hyd final ep

i just finished watching the 9th and final episode of hana yori dango. i'm not going to say anything except that it's bitter-sweet. same feeling that I got when I turned the last page of the last volume of the manga. and although there is the time constraint and limitation because of the number of eps, they did a very good job of squeezing in little details (although a bit dyslexic in terms of chronology) and also resulted in episodes that don't have any dragging or boring moments, every episode was full to the brim, rich and fast-paced. in the end I did like the f4.. all of them. yuki was great in her supporting role and even the ubiquitous sakurako who juggled no less than 5 characters (makiko, sakurako, kazuya, junpei, shigeru) rolled into one sustained her interesting take on the different characters up to the end, i can never make up my mind whether to love her or to hate her. but actually i liked her better than the sakurako in the manga. so anyway, the season ended leaving me tear-stained but happy. here are some random screen caps:

loved this one where nishikado was being strict to tsukushi.
the whole gang strutting their stuff.
domyouji x tsukishi moments
rui or domyouji? i can't decide!
akira with rui looking like a lost lamb & rui x domyouji moment (?)
reverse bus scene & cookie appreciation

as i was reading my ten year old journal I was thinking... did I really have such thoughts when I was 19 or 20? Some of the thoughts are petty, some completely different from what I believe now, but some were also surprisingly mature and well thought out. Anyway, I feel as I had felt when I was writing those things and I remember that back then I felt grown up and knowledgeable and wise. It's funny that when I was barely out of my teens I thought I was grown up already and had no qualms about spewing out my observations and opinions about the world and now that I'm twenty-ten (^^) I know that I still have much to learn: there's still so much to be discovered and understood. I have barely grazed the tip of the iceberg!

azumi movie

azumi (warning: spoilers ahead) i did a marathon of azumi 1 and 2 and watched them back to back. azumi is based on the manga by yu koyama (never heard of it before nor seen it so i won't be able to compare). it was long! still, a feast for the eyes to watch. i mean aya ueto was so pretty and having oguri shun there wasn't bad either.he was present only in the first part of the first movie but played a relatively bigger role in the second. fights abound and the period action film fangirl in me was happy. i can tell joe odagiri's villainous character, sword-crazy-rose-carrying-fighting-perv bijomaru mogami was straight out of the manga. i think he did a good job interpreting the character and he was oozing with lunacy in the scene where he can not contain his happiness as everyone was killing each other and dropping like flies all around him. there was also this amazing crazily-angled shot of his fight with azumi that made my jaw drop. aya ueto as azumi, although very easy on the eyes, sadly lacks a bit in the acting department. she was supposed to be this undefeatable, bad-ass, sword genius among all the assassins but the lack of power and speed in her swordplay fails to convince [the extras patiently waiting for their turn to be chopped off by her didn't help either]. i also did not feel any depth of emotion even in the different heart-wrenching scenes when her comrades die. she experienced every possible kind of heartache known to man, and yet wasn't able to make me empathize. with lowered expectations in terms of depth of acting and believable sword-fights one can actually enjoy this movie for its visual appeal. expect excessive amounts of blood gushing from pierced or beheaded characters. (^^;)

king kong was one big amusement park ride. that's what I concluded after watching the almost 3 hour flick.

on jonathan edwards

Upon the reccomendation of so many reputable people (actually people I have read or have been reading recently), like James Montgomery Boice and John Piper, I sought out the biography of Jonathan Edwards from our Church Library. What I know of him was that he was a great man who had influenced so many people including other great men of the faith like David Brainerd, George Whitefield, etc. and thus I was setup with that sort of expectation as I start to read the book. But the first thing that God made me realize as I read the introduction was I should take him down a peg or two from the pedestal I have thus put him. In the introduction negative things were said about him and his writings and I sobered up. Jonathan Edwards, regardless of how great his writings turned out and how ever great he had become, was once a lost soul too ... maybe with knowledge but definitely without purpose nor greatness when he was apart from God. He was changed by God's regeneration, and he was only able to speak and write whatever great idea he had by the sheer grace of the Lord alone.
Never venerate the messenger but only He who sends the message.
With that sobering thought in mind, very different from the frame I was in before I started this book, I will continue reading - with the objective of knowing more, the great God behind this great man.

lately, i think my life has been pouring into the books I read or vice versa. That sentence didn't make sense and I don't feel like I make sense at the moment since I just woke up and had about only 3 hours of sleep.
Anyway