With me looking forward to the MG ReZel release (which looks quite awesome in its colored proto shots), I was actually surprised that Bandai announced this MG release, just a couple of months after the movie’s release. Although not really an actual curveball, and seeing the timing of its release and the movie’s release, this was something rather expected after a bit of thinking. Makes me wonder though what kind of unique gimik this kit will have compared to the previous Gundam 00 Master Grade releases.

Here are some scans picked up from Ngee Khiong’s blog.

Continue Reading

I had written about Iron Man 2 posters in a previous post. It was the first poster to showcase War Machine. Now that the second trailer has been released with more mechanical eye-candy, and more action shots of War Machine, there appears to be new posters as well. We’ve seen Whiplash’s solo poster. This time around, there are solo posters for both Iron Man and War Machine.

But prior to all of this, there have already been some releases of the Iron Man Mk. 4 armor figurines and I believe, some action figures/toys/merchandise. When I first posted that poster including War Machine, I had noticed some changes on the chest plating for Iron Man’s suit. And THEN I saw the trailer and noticed that the light on his chest where the reactor is housed is no longer circular but triangular. THEN I saw the new solo poster for Iron Man with the triangular light on the chest and a slightly different color scheme and I thought, perhaps they had changed the armor design on the last minute.

Actually, aside from the chest light and the slight change in color scheme, everything is EXACTLY THE SAME. Here, have a look:

So here’s the poster I was talking about earlier. The chest design is definitely different compared to the Iron Man Mk. 3 armor used in the first movie. The first full movie trailer came out and the suit still used the circular chest light. Continue Reading

Today, I watched The Forbidden Kingdom with my younger brother in a nearby shopping mall’s cinema. I’ve always like watching Jackie Chan and Jet Li in their respective movies both recent and old, old ones. So this collab between the two of them is momentous for me since it has never happened before and may never happen again. But of course, it also felt weird, and I think a lot of people might agree with me, to see an American as the lead actor in a movie where two martial arts icons have collaborated for the first and possibly the last time. I would have wanted a movie top billed by these two rather than the story revolving around an American lead actor.

In short, I was really there for Jet and Jackie. I couldn’t care less about the white guy. Of course, there were the eye candies Liu Yifei (from The Legend of the Condor Heroes) and Li Bingbing (from I don’t know what show).

Sadly though, the movie isn’t as epic as I would have hoped it to be. Of course, there’s Jackie’s classic monkey/drunken master antics and Jet Li’s cold but very cool demeanor in their respective characters but the enormity of their mission lacked the epic proportions that were seen in past epic martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers or Hero. It just felt awkward. I loved the fight scenes. Jackie and Jet are definitely at the head of their game despite their age. But it just felt weird and I couldn’t put a finger to it.

I loved the film, nevertheless. Liu Yifei was really cute. Li Bingbing was deadly gorgeous. But my eyes always went back to Liu Yifei although it felt weird to hear her talk in English and always refer to everyone, even herself, in third person.

Would I dissuade you from watching the movie? No. Like I said at the start, this may be the last time that these two martial arts legends will collaborate. If there’s any reason to watch this film, that would be it.

Time to wait for Kung Fu Panda.

I only saw this today when I stumbled upon this website about a Dragonlance animated movie covering the events from the novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman finally cover the events that lead to the recovery of the Hammer of Kharas which bought the refugees passage into Thorbardin and united the clans of the mountain dwarves under one thane.

Dragonlance the movie is set to show in the US on August 2007.

Small updates, yes?

I feel quite strongly for this film primarily because of the virtue in selflessness that is strongly exhibited in the film that is rarely seen in government utilities and military utilities in the Philippines. Watch the movie and see what I mean. Here’s the trailer though. “So others may live.”

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7090799959068321307&hl=en]

I recently watched two movies that I can say I enjoyed watching: The Departed and The Guardian. The Departed was an awesome movie with an all-star cast but I’d rather talk about The Guardian starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher and it was about the US Coast Guard. It’s a teacher-student kind of movie but what struck me rather was the dedication to one’s work that the teacher wanted to ingrain to his students as well as that personal lesson he wanted to impart to this promising Coast Guard trainee (Ashton Kutcher) whose reasons for wanting to be in the Coast Guard despite a record holder in the pool and an Ivy League scholarship offer.

What also struck me was the song used for the trailer of the movie. It is yet another wonderful song from Snow Patrol from the Final Straw album. Here are the lyrics:

I’ll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You’ve been the only thing that’s right
In all I’ve done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we’ll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we’ll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can’t raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up…

Slower slower
We don’t have time for that
All I want is to find an easier way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear
We’re bound to be afraid
Even if it’s just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

You can listen to it in this Odeo podcast. It’s the first song the fellow featured in his podcast.

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/56608/view]

I recently saw her in a facial product TV commercial and I felt like I had seen her already in some movie or show. So I did some research on Gong Li’s filmography and voila! she’s part of the cast for the movie Farewell My Concubine which I’ve seen twice already. Quite a powerful movie and she did quite a role there too.

Related site: Farewell My Concubine – Wikipedia Article

Ok, way too happy about that song so I hunted for the video in Google Video. Enjoy~!

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9068005400589340811]

I can’t believe I haven’t actually written about this and yet I’m already #5,023 in this petition that I’ll be talking about later. Yes, there will be a live action Transformers movie come 2007. You’d think that TF fans across the globe would start leaving skid marks on their pants out of sheer excitement. Think again.

Michael Bay is directing this movie and our worst fears have come true. It appears that the direction this movie is taking is even worse than the direction G.I.N.O. (Godzilla In Name Only) took when Godzilla got Americanized. As much as you loving fans of TF would want the movie to be as close to G1 as possible, it looks like you’re sooner to find yourselves in bed with either Paris Hilton.

There have been a lot of complaints being lodged by fans ever since the news of the filming of the movie started but I think the complaints started spiking when a picture of Optimus Prime in automobile mode was leaked in the internet starting an uproar amongst TF fans. No longer is Optimus Prime looking like the G1 version but is instead a Peterbilt long-nosed cab with flame decals all over. This outrage triggered a large petition campaign to revert Prime back to his original look. But I fear for the worst.

Personally, I think the flames look so ghei and Prime’s automobile mode looks like a Hot Wheels toy which puts a lot of suck into Prime’s overall look and feel.

And if you’re thinking that the robots would have those really cool faces that we’ve always been familiar with, think again. There’s this link to a close-up of Bumblebee (who is no longer a VW Beetle but a yellow Camaro) looking like a robotic imp hatching out of a yellow egg. They’re so damn ugly, Michael ‘fscking’ Bay has got much to answer for.

Oh yeah, here’s Optimus when he’s not being ugly with his alternate mode:

*sigh* Still ugly.

I’m not saying I’m not going to watch this just because of all the disappointing stuff that I’m already seeing coming out. I love the Transformers too much to just boycott this bloody movie just like that. But I’m definitely setting my expectations very low so as to avoid getting severely disappointed. I, and other fans alike, are already feeling quite disappointed at this point. What more when we actually see the movie? I swear, Americans should stop taking all the awesome Japanese stuff and corrupting them with sheer stupidity…