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One thing you need to know before watching the movie – this is a sequel, NOT a remake of the previous Alice In Wonderland (1951) classic cartoon movie.

Thus the sequel, the characters in this Alice in Wonderland movie are pretty much the same as the previous one. With the likes of Mad Hatter, Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, Red Queen, White Queen, Tweedledum & Tweedledee, and of course Alice Kingsley herself appearing in the latest movie.

Highlight the words below ONLY if you really want to read the summary of the story. I do not wish to spoil the story for you if you’ve not watched it lol.

*spoiler start*

A grown up 19-year-old Alice Kingsley who has forgotten about her childhood journey into Underland (she misheard it as ‘Wonderland’) and once more takes a trip down the rabbit-hole after ducking out on an engagement proposal that has been arranged without her acknowledgment. Having now returned to the magical world that she thought it was all just a dream, Alice has been destined to save the Underland/’Wonderland’ inhabitants from the tyrannical reign of the Red Queen.
*spoiler end*

Alice in Wonderland is a well-paced, beautifully crafted visual spectacle. Mia Wasikowska does a decent job at embodying the outsider/loner persona in the character of Alice. Johnny Depp playing as the Mad Hatter was simply mad (in a good way). Anne Hathaway taking the role as the White Queen is as though she’s not much of a use in this movie (in other words, not showing up enough, not making use of her properly). Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat is always as mysterious as the original film with its appearances (and disappearances lol).

My thoughts on the movie? Tim Burton shouldn’t have used back the same title – Alice in Wonderland. Very misleading! I thought it was a remake of the original cartoon and went into the cinema thinking: “Eyh? Storyline totally different lol.” And the ‘Wonderland’ looks flat now; there is no more bright, cartoony, tea party feel anymore. It is now a little bit darker, depressing and looked slightly haunted. They should have went with a title like… “Alice Returns to Wonderland”? “Wonderland Returns?” I don’t know… but definitely not the same title for a different piece of story.

One thing for sure is that you’ll definitely have a better understanding of the story if you know about Alice in Wonderland original story (at least go read up the synopsis/summary or something). Because i hear people coming out from the cinema not knowing what the movie was about and couldn’t figure what was happening during the show. No, i didn’t watch the original cartoon movie. But i played Kingdom Hearts game on PlayStation 2 last time and somehow learned the story from there! It helps though, better than knowing nothing

(Mad Hatter sure does look like Joker from The Dark Knight movie lol)

I gotta say that the Digital 3D effect on Alice in Wonderland wasn’t as great and immersed feeling as James Cameron’s Avatar 3D. However it does gives you a feel of like those books with pop-up castles, characters and so on (you get what i mean? Amateur 3D like lol)

Perhaps Tim Burton’s move on making the movie in 2D then later on converting it to 3D might probably be a wrong step. He should have shot the film in 3D at the first place.

Rating: 7/10

DISNEY’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND will be released in Disney Digital 3D on 4th March and opening in cinemas (Malaysia) on 11th March 2010. Wait for it alright!

The world’s first full cinematic screen mobile phone – LG Chocolate BL40

My mum previously used an LG Viewty and i gotta say they had definitely improved a lot in terms of their features as well as design, good job there! But anyhow, i’ll still be giving my own personal opinion regarding the phone.

DESIGN

I love the design – cool glossy jet black, thin, slim and slick finishing! The only thing i despise about the design is the length of the phone. Yes, i know it’s for fitting in the 4 inch full cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio screen thus the elongated design. But i don’t think you could comfortably hold on to the phone with only one hand typing messages or doing something on your phone. Though i think it’s not really a big issue because the phone design itself is already very ‘chio‘! In other words, it’s excusable due to the stunning beauty of the phone design lol.

