Rating: PG (Violence)
Running time: 125 minutes
Opens: 30 April 2008, Now Showing

Some info:
1) Wiki
2) IMDB Profile
3) MovieMistakes Profile
4) Official Site (English)

Sure took me long before I watched this blockbuster. Well, as you might notice from the opening date of the movie showing on local cinemas (excluding premiere, sneak preview whatnot) is in the midst of my semester exams. In fact it was just a couple of days before my most dreaded paper. Haha, ah well, before I watched this earlier today, in general I’ve heard good responses about this film, which I often don’t hear especially when it comes to movies about superheroes and whatnot. Haha.

The way the movie introduced Tony Stark, the main character of the show, was pretty nicely done imo in order to show the transition from his wild lifestyle into a man who has found a direction and goal to work at fully to achieve. The story sets it up nicely, and of course, the actor must also be able to carry out his role well in order to be more convincing, in which case I think it has been done nicely in this 2-hour movie. He has brought out the personality of the character well, showing the different faces on different occasions.

Well of course, that aside, the highlights of this movie of course would be Iron Man, or rather the suit. The movie also shows the process from a prototype that breaks after a short battle to the various testing and tweaking to make the final Iron Man suit as shown in the film. Stark’s home also has quite many nifty gadgets, robots and stuff, which really shows him off as someone possessing various equipment (rich mah, and invented alot of cool stuff) capable of performing such tasks. It’ll be cool to have some of those in our homes as well =D But I think it’d be too expensive even if it’s fully functional in its own right in present day and time. So yeah, it’ll probably remain as a dream for the future =P

The movie ends off setting up for a sequel, and future developments to the Iron Man character. I wonder what the sequel will be focused on (more like I too lazy to find out).

Now for some lame observations. Let’s see:

1) Since I bothered to stay behind for the credits, I noticed that Stan Lee was credited for playing “Himself”, but at that point in time, I had no inkling whatsoever of any Stan Lee being mentioned in the entire movie. After putting in some thought on the bus, I realised he really didn’t play a character with the same name, assuming Tony Stark didn’t recognise/remember wrongly (which wiki article seems to believe so). Hahahaha.

2) In the movie, there’s this super long name that this agent keeps saying he’s from, which happens to be Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, and he did mention that they are working on a shorter name. Finally towards the end of the movie, he finally says SHIELD. It amazes me how a special division takes so long to think of such an acronym when it’s already… there. Lol. Oh btw, I wonder what happened to him in the Stark Industries after the fake “iron man” attacks his colleagues. I’m quite positive his colleagues probably died from the attacks =D

3) Being a genius in the fields of science, and with a capable secretary, surely both of them will know the dangers of wearing accessories that are made of metal when dealing with “operations”. Yeap, I’m referring to the part where Tony asks his secretary for help during his upgrade of his core. Ah well, without that it probably won’t create the comedic effects it had intended for anyway. But just thought it’s kinda lame to allow such a thing to happen.

4) Being so rich and living in a house with so many high-tech devices, I wonder why it is so easy to enter his home without being noticed. His secretary aside, whom I presume has free roam into and out of his house, there are at least 3 other people who could easily just get into his house. Ah well, maybe they’re all very skilled with Tony’s home security systems or something. Haha.

Overall, a pretty cool movie, seeing all the technology, gadgets and stuff. My take: 6.5/10. Go watch it =)

p.s. btw, there’s a very short clip after the credits, though it doesn’t really affect the main storyline for this movie. Probably will be of some importance in its sequel, or some other Marvel film. =D Oh, can someone tell me if gold-titanium alloy be really that durable and sturdy?

Japanese title: 彩雲国物語 第2シリーズ
Number of episodes: 39

Some info:
1) ANN
2) Wiki
3) Official Site (Japanese)

I’ve previously blogged about the first season, and certainly I truly didn’t mind watching this 2nd season. Though it’s once again profiled at 39 episodes, it sure isn’t going to be dull or boring if you liked the first season.

Almost all the elements are preserved from its season 1 prequel. Episode titles are generally proverbs/sayings/idiom/wise words which are the same as the earlier season. It’s quite meaningful really. =) Basically, it’s the continuation of the storyline left off at season 1.

Expectedly, our main lead (the gal in picture) faces more trials and obstacles. However this time it seems a little more serious (on a bigger scale) and it isn’t as easy to get around things as before (from what I can remember lah). Once again, the downside of this show is that you really need to follow the episodes, or at least know the flow of events clearly to enjoy the show to its fullest. Though this show isn’t exactly action-packed, somehow it is able to make me want to continue watching. It’s somewhat like those dramas which make you want to find out more when 1 episode ends. Yeah, something to that extent liao. Lol.

