the hangover

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Kel

I saw The Hangover a few weekends ago and it was HILARIOUS. At first, I thought it was going to be one of those movies where all the funny stuff is in the trailers. NOT SO. I haven’t laughed so hard in a REALLY REALLY long time. I loved it!

I highly recommend this movie to everyone. Ok, I take that back. If you’re female and get offended easily by stereotypes, I would probably skip this movie. The movie isn’t kind to women and the major female characters are pretty ridiculous (stripper with a heart of gold, girlfriend who cheated and is a raging b*tch). If you can get past those cliches, though, this is a good movie. Really.

This is usually the part of the post where I list some of my favorite quotes… unfortunately, I can’t post any because I would have to censor them all. Heh.

So go see this movie! And don’t forget to stay for the end credits. Trust me.

up

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Kel

The lazy stick hit me again.

I’ve been preoccupied with watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 marathons (they are totally separated; how sad), catching up with the show Life that my cousin got me addicted to (like I NEED another show to add to my TV viewing schedule), rooting for the LAKERS, hanging out with visiting friends, and even summer vacation planning.

Speaking of vacations, I just remembered a (maybe?) funny story from a few weekends ago. So Rob and I are tentatively planning an overseas vacation for our first anniversary this summer. While we haven’t officially booked anything yet (waiting and waiting for my vacation to be approved), I figured that I should go ahead and update my passport since I changed my name. Plus, I couldn’t wait to change my passport photo. It is THE WORST picture ever. It was raining in SF the day I took it and I didn’t think to take off my big wool coat or the scarf around my neck for the picture. So I look all huge and bulky. Not a good look. Since I can renew my passport by mail, all I have to do is fill out the application with my new name, write a check for the fee, and send a couple of 2×2 photos. I took my new passport photos at a local mail center and they are EVEN WORSE than the previous ones. My eyes are half closed so I look like I am sleeping standing up. UGH UGH UGH. I was so tempted to take them again but I’m cheap and didn’t want to spend another $10. I’ll just have to live with it for the next 10 years. GREAT.

ANYWAY.

I went to see Up this past weekend. (spoilers?)
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terminator

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Kel

I went to see Terminator Salvation yesterday.

I wanted to love this movie so much but instead, I have mixed feelings.
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star trek

Posted on May 10, 2009 by Kel

I thought the release date for Star Trek was Friday, May 8 but for some reason, it was playing at our local movie theatre on Thursday night. So off we went!

The trailers shown before the movie totally got me excited for summer movies! I want to see…

G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra. Channing Tatum.
Terminator Salvation. CHRISTIAN BALE. *drool*
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. No, not because of Shia LaBeouf. It’s all about Bumblebee! Oh, also Josh Duhamel.

YAY FOR FUN SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS WITH CUTE BOYS.

Back to Star Trek. Confession – I’m not a Trekkie. I might have seen 1 or 2 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (I thought Wil Wheaton was cool) but I never saw the original series or any of the previous movies. So my thoughts on the new movie might be totally off the mark. Oh well.

So I really, really liked it! I liked that it was accessible to non-fans like me. I’m sure there were lots of inside jokes and references but I never felt left out.

Spoilers? Maybe.

The cast was amazing. I absolutely LOVED Karl Urban as Bones. Chris Pine did a great job as Kirk too — he’s a cocky character but Pine managed to make him charming and likable. I’m a fan of Zachary Quinto’s so I naturally thought he was a great Spock. The weakest link was Zoe Saldana as Uhura but I’ve never really liked her acting. I always feel like she’s OVER-acting. The interaction between the whole cast felt natural and real — I particularly loved the friendships between Kirk/Bones (one of my favorite scenes was when Bones injected Kirk with a virus to get him on board Enterprise and Kirk kept saying “STOP IT” — lol-arious) and Kirk/Spock (they had a great push/pull relationship).

The movie started out strong with an amazing opening sequence. I only knew Kirk’s dad for a few minutes and my heart broke. After that, the movie took a while to get going again (although totally necessary to introduce the characters and their background) but once it did, the action was pretty much non-stop until the end. Like I said earlier, I know nothing about Star Trek canon so I thought the twist of the alternate reality was interesting. I have no idea how hard core fans will react but I like that this movie (and any of its possible sequels) now exists in a different “universe” from all the previous ones.

My only real complaint about the movie is that Nero is kinda boring and forgettable. THE VILLAIN of all characters. What a waste of Eric Bana!

Regardless, I would totally watch this again. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

february update

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Kel

Random entry alert! I’ve wanted to do a “what I’ve been up to” post for awhile now (really an excuse to post some pics) but am always too lazy… here’s a quickie version.

Back on Valentine’s Day, Rob and I went to the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland. We bought annual passes for each other for Christmas and finally went to get them activated. The best thing about having annual passes is that we don’t feel the need to do EVERYTHING in one day. We can totally take our time, relax, and visit select attractions. The most important thing we wanted to do on this trip is ride Toy Story Mania at California Adventure. It’s an interactive midway ride and it is SO FUN. Seriously. It’s a MUST.

