Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Movie Review 33: G-Force

Title: G-Force

Director: Hoyt Yeatman

Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Genre: Comedy

This story revolves around a group of specially trained animals who are facing the danger of being shut down by the FBI for cost cutting measures. In order to win his superiors over, Ben (Zach Galifinakis) ordered his special animals to infiltrate the residence of a home electronics maker, Leonard Saber which is suspected to be involved with terrorism. The infiltration team consists of 3 guinea pigs Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Juarez (Penelope Cruz), Blaster (Tracy Morgan) and a mole (Nicholas Cage). I never realize that this movie has such a huge cast before writing this review! Anyway, as expected, something went wrong and they were shut down and they attempted to find the truth behind everything... duh...

This comedy is actually quite nice. There were numerous of good laughs throughout the movie and at the same time, there's still adequate action-oriented scenes. Unfortunately (for me), this movie might actually be targeting younger audiences as there were so much mushy conversations throughout... they'll talk about friendship, families and honour... which had me squirming in my seat as I can't really stand such "message to children" in a movie.

So, if you are expecting a mature kind of comedy, this is not the place... the 3 mice and a mole is a pretty giveaway that it's a movie for children. Anyway, I still think that it is an okay movie to bring your children to and if you're into a not so deep movie just for some quick laughs. And I supposed this is a good reason to watch a movie in 3D too... though I think that 3D movies have become quite common of late.

Observation: When Juarez mentioned she played the simulator for 200,000 hours, it meant that it's at least 23 years old, which is impossible as a guinea pig has a known maximum lifespan of 8 years. (from IMDB)

Bottomline: Children only

Bamboo Ranking: 2.7 / 5.0

Friday, September 11, 2009

Of Food and Presents

Ah, one year has passed by and I'm celebrating my second birthday since I started blogging. My birthdays in the past has always been celebrated in somewhat muted manner. Celebrating in getting older is not something I will ever get used to in my current lifetime.

This year, I get to have a birthday lunch (first time, previously always dinner and supper) with my lunch mates. Doryfish suggested this restaurant called OXO... which according to her, was once so popular that you won't even be able to get menu to order things!

All of us ordered set lunches which we can select soup or salad, main course, dessert and tea or coffee.

Mushroom soup... acceptable

Salad... don't know what it taste like, but it seems to be same as the one in my main course and it doesn't taste nice loh...

Bread sticks... just crunchy... no taste at all

Dunno what it is... but it's so filled with sesame seeds that it's actually bitter!

Don't know exact name, but it consists of chicken and lamb... Doryfish claimed it's quite nice... but it's definitely filling!... RM22.90

Chicken thingy... this dish is quite nice, got a taste of it when KY generously offered a piece... should be tried... RM16.90

My order... the taste is not bad, but it's basically sandwich filled with chicken floss loh and the salad is not good and the potatoes have skin (which is normal, but I don't like those), and it's definitely not worth the price... RM22.90

The redeeming value of the set lunch :P... the cake is okay but the cookie is really nice loh... you just can't screw up with sweet things :P

Tea... none of us ordered coffee though...

Another photo of the dessert... this cake has a brownie on top!

My birthday card... it's been years since I last got one of them... not counting the one gave by my company of course, which brings me to the attention that I still haven't got my vouchers from my company this year lah... canceled due to cost down? Anyway, see the picture above, apparently, I'm loved a lot!

My birthday gift! Very nice! I'm always spending money to buy novels every month, so this is definitely the second most useful gift I've ever got... the most useful gift is of course hard, cold cash, which I get from my parents every year :P. Once when I was in my early teens, my relative gave me a book because she know that I love to read, but I never finish reading it because it's super boring... so, nice thinking guys and gals!

The guy next door...

The girls opposite the street...

The restaurant...

And then, night came and another friend come and asked me out for dinner! Never have I had lunch and dinner with friends on my birthday!

Of course, it was not really a birthday treat... it's more like catching up kind of dinner... we just had dinner in a food court. We ate from 9pm till almost 12 midnight! Well, that's because by 10.30 pm, when we finished our dinner, another friend came and join us for dinner... so, I had a really long dinner that night!

My laksa... how I missed you... okay, I could have eaten this anytime I want, but the nearest food court is 5km away from my house... why travel when I have a restaurant just across the street? :P

'Loh bak"... much, much better than the stupid, gross pasembur...

Oysters! See those oysters?

Herbal duck noodles... doesn't look very nice and it's put on top of a broken plastic basket... who uses that kind of tools for food?

My very shy friend...

And I got a free ticket from GSC! Okay, I have always got a free ticket from GSC on the month of my birthday, but I have never used it since it's applicable only for movies with asterisk which means movies that are already on the silver screen for more than a week and since I have always watched any new movies in the first week, I was unable to use it. This month I think there're quite a few movies I haven't watched that are with asterisk. Gonna to watch it this weekend.

Still waiting for the free KFC and McD vouchers from company and amazing cash from parents!

Friday, September 4, 2009

Ramadhan Craze... Again

Too lazy to write a blog on this since I've already covered this last year. Just wanna show the food I had in Ramadhan Bazaar this year... don't worry, these are the pics of the food I bought from Ramadhan Bazaar for a total of 3 days... not one day :P.

Pasembur... worst food that I had there... it's not freshly fried like "Loh Bak" and the sauce is just terrible... threw away more than half and it cost me RM8! (This is not the pic of the pasembur I ate... it's so horrible that I forgot to take the picture!)

Murtabak... chicken wrapped in egg... what's so nice about that? But it is one of the most repetitive dishes sold in the bazaar... RM1.50 per piece...

Chicken Kebab... this one is slightly better than the previous 2 dishes, but just marginally... RM2.50 per piece...


Honey Chicken Rice... RM 3.5... not as good as I remembered last year...

Assortment of fried stuff (curry puff, fried popiah & sardine puff)... RM2 for 5 pieces... still heavenly...

Grilled fish... siakap... RM15... not good at all...

Satay... RM0.40 per piece... so so...

Fried sotong... RM2.50 per packet... not really that good, but always got throng of people lining up to buy it...

Ayam percik... ranges from RM1 to RM5... shown above is the RM2 per piece... still very nice, especially the gravy...

Chilli fried chicken rice... RM3.50 per packet... I didn't taste any chilli loh...

Assortment of 'kuih'... RM1.00 for 3 pieces... not really as good as I expected... I'm maturing, perhaps? :P

Nah, this is not bought from the Ramadhan Bazaar... just something I ate for dinner last weekend... and resulted me in having sore throat for 5 days (still having sore throat even now)... dun worry, it's not the A(H1N1) flu... no fever, no runny nose, no muscle pain... just pure sore throat :(

So, it turns out that the food at the Ramadhan Bazaar is not as good as I remembered them to be... it's either the quality of the food sold at that particular bazaar is declining or I'm maturing and thus these junk food no longer hold any influence over me!
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