On a side note, even the opening song is the same as season 1’s. I was quite surprised to hear it when I first started on this series. I guess this song suits this story/anime really well, hence the continuation of its usage. =)

I have no idea whether there will be season 3. I won’t be hoping too much for it, though of course further developing the story isn’t all that impossible since many things can happen in/out of the palace and stuff. For those who have watched season 1 and liked it, you mustn’t miss this. =D

Japanese title: しおんの王
Number of episodes: 22

Some info
1) ANN
2) Wiki
3) Official Site (Japanese)

What attracted me to this show is probably the integration (not that integration hor!!!) of Shogi in its story. Although the wiki article for this show claims that Shogi is a Japanese strategy game that is similar to Chess, I would want to think it’s virtually a different type of game since Shogi isn’t as “fixed” as Chess. The fact captured pieces can be re-used makes thinking a lot less “trivial” since the possibilities are now so much more, and this makes it more difficult even for the AI to compute the moves effectively (as compared to Chess).

Haha, I did try looking at the rules and gameplay for a better understanding of the show, but I realise it’s not such a simple game that I can digest that easily, especially I want to learn it quick without trying the actual game, and hoping to understand some of the tactics used in the show. Lol, missing out on this probably lowers the level of enjoyment, but while Shogi is the main theme of the show, there’s also a mystery revolving around the main character, about her past and the incident in which both her parents were killed.

Well, the mystery only unveils bit by bit in the earlier eps, as people try to find clues to the murderer. It’s only rather obvious in the ending few eps (like duh). Seriously, the final showdown probably requires some decent knowledge of Shogi to be able to appreciate the art behind the moves which the characters seem to exclaim about so much. Haha.

Overall, I think knowledge of Shogi is somewhat important to enjoy this fully, though I think it’s not all that critical. Haha. Do give it a try if you’re interested.

Number of episodes: 11

Some info:
1) D-Addicts Wiki
2) Official Site (Japanese)

The actual title for this drama should be SP, but I thought it’s better to put the full title as SP is usually used to denote “SPecial” episodes. This drama is also the 3rd series in its timeslot, with Liar Game (already reviewed here) and Life (I might review this someday) being the first two.

Apparently, the show is well-received and there’ll be a special episode airing sometime in April to let more viewers get to see the show. After all, Saturday late night isn’t exactly very ideal to air popular shows since you can expect many people (especially the youngsters) to be out having fun or something.

Well, as you could somewhat guess from the title of the show, this show is about a section in the police force that focuses on security, more specifically the security of VIPs by being their mobile meat shield (to put it bluntly). It also somewhat shows how in today’s age of terrorism (or it’s supposed to be like that), the roles each officer plays are no longer the same, but also shows the difficulty in executing a change to the system faced by the section’s chief (or is it leader? haha).

Initially, I thought it’ll be somewhat a “case” every 1 or 2 episodes, but luckily, most of the cases require around 3 episodes to conclude nicely, which means it gives the case some time to develop and stuff. Then again, each episode is somewhat shorter than your usual drama fare on other time slots. Ah well, at least it’s usually not over-rushed just so that viewers can watch it as a standalone. Hehe.

The show sometimes tries to build up tension and the atmosphere, thinking that something might happen when it’s just nothing special. Heh, quite irritating at times though. Oh well, good effort there though. With that said, it can only mean the editing and post-production were quite decently done at various parts of the show. Good job to those involved in the work.

Well of course, one of the SP agents (the one on the left in the picture above) have very keen senses, possibly due to stress/shock/trauma after his parents’ death many years back. Initially, I thought it was quite ok having that keen senses, but sometimes he seem to be able to foresee things, which is like getting a little out of hand liaoz. Haha. Ah well, his powers are needed to prevent certain bad things from happening at times =P

Now for some stuff I spotted: in episode 1, in the opening scenes when the guy receives a new email, a popup “A new massage” appears. Bad spelling mistake. I wonder if it’s really an actual email program available commercially, or it’s just a “dummy” created for this show.

Overall, the show’s pretty nice, putting some emphasis on terrorists and stuff. Some things in the show seem quite “real”, though some look quite made up anyway. Haha, I suppose you can’t make the show too realistic as people might get some weird ideas from there, you never know.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve blogged about RF2. Haha, stepped back into Jubilee arcade after having not been there for months (iirc). During the reading week, Clarence and Yida informed me that Jubilee ZoneX has finally unlocked the boss characters for RF2, though I didn’t go down until yesterday.

Since I’ve already completed Hazama some months back, I was more eager to complete Greed and Beatrice to make my completion almost full, with the sole exception of Bazoo. Haha. I also realised that I haven’t updated the RF2 page. Perhaps I’ll update it with a few things here and there since I didn’t really experiment with those 3 characters anyways.

