Pump 69

After addicted to Step Class for past few months, now I get more and more addicted to Body Pump. First time attending launch of Body Pump 69 about two weeks ago, I didn't think I will like this release so much, but having done this release for 4-5 times, I think several tracks are really awesome, particularly squads with super bottom-halves made me burning until sweat drop, and killing shoulder tracks with great music from Bass Hunter. I almost never able to do full push up, but the last pump 69 by Tim on Monday, made me feel high and I managed to do full push up (ok2, admit I missed 2 last counts :p). I think it's the music, familiarity to the moves and of course, the encouragement voice from favorite Pump instructor. From all the tracks in Pump, I am still particularly weak in bicep and triceps, guess I need to practice a lot on my hand.

Just attended Collin's level 2 step class, I found his moves doesn't really change much. Several of my friends found his class is a bit boring nowadays. I prefer the dynamic moves by Daniel, which getting better and better.. Love it..


If you like the music from this release, you can listen here. Below is video for shoulder tracks (weird video though)

Departures

A lot of buzz about this movie as this movie just won one of the highest award for non-english movie, academy awards for best foreign language. I try to drag my friends to watch this movie, but none really want to give this try, because of the theme and japanese movie. I usually do not prefer Japanese movie either, even the high-rated "Death Note", I am not interested to watch at all. However, with all the so good review of this movie, I went alone (how sad..) to watch with quite high expectation that this movie will be able to squeeze my heart and tear. 

This movie is about Daigo Kobayashi, desperate to find a job after his orchestra group is dissolved, landed himself a job to take care of the "departed", which is mispelled as departures in the job ads. The story revolves how he learns to appreciate the job that most people look down, including his wife that leaves him after she found out the job. It shows in detail, how the corpse is taken care in such precision, graceful, and sense of art, to show last respect to the deceased. The acting is good, especially the main actor, Masahiro Motoki. In short, this movie is beautifully done and touching. Although I don't really found myself with tear, I can hear some people sobbing at the back. I don't think it's a very heart-wrenching movie, but meaningful. Given running time of more than 2 hours, it is not really a boring movie, although I think it can be shorter. 3.5 of 5.

Super Hero Movie

There are suddenly several super-hero theme movies in the cinema now, judging from the trailer, I think Watchmen, Push and Dragon Ball will be a good entertaining super hero movie, but, all has failed me.

Being one of the best rated super hero movie so far, Watchmen has received a lot of good reviews. So with such a high expectation, unfortunately, I found this movie is such a long boring movie and totally lost in the conversation, although the art and comic-style is nicely done. I keep looking at the watch, how long more I need to stare at blue big penis. Haha, I can feel a lot of people laugh and smile when Dr Manhattan thing is shown. Push is another disappointing movie this year, the story is really slow and keep dragging. I found this movie is like a spin-off from TV series "Heroes".

Being a big fan reader of Dragon Ball, I am a bit disappointed that the character of goku and setting will be in western country. Overall story is still pretty the same with the original comics, however it's been summarized and packed into about 1.5 hours movie, which I think it's too short, and makes the story too shallow.

If you think that advertisement sometimes can be annoying, I found this advertisement in AsiaOne is totally disturbing and inappropriate. Once the page is loaded, there'll be flying ugly handphone or car or whatever thing, covering the whole main section. Once you want to click the news behind, it will popup the advertiser website. Sigh.. hope there'll better control to put such advertisement in local news.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I have watched this movie about two weeks ago, but I really enjoy watching this movie and want to put this on my blog. Apart from all the award and praise for this movie, it does not mean that this movie is difficult to enjoy, like some boring artistic movie. It tells the story of a guy name Benjamin, which starts aging backward, and all the story around him from his birth until death. Although it's a quite long movie, but the story just flows through smoothly, and without realizing, it's already Brad Pitt without any make up. It's an interesting story to tell about people aging backward, but that's not the whole point of the movie. It's about his love story, just like normal people, how he fell in love with at least 2 women, found his true love, took some consequences and responsibility of his abnormal life, and how the true love found him back, and died.

This is one of the movie that I can feel very pleased to sit through almost entire 3 hours. One of the very nice last sentence by daisy at the end of the movie: "And in the spring, 2003, he looked at me. And I knew, that he knew, who I was. And then he closed his eyes, as if to go to sleep."

Last week was a totally hectic week for me, there are several proposal that have almost the same deadline. It costs my sleeping time for several night. So, after the bizarre week passed, I just want to enjoy my weekend with more catching-up sleep (needs more than 10 hours in 2 days to recover, haha) and cut down a bit accumulated weight in the gym. And, not as usual, I found a bit refreshing to go back to work this Monday. :)