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I heard about the story of 200 pounds beauty before but have no time to watch it. Yesterday (CNY Day1), went to auntie’s house and managed to watch the movie. This movie is based on a Japanese manga, Kanna-San, Daiseikou Desu by Yumiko Suzuki. The story tells the tale about a large girl that undergoes an extreme makeover to become a pop sensation.

Rating (5 stars MAX):

The story

An overweight phone sex employee, Kang Han-na (Kim Ah-jung) was also a secret vocalist for a famours Korean pop singer, Ammy. Han-na hides behind Ammy’s performance stage and sings during Ammy’s concerts, and records all of Ammy’s songs.

During the music company’s director Sang-jun’s (Ju Jin-mo) birthday party, Han-na overhears Sang-jun telling Ammy that they are just making use of Han-na for her voice. Heartbroken, Han-na contemplates suicide but is interrupted by a phone call from one of her phone sex regulars who happens to be a top cosmetic surgeon. She decides to get a head-to-toe makeover instead. Han-na puts herself in seclusion for a year as she recovers from the changes.

Han-na changed her identity as a Korean-American from California named Jenny, and earned her own recording contract. Meanwhile, romance begins to blossom between “Jenny” and Sang-Jun. But he then realised that “Jenny” is actually Kang Han-na.

So, will Sang-jun expose Jenny’s real identity? What will happen next? Watch 200 pounds beauty and you will know.

I was one of the 100 lucky people who got to watch Kung Fu Dunk movie preview. This movie will be out on the first day of chinese new year (7 Feb 2008), together with Stephen Chow’s latest fiction comedy, CJ7. So, these two movies will be fighting to be listed in the top chart.

The story Kung Fu Dunk is inspired by the Japanese manga - Slam Dunk. The main character, Fang Shi Jie(by Jay Chou) is an abandoned child and was found beside a basketball court by one of the Kung Fu teachers and was brought back to the Kung Fu school. Shi Jie practiced excellent Kung-Fu and was equipped with a good sense of feel.

Shi Jie then knew Wang-Li who had wicked ideas and made his living in the streets.On the excuse of helping him search for his family, Wang-Li invited him to play basketball at the first university so as to make use of him to make money.

Shi Jie joined the basketball team and learned to combine the foundation of Kung-Fu into the basketball skills, which brought his skills into full play and helped team go through the critical competitions.

At this time, the team was constituted by a group of horrible men who were withstood to join any basketball games in the United States. They also bribed the referees, which made the basketball team of the first university become the living targets and face the situation of crushing defeat. When the situation was in danger, Wang-Li made great efforts to persuade four grand masters with excellent martial arts to take up a challenge at the last moment.

How did Shi-Jie reverse the situation and lead the team to create a miracle? Will he find his family? Who would be his lover at the end?

My two-cents worth comment
My Ratings (5 stars MAX):
What I like about this movie: It is about Jay, and about basketball. These are my favourites.
What I dont like about this movie: There wasnt any impactful climax. Abit dry.
SPOILER ALERT..
This movie is not all about basketball and kung fu. There’s also abit about loyalty. Like what I mentioned in THE STORY section, Wang Li was using Shi Jie as his money tree. In this case, Wang Li still treat Shi Jie like his own son, took care of him and protected him from the bad people. In the end, Shi Jie got to know his family background. He is a rich kid and his father is going to bring Shi Jie back to London to inherit all his assets. Between money and loyalty, Shi Jie decided to stay with Wang Li. I have not met someone who is willing to give up his fame/wealth because of loyalty.

Counting down 3 more days to the brand new year, 2008! Here, I bring to you my first movie marathon. The third movie I am introducing today is Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. I dont think the movie is out yet, but I will be the first few to watch this!

Did you guys watched the movie from the second book- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ok, tell you a brief summary of the first movie before introducing you the recent movie.

In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there were four ordinary children who found out that the wardrobe in the professor’s house leads to another world-Narnia. Narnia was under the spell of a witch and these children helped the Aslan(Turkish word of Lion) to save Narnia, and beat over the evil White Witch who has reigned over the kingdom of Narnia for a hundred years.

Ok, back to Prince Caspian.

The four children were waiting for the train at the railway station to go back to their respective boarding schools. But there was then a great pull of magic that brings all of them back to Narnia. It has been 1000 years ago ever since they reigned as kings and queens.

They met a dwarf called Trumpkin. He explains that the land has been “civilized” under the domain of a race of men from Telmar. And all the old inhabitants of the kingdom, talking animals and dwarfs and other fantastic creatures, have been driven into the wild and unfriendly parts of the land to live in hiding.

Later, Dr. Cornelius(Prince Caspian’s tutor) told Caspian about Queen Prunaprismia just had a son. Prince Caspian is in danger as the Queen wants to assure his own son’s succession. Caspian flees the castle, but while riding through a forest during a storm, he hits his head on a tree branch and falls off. Caspian and the Old Narnians flee to Aslan’s camp. Before Prince Caspian flee, Dr Cornelius passed him the horn of Queen Susan. He blew the horn, and it brings the Pevensies to Narnia. So, what happened next? What did the Pevensies do?

So, what will happen to Prince Caspian? Will Aslan bring his army to aid Caspian? What will happen in the end? Watch Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia!

Counting down 4 more days to the brand new year, 2008! Here, I bring to you my first movie marathon. I will be watching the few latest movies currently showing at the cinemas, and give my reviews about the movie. The second movie I am introducing today is The Golden Compass.

Golden Compass is a movie based on the first novel in Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Material.Before its release, the film received criticism from secular organizations and fans of His Dark Materials for the dilution of the religious elements from the novels, as well as from some religious organizations for its perceived anti-Catholic and atheistic themes.

The story concerns Lyra, an orphan living in a fantastical parallel universe in which the dogmatic dictatorship of the Magisterium threatens to dominate the world. When Lyra’s friend(Roger) is kidnapped, she travels to the far North in an attempt to rescue him and rejoin her uncle(Lord Asriel).

After Asriel departs, the college is visited by Mrs. Coulter (Kidman), who offers to take Lyra north as her assistant. Before Lyra left, she was given an alethiometer, which is a device that is able to reveal the answer to any question asked it by a trained user. While unable to operate it, Lyra accepts the gift and takes it with her to Mrs. Coulter’s home.

So, what does the alethiometer tells? Who is the destined reader who can read what the alethiometer said?

My Personal Comments

Rating:
This is one of the movies I could not tell whether is it nice or bad. There are some charming effects here and there, but there wasnt punchline or a great climax in the story. To me, the story was quite dry and calm with no sense of awe. It lacks some quality to allow the viewers to embrace it. It will be more appealing to for young teens but not for the adults.