Here I am in my Mickey ears and the Toy Story 3-D glasses. Spiffy.

Of course a trip to CA is not complete without visiting the Animation Academy. This time we drew Goofy. My drawing is on the right.

Lunch was at Cafe Orleans. We shared French Onion soup, Pommes Frites (garlic fries with the yummiest aioli ever), and a Monte Cristo sandwich (turkey, ham and cheese fried in a light batter with berry puree). Not the healthiest lunch but SO GOOD.

Before we left, we made sure to get on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters. I had a measly 46,300 points. Rob totally beat me with 93,700. Too bad for Rob the picture got our scores mixed up. OOPSIE. Hehe.

The following weekend we celebrated our friend Sebastian’s birthday with pizza at Round Table (his choice) and dessert at Guppy House. There were 9 of us and we shared a large mixed fruit shave ice. It was GINORMOUS. We barely finished it.

I’ve been going through lots of Netflix movies lately too…

Eagle Eye
Entertaining but not very good. :/ Reminded me too much of I, Robot. Not very original. Also, I guess Transformers didn’t really require much acting from him because this movie made me realize Shia LaBeouf is a pretty good actor. I liked him a lot here.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Another Shia LaBeouf movie! Only meh. Lots of potential too. I just didn’t care for the storyline AT ALL. And the dialogue was so predictable. I lost count at how many lines Rob would guess before the words even came out of the characters’ mouths. Disappointing.

Wanted
I had no expectations before watching this movie so it was a pleasant surprise to find myself really enjoying it! Lots of thrilling action sequences and a well-constructed storyline. Plus, James McAvoy!

What else? Hmm… a couple of random things…

I love when DVDs have digital copies included. I load them right onto my iPod to take with me to the gym. As much as I love listening to music when doing cardio, my mind inevitably wanders, I get bored, and I stare at the clock. Watching and listening to episodes or movies definitely keeps me occupied.

Our Wii broke. I tried to use it yesterday but the console was eerily quiet (you couldn’t hear it booting up) and the TV just had a blank screen. After checking all the connections and looking up the problem on the Nintendo site, we determined that we had to send it back. Unfortunately, the repair would cost $75, $10 shipping, and CA tax, which was almost $100. !!! We might as well buy a new one. UGH UGH UGH.

watchmen

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Kel

WHAT DID YOU DO 24?!? Tonight’s episode made me so sad.

I’m a huge fan of Dwayne Johnson (formerly known as The Rock) and I found this clip of his recent Saturday Night Live opening monologue. Gotta love a cute guy who can sing and dance.

Anyway, I went to see Watchmen on Saturday and enjoyed it!

I haven’t read the graphic novel (though now I want to) so the movie seemed unnecessarily violent at times (a certain jail scene comes to mind) and there were one too many shots of Dr. Manhattan (I know you know what I mean *wink wink*) but the plot and themes worked and resonated with me.

By far, my favorite part was the credits. I loved that in just a few short minutes (and complete with Bob Dylan), the credits told the story about 2 sets of “watchmen” with such amazing detail and visual interest. Relive the credits here (hopefully Warner Bros won’t have this video taken down)!

I thought all the lead actors were great, particularly Patrick Wilson (I fell in love with Nite Owl), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian), and Jackie Earle Haley (Rorshach). I wanted to love her but unfortunately, Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre II was definitely the weakest of the leads.

I just read that the movie only grossed $55 million this weekend. Is it just me or isn’t that a really low figure? Maybe cause it’s rated R? I would have guess-timated it to make at least $75 million. Huh. Warner Bros must be really disappointed right now.

things to do

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Kel

KATE WINSLET. I’m so happy with her wins(!) at the Golden Globes. I just love her. And with LEO?!? *swoon*

…From the Revolutionary Road premiere a few weeks back.

Seeing them takes me back to my freshman year in college when Titanic took my little world by storm. I watched the movie in the theatres 10+ times. It’s ridiculous how happy they make me.

So Rob and I are down to about 2.5 weeks left here in the Bay Area and I’m making a list of things that I want to do/see/eat before the big move…

1. Spend as much time as possible with friends!
2. Go ice skating in Union Square.
3. Walk over the Golden Gate Bridge.
4. Have the BEST RAMEN EVER at Santa Ramen.
5. Take the Scharffenberger chocolate factory tour.
6. Have 1 really nice (but not necessarily expensive) dinner in San Francisco.
7. Go to Tahoe (this is a blatant example of something we won’t get the chance to do because we just don’t have enough time).
8. Have ice cream at both Sketch and Ici.
9. Walk around 4th Street in Berkeley.
10. Visit the UC Berkeley campus, look at the view of the Bay from the top of the Campanile, and purchase as much school paraphernalia as possible.
11. Have the most AMAZING chicken and waffles breakfast at 900 Grayson.
I love that most of these have to do with EATING. I highly doubt I’ll get the chance to cross everything off the list but we’ll see!

this past week

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Kel

Ugh, I have been so lazy lately. (What’s new, right?) And today it’s raining like crazy so I’m doubly lazy.

