Movie Review - One Missed Call

One missed call is based on the similarly name, Original Japanese movie “Chakushin Ari”. Following the footsteps of “The Grudge” and “The Ring” series, all American Remakes trying to ride on the successes of the Japanese horror genre, will One Missed Call prove to be a movie to be missed instead?

"Its getting cold here"

Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) is skeptical when her best friend says her childhood friend dies after apparently receiving a voicemail received in the future which foretells her own death in her own voice….

However when she sees it happens to her friends in exactly the same way with no logical explanation at all, she gets the help of Detective Jack Andrews (Edward Burns), whom himself is mystified with his sister’s recent death in a similar fashion.

As they try to find out the source of the calls, Beth herself receives one missed call from a friend she just witness her death a few seconds ago….

One of the main reasons why Japanese horror shows are so successful is the way the story drives the movie, keeping the suspense right to the end. And to do that, the character development, focusing on the main character, of course has to be immersed together with the storyline.

Using a total replicate of the plot from the original japanese version, Shannyn acting as the main character has her work cut out. However her acting does not let down the plot one bit. The most commendable part should be the change of emotions from appearing calm over her friends’ death to being panicky when she receives the missed call herself.

For those who haven’t watched the Japanese version, One Missed Call promises to keep the audiences freezed to the seats with the classic sudden scares in between the show. But the most entertaining and talked about part will probably be the answer to how and why it all started, which will be revealed right at the end of the show…

For those who did watch the original version, the plot is almost exactly the same, so the only new thing would be the more advanced graphics display, which is a welcome plus for the show.

Now I just hope I do not get any voicemail dated in the future…..



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Illogical Scene detected! (Contains spoilers!)
When Leann (Beth’s best friend) is struck by a train and dies, her body seems to be still in one whole piece, while her hand is dialing the phone! I wonder how is that possible..

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Movie Review - 30 Days of Night

Quotes from critics on the internet and newspapers mostly agreed on one thing about this movie; “A new form of vampires that move like never seen before”
Movies like “Underworld” and the “Blade” trilogy modernized the theme of vampire movies.
30 Days of Night promises to revitalize the savage ways of these ancient monsters.

"I'll run to fight another day!"

Story
The setting of 30 Days of Night (30) can be said to be similar to most vampire/zombie movies. Helpless people trapped in towns/countries struggling against the more powerful adversaries. However, (30) differentiates itself through the white snowish background of the northernmost are of America, with an entire month of sunless days, providing lots of potential for pure graphic scenes.

Eben Oleson (Josh Harnett) is a responsible Sheriff who takes good care of the town’s residents. There’s an unspoken problem with his wife, Stella Oleson (Melissa George), who is trying to get to the airport and leave the country before the first of 30 nights starts. Unfortunately her car is damaged in an accident and she calls Eben for help. She tries to persuade Eben by saying she promises to listen to him as he drives her there. Eben is disappointed by the lame excuse and asks his colleague Billy Kitka (Manu Bennett) to help her instead.



Stella wasn’t able to make it on time and she bumps into Eben in the diner where they meet a stranger who tries to threaten the owner and gets escorted by Eben to the jail cell instead. The stranger soon foretells ‘they are coming’ and advises Eben and his family to hide, though it would be a fruitless attempt. Just as Eben probes the stranger to reveal more, the power goes off and Eben goes to the power station where he bumps upon the first of many gruesome discoveries…………



Characters / Acting

Heartthrob Josh Harnett seldom acts as the hero in the shows he has starred in, even when he is the main character in most of them. This makes it hard to distinguish himself as a leading actor. However as Sheriff Eben, his constant and mostly solo efforts to protect the town residents from being killed really showed off the emotional and heroic side of his acting.Melissa George’s acting, on the other hand, was not very convincing. The only part I could felt she and Josh were lovers came only at the last scene..



Finally, its time to talk about the vampires. Lets just start by saying that these monstrous creatures epitomize the words eerie and evil combined together. Normally, one or more vampires in movies will have a soft side. In (30), they just want to drink blood and eat flesh, acting like beasts to fill their hunger. Their appearances are distorted to depict their evilness with razor shark-like teeth to boot.
Sticking together as a squadron and acting on the orders of their leader , those humans who do not act fast enough, feel like helpless prey against a scheming and ruthless predator.



Summary

In all, (30) actually makes you scared of the vampires. Unlike in other similar themed movies where you wished the monsters will appear and kill more people to earn back the ticket money, it was almost unbearable sometimes to see the way the residents getting carved apart heartlessly. 30 Days of Night has shown how vampires should be portrayed as, Pure Evil.