DISPLAY & USER INTERFACE

It has an unusual 21:9 aspect ratio 4 inch display screen on it. Though the 21:9 ratio is not that popular for phones these days YET, i think it’s very nice, really. Add-on to its S-Class 3D interface, the animation, 3D cube and widget makes the phone looked more ‘chio‘! With the large wide screen on the phone, it makes the icons looked better than any other ordinary touch screen phones. However, there’s always an imperfection. For the phone’s interface, it feels very sluggish at times. After a long period using LG Chocolate BL40, i lost my patience to continue using this phone. If you think Nokia phones are slow, this is slower! Nevertheless, it has definitely improved from their previous phones (my mum’s LG Viewty KU990 is VERY MUCH slower than this phone! hardly tolerable if you’ve used a faster phone before that)

INTERNET BROWSING

Internet browsing experience on the LG Chocolate BL40 wasn’t really up to standard. It’s a pain-in-the-ass when you’re trying to load heavy content websites or those with Flash file on their site – the phone hangs if you’re unlucky! The speed isn’t fast, but it isn’t that slow as well (BUT i realised the browsing speed slows down after long period of web browsing). The only thing that made up for this phone’s internet browsing is the pinch-and-zoom function (but not as smooth as iPhone’s pinch-and-zoom). It also shows website screenshots as bookmark thumbnail instead of just the website title.

MULTIMEDIA

Video playback on LG Chocolate BL40 is really cool with its 4 inch 21:9 wide screen. The 3D gallery (where you see all your photos, videos, etc) is really cool as well. Flicking through the thumbnails on landscape mode with its 3D animation looks really cool. As for the speakers, it’s just… okayyy, that’s it. Good enough if you’re not picky on audio quality lol.

CAMERA

Aha! Here comes the interesting part! Unfortunately i have to say this, the phone camera is disappointing. Even though it’s 5 megapixel packed with Schneider Kreuznach lens and LED flash and what shit i really don’t care, it’s still mediocre for a decent 5MP phone like this. It’s very hard to get a sharp image, the colours are ‘off’, the image noise is seriously worse than my DSLR camera putting on ISO1600!

As if they haven’t gotten enough… Capturing photos are already a pain, recording videos is much worse! Its maximum capture resolution is VGA and the format taken is 3GP! I hate 3GP! It’s a low quality format and you’ll need to convert it to other video format before you could actually edit it on a video editing software. Besides that, the videos taken are blurry (most of the time) and with distant sound. The sound recorded in the video sucks to the max! Sorry LG i have to say this, but it’s the truth! Try watching the video below and experience it yourself!

Bottomline is that the LG Chocolate BL40 is not recommended for those who uses their phone to take pictures/videos frequently.

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Oh well probably my expectations were high, but still… it’s my personal opinion wert. I’m sure you won’t wanna read “wah this phone damn good, this one the best, this one blablablah” biased review right?

Anyway, special mention to LG Malaysia for providing me an LG Chocolate BL40 for review!

I was given a chance to experience staying on a cruise ship (Royal Carribean’s Legend of the Seas) during 22-27th November 2009 by Salsa Cruise Asia. Most importantly, for FREE! Well, i went there as an OP along with Euveng and Dwayne Foong for the dance cruise program onboard.

I’m writing this in order to help/show any future Royal Carribean’s Legend of the Seas passengers on what they’re gonna expect on the cruise ship before boarding

But first, I’ll write on what i experience onboard before this.

Basically the whole cruise trip program was about…

Ballroom dance..

Salsa dance..

Hip-hop dance..

Zouk dance..

and more dance, dance, DANCE!!

There’s salsa, hip hop, zouk, west coast swing, ballroom, latin, and many more… All types of dance performances and workshops on the cruise ship itself!

These are some of the international workshop dance instructors!

Most of the time, i hung around with these people below (3 of the girls are interns from my college lol!)

Dwayne, Vanessa, Pauline, ShuShan, Euveng

The cruise also stopped by a few places… This picture below was when we’re stopping by Phuket. The seashore was too shallow for the large cruise ship to sail through, thus we need to board a smaller boat to get over to Phuket, Thailand.

So yeah… Let me show you around the cruise ship!

