Oh I have a blog!

Hahaha. I totally forgot about the blog, my last post was in november 2009. Thats like.. 6 MONTHS! Alot of things happened these past few months.. oh well i was super worked with 1st year degree. Final exams ended around early March 2010, and yeah since then until now im on holiday.. well actually classes start on the 19th of May.. 2 weeks or so to go.

EXTREME boredom is the cause of me coming here, blogging.. I dont have much to do, spent my holidays helping mom with house chores and going out once in a while, i jog sometimes too to keep myself fit. Other than that i basically spend my time playing computer game.. Counter Strike that is :x ....

Oh well my love of playing computer games have always been hampered by my PC.. super-old.. already 8 years or so now. Still functioning but oh well, it got upgraded a few times... the ram and the graphics card, but now its just too old that it cant even take anymore upgrades. Done my whining to my dad, and GUESS WHAT im getting a laptop! Its not really SUPER AWESOME, but its definitely A LOT better than this old wood PC im using.

Its ASUS A52JK i5.. it definitely has some cool specs, will write more on that later.. been close to two weeks since i ordered it at the pc fair early/mid April. They said i can get it by the 1st week of may.. so yeah 1 more week and i should have it :D ...

The Prestige

In my previous post i did tell you im gonna write about The Prestige so here's my account of the movie. Dont worry its a no spoiler review.

The Prestige -

So im sure many of you have never heard of this movie, was never really famous in Malaysia due to lack of publicity. Its a movie directed by Christopher Nolan, a pretty famous guy who directed some great movies but yeah, who cares this review has nothing to do with his other movies...just saying he's a great director. Now..The Prestige, what is it?

Michael Caine was magnificent as Cutter

Well in every magic trick there's 3 parts. The first part is called the Pledge, where the magician shows something pretty normal and lets the audience inspect it. The second part is called the Turn, where the magician does something NOT VERY normal to the pretty normal thing, something that makes you go ooohhhh and aaahhhh. Well usually you wont be very impressed, which is why there's a third part, which is called the Prestige, to make the audience simply wonder...and clap. The Prestige is the most difficult part, for an example, a magician can easily make an object disappear in a trick, but that is simply not enough to impress many. What makes that trick wonderful...is when the magician makes that disappeared object reappear, in a fabulous fashion.

So now u know what The Prestige actually stands for. Lets get to the movie, i had to say when the movie started nothing much really made any sense, it was all blurry. The movie kept jumping from the past to the future vice versa. The beauty of this is that Nolan didnt use the typical way of showing past and present, the all too familiar black and white or dark screen. It looks pretty much the same but the audience can somehow differentiate the past and the present. As the movie goes on, the blur starts to become clearer, and excitement comes into the story all the while keeping the 'whats going on? i wanna know more' feeling in us. It's pretty much like a box of chocolates, you don't usually see the chocolate, you slowly open the box, the wrapper, then you pop it into your mouth for an absurdly wonderful taste. So yeah, the story unravels bit by bit, beautifully.

The story is set towards the end of 18th century, and there were 2 men who start as magic helpers.. you know, guys who stand at the side getting the stuff for the magician.. or being a 'volunteer' to check the magicians equipment or even tie the magician. Inside, these 2 men wanted to become magicians themselves. The two men were Alfred Borden(Christian Bale) and Rupert Angier(Hugh Jackman). So at one point, their mentor, magic equipment engineer Cutter(Michael Caine) told them that one of them will get 10 minutes of showtime if he can figure out how this old Chinese dude can do the 'fish in the bowl' trick. So Borden and Angier went to find out, yeah i wont tell you how he did it, but Borden is the one who found out how and he got his 10minutes on stage. So basically this incident taught Borden that TOTAL CONVICTION is the key to being a successful magician while Angier believed in GREAT SHOWMANSHIP.

Alfred Borden and Ruper Angier

So both of them started to become rivals when a terrible incident happened and both worked hard to outperform the other and also screw up the other person's shows. Still, at one point, Borden came up with a new trick..a very impressive magic called ' The Transported Man'. This made Angier try to find out the secret but he couldnt find out how, later Angier came up with a more impressive 'The New Transported Man' as a challenge to Borden. Borden, always the better magician but a less impressive showman, knew how Angier did it and screwed Angiers trick while embarrassing Angier at every turn.

Later on, Angier with the help of Nikola Tesla(David Bowie) comes up with an even more impressive magic which drove Borden mad and everyone shocked with disbelief, yeah not gonna tell you what it is :) . Still if you're looking to find who is the 'good guy'..you wont find it here, they are both equally bad and good. No choice of hero and villain in this movie.

David Bowie as Nikola Tesla

I have to say at the end of this movie, one word kept defining this movie in my head. That is 'MISDIRECTION'. The most beautiful thing about this movie is the way it makes the audience believe something at one turn and at another it gives us a whole new idea. The movie itself was magic, beauty, a movie so impressive that i wish everyone watched it. Total misdirection employed by both magicians...all culminating at the very last moment of revealing. What it takes to be a magician...and why they do what they do..

5 out of 5

Got it, Finally!

Ever since my first post, the introduction, i have always wondered what my blog is going to be about. You see, many blogs tend to have some sort of a theme, i tried thinking about it but well there's just too many different things that i would want to write about. I have many interests so it's not easy to choose one. SO I DECIDED MY BLOG IS NOT GONNA HAVE A UNIFYING THEME.

So well, my next post is gonna be about the movie i just watched. Actually its not a new movie, i always wanted to watch this one, it's called The Prestige. It was back in 2006 i think when the movie just came out, I wasn't free to go to cinema so i bought the dvd instead Bhahaha.. but the dvd playback-ed me. I can only watch for like half an hour before it stops, so i went to the shop and changed, this time the dvd played the full movie but it kept getting stuck, a lot like lagging while playing a pc game using an awesome-ly underpowered pc(i know how it feels). So i went to the shop for another 2 times getting the same result before giving up with just half the movie watched.

Then at last, the day before yesterday, my classmate Yoga brought his ext hard disk to college to transfer a game from Salim. What i saw was quite amazing...MORE THAN 200GB of movies, the best part was the movies were mostly of good quality and some dvd rips. All of our eyes started to twinkle looking at that impressive collection. WHAT ELSE!? TRANSFER LAH! So we went about the whole hard disk and i saw The Prestige, ok lets check the quality now. PLAY.....QUALITY.....AWESOME. Right - click > send to > munir YAY!!

So when i reached home, that's the first thing that i did..watch the movie. From start till the end without distraction, with super loud volume.

Here i Go

Been wanting to start a blog..but Im not sure what its gonna be about. But well, probably my hobbies and interests. In holiday now, so i can spend some time blogging!

Lets just wait for my next post...