Ted Mahsun

(Those who don't follow Doctor Who can just skip this post, thanks.) Woohoo! I am totally stoked about tomorrow's episode of Doctor Who, mostly because it features an infinite library! Shades of Borges anyone? While I'm on that note, I think Donna Noble is excellent as a companion. Who would've thought? I found her absolutely annoying in that one Christmas Special, and before the current season started, would have preferred Kylie Minogue staying on as companion. Alas! It was not to be. I don't have any opinions about Martha Jones because after Rose left, I was left very upset and decided to boycott the show...only for The Master (played by that cool bloke from Life on Mars !!!) to return in that season's finalé! So yes, I regret that now. Nvm! I just hope the Doctor's daughter returns in style. (If I was bothered to update my twitter account, I would probably type in: "is humming the original synthesized Doctor Who theme.")

Fellow blogger and pal, Swifty , has had his short film, Chicken Rice Mystery , become one of the finalists in the BMW Shorties 2008 competition. I've seen it and I think it's an enjoyable watch. Combining elements of noir and several bits of comedy, which to me is very reminiscent of Chow Sing Chi's work in the Nineties, Chicken Rice Mystery is about a boy whose mother used to make really good chicken rice, a dish that everyone in the family remembers with great fondness. But ever since he was born, his mother stopped cooking it and now his father has grown to miss that particular chicken rice. But then there's that issue of his mother not really being able to cook very well... So how is it that his mother was able to cook this magnificent dish that everyone seems to praise? He then takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of why his mother doesn't make her particular brand of chicken rice anymore. The movie is only about ten minutes long but totally worth loadin...

I've only recently jumped on the Battlestar Galactica bandwagon. Until recently, I didn't watch a lot of TV and due to recent changes in my life I finally got round to watching some good TV shows (What? Watch them on terrestrial TV? You must be joking!) thanks to the internets. One of the shows I finally got round to watching is the very much acclaimed new version of Battlestar Galactica . I've watched the first four episodes of season 4 already and so far, I like what I see! (I haven't got round to downloading the rest of the episodes but will do so once I get a new hard disk drive for the PowerMac.) The story so far, as I understand it, includes a certain very interesting character by the name of Gaius Baltar. Throughout the series he's been a politician (namely the President of New Caprica), and now, he's becoming some sort of prophet promoting a monotheistic religion, very much in contrast with the more popular polytheistic religion of worshipping Roman-styl...

So you watched I Am Legend with Will Smith. (Actually I watched it with my wife but let's not bicker semantics now.) Perhaps, like me, you thought it was good for the first two-thirds of the movie. Then it all goes downhill. The ending? A pure WTF moment. Am I right or am I right? It goes without saying that the book was better. But if you're the sort of person who wants to know how the story should have ended without actually reading the book, there's always the option of watching the original movie made in 1964 starring Vincent Price. And thanks to the wonders of the Internets, you can actually download it at the Internet Archive . Or if you're too lazy to do that, here it is, embedded just for you! Now you can watch the ending as God The Flying Spagetti Monster Richard Dawkins Richard Matheson intended! The film though given the title of "The Last Man on Earth" and having had the protagonist's name changed from Robert Neville to Robert Morgan, keep...

I caught The Golden Compass on Sunday morning. It was a midnight show, and by the time the lights had dimmed and the beer ads were rolling 1 , I was already nursing a slight headache. Now I'm not sure if the reason for me not liking the movie was because of the headache or because it just wasn't any good. I read the book nearly five years ago, and I remember liking it very much. But it was five years ago, so my memory of reading it is far from fresh. I looked forward to reacquainting myself with Philip Pullman's characters in the movie and I was glad they were the same as I had left them so many years ago... except that I don't really find their company all that enjoyable any more. Was it just me, or was the movie just incomprehensible? I mean, I read the book, but even then half the time I was struggling to understand what was going on and what the motivations of each character was. Example: Mr. Lee Scoresby, the cowboy captain of an airship 2 . It felt too easy for ...

This book review was published in The Star on 30 September 2007 . Th e print version comes with a 25% discount voucher for the book which can be us ed at Kinokuniya KLCC. Authors: Eileen Chang, Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus Publisher: Pantheon Books Hardcover: 311 pages ISBN: 978-0375425240 WHEN I read a while back that Taiwanese director Ang Lee was making a movie that had some of its scenes shot in Penang and Ipoh (and being an Ipoh guy myself), I made a mental note to find out exactly what movie he was making – then, like the forgetful dolt I am, I proceeded to forget all about it. Much later, I chanced upon the movie trailer online, and realised this must be the movie that Lee had shot on our shores. The trailer looked interesting, promising an intriguing cinema experience and it played to my fancy with its period setting and sensuous scenes. The movie, Lust, Caution, stars Tony Leung, Joan Chen and Wang Leehom and features the debut of mainland China actress Tang Wei. Based ...

