August 31, 2008

Avatar: The Last Airbender


My Friday night, I watched the last 4 episodes of Avatar~
Suprizenly the show was pretty damn good. All this time I've been watching all the episodes on streaming and then this last 4 episode I download the TV-rip where I didn't realize how smooth the animations were!
The show was so good that going back to watch Transformers, TMNT or any other kid's show, those shows are the most mindless show I ever seen. I was trying to finish TMNT but it kinda got boring at space invator area. It also makes me think does kids actually watch and understand the philisophy?? Espeically the culture difference. I remember in Mulan they had to replace the funndoshi(asian underwear before WW2) to stripe boxers just so people know that is an underwear, but Avatar they just went ALL OUT with full asian culture. I don't think I saw anything that had European culture in it to transulate it, which is good so it feels they have there own world.
It really was too bad the voice actor of Uncle Iroh: Mako died before the show ended. Luckly there weren't that many line for him in Season 3... But it woulda been A LOT nicer if they had his voice at the scene when Zuko applogized him. Mako has distintive voice he sounded awesome playing as Iroh, to me he's been typecast as wise old man, unless that is what he's known for already. ;) I only know him as wise man role like Iroh and Splinter from TNMT movie and as actor, I didn't even know he speaks english well -_-
There are few things I didn't catch:

- if Aang is the last airbender, will it screw up the order of reincarnation now that they're missing air? The only possiblilty I can think of is by the time it gets to air, airbender already expanded.

- how do benders become bender? is it a gifted talent they born with or anyone can learn from their nation? If anyone can learn it can't Sakka would of learned waterbending? I can only assume warrior is also one type of fighting style or whoever is interested can learn how to bend. Did I just answer the question?
Though it woulda been pretty powerful if warrior learned bending, and cheesy at the sametime~ =)



K, slightly off topic but how many people find it's annoying when episodes of anime aren't consistent with their original drawing style? Like first couple of episodes are the same team who animated them, then the studio will send it off to somewhere else to do it for them(or within the studio they get different animator to do it, but you get the idea) and then it'll go back to the same team originally to work on the episodes. If you don't know what I'm talking about try watching Gundam Seed Destiny, because that has the obious style difference. Though I remember my brother told me there's no difference. OR Samurai Champloo, I think it was somewhere in between episode 20~24, when Mugen and Jin were fighting with naginata lady who lost her child.
So I guess really the question is do anyone notice the style difference in some episodes in the show??
From Avatar, the one I remember right now is check out Season 1: Episode 15 "Bato of the Water Tribe" THAT looks different from the first episode of the show. In case you didn't notice, their face and especially the eyes they look more bubbley/rounded. Like it's almost they don't know how to draw anime perfectly.

The minor anime studio do send their animation to Korea to save time. But some places do a really bad job. That is when you should notice the difference.
There is nothing wrong with sending animation to another studio. But AT LEAST keep the style consistent!!
Sure, American doesn't want Avatar to consider to be as "anime" but even the Americans can't keep the "anime-style" consistent with each episodes. Maybe the American cartoon has the same problem as anime but their drawing are already so bad that I probably didn't notice.

That's enough of that~ =) Now I'm back to deciding what to watch next....

August 18, 2008

Saltimbanco: Cirque du Soleil

I've been a little tired lately, with many different work I have to do. On Friday I got another day to bowl again which made me happy =) Which I forgot to mention that I went bowling last 2 weeks ago and I sucked really bad that I couldn't even score over 100 -_- BUT this time I scored 132! After that we went to viet cuisine on Bayview and Hwy 7 for night snack~

Saturday was a long day, I went downtown to meet up with Celine and drove around to thrift store in downtown east area. I never been to thrift store so I was amazed by the price they sell housewares. I even saw ikea products there. Almost everything were about 50 cents. We went to 4~5 places to buy tea light glass cups, we did well shopping~
We wandered around St. Lawrence market for lunch, we tried out a meal that kinda tastes like curry without a spice, instead of coconut milk it used half and half with giant tiger shrimps and rice. The place seemed like it was known for best kalamari but we wanted to control our fried food~
The food was delicious~!