It would seem that the AI level has increased in general, making it harder to get high score for normal story mode liao, I think. Wonder if it has anything to do with unlocking boss characters, or the staff went to tweak the difficulty settings since they were at it unlocking the boss characters. Haha, doesn’t matter since I could still complete story mode quite comfortably. Hee hee.

Oh, I also tried survival mode. It’s quite interesting. Every 3 or 4 stages you’ll battle a special version of one of the characters who will have some kind of special property, easily identifiable by their black and dark colouring that’s definitely very different from all their possible costume colour sets. The first one has a “lightning” strike every now and then, which essentially breaks whatever you’re doing, unless you’re faithfully blocking. 2nd one has insane damage after it turns red (from black). My furthest was until stage 21, where Orville is essentially like Mech Zangief who essentially cannot be knocked down, nor combo-ed close range. Haha. Didn’t take much notice of those in between. Was busy clearing to my best abilities, and whee I’m top for survival mode too! Aran ftw! Hahahaha.

However, the main purpose was really to try out a new game there. Yeap, the logo is at the side. Another cheem 2D side-scrolling beat’em-up game by IGS. Ya, the makers of games like Knight of Valour series. Well, this time this game has an optional card system which allows you to retain your level, items, armor, weapons, and whatnot. Why do I say cheem? Cos the possible paths remind me of D&D games back then, and what’s more many items and stuff need to go so super specific (and sibei tough) paths just to have a CHANCE in getting it. Crap. Lol. Only managed to try once though, since all the pros (they alr >lvl55 liaoz) were chionging. Haha. I’m at a measly level 7 by kio-ing exp in completing stages where most of the work is done by this guy with a near-lvl 60 二郎神. Lols. Well, at least I did see how a few of those pros use 紫衣, see if I can try those out next time I play, which is I dunno when. Hahahaha. This one will take a long time to learn siah~~~

Hmm, off I go to update the RF2 page. Should see it being updated soon enough.

Rating: PG
Running time: 110 Minutes

Some info:
1) Wiki Article
2) IMDB Profile
3) MovieMistakes Profile
4) Official Site (English)

Actually, back then when I saw trailers of this movie either through the advertisements in cinemas, or just summarised ads on tv/tv mobile, one can easily tell roughly what’s the story gonna be about liao. Haha, for those who have no idea what this show is about, you can go ahead and read the wiki article since it’s pretty nicely written. Haha.

Well, the nicer parts of this show is that it’s actually quite funny at times, though it may seem a little exaggerated and simplistic at times. At least it’s entertaining and enjoyable, which is very important for any movie. I mean, that’s why most people watch movies anyway what…haha. What I couldn’t foresee from the trailers was the minor story “twists”, which aren’t really twists, but the way it developed to finally reach the predictable ending. Ah well, at least not everything is predictable (at least for me) else it’ll be quite boring liaoz. Lols.

On a side note, the editing style of the initial part of the ending credits is also quite interesting. Nice idea of using newspaper article/report style of introducing the main cast, of course with pictures and all. And in fact, looking at the words (the ones that seem to make up the article content) apart from the cast’s names etc, the content actually makes sense, and it’s in a manner that actually tries to provide reports/articles on the wedding between the leads. Quite interesting siah. At least the words make sense and is relevant to the movie at that point in time, rather than just some random sentences or something. Heh.

Overall, it’s somewhat a simple and predictable show, but at least it’s somewhat enjoyable. Haha. My take: 6.5/10

Japanese title: サクラ大戦 ニューヨーク・紐育
Number of episodes: 6

Some info:
1) ANN
2) Wiki Article on the Sakura Taisen title and franchise
3) Official Site (Japanese)

Honestly I have not watched any of its other OVAs (or movies or whatnot), nor have I played their games (I think I haven’t done so before… iirc), so I thought no harm trying to see why this series can keep going and going. At least I get to see new titles being released under the name of Sakura Taisen, so it must have some sort of merit. Heh.

Well, I guess this OVA is set after some major event, be it referenced from its game counterpart, or continuation of some other OVA. Also, it’s set in an era where it’s supposed to be quite “old school” (judging from the people’s dressing and fashion sense) but at the same time, the main characters do have access to some super high tech robots and stuff. Really kinda weird. Ah well, just treat it as some fictional timeline that the creators came up with. Lol.

Anyway, this short OVA is about some pharaoh that was released from a deep sleep (or something) and intends to complete his mission to save and help his people (dated some 3000 years or earlier) by doing some ceremony to make the land a better place. So well, you can expect the main aim for the main characters (aka the people featured in that picture) to stop him, and protect New York (yea well, they are in NY mah…).

Then again, the actual face-off between those guys and the pharaoh isn’t that much. Most of it are just “unimportant” stuff with many parts with the guy cross-dressing for a character he’s gonna play in their play (wow, what a use of words) titled Cleopatra. How coincidental right. Yeah well, it is of some use though, since the pharaoh sees someone he knew back long, long ago, in this character. Yah, you can see where it’s heading liaoz. Lol.

Well, the 3D animation is pretty not bad, though at some parts it looked kinda weird lah. Don’t know why though. Hic. The mecha action isn’t say very exciting, but still passable lah. Lol, I wonder if the game is more “exciting” in that sense. Overall, it’s an okay show only lah. Probably will not bother with future series/OVAs of this liao. Yeap.

Yeap, I finished my last exam for this sem, but I think I’ve also busted my chance in getting A for any module in NUS. Heh. I was initially quite confident about econs, plus the midterms did show that I still can do all these stuff, but a conceptual error that I made today made me think otherwise. Lol.

The same thing was tested something like 10-15% of the paper, phrased in various ways, until I think almost all the scenarios have been drained liao. Of course, a “wise” way might be to split the answers into 2 camps since I was unsure, but the thought of losing half the marks if I indeed had the right concepts is kinda… painful. Turns out splitting is a better move for me. Ah wells, hopefully I’m not the only person out there who gets all that string of questions wrong. Bleah. Hope can get B+ or something liaoz. Sighs… fated not to get A maybe. Hehz.

Now that my exams have ended, it’s time to piah!!! Loads of stuff to clear. Hee hee. To those who still have a paper (or two), persevere and it’ll be over soon! Good luck for your remaining paper(s).

Ok lah, it’s not like I’ll be getting an A or A- or anything, but at least I didn’t really get slaughtered by today’s 2100 paper. A total of 7 marks (out of 100) that’s directly related to datapath, which happens to the most clueless topic for me. I actually was mentally prepared to see somewhat significant amounts of that topic since it didn’t really come out during term test 2.

Well, of course I can’t put aside the fact that this module applies the Mr Bell Theorem, so me finding it manageable and do-able will probably mean lots of other people will find it so too (based on term test results 1 and 2). Will probably end up with a B or something. Good enough for me I guess. Lol, set so low target one. Haha.

Perhaps diving into 1108 hell made me somewhat happy after seeing today’s paper. At least the questions do not look like alien or some foreign language to me, and I could actually do almost all the questions, though no doubt I realised I made a few mistakes here and there. Hee. Still have to pray for 1108’s passing. Haiz.

Tmr’s last paper liao! Econs some more, which rightfully *should* be my most comfortable exam paper this sem. Hopefully it truly turns out to be so, though 80 mcqs in 2 hours is still cannot play play one. I can clear backlog soon. *looking forward*

p.s. to those who have finished their papers. congrats. have fun.

The series continues, and it’s already the 9th entry now. :O Well this time it’ll be more of a mixture of various types of videos.

First up, a speed bug combo done some years back. The bug involves Yamazaki, and how it is being done is also showcased somewhere near the middle of the video. Well basically, just whack Yamazaki until he’s dizzy, then he’ll do his HCBx2 A/C DM while calling out his other player (you can do that in team play mode in KOF 97/98 and other years to knock away your opponent while you’re dizzy. go find out more if you’re interested) to hit the opponent away from his DM motion. Then Yamazaki’s opponent will be “speed up”. Yeah, so that means probably some cheat was used to restore Yamazaki’s HP to full so that you can see all those fanciful combos that aren’t anywhere near possible under normal game conditions. Haha.

Speed Bug Combo Video

The next video is an addition to some of the videos already featured in my earlier entry featuring LJC and Skill99. As usual, his combos are still nice to watch, though a couple of them used a minor cheat if I’m not wrong. Well, experienced players (or at least CMV watchers) will be able to tell which are the ones, though it’s not like it’s easy to do those combos either =P

LJC CMV 4

This 3rd video is yet another bug-propelled combo video. Yeap, this time it’s using screen lock, and the featured game this time is kof2002. Some of the set-ups are really quite interesting (during its premiere), though I think by now it’s really not that special anymore. Such is the harsh reality of combo-making =P. Well, enjoy the CMV, discounting the overly-used background music. =D

Screen Lock [KOF 2002] CMV

The 4th and final video in this entry will be a KOF97 combo video. A nice KOF97 CMV containing many nice variations and improvements of classic combos in KOF97. Of course, there are a few [relatively] newer set-ups, and flow of combos. Overall, it’s quite a nice video to watch, though it’s really hard to revolutionise a combo video of a game that’s more than a decade old.

KOF97 Forever [FMCU]

Stay tuned for volume 10!!