This is the top deck of the cruise ship

The swimming pool on the roof top

The spa pool at the indoor spa deck

At the same spa deck place, there’s this Pizza & Burger Bar… They serve pizzas, burgers, sausages, and any other snacks you can find there! Most of the time when i’m hungry, i’ll just come by this bar and have my light meal lol.

Ohh i forgot to take a picture of the ice cream machine, but yeah they had this machine which looks similar to McDonald’s ice cream machine! Self-service free flow ice cream cones! Somehow the ice cream tasted nicer! I miss the chocolate ice cream onboard! It’s a MUST try ice cream if you’re onboard hahaha!

Anyway this is the outside of spa deck (which is at the back of the cruise ship)

And on top of the outdoor spa deck, they have this rock climbing wall

Beside the rock climbing wall, they also have a miniature golf course

Apart from that, there are many other facilities on the cruise ship such as…

Gymnasium

Table tennis table

24 hours internet place for you to check stuff online (you need to pay, and it’s quite expensive)

Casino! Hahah this casino, underage people like me can go in lol!

The cruise ship has this ’shopping area’ where some of the stuff are duty free! But can’t be brought out of the ship (especially liquor and so on)

We usually have our dinner at this fine dining restaurant called Romeo and Juliet (the food is not bad! depending on what you order from the list of daily set menu)

Oh when you’re dining at Romeo and Juliet, make sure you lookout for this waiter! (his name is Dwi) Sit at his serving table! You’ll not regret! Extra entertainment hahaha

This is the cruise ship lobby area

There’s also a lounge bar for people to have some drinks

Wanna see the toilet on the cruise ship?

And for you GIRLS who’ve not seen a urinal, here it is lol… Save you from being embarrassed trying to sneak into male toilet haha

And this is the corridor towards my room which is right at the end hahaha! Quite spooky if you’re walking alone at night hehe

Hmmmm i think that is pretty much it…

I have to thank Dance Cruise Asia for providing me an expensive experience (despite the seasick i had during the first two days which was blerghh -.-)

So… when are you gonna board on the Royal Carribean’s Legend of the Seas?

=)))))

After i’ve watched the trailer for The Legion movie, i was looking forward to watch the full movie and had slightly high expectations as well.

The whole movie revolves around ONE particular diner house in an out-of-nowhere-dessert.

So what’s the story about? Just think of…

Angels…

with a whole load of weapons and machine guns…

It’s sorta like a mixture of the movie Terminator + 28 Days Later (or any other horror movies). Or probably something like Left4Dead game? The only difference in this movie is that you don’t go around searching for undeads/possessed, they come to you instead. As i said, the whole movie only revolves around the diner house lol.

A lot of decent action scenes. Camera also gets shaky at certain times (probably just to enhance the ‘effect’ lol).

Okay the actual plot goes like this.. God gets ticked by human doings and decides to send a horde of angels to abolish human being.

As mentioned in the movie “The last time God lost faith in man (human being), He sent the flood. This time, He sent angels.”

However, Michael (arch angel, also the lead general of the God’s army) still has faith with the human being and decides to sacrifice his arch angel bind with God by coming down to Earth to protect the unborn child that can still save humanity.

Means, no more heavy sharp angel wings for him haha. Srsly, their angel wings looked really heavy and and it’s sharp! It slices like a blade lolol. If it’s so heavy, how do they fly like that?

Anyway, where’s the unborn child? In the diner house’s waitress stomach lol.

I do think The Legion movie is a sequel to a 2007 movie, Gabriel.

Why? You go watch both movies yourself first =)

Here’s a scene of Gabriel in The Legion movie.

The granny… You must watch out for her haha!

The bottom line is that The Legion isn’t really a good movie, just average probably. I came out of the movie screening feeling slightly disappointed. The film seems sloppy and filled with holes. However, you’ll be treated to graphic scenes of violence, guns, language, plus grotesque images and transformations.

Ratings: 5/10