The Covenant

I actually bought the DVD, I had that much faith in my enjoyment of the film. And it was AWESOME, in that whole this-teen-movie-is-really-shit kind of way.

The Story: Back in the Salem days, there were 5 Warlock families who were in a coven, but one of them died out. The other 4 have passed on their power from generation to generation. The power is dangerous because it's addictive and makes your body old and gross. You get a sample of it at 13 and then at 18 you get the whole thing.

Anyhoo, present day: 4 handsome handsome men have inherited the power. The oldest is Caleb (aka Stephen Strait aka that boy we were looking at in Sky High and 10000 BC), who falls in love with new girl Sarah (aka Laura Ramsey aka Olivia from She's the Man). His other brothers are Pogue (aka handsome long haired man), Tyler (aka Chase Crawford aka Nate from Gossip Girl) and Reid (aka wishes he was Draco Malfoy). Weird things start happening, starting with the mysterious and probably magic-related death of some student, and Caleb getting signs that power is being used in extreme quantities, even though his buds say it isn't them. He has to sort it out while also dealing with his budding new romance.

I won't go on because I don't want to ruin it and also because I am lazy. If I tell you any more it gets ridiculously predictable.

The Good: The gratuitous shirtless guy scenes... (I know you love me for finding you that picture... for more shirtless men, see here... OH GOD, see the side profile of this blogger -- ANOTHER SINGAPOREAN!) Conveniently, they do swimming in PE all the time.... 17 year old boys should not have bodies like that. The men were very very sexy. There are also equally gratuitous girls in skimpy pjs scenes, because obvi that's where you find out all the juicy deets. Also good were the fancy cars/sexy motorbikes. Seriously, these 4 boys are the perfect boyfriends. There were some pretty great shots like when Handsome Man is meant to crash into a lorry and his car shatters and breaks up into all its pieces which are suspended in mid-air til the lorry goes through and then it reassembles. It was in the preview, I remember that.

The Bad: Like I said before, the story was pretty predictable. And by pretty, I mean, I could have stopped watching it after the first half and known how it would turn out. The acting, with particular attention to Sarah and also the new guy. The sound was also quite bad, the dubbing was pretty obvious and stood out too much from the background sounds. I think it might have been a little out of sync too. And you know what they say, bad dubbing = bad film. Also bad was that there were no sex scenes and very little relationship developments.

The Ugly: The way movies look on my shitty tv. It has a way of wasting the thousands that film companies spend on making the fore and background blend, and also ruins the lighting. As such, I am unsure as to whether the special effects were actually looking that shitty or whether it was just my tv messing around.

The Rest: The dialogue was not awful, which was a pleasant surprise... nothing too cheesy went down.

I think this is kind of a foreboding as to the kind of movie Twilight is going to be, although hopefully that will be better because it will have more soul mate scenes. It had some very Twilight aspects, such as how everyone's eyes went black while doing magic and also because they drove very nice vehicles very quickly.

Yay or nay? Um, yay for girls who want to look at hot men, and I guess anyone looking for a vacuous movie on a night in with mixed audiences. Could be a good dvd-date movie, except that your date will find you sadly lacking at the end of the film.

A Very Long Plane Trip

I watched 5 movies on the plane. I am too lazy to do proper things on them, and also jet lagged, so I'm just going to list them in order of what I liked best (I liked them all, surprisingly) and some things to note.


1. St Trinians - I grew up on the TV series, loved how it kept the old stuff and added a good dose of our generation ("We're not Goth. We're Emo." and "It's like Hogwarts!"). And there were Chavs. Um Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Lily Cole were in it. Also, Russel Brand (aka Aldous Snow from Sarah Marshall?!) showed up playing pretty much the same guy. The soundtrack was cute, too.


2. Charlie Bartlett - I've been wanting to see this for a while. The main kid was a bit creepy in his over-zealousness but was a terribly good actor. Robert Downey Jr was cool. The love interest had really big lips and is going to be in the House Bunny, which we will all watch and love. But most importantly, half the senior class from Degrassi was loitering around the background! Craig was the captain of the football team, Paige wanted new boobs, and Jimmy could walk! OH and Tyler Hilton was the school bully! And was hot!


3. The Other Boleyn Girl - Was good, as can be expected from star-studded cast. Eye candy: Jim Sturgess as their brother. Yea, I'd be incestuous too, if I was hanging out with him all day.


4. Penelope. Oh James, I love you. I thought this movie would be awful from what I've heard, but it was better than I thought. I mean yea, it was a little morally, but it was sweet and the look was cute. As was her wedding dress. AND, there was a dwarf, which makes everything better. Also, Russel Brand was strolling around this film too, playing pretty much the same guy! I was soooo confused when I saw him twice in one plane trip.


