understand what you are about to witness, that one of history’s darkest periods will be revealed to you in its ugliest form. There is not much actual violence in the film. But there is no need. You can feel the horror and pain and desperation without seeing blood all over. You know it is there, there’s no need for them to show it.

To be honest, I think I would like to see this movie once more. Because somewhere in the back of my mind I am still hoping to understand why. It probably is pointless, I know. But one can only hope. And I also think we should all see this movie. It is there to remind us, to make us understand what huge mistakes were made and to teach us not to ever do them again.

I cannot end this review without mentioning Spielberg. Usually, I am not a fan of his work. But this is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The music (John Williams) and cinematography (Janusz Kaminski) are also works of art. Everything comes together wonderfully.

You can buy this movie on Amazon.co.uk.

I wanted sooo bad to see this movie. I was waiting for it with all hopes up, of course, since there were Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler involved. Disappointed? No. Could’ve been better? Hell yes.

The movie is your classic hate-becomes-love romantic comedy. Katherine Heigl – Abby – is a control freak, efficient, tidy woman, with a million bullet-point lists and to-do’s that help her organize her life to the very least detail. She is a smart, beautiful TV producer, top of the game at her job, but not so much when it comes to her love life. On the other hand, Mike (Gerard Butler) is a good looking, I-don’t-mince-words playboy, who has been recently hired as co-host for Abby’s show. He is proud to show The Ugly Truth to women, giving them hints about what men really want (a job and a blow, apparently).

At first, as you’d expect, the two hate each other. She despises his way of being, he laughs at her lonely life with her cat. And then decides to help her get the man of her dreams, oh-so-attractive Colin, a doctor who lives next door to Abby.

Sorry for the Spanish subtitles, I couldn’t find a better one

And this is when the games begin. She is trying to find the romantic guy, he is telling her there is no such thing. She’s wearing turtlenecks, he shows her the magic of a nice cleavage, and so on and so forth until, obviously, they fall for each other. I may say there was no big surprise there, as they even didn’t seem to hate each other that much in the beginning. There’s an obvious spark right from the moment they meet, so I really don’t think they had that much trouble falling in love.

All in all, it is a funny movie, full of sexist kind of humor and hilarious scenes (don’t miss out the vibrating panties scene!) and gets you to laugh even if the actual story is not the best. Easy going, funny, cute. Best seen with your better half or girl friends (since i don’t imagine guys would actually ever see it on their own or with their buddies). Yeah, it’s a chick flick. But it’s a chick flick with a twist

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah ohhh Yeah…

P.S. You can pre-order Jovi’s new album as well as the documentary film they’ve been working on from amazon.co.uk. Check out my widget on the right

Order any Bryan Adams video on amazon.co.uk. My personal favourite is ‘Best of Me’ ———————————->

You would think that “Knowing” is a movie that would actually let you know something. Like any teensy bit of information. Or at least tell you that knowing something will let you do something about it. But nooo. Not this movie.

You see, I’ve always like Nicolas Cage. Even with National Treasure, I thought: OK, so a little children’s fantasy movie never hurt anyone. I tried to remember the good old days of Gone in 60 Seconds and  8MM and wait for something more like him. And Knowing seemed a good movie, with a good idea for a plot: in 1959, a group of elementary school children make a time capsule imagining what the future would look like. One of them though only writes a series of numbers that seem to have no connection whatsoever. 50 years later, the capsule is dug up and every child that is now in elementary school receives one of the drawings. Caleb Koestler, son of an MIT professor, receives the paper with the numbers and from then on everything goes ballistic.

Apparently, the numbers are the exact dates and positions of the major catastrophes that took place in the last 50 years. While ‘googling’ them, John Koestler finds that 3 of them have not yet happened and realizes that the last one may well be the end of the world.

What is to like about this film: everything, apart form the last 10-15 minutes. I really did enjoy it as it was quite different from the usual “good guy saves the world when there are 13 seconds left” kind of thing. Nicolas Cage is a professor, very smart indeed, but not the usual ’superhero’ you would expect. He is powerless in front of what could be called destiny and is struggling to find a way to solve it. Should’ve called Bruce Willis there, in my opinion.  Also, the special effects are okay, quite impressive I might add.

What I disliked?

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Well, the ending, obviously, which, without being a cliche, is too weird and to ‘out there’ for me to enjoy. Some say it’s related to Scientology beliefs, but I really wouldn’t know that. I also disliked the so called “strangers”  that appeared throughout the film and that are supposed to be aliens. They look really weird and…white and…ew. Plus, their constant following of the children is quite creepy.

All in all, it probably seems a better movie to sci-fi lovers. The ones that can actually like the aliens-we are not alone crap. I am sorry, but I don’t enjoy it that much. Plus, there are a LOT of plot holes in it that you can go past but can’t really ignore for good. I for one am not seeing this again, especially since I don’t think I would be able to stand again through the crappiest ending ever. There, I’ve said it.

For those of you thinking and believing that the truth is out there, enjoy!