I'm sure there are some of you dying to know what happened at the wedding, and want to see some pics of the event, but I'll have to leave you hanging for a little while longer. I might be able to post up some pics on Flickr tomorrow. Perhaps. In the meantime, enjoy this writerly video from The Family Guy :

I mentioned Jean-Luc Godard's retro-futuristic noir movie, Alphaville , in my review of After Dark . Luck must shine on all of us, for Google Video has it up on their intertubes for you to digest. Wikipedia, as always, has a nice summary of what Alphaville is about : Alphaville combines the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. Although set far in the future on another planet, there are no special effects or elaborate sets; instead, the film was shot in real locations in Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete buildings represent the city's interiors. In addition, the characters refer to twentieth century events; for example, the hero describes himself as a Guadalcanal veteran. Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a trenchcoat-wearing secret agent. Constantine had already played this role in dozens of previous films; the character was originally created by British pulp novelist Peter Ch...

This extended preview of The Golden Compass , shown at the recent ComicCon, basically tells the whole story in little less than 5 minutes, but if you've already read the book, it's worth a look-see (yes, that was a spoiler warning). As for the movie itself, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green and armoured bears sold me. Yeah. I'm hyped and psyched and ready to watch it. Bring it out already.

Everyone's favourite urban fantasist, Neil Gaiman, talks to TIME magazine about his recently made Stardust movie, fame and the upcoming Watchmen movie: It's all fairly win-win for Gaiman. If Stardust becomes the next Princess Bride, then hooray, and if it doesn't, it's back to cult figurehood. "Five years ago, I was absolutely as famous as I wanted to be," he says. "I'm now more famous than I'm comfortable with." In a genre like fantasy, the relationship between artist and fan is a fragile, intimate thing, and in some sense Gaiman is still that nerdy public school kid. He's leery of selling out to the popular crowd. "I have really mixed feelings about the coming Watchmen movie," he says, "because I keep hearing that it's going to be really good. And part of me is going, I don't want a really good Watchmen movie! I want my graphic novel!"

Entertainment Weekly grills Sebastian Faulks on being the new Bond author, his new Bond book, Devil May Care , and David Craig's take on the franchise : Oh, he was certainly a lot tougher than Roger Moore, who was very soft. You felt that if you punched Roger Moore in the stomach it would be like punching a bag of marshmallows. And Fleming does stress the cruelty of Bond, particularly in the early novels. I think that was one of the things that made the creation appealing and rather shocking when it first came out. But if you actually analyze the way that Bond behaves, both towards his enemies, and towards women, it isn’t actually a sadistic or unnecessarily cruel. He only kills in self-defense, or if absolutely necessary for his mission. Although he is an incurable womanzier, he doesn’t actually treat the women badly. In fact, he frequently falls in love with them and is jilted by them sometimes. I totally agree. Roger Moore was such a total wimp, I'm perplexed as to why he su...

According to Swifty , the Dark City TV series that Xeus mentioned some time back has apparently already started showing on Astro RIA. I don't own a TV and I certainly don't own a satellite dish to connect to the TV that I don't own, so I wouldn't know if the show is really based on the book of the same name. I highly doubt it. Seems the ratings have been low because there hasn't been any marketing to promote the show. So the filmmakers have taken things into their hands and plunged their film-making selves into the tubes of the dangerous internets to bring you the following message: NICHE FILMS present DARK CITY, a local 13-episode series playing on Astro RIA every Wednesday at 10:30pm (followed by repeats throughout the week). In the tradition of omnibus shows like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, DARK CITY brings you various tales of the macabre with a distinctly Malaysian flavor ... ranging from supernatural horror to psychological thrillers, an...

Science fiction at its best--when the ghee-whiz special effects are stripped bare and that which is left is only the story. In this 1965 BBC adaptation of JG Ballard's short story, "Thirteen to Centaurus", the 15-year-old Abel questions Dr. Francis of the true nature of the station they inhabit. Twists upon twists await!

I didn't know the creator of The Muppets was into surrealism! I found this movie via Boing Boing and I totally dig it. I feel like it caters directly to my interests in surrealism, existentialism and meta-fiction. There's even some interesting moments involving quantum physics (always a hoot when deployed properly :p). Spare an hour and enjoy!

"All God's Children Can Dance" is a short story from Haruki Murakami's after the quake . I've already read the book, but for some reason I can't remember what the story was about. Now, via Five Branch Tree , I find out that director Robert Logevall has gone and made a movie out of it . Hurray! Bet that'll refresh my memory.

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along. - Jalaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks) Yasmin Ahmad is probably the only auteur we have who actually has the guts to go against the grain of Malaysian movie-making and yet still be able release a movie successfully on our shores and overseas. With other excellent Malaysian directors being given the middle finger when it comes to releasing their features on local screens, it's a ray of sunlight in our dark, hazy skies to see a movie of pedigree like Mukhsin get released in Malaysian theatres. I'm relieved Yasmin Ahmad decided to forego the dense intellectualism of Gubra , which I found more of an essay-as-film, rather than a proper story. Nice, but a little too high-brow for my tastes. Call me a philistine but I think I preferred Sepet's simpler love-story. Mukhsin is just that. It's ...

A lot of people have told me their favourite Haruki Murakami short story is " On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning ". It's a sweet story and I'm not surprised a lot of people like it the best, but I am surprised someone made a short movie out of it, and seems to have made a good job out of it, transplanting the story from Japan to a small town in Scotland. Enjoy.