After that we went back to Celine's and walked to M.A.C. to check out make-ups. Unfortunitly I have to look for make-up that'll suit my skin for Celine's wedding. -_-
Celine showed me collection of her make-up and MAN there's A LOT!
Then went to vegetarian resturant, fresh. That food was really good but they give you too much rice 0_o

The rest of the night, we worked on the skirt for the bridemaid's dress and flower vase for guest tables~

Sunday I met up with Jen and went to Jap Noodle, and Yorkdale~ We went to Sephora and Holt Renfrew. I honestly can't handle the smell in these stores. I get headache in 2 second...
I tried out few Shiseido, Smashbox, Shu Uemura, M.A.C products none of them really do the job well. They all gave me red rashes on my hand so who know what happenes when I put it on my face. I had Sho Uemura foundation on my cheeks and I got itchy and was creating bumps on my skin. But they have really nice false eye lashes! They look so natural~
I asked my mom about cosmetics when I met up with my mom and her friend to see Saltim Banco: Cique du Soleil. It turns out that my mom's skin can't handle anything that has fragrent in it. So NO Shieido for sure. She uses Clinique for make-up and uses Shaklee for skin care. So next weekend I'm gonna try Clinique and give Lancome a try~


Back to Saltim Banco, it was my first time seeing their show~ I thought it was at CNE but it was at Air Canada Center~ -_-
It had beautiful uses of colors on the costumes and the designs were so inspiring~!
I think one of the performer screwed up on grabbing the swing near the end but they still perform along with the mistake. The opening music of the show was so good!!!



I personally liked the live version more. The sound had more impact. The mp3 sounds softer and calming. If you go to their official site, it has short video of the show that's how it sounded. Strange... this video has few character that didn't appear at the show... there were no flames!

August 11, 2008

*surprise*

My Friday night was spending time at Jen's to prepare a surprise bachelorette party for Celine~
From the information I got from Celine this past year on bridel shower that she likes, we went for non-traditional bachelorette party~ To be honest I don't know anything about bachelorette party so basically we did whatever we want to make it look good.

So this was us spending time on pom-pom flower decoration~ We kinda went over-board on the layers of the pom-poms.... ;) It discouraged Jen to never to do it again. Thanks to Matt who lent us fishing wire that can handle 14 pounds of weight, I didn't have to worry about strings snapping or anything~
After that it was already 4am, I went home to continue working on the decoration for the table and the "thank you" gifts. I got my brother to help me with it~ Thanks Yoshi!
By the time it was done it was 6am already I went to sleep for about 2 1/2 hours and went to Michelangelo's to continue off with getting the rest of my ingredients~ Then I wandered off to a park to grab flowers in the bush for floral decorations~ Luckly I went early in the morning because of the rain...

From 10am till 3:30 I was preparing the food for the party~ I didn't have that much sleep but I was so pumped!! I had so much fun making the food~ Mainly because I bought my ingredient from Michelangelo's where the food were so fresh~! I'm just been too used to buying food at super store.
We all meet up at Jen's place and plated our food. We got each people to make Hor' dourves from Martha Stewart recipe book that I have. The main reason is Celine liked the Martha Stewart Hor' dourve book I had~
We made this a little more formal so we got people to dress upscale casual(no jeans)~ I got Celine to dress nicely by telling her that I wanted to go to this nice place for dinner, and then after that we'll work on the wedding stuff.

Originally Celine wanted to serve cupcakes instead of wedding cake for her wedding but we found out cupcakes were expensive than wedding cake so we went for wedding cake. Ever since Jen and I decided to have the bachlerette party it was perfect timing for Celine to enjoy having a party that serves cupcakes~


Around 4pm I went to pick up Celine at J-town where she went there for her facial/make-up trial~ When I got there, it seemed like she just started her make-up because she was still on foundation. I wanted to just take her and drive down to Jen's but I actually needed to know how make-up around eyes worked so we stayed for another 40 min. While then I told Celine that Jen wanted to go with us to the dinner so we go there I call Jen and told us to come inside becuase she's not ready. I let Celine walk into the front door so Jen can lead Celine to the kitchen... Then surprise~!

The food turned out yummy, and tasted good~ Everyone, thank you so much for the support~! We couldn't of done this without you all~ It must of been stressful to make the food but we made Celine happy! Enjoy the gift!
After the party Celine, Jin and Charles came to my house to work on the bridemaid's dress. The guys watched movies while us girls were working. We were up around 3:30 then it made a noise that sounded like something heavy droppped on the ground. We were in the kitchen and I saw the patio drapery lifted itself a bit and dropped down. Anything in the house shook a bit. We all thought it was earthquake until the next day we saw the news... It's scary how it feel something when it's so far away...