Friday Favorites (6)

Friday, 14 November 2014Friday, 14 November 2014 Starr3 Comments

Haven’t done a Friday Favorites in a while, so let’s just jump right in:

Hot Noodle Soups

We had a sudden drop in temperatures, from mid-60s to mid-30s, here in the DC area. And really, what satisfies you like a hot noodle soup? Specifically, I start to get very consistent cravings for pho, ramen, and jjampong.

Some of the pho and jjambbong I’ve had this past month

I also love going home to my parents’ house and eating bone soup with some rice noodles in them. (You know those big pork bones that you can just slurp the marrow out of? Yah, those are the ones.) There are so many comforting feelings that come with hot noodle soups: the smell coming up with steam, the first sensation as you take your first slurp of hot soup, the feeling as the hot soup goes down into your belly.

If you eat with me in the colder months and ask me what we should eat, there is a good chance I will suggest some form of hot noodle soup. I haven’t been able to have too many this week, but with another brutal winter up ahead, you can be sure I’ll have plenty.

Cooking Videos

Some of you may remember that I had a brief obsession with makeup tutorials a few years back. I never used any of them, but I felt like I was theoretically armed with the ability to create these stunning makeup looks. (I’m not.)

These days, I spend a lot more time watching cooking videos. Again, I’m not actually applying the stuff I’m watching, really, but I feel like I can apply this theory later on. This has been a lot more productive for me, as I do cook but I don’t wear makeup. Usually, I’ll end up watching Sorted Food or Gordon Ramsay. (I guess I just like watching British guys cook food? The accent makes it more compelling.)

Here’s one of my favorites by Sorted:

Warning: This chocolate cake looks sinfully good. You probably will drool watching.

And here’s the iconic video from Gordon Ramsay:

If you aren’t making eggs like this, apparently we’re wrong. Very wrong.

Big Hero 6 Easter Egg

I won’t spoil it for you, but, this is a Marvel film. And if you know Marvel movies, then you know Stan Lee shows up in [nearly] all of them in some way or another. (Since he didn’t have a hand in the Guardians of the Galaxy, he is not in that movie and likely will not be in any future GotG movies.)

So, with Marvel’s first animated feature, we do have a Stan Lee cameo! You might miss it for just a moment in the middle of the movie, but if you stick around after the credits, it’s a confirmed Generalissimo appearance.

Jasmine Tea

I don’t know why, but I put off buying new jasmine tea for a while. Partially because I already have tea, partially because I could’ve sworn I had some at my parents’ house, partially because I’m lazy.

Finally got myself one of those yellow tins of looseleaf tea and I am so glad I finally did. Jasmine is maybe my favorite variety of tea because of the fragrance. (I love the smell of jasmine.) Drank maybe too many cups today but that’s all right, I have a bathroom, it’s all good.

National Museum of Natural History

After 8 years of living in Maryland, I haven’t been to a Smithsonian museum since the 3rd grade, when I lived in New Jersey. So, for Veteran’s Day/our anniversary, Ben and I went to the natural history museum. It was SO nice! Even though the dinosaur exhibit was closed for renovations, which really disappointed Ben. BUT BUT BUT the live butterfly room is free entry on Tuesdays and I got to just be enchanted by all these fluttering little butterflies. It’s so great, I love museums and the Smithsonians are cream of the crop. AND THEY’RE FREE.

Spending Time with Ben

This week had both our anniversary and Ben’s birthday, so I got to spend a lot of time with him and give him gifts! I feel like we got to spend some really quality time together and I am just really grateful to have him in my life. Spending time with my better half always makes me happy!

What have you been liking lately?
What do you crave in the cold months?
Any fun weekend plans?

Big Hero 6 (2014)

Friday, 7 November 2014Saturday, 20 December 2014 Starr4 Comments

Last week, I was able to see Disney’s newest animated feature, Big Hero 6 early in theaters.

Me and Baymax! I’m dressed a bit like Gogo Tomago and worked hard to get her makeup look down, which you can’t see at all in this photo but it came out pretty well, lemme tell ya.

