The Fighter is ending its run in local cinemas and I’m glad I caught it before it did.
The story follows a small town guy Micky (Mark Wahlberg) who’s keen on becoming a big time boxer due to influence to his rather famous previous boxer older brother Dicky (Christian Bale). Micky idolises his older brother for teaching him all that he knew about boxing. Micky then meets and falls in love with a bartender Charlene (Amy Adams) who tells Micky that Dicky and manager mom Alice (Melissa Leo) may not be having his best interests in mind.
While the narcissistic Dicky screws his own life up with crack and puts his brother’s training and rise in the circuit at risk, Micky tries to deliver the knockout punch and become the champion.
Verdict? Four words: Christian Bale is awesome. The character he plays is such a SOB that it didn’t look like acting at all. A quick check at his IMDB page and yes he swept all the major Best Supporting Actor trophies for Awards season. Melissa Leo displayed some great acting chops personifying that (pardon me for putting it in SG context) chain-smoking Ah Lian kampung mother with 9 kids too. Amy Adams continues her climb to be an acting A-lister and Mark Wahlberg while putting in a fine performance as the title character was overshadowed by his supporting cast, especially Bale.
In short, an effing well acted and written film.
Watch it.
This is the stuff that make me stop and stare for a long long time. I was looking for something else and came across this French company, Lexon Design.
Much like IKEA for example, credit is given to the designers who created these products of generally great industrial design. Just 2 highlights from the website.
First is the LR105 Around Clock. With a 11cm diameter it takes up about the same space as your iPhone if it were circular. If you haven’t guessed how it works, the cylinder rotates around the central axis and the green bar tells the time. Unfortunately you can only tell the quarters and not specific minutes while reading this clock. Its American site lists it at US$35.
Next is the Tykho Radio. Initially the myriad of available colours grab you. Then you realise its rather tiny dimensions of 14x8x4cm. Next you find out it’s made of rubber and therefore waterproof, making it suitable as a kitchen radio. Finally knowing the cool factor that this 1997 creation is on permanent display at the New York Museum of Modern Art seals the deal. With US$75.
There’s more to gawk at Lexon’s website. Visit www.lexon-design.com and prepare a few oooohs and wows.
A quarter of a century. And one day. That’s how old I am today. Thank you everyone for making 2010 a fantastic year. The amazing personalities I’ve met in the past year was certainly the highlight. And of course I have to thank a friend for helping me find some drive as I dip both feet into real life.
The “Happy 25th Birthday JR!” day has passed 20 hours ago but thanks to some of my colleagues especially, it’s going to be one of the most memorable ones. So thank you everyone, it’s so great to know so many of you care.
The Pentax Optio H90 compact camera is armed with a 12 megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom wide angle lens (28-140mm equivalent), 2.7” screen, 720p video recording at 30fps, electronic shake reduction, and the usual face smile blink detection portrait mode. Looks pretty sharp with that retro thing going on too eh?
Now guess the price. S$350? Nope, too much. S$250? Too much too. This costs the equivalent of about S$150 in Amazon.com! That is some crazy value to be had. Realistically speaking you shouldn’t be comparing it with Canon Ixus or Panasonic Lumix models, but pitching it against the entry-level Samsungs, Fujifilms and AA-powered Nikons, this stylish Pentax snapper isn’t going to embarrass itself. And let’s face it, you’re not going to find another camera with wide a angle lens at this price. If you need more convincing, Pentax is a Japanese brand. Cool huh?
Friends looking for a cheap point and shoot that performs the trick of extracting oohs and aahs from your peers and don’t mind the lower end image quality (how bad can it be anyway? it’s a proper digicam afterall), your gear is here.
If you ever needed a reason as to why denim is the most versatile material around, look no further than these 2 looks. I was page hopping and found them in the Spring 2011 collections of Dolce & Gabbana (left) and D&G (right).
Incidentally these 2 looks happened to fit their body types of the models perfectly; tall and lean for the Dolce, masculine and rugged for the D&G. Sometimes you wonder who actually wears Vivienne Westwood’s men’s collection, but in this case they’re completely wear-able, if you can afford them. Excellent.