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Sammi Cheng Show Mi Singapore Concert 2007

Since Sammi Cheng announced she will take a break from showbiz around 2 years ago, the media have been relentless with their assaults on her. Baseless rumors such as cancer, depression appeared, striving to condemn her into deeper darkness.

But determined as ever, Sammi made her comeback with 8 fabulous concerts at the HongKong Coliseum in May 2007, which resulted in even the media declaring that they were impressed by her energy and style of singing.

When I got news that she would be continuing her tour with a concert in Singapore, I knew I had to experience for myself the re-born Sammi Cheng.

The opening song was a slow song “唯独你是不可取替”,which deviated from her previous concerts, which usually started with fast paced songs. But it was even better as Sammi appeared in a wig which covered her eyes and angel wings at the back, making the audience filled with anticipation. When she threw the wig high up into the air during a song break, it made the stadium rocked literally with screams and applause.

She continued with songs, mostly in Cantonese, which were a relief since they were her forte. I was exhilarated to hear “唉声叹气”as it was one of my favourite songs. (However it was a shame when I realized the costume and performance was not as stunning as the on i saw from the hongkong concert dvd later on). New songs like “爱情万岁”and “Mi” were performed as well.


Sammi then confessed to the audience the ups and downs of her life over the years she has been away. It was the man she respect most, her father, who told her that she can rest for as long as she liked. When he suffered a stroke during that time, she also realized that life can change so fast and relentlessly. The media’s unfair treatment of her has made her stronger, training her body by jogging as long as 2 hours per day. She states the sweat that comes out is not salty at all, but sweet as success. After the success of her Hong Kong concerts, she finally knows that her courage has come back, all her efforts has paid off when she hears the applause ringing in her ears.


Singapore’s own star; Sun Yanzi appeared as her guest star and they sang “绿光”which brought the crowd standing with their vibrancy. Sammi also amused the crowd with her usual humorous self, making fun of Yanzi’s ‘sugercane’ bodysize.
When Yanzi sang solo with Sammi taking a break, it was obvious the crowd just want Sammi back singing instead, as there was just not as much atmosphere.



When Sammi came back finally, she brought the tempo up to the highest level with ‘星秀传说/独家试唱/非男非女/小心女人/发热发亮/莹光粉红/神奇女侠/煞科’ sanged and danced all at once. The energy she showed while performing stunted the crowd as we anticipated some rustiness after years of rest. She just kept dancing and dancing, not willing to give up until the last second of the final song, showing us how determined she was to exorcise the demons of the past.


MC仁Jam made a surprise appearance to sing “爱是...”with Sammi, a weird yet soothing duet performance which added another unique experience to the whole concert. Though I cannot stop laughing at the way MC仁 keeps on nodding his head like a rooster.





Keeping with tradition, Sammi chose two similarly shaped fans (forgive my bluntless) to sing along with her, making the rest scream with envy. She picked fun of their weight, but it was nice to see them reacting sportingly to her well-intentioned jokes.

Driving them away, Sammi made her way down the stage to shake hands with the audience, singing “亲密关系” along the way. I could have done the feat if not for the guard rejecting me from moving to the front when soon afterwards, others were allowed instead…Doh!


Her last song was “终身美丽”and after she disappeared backstage after the song, most of the crowd shouted: Encore! Encore! and stamped their feet simultaneously. I have attended all of her past concerts in Singapore and she would always appear after that for her encore performance. Therefore it was both a shock and disappointment to me when one of the guards actually wave his hand to indicate the concert was over.


The picture became clear when the media explained that she was actually recovering from a throat infection suffered when she arrived in Singapore. What a time to suffer from that! Without the encore performance, the concert was noticeably 30 mins shorter than her previous concert. Other complaints would be the lack of costumes compared to her Hong Kong concerts and the frustratingly one sided stage which really restricted her ability and freedom to perform.


Nevertheless, after experiencing her comeback concert myself, there is no doubt in my mind that she is still the undisputed queen of Hong Kong Pop.

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Movie Review - Resident Evil: Extinction

The first Resident Evil movie was a hit when it first came out in 2002...Its sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse was even more impressive, introducing new characters (Babelicious Sienna Guillory as Jill and the awesome Nemesis)with tons of action.

Hot babe Ali Larter lends a hand

But will Extinction retain the reputation of its predecessors?


Story

The deadly zombie T-virus has not been contained despite the efforts of Umbrella Corporation. Now it has spread across the world and almost everyone is an undead, while even oceans are drying up and tress are withering, turning earth into a hideous desert.