Basically, it was amazing fantastic awesome spectacular. This is kind of a longer review, but it gets a full 5/5 100% recommend you watch it for the following reasons:

Fantastic characters
Beautiful animation
Great promotion of the sciences
Fun story and funnier lines

I have been waiting for this movie for over a year now. No, really. (It’s not easy being a Disnerd. The wait for Moana is agonizing as well.) This is Disney Animation’s first go with a Marvel property and it’s pretty great.

Let’s look at our cast of characters first, because that’s really where this movie just comes alive.

From L to R: Fred, GoGo Tomago, Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, Wasabi

These are our 6 heroes. Let’s meet them, shall we?

Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter) is the protagonist of our film. He’s 14-years-old and a casual robotics prodigy. We get a really good feel of his personality in the opening scene, where he’s at an [illegal] underground robot fight. As a character, there is a lot of depth to Hiro that I really really loved. Seriously classic example of how to put a character through hardships and see him pull through. He’s a teenager at the cusp of puberty, so he’s awkward and sassy and kind but selfish. He’s many things and that complexity is SO delicious because it makes him more real without making him too real. (I tend to dislike characters who are TOO realistically flawed.) I also really want to talk about his family, but just know that Hiro’s relationship with his brother and his aunt are really special.

Meet Baymax, our adorable squishy character. THIS is how you do a non-human sidekick. (Note: I hate Olaf from Frozen.) Baymax is squishy and chock full o’ comic relief because he is a robot and doesn’t understand our zany human ways! I’ll admit, I was skeptical of Baymax because it seemed like an Olaf-esque ploy to just push out merchandise and have a recognizable character for the franchise. But he’s completely terrific.

Gogo Tomago (voiced by Jamie Chung) is one of my favorite characters in this movie. First of all, I’m always thrilled when more Asian characters are added to the Disneyverse and Gogo Tomago is everything we could have asked for. She’s a no-nonsense butt-kicker who is, as with the rest of the team, also really smart. She works with electromagnetic disks (that you see her wearing above) and chews gum. Also PURPLE. She’s awesome, everything about her just screams cool.

Wasabi (No Ginger?) (voiced by Damon Wayans Jr.) is also a really fun character. He’s the biggest hero of the team (besides Baymax, of course), but he has this really funny neuroticism that makes him maybe too relate-able, personally speaking. He seems like the most real-world-esque character. He gets freaked out flying over the city, he is scared of creepy abandoned warehouses, he doesn’t like his workspace being disturbed because he has a system goshdarnit! He’s also wicked awesome with lasers.

Honey Lemon (voiced by Génesis Rodriguez) is a bubbly and cute character (although her accent was inconsistent in a way that I found slightly distracting). She is also really kind, and that is not really shoved down your throat too much, which is great. She’s just an overall sweetie and her love for chemistry is adorable.

Oh Fred Zilla (voiced by T. J. Miller) is easily one of the most fun characters in this entire movie. The only hero in our group who is not a genius student at SFIT, he is the mascot and dreams of being a fire-breathing dragon. So the team uses science to make that a reality. I usually don’t like characters like Fred too much (think Shaggy from Scooby Doo) because they’re a little TOO laidback and TOO silly. But BH6 did a really great job of making him likable for me.

Tadashi Hamada (voiced by Daniel Henney) (“I thought he sounded hot!” – my friend) is Hiro’s lovely older brother. Like brother like brother, he is the robotics specialist in the group of nerds at SFIT and built Baymax to be a healthcare robot and help people. His powerful desire to help other people is, again, not overdone but it really does affect everything he does. He saves his brother from an illegal robot fight, he gently encourages to use his genius for more noble pursuits, and more. It’s difficult not to really adore his character, I think because I’m just such a sucker for really beautiful families.

Speaking of beautiful families, this is Aunt Cass (voiced by Maya Rudolph) (but Tumblr says she looks like the animators used Tina Fey for a reference model). It’s not really explored much in the movie, but Hiro and Tadashi’s parents are dead and she is their guardian. She does the best she can and it really shows, just how much she loves her two boys. She works really hard to support them in their endeavors, runs a cute cafe, and is just such a cute and fun and loving character. She’s easily one of my favorite characters in this movie.

