I have decided to upload all of my existing posts featured in the Eternal Sunset forums here on my blog. These will include all of my Formula One race reports, films, TV shows and other interesting stuff. I’ve noticed that there is a ‘post time stamp’ feature in Word Press, so I can post the articles in it’s original posting date.
Right, time to multitask with the ES forum, my blog and ImageShack/Flickr for hosting images. Will take a while…
Just returned from the cinema after watching Pixar’s latest movie, Cars and I have to be honest, it’s not that great… Sure, the visuals and the CGI work by the talented Pixar’s animators are super impressive. In some scenes, it looked photo-realistic. The car models based on well-known, everyday cars like a Fiat 500, Porsche 911 and Ferraris look like the real deal. The landscape around the famous Route 66 (the road that goes across North America) is breathtaking and the atmosphere is just perfect.
But it’s let down by the story. You would have expected high standards from Pixar (especially after Toy Story and The Incredibles), but you end up feeling disappointed. It starts off with excitement and speed when we see the arrogant race car ‘Lightning McQueen’ (voiced by Owen Wilson) racing in a NASCAR-type race on the verge of super stardom. Then we get the middle part of the movie when the pace grinds to a halt… The story now focuses on the slow life at Radiator Springs, where McQueen is stranded after being left behind on the highway.
The red race car is sentenced to community service by Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman) in order to fix the damaged road. During his time at Radiator Springs, McQueen discovers that racing is not important and that there are other significant issues in life – that of true friendship and helping out each other.
McQueen then returns back to the race track to win the Piston Cup in a three-race duel for the championship. At this point, the story returns back to the exciting and entertaining racing action.
In terms of the characters, the personality gives out as eccentric, loyal, friendly and charming. But I feel there is a sense of stereotyping. For example, the Fiat 500 is a typical Italian who loves Ferrari. The VW camper van seems to be a 1960s hippie. And as for Mater, he was quite amusing (in a disoriented state) but was slightly irritating.
The best performers were Owen Wilson in the lead character role and Paul Newman. It’s nice to hear the legendary actor providing advice to the young hotshot during the final race just like what Newman does in the real Champ Cars! (Paul Newman is a co-owner of the Newman/Haas racing team)
However, ultimately, the cast is somewhat unmemorable and lacking in diversity. Despite some guest voices from motor racing legends like Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Michael Schumacher and Mario Andretti. The UK version of the film features Jeremy Clarkson, leading motoring journalist and Top Gear presenter as McQueen’s manager, Harv.
Overall, I would say Cars is a visual masterpiece but lack the sophisticated comedy we’ve come to expect from John Lasseter and his team. In terms of comparing other Pixar films, this is better than A Bug’s Life but could not match the wonders of Toy Story. A good film, but not fantastic.
One of my favourite actress, Elisha Cuthbert a.k.a. Kim Bauer from the real-time TV drama 24, has her own web blog. She is a passionate hockey fan as this is Canada’s main sport. It’s interesting to read her comments regarding the National Hockey League (NHL).
http://www.nhl.com/blogcentral/cuthbert_blog.html
In addition, found this on Google. I don’t know if the real Elisha posted these articles, but it’s pretty much up to date with the latest news on her movie career.
http://elisha-cuthbert-blog.blogspot.com/
Now I wonder if Kiefer Sutherland has one? 😉
I love talking to everyone on Skype. The conversations between Emily, Jade, Luna, Mike, Josh, Yas, Rob and Janus is entertaining and enjoyable. Though my sense of humour and observation will always cause people to question my views on life! 😉
Last night’s Skype chat was great. Though my PC kept on crashing all the time… From now on, I’m using my Apple PowerBook’s version of Skype as it’s more stable (reliable) and quiet. The fan on the back of my Sony Vaio desktop PC is damn loud! Need to clean out the dust or do something in the BIOS.
The dialogue went from cookies, to Jade’s underwear(!), money, education and finally Animal Crossing. In fact, Luna and Jade was playing this popular game on their Nintendo DS via Wi-Fi and trading items like coconut and fruit!
Received a surprising message from Emily and Josh in Spain. They are on holiday this week and Emily’s message was nice and unexpected. Glad she enjoyed talking to the Leaf despite hundred of miles away in sunny Europe.
Will talk to everyone again later on. Need to visit Luna’s town in Wi-Fi mode in Animal Crossing I think.
After a week’s holiday to get away from the stress, it’s back to work and boy, was I feeling quite tired when I got up this morning (it didn’t help I went to bed late last night after chatting to Luna, Jade, Janus, Mike and Yas on Skype…) Been so lazy over the last few days, with long lie-ins in bed. But I have to get used to getting up around 7am instead of 1pm from now on…
Arrived at work, quite refreshed after sleeping on the comfortable bus on the journey in. Brought this morning’s papers (The Guardian and The Times) to read about the latest news and Michael Schumacher’s victory yesterday at Hockenheim. Log-in my Apple iMac and received quite a lot of emails. Sorted this out now and now preparing myself for an interesting press week!
Perhaps if I have time, post some messages on the Eternal Sunset forum and contribute some articles on the eMagi site. Will continue to update my blog.
Now, off to make a cup of tea!
Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher won his third race in succession and his fourth German Grand Prix in Hockenheim. The German’s victory is significant in terms of closing the points gap to championship leader Fernando Alonso, who struggled with blistering rear tyres and could only finish in a distant fifth.