Alice (Milla Jovovich - UltraViolet), a bio-weapon project developed by Umbrella Corporation, still alive after the events five years ago, travels alone (not wanting to harm anyone who always get hurt when with her) to try and put a stop to the mayhem.

But she soon come across Claire Redfield’s (Ali Larter - Heroes) convoy who together with Carlos Oliveira, Alice’s friend from Apocalypse (Oded Fehr – The Mummy), just want to stay alive and find other survivors.

Alice with the help of her friends, finally reaches one of the headquarters of Umbrella but finds out from Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) that she is actually the cure to all of this….

Characters / Acting

Ali Larter fills up the space of Sienna Guillory from Apocalypse as a new babe character from the game series, Claire Redfield. She portrayed her character well, showing true emotions as a leader over her friends’ loss. But it was a shame, she was only involved in one action scene which actually showed she deserved more fighting action than that.

Oded Fehr similarly acted well, but with more action scenes credited to him, which was what the movie seem to lack of as a whole. His heroics near the end of the show was a touching moment as well.

Milla Jovovich as the film’s pivotal character, once again kicks more zombie asses with her flying stunts and now wielding two new deadly sickles for maximum damage.

Her fighting scenes have been the main highlight since the trilogy started, so it might have been refreshing if there were more scenes of Claire combining with her when dealing with the zombies. The ever-loveable zombie dogs were also not given enough limelight (Literally) as the scenes were too poorly lit and more slow action could have been used.

Summary:

Paul W.S. Anderson has been writing the script for all three films and also directed the first film. Perhaps this has led to lack of innovation, leading to repeated backgrounds (Mansion, Laser beam room) and little story development.

There was abit more character development in Extinction. But it made the movie feel like 28 days later or Dawn of the dead, showing people hiding and trying to survive. The trilogy was more known for its action scenes but there was too much deliberation and emotions in Extinction, which was probably not what the audience come to expect from this particular film.

More unique creatures/monsters could have been introduced (Cerberus or Hunters). Instead we get to see a bunch of lame crows picking on children that should been pictured in low budget films instead. And I would have rather seen Apocalypse’s Nemesis one more time than the final “boss” in Extinction, who did not really put up a fight against Alice. And who can forget the classic appearance of lickers in Apocalpyse…

All in all, Extinction feels like an expansion set for a successful game, with few new characters/creatures and little story development. The lack of action this time round does not help its cause.

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Movie Review - Fantastic Four : Rise of the silver surfer

This movie is the third blockbuster sequel in a month, After the disappointments of Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Carribean “3” for many fans of their previous episodes, there was not many high expectations of Fantastic Four “2”.

Hothead vs Mr Cool

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Flame on!
However watching the show turned out to be a relatively exhilarating experience, with numerous action packed scenes.

With the silver surfer being the main instigator for the demise of earth itself, most of the show centered on the slick looking character. Thankfully so, as the chase between him and the human torch (Chris Evans) set the pace for a highly charged show.


The powers of the fantastic four were again put on show, with an interesting twist this time. The human torch after coming into direct contact with the surfer, was able to switch powers with the rest and this provided loads of opportunities on how they use their powers.


The saving scene at the London eye and perhaps more evidently the final showdown with Dr Doom presented this new element perfectly. (Not to forget the near naked scene of Jessica Alba after switching powers with his brother)


Fours a Joy

One of the more interesting aspects of the first Fantastic Four movie was to see how the four characters interacted with other. This was rightfully portrayed again and even developed further in this show.


It was especially comical to see the way Johnny (Chris) cracks jokes on The Thing’s (Michael Chiklis) awkward appearance and actions, but still remaining buddies in the end.


The voluptuous Jessica Alba looked more at ease than in the first show, which can be seen in her longer screen time than the other characters with the silver surfer. Ioan Gruffudd, an established actor had no problems too acting as the leader of the pack.


Worthy sequel?
Fantastic Four : Rise of the Silver Surfer was definitely more action packed less talk (Spiderman 3), which was really what many viewers of this category would want to see. The jokes were also more hilarious and blended well with the flow of the movie (Pirates “3”).


The only complaint could be the show was so enjoyable that when it ended, it felt too quick. And they should have given Galactus more respect by showing at least his face then to just show a cloud of smoke…


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Interesting fact: Silver surfer was actually not all CGI animated, He was acted by Doug Jones, the same actor who portrayed the pale man in Pan's Labyrinth

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