There are so many things I love about this movie. One is how appealing it makes getting a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education. The heroes are all engineering geniuses, more or less. They attend a “nerd school” where they are changing the world. One of my favorite moments in this movie is when Tadashi, Hiro’s older brother who is a student at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, shows Hiro what he can be doing with his genius. I really think that Big Hero 6 will inspire so many children to look into studying science and engineering. It’s going to be amazing and I’m so happy that Disney has really been pushing this with lots of innovation-themed contests for kids. Amazing.

Also, can I just say WOWOWOWOWOWOW to the animation team? The animation in this movie was absolutely beautiful.

I can’t find too many examples online but I remember, even as I was watching, just being stupendously impressed with the attention to detail and the framing and WOW. Just visually, this is SUCH a stunning film.

I also think this is one of Disney’s funniest movies of late. I just found myself laughing so much because the screenwriters made such good use of awkward silence, omission, physical humor, puns, etc. You’ve probably seen scenes like this online already, and it is definitely one of the moments that shows you how funny of a character Baymax can be right here in his introduction:

Too good. Toooooooo good.

Please please please please go watch this movie, I promise it will be well worth your time.

Spoilers below the trailer! (SRS SPOILERS)

Avengers: Age of Ultron [teaser trailer]

Friday, 24 October 2014Friday, 24 October 2014 StarrLeave a comment

Duh.

In case you didn’t know, I’m a big fan of the first Avengers film and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.
Also in case you didn’t hear, this teaser trailer was leaked 2 days ago and Marvel had the greatest response to the incident.

If you don’t understand the reference, check out Captain America, Captain America: Winter Soldier, or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Marvel fandom has been in absolute uproar. I mean, you thought we were excited about Guardians of the Galaxy?

Okay, yes, we were excited for GotG. But that was for a comic franchise that most movies-only fans like myself weren’t familiar with at all.

This is the AVENGERS. Everyone fell in love with them 2 years ago. (I may have seen the movie 3 times in theaters.) (Not on purpose, but just because people kept spontaneously deciding to see it and I wasn’t going to be that spoilsport who went “No no no we can’t I saw it already”.) (But I digress.) We love the characters and we love the cast. OH how we love the cast.

So. The new trailer is out. Release date is May 1, 2015. Here is a quick list of things that got me SUPER excited in this trailer:

The deliciously dark cover of “I’ve Got No Strings” from Pinocchio. Disney, as a movie powerhouse, knows that their audience looooves these dark and somber covers of songs in trailers. (See: Maleficent with “Once Upon a Dream” ) In fact, all of Hollywood knows this. (See: The Social Network with “Creep” or, heck, even Fifty Shades of Grey uses an intense version of “Crazy in Love”).
James Spader’s voicework as our new villain, Ultron, is flippin’ fantastic
Marvel Studios’ take on Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver. If you watched the sting scene at the end of the credits for Captain America: Winter Soldier, you would’ve seen that Hydra has the twins. It’s also interesting because we’ve seen Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but these are two different studios, so… the joke in the fandom is that AOU (Age of Ultron) won’t be able to talk about mutants. Which is what they are. But… Marvel Studios doesn’t have the rights to “mutant” because Fox does? (In the sting scene, they’re referred to as “miracles”.)
- By the way, I am liking what I see with Elizabeth Olsen? I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen any of her work before.
Hulkbuster! The Hulk is a fairly important in the first film but it seems like he’ll be important in this one as well with how often he features in this trailer.
- Also, one of the best things about the first film I think we’ll be seeing here: the Avengers clashing and having to work together
- With all the talk of Civil War, the fandom is definitely abuzz about the clashing of the Avengers and the conflicts that will be exposed in this film that the previous films have been building up to. (I’m not familiar with the comics, but essentially, the Civil War arc sets Avengers against each other on the debate as to whether superheroes/mutants/whatever need to be registered.)
- Doubly also, a Hulk + Iron Man fight means that the Science Bros fandom will go bananas.
Hoping that Hawkeye gets more screentime in this one! Although he wasn’t featured much in the trailer.
Also hoping for some Black Widow story here, since Marvel keeps hedging on her own independent movie…
Some folks think this will be a Natasha Romanoff backstory sequence?
Possible Steve Rogers flashback?
Y’all know I love me some Cap.
SHIRTLESS THOR?
Because in the midst of half the world getting wrecked, we still need some at least one shirtless Chris to appease the fans
Andy Serkis as not-Gollum!
Rumored by comic fans to be playing Ulysses Klaw?
MUCH MUCH MORE

Sorry, guys. I started getting sucked into all the great information out here about this teaser trailer, all courtesy of the wonderful Marvel comics universe fans out there.