If Michael wins the last six Grands Prix then he will be the 2006 FIA Formula One World Champion. Unbelievable to say the least a month ago, when Fernando Alonso looked comfortable with a 25 points advantage. But after three poor races (USA, France and Germany), I believe the Spanaird is feeling quite tense about the form of Ferrari and Schumacher recently.
Schumacher’s 89th Grand Prix victory has reduced the gap to Alonso to 11 points. Ferrari scored a perfect 1-2 result with team-mate Felipe Massa doing a splending job in supporting his team leader. The Italian team is now ten points behind Renault in the Constructors’ championship.
Renault was left to trail home in fifth (Alonso) and sixth for Giancarlo Fisichella and for most of the race could not lap within one second of the flying Italian cars. The pace of the Ferraris at Hockenheim was impressive. Michael and Felipe could even lap the whole field if they wanted to, but decided to drive safely and finish the race.
McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen finished in third place after starting on pole position. His qualifying lap was based on an unrealistically light fuel load, as was evinced when the Finn pitted on just lap 16. But the Woking-based squad seemed to have the legs on Renault throughout the weekend, and Raikkonen’s eventual third-place finish was a fair reflection on the two teams’ relative performance.
Jenson Button drove a good race in the Honda to come home fourth and even though he was beaten to the third place by Kimi Raikkonen (in the closing stages of the race), he was still delighted to finish in the points for the first time since May.
Toyota’s Jarno Trulli drove another strong race to charge from the back of the grid to seventh, making up much of his ground on an incident-filled opening lap. And Christian Klien earned his second point of the season with a solid performance (P8) at a critical moment in his contract negotiations with Red Bull Racing for next year.
Special mention to Mark Webber in the Williams. The Australian was driving superbly and was racing against Raikkonen and Button for the final podium place. Alas, the unreliability of the FW28 let Webber down and yet again under non-points finish. A shame really…
But the end feeling is that Ferrari are on a mid-season charge in it’s quest to win this season’s championship. Renault and Michelin are under pressure to return to winning ways and they needs to find a dramatic improvement in pace to keep their championship hopes alive.
The next race is the Hungarian Grand Prix at Budapest next Sunday (August 6th) and if Ferrari score another one-two result then we could have an exciting and tense championship finale.
My dreams have come true! Animal Crossing: the movie is based on my favourite game on the Nintendo DS and will be produced by Japanese director Jouji Shimura. The animated film should hit cinemas over in Japan in December.
See the trailer here (it’s not that long but does feature the gorgeous Rosie the cat whom I adore!): http://www.doubutsunomori-movie.jp/tokuhou/index.html
There’s still no word as to whether the Animal Crossing movie will make it to Europe… Despite that, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie and I wonder what the plot will be? Running around helping your animal friends and paying off that huge mortage to Tom Nook?
Guardian Unlimited (the most popular news source on the Internet) has launched this week an online and downloadable free PDF newspaper in which you, the readers, supply the printing press.
G24 is the first of its kind here in the UK allowing the users to read the latest world news, business, media and sport by a press of a button. All you have to do is download the pages from a dedicated Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g24 and a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the PDF files. Then you can print out the latest newspaper straight from your desktop.
You can pick what section you want to read, download it for free and print. Simple and effective. Such a great idea to keep in touch with the latest headlines from the talented Guardian writers.
Perhaps we should adopt something similar to eMagi? 😉
Yesterday evening – July 28th – we (as in the family) went to a fun and amusing designer expo in the back gardens of London’s Victoria and Albert museum. It only cost £1 to get in and only 2,000 people were allowed in to sample the designers’ goodness. But on the warm summer evening, it seems to be double the amount of people and everyone was enjoying themselves.
So what was special with this fair? Well each stall was set-up by a design agency or designer. Instead of showcasing the latest products or corporate branding, it was all fun and games. On one stall you have to hit a ‘rat’ (a black sock with red buttons sown on it to look like eyes!) with a gardening fork tool. The next, drawing a fantasy image for a cover based on the classic Penguin books (my sister drew an hilarious dove with guns based on Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”).
Each stall requires the punter to donate some money to a good cause (charity for the under-privilege children for example) so it was nice to participate in the event.
So what games did I play? Well, how about spin a wheel to win some designer t-shirts, badges and postcards? I actually won some cool prizes including a book on Vikings! There was a raffle as well. Didn’t win the cool design chic (you have to have a number zero on your raffle ticket to claim the item) but I got a free lollipop instead!
Tomorrow night (July 28th) on More4 will be the last ever episode of The West Wing.
The West Wing is a popular and widely acclaimed American television serial drama created by Aaron Sorkin for NBC, airing since 1999. The show is set in the White House – which serves as the residence of the President and his family – during the fictional Democratic administration of Josiah “Jed” Bartlet. The West Wing of the White House is the location of the President’s Oval Office and the offices of most of his senior staff. The show is produced and co-written by John Wells.
I love this show and I enjoyed the performance played by Martin Sheen as the President of the United States. The stories, characters and situation in which the White House staff were put though over the seven years kept me interested in American politics.
I’m depressed to see this show end but considering the many characters have left the show including the tragic death of John Spencer, I feel it’s time to end the series on a high.