BMW World is starting on the 9th and pre-registration is underway. Besides apparently getting priority entry to the free-admission event at MBS, putting your name online entitles you to a chance to win this M Bike.
Yes, the matt-anthracite aluminium bodied, Manitou Match suspended, fi’z:k leather saddled, Shimano SLX geared, disc brake anchored looker of a bike is the grand prize for confirming your attendance before-hand. A featherweight road bike it certainly ain’t, tipping the scales at 12.9kg, but just look at it. It certainly sits on the right side of tasteful as far as badge-whoring goes.
Interested (and loaded) folks out there, feel free to cough up a whopping €1500 as listed on BMW’s online store. Is it worth the dough? Of course not. (I mean what did you expect, BMW’s going to set reasonable prices?) So that means for us paupers out there can hope to win it next week or just look at the photos.
Admit it, you saw it coming. It was just a matter of time before proper e-book readers came with colour screens. I don’t consider the iPad a pure e-book reader so among the other big players like Amazon, Sony and iriver, it seems that Barnes & Noble has won the race to colourise your e-books.
The Very imaginatively named NOOKcolor hits US stores in time for the holiday season shopping spree. So what has it got to lure you?
- 7” capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colours
- runs Android 2.1, upgradeable to 2.2 next year
- sorry, no Android Marketplace though
- wi-fi (802.11b/g/n), so at least surfing is quick
- 8GB built-in storage with microSD slot
- PDF and ePub support, MS Office support with Quickoffice app
- media player
- 8 hour reading time with wi-fi off
- weighs about 450grams, 8.1” x 5.0” x 0.48” (HWD)
The 2 million-book catalogue remains for the new NOOK and in addition, you can surf the web and read newspapers and magazines in all their full-colour glory.
Gripes? It remains to be seen if Barnes & Noble did enough to make the backlit LED eliminate potential eyestrain which is a non-problem for non-backlit e-ink screens of the current crop of e-readers. What is entirely sure is battery life has definitely taken a hit. Let’s face it though, B&N has started the new norm in its market.
SOUNDBITE : 王馨平,高明骏 - 今生注定 (1995)
Linda Wong is one of the big female singers to come out of Hong Kong in the 90s and this duet was one of her big hits. Sappy love songs were order of the day and the whole “Jade Lady” (玉女) image she had was all the rage during the period too.
This song simply won’t be left out when talking about duets of the time, so enjoy.
The figures for worldwide mobile phone shipments are out, and there have been some movements this time round.
Big 3 remains firmly in the hands of Nokia, Samsung and LG, but as you can see Samsung is the only one that has done significantly better compared to the same quarter last year. As for LG, we’ll see if this is the beginning of the fate in the likes of Sony Ericsson.
Speaking of which, the Japanese-Swedish phone maker has been ousted from the top 5 this time round since tracking of shipments started in 2004. And it’s been overtaken by none other than Mr Jobs’ fruit company. Apple storms into the worldwide sales charts for the first time with one single product in its lineup. And it’s a high-end smartphone at that. Every other company should be slightly embarrassed that their massive portfolios have garnered them pretty much no advantage whatsoever.
RIM or Blackberry as we know it rounds up the top 5. Which is actually very decent to be honest. Without the backing of lower-end products to boost sales in rapidly growing emerging markets, another smartphone-only manufacturer managed to keep Sony Ericsson and Motorola at bay. Oh Motorola, how the mighty has fallen.
SONGBITE: MICHAEL & JANET JACKSON - SCREAM (1995)
We move on from the Queen to King of Pop with MJ and sister’s Scream. It wasn’t his biggest hit ever but there is really no reason to post Thriller and Black or White which everyone knows.
Taken off the album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1, there is something significant about this song. The music video for Scream has the honour of being the most expensive ever produced to date. How much you say? A staggering US$7 million in 1995 money. For all his effort to make such an expensive video for his fans, please enjoy this video of the late Mr Jackson and Janet.