So… what have I been up to? Let’s do this in list form because it’s easier.

1. Last weekend I saw Bolt. It wasn’t the best animated film I’ve seen but definitely entertaining. Bolt was so cute! I loved his little face when he was begging for food. Awww. Although, is it just me, or does Bolt NOT look like a German Shepherd? Anyway. Rhino was pretty awesome too.

2. Ever since I got my iPhone (squee!), I’ve been a little obsessed with downloading Apps from the iTunes store. Some of my favorites are Yelp, Amazon, Style.com, Lightsaber, RhinoBall, Pop Quiz. Anyone have any other recommendations? It’s so hard to wade through all the options on iTunes. Admittedly, I’m cheap so free is best but I’m willing to pay for good apps.

3. Last Sunday, Rob and I went to our friend Shirley’s birthday cooking party. Such an awesome idea! There were about 20 of us (I think) and we were split up into teams working on separate parts of the meal. Rob and I worked on the dessert, which was a tangerine souffle. We were in charge of chopping up the tangerines, making juice out of the oranges, and boiling it all together. The rest of our team was separating the eggs and prepping the baking ramekins. The end result was fantastic (the souffle was so light and fluffy) but honestly, I kinda think it took way too much time and effort. :/ Or it could be the whole laziness thing again. A couple of pics of us courtesy of the birthday girl!

Rob making juice from the oranges!

Me cutting up the tangerines.

4. As organized as I like to think I was for the wedding, post-wedding wrap-up has been a completely different story. A lot of the “stuff” used at our wedding is still in boxes at my dad’s house (like extra programs, signage, baskets, etc), some duplicate presents we received still haven’t been returned/exchanged, we haven’t finalized the photo selections for our album. And we haven’t started our Thank You cards. EEEEEEKKKKK. Well, I finally designed the cards and had them printed and now Rob and I are starting to write them… WOW. It’s going to take us a little while. :/

5. We went to Home Depot yesterday to get some moving boxes. I know we’re not moving until the end of January but knowing us and the amount of “stuff” we own, we figured we should get a head start. Since it’s raining today, we got started with our books and DVDs. We already have about 6 boxes full and we’re not done packing them yet. !!! What can I say? We love our DVDs. Too bad our apartment looks like a hurricane plowed right through it. There are piles everywhere.

Hmmm. I thought I had more to write about but I guess that’s it. I can’t believe Christmas is next week. Just 7 more days of work. WOOT.

hsm3

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Kel

I’m around. Just been tired lately so I haven’t felt much like blogging.

BUT. Something has brought me out of my blogging funk and that is…

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR

Oh, yes. I just came back from watching it. In the theatre. On opening day. With Rob. Look how much fun he had!

The picture is super blurry… I was rushing because Rob was yelling at me to hurry up. Oh well. You can still tell that he’s standing with the huge HSM3 cut-out in the lobby of the movie theatre.

Anyway. Back to the movie. I LOVED it. It was SO much fun. The musical numbers were huge productions — they were bigger and brighter with dazzling choreography and lots of props and costumes to tease the eye.

Spoilery thoughts.

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SatC movie

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Kel

So I managed to have a good weekend despite the unexpected hack job. (GRRR).

I finally went to see the Sex and the City movie. WOO HOO! It totally made my weekend. I’ll post my thoughts after the cut.

I’ve also been getting through some movies on our Netflix queue. Let’s see if I can write quick 2-3 sentence reviews.

Atonement
Enjoyed it (mostly because I loved the romance between Robbie and Cecilia) but it was depressing. And I’m actually still mad at Briony. Can’t help it.

27 Dresses
I’m in the throes of wedding planning so of course, I thought this was a cute movie. Jane could have been a really sad, sad character but Katherine Heigl did an amazing job at giving her real depth. And she totally pulled off the scene where she tries on every single one of those 27 horrifying bridesmaid dresses. Plus, Judy Greer! I love her.

National Treasure 2
Cheesy (and I’m sure terribly historically inaccurate) but so much FUN! I totally want to see the first one now.

Juno
I think I might have bought in to the hype cause I liked the movie but wasn’t WOW-ed by it. I hate when that happens.

August Rush
Again, I liked this movie (as you can probably tell, I am very easy to please when it comes to movies) but I also felt like it was too… something. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Too sentimental maybe? Almost like it was trying a tad too hard to win over the audience. Anyway, Keri Russell as Lyla really sold this movie for me (and it didn’t hurt that there was eye candy in the form of Jonathan Rhys Meyers). I think Evan (Freddie Highmore) was supposed to be the heart of this story but I found it in Lyla.

Ok, now for some Sex and the City thoughts (spoilery! beware!)…

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