Are you excited for this movie?
Were you excited when you saw this teaser trailer?
How many times did you watch it??? I watched it no fewer than 10 times. No fewer than 3 times in a row.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Wednesday, 6 November 2013Saturday, 20 December 2014 Starr2 Comments

I had the privilege and opportunity to attend an advanced screening of Thor: The Dark World (henceforth referred to as either Thor 2 or TDW) on Monday. I was extremely excited because I really like the Marvel films, I’m a fan of Hemsworth as Thor, and I’m a huuuuuuuuge fan of Tom Hiddleston as Loki. (Hiddlestoners, holla at me!)

SPOILER-FREE

Thor 2 was what I thought it would be. It had a bunch of really terrific action scenes, but I felt more impressed than usual with the visuals. Absolutely stunning visuals. The colors, the landscapes, the stars… it was pretty breathtakingly gorgeous at times. My favorite scene, visually, was the funeral scene. This spectacular funeral scene is the kind that inspired the Viking funerals you remember learning about in school. This scene was set to a perfect score and I really had my breath taken away.

A little sneak peak of the gorgeous scene (Courtesy of TotalFilm.com)

I still don’t really understand the relationship between Jane Foster and Thor, and by don’t understand, I mean I don’t think there are any grounds for it. Their chemistry and relationship sprouted out of seemingly nothing in the last film, and their love seems to be a huge factor in this film. This would be okay if I believed in it even a little bit.

Kat Dennings as comic relief Darcy was funny, but I felt like the writers tried a little too hard to squeeze more laughs out of her after she was popularly received by audiences in the first film. I laughed each time, but I didn’t like that there was SO much comic relief from Darcy.

However, this movie definitely had a lot of great comic moments. Loki plays up his God of Mischief title well. We get some nutty Stellan Skarsgård. I laughed a good deal throughout Thor 2, and I have to commend the screenwriters for that.

I was a little upset about 2 things.

The recasting of Fandral. Josh Dallas, of whom I am a big big fan, played Fandral in the first film and was pretty great. If you watch some of the deleted scenes, you see how he channeled Errol Flynn for the role. He wasn’t able to reprise the role because of Once Upon a Time (my current favorite TV show!) so they cast Zachary Levi. Now I like him, and he was actually the original choice for Fandral and had to pull out because of Chuck (I loved that show). But I missed Josh, and, not going to lie, Zach looks kinda funny with blond hair and a beard. 😛
The benching of Hogun. We have a grand total of one Asian character in this franchise right now. In the first film, Hogun is already the silent, brooding type. His lines are few and in-between, even among the other Warriors Three, who don’t have many lines or screen time for the film. At the beginning of TDW, Thor saves Vanaheim and tells Hogun to stay there with his people. Effectively, this means that Hogun only appears in this scene and then he has sliver of screentime towards the end. Meanwhile, the other Warriors and Sif are pretty cool in this film, but Hogun is left out of the fun.
This is kind of frustrating to me, as you can tell. There are so few people of color in the Marvel movies, sometimes, so it is frustrating that the one Asian one is told to stay home for the film. Why??

“You should be with your people… and have as little screentime as possible.”

I really really liked this movie. While the plot itself wasn’t terribly compelling, here is a quick bulleted list of reasons I think you should see this film:

Christopher Eccleston plays our villain, for fans of the Ninth Doctor. It was nice to see him, as I haven’t seen him since I finished watching series 1 of DW.
There is a cameo appearance by my favorite Avenger and it makes me feel happy and warm inside.
Loki, ’nuff said.
Thor, also ’nuff said.
Gorgeous visuals, as mentioned earlier
Great action sequences
Women taking names and kicking butt (namely Frigga and Sif)
Plenty of laughs
Tears also, if you cry easily at movies like I do.