5. Spiderwick Chronicles - As far as kids films go, it was pretty good. I mean, some of the plot was flawed, but it was enough to scare me at some point. Freddie Highmore plays twins, so props to his Lindsey skills, and like her also had to fake an accent. Mom was Mary-Louise Parker from Weeds, and was hilarious as usual.

The Incredible Hulk

Was really not that incredible. It was pretty shit, actually. I had pretty high expectations going into it because lots of people told me it was good... lies.

Story: Bruce Banner (aka Edward Norton, aka if Brad Pitt was a big green monster, Edward Norton was also the Hulk in Fight Club) is on the run from the US Government. He used to be a scientist, but then an experiment went awry and now whenever his pulse reaches 200 he turns into a big green monster that is really strong and bullet proof. He was hiding out in Brazil when the government caught up with him, so then he went to stalk his ex girlfriend, Betty (aka Liv Tyler, aka Arwen, aka lots of things where she breathes romantically instead of talking). Betty has a new man now, so Bruce decides he'll just leave her alone and go get a cure for his hulking from some guy he's been corresponding with. Oh yea he was also stalking her so he could get some info on the disaster, but all those files were erased so he doesn't have them.

Ok, I really can't be bothered, basically Betty's dad is some high up general and wants to experiment on Bruce and he has a buddy who wants to be a super monster too, and Betty sees Bruce and learns that she can control the Hulk because love is the greatest power of all, and she and Bruce go on a road trip and then Bruce has to accept his hulky ways so he can fight the other guy.

The Good: Edward Norton is great as usual. The first 30 minutes were good, when it was just Ed and his life in Brazil. Then the others come in and ruin the movie. It's also funny that they can't have sex because it risks him turning into the hulk. Sorry, SPOILER.

The Bad: Liv Tyler's idea of acting, which is really powerless and just breathing out her lines. Lots of plot holes (why are you running away, Hulk? What happened to your scientist friend? Why wouldn't Betty let you kill the mofo?). The final fight lasts way too long.

The Ugly: Liv's hands are pretty mannish. Also, some of the CGI was really fake looking (ie the hulk himself) and that was pretty distracting.

Yay or Nay: Eh... I'd pass. Iron Man was infinitely better.

Also, don't bother sticking around through the credits... there is no special secret scene.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl

This just premiered on Showtime, the happy place that brought us Weeds and that show about lesbians. It's pretty good, and confirms the fact that I am wasting my time in school when I could be a high class hooker instead. I'm just trying how one would get into the business. I need to be spotted by a hooker agent.

There is a really handsome man in it, but for some godforsaken reason, the only video I can find of him occurs at 1:02 of this clip and lasts til 1:04. Yes. 2 seconds. He had more time in the episode. His name is Tom Mison, but he's never going to get anywhere in life if his IMDB page has no picture and his personal website only has 4. And all of them are when he has long hair and is trying to look all Orlando from Pirates. So really, the only way you'll find him is to watch my carefully procured 2 seconds.

Taking over the world

I swear to God, every time I do a google search on something pop-culture related and get a blog result, the writer is always Always ALWAYS from Singapore.

How is that happening?! My computer is American, so it's not like its singling (ha- pun!) out the singlish or anything. Are Singaporeans just more inclined to blog? Or do we all think the same, so the Singaporean posts emerge for the Singaporean searches? It's not like I'm searching on anything local... Or maybe, we are just nerdy enough to figure out how to get our blogs noticed by google. And the 'we' here excludes me, because eff if I know how to do that.

Marital Status

I went to the printers to see if they had any boxes I could steal.

Me: Do you have any big boxes I could, like, have?

Printman: What for?

Me: I'm moving.

Printman: Why, did you get a divorce?

Hahaha.

Experimental Baking : The Conclusion

Tonight, on In The Kitchen: These suckas are out of the oven, cooled, tasted, and wrapped. They're not very shortbready, though.

Previously, on In The Kitchen: I took the dough, slapped it on to some floured cling film, squashed it into a log and stuck it in the fridge.

...

(Super: One Hour Later)

I took both logs out and cut them each into 12 slices. Perfect dozen per batch. Sprinkled some white sugar on the pecan+cherry before baking, didn't on the other. Should have. The problem with the sugar is that it browns the sides. The bottoms of mine were brown anyway from Pamming the foil. I should stop doing that.


Neither cookie was very short-bread like, they were more like sugar cookies. Not enough butter? Not enough flour? Too much mixing? Will have to find out what Ina does.


The pecan+cherry were excellent, would be even better half dipped in chocolate. Unforch, I don't have any.


The lemon was sour as eff, so I sprinkled some sugar on them and baked them for another 5 minutes. That wasn't long enough to melt the sugar though. Solution? I think half the lemon juice and 1/8 cup more sugar would have been excellent. Also, I was really lazy with my rind so there are rather large curls of lemon peel in them. Oh wells.

Did my ghetto packaging for the office peeps -- see how they like them, or how polite they can be while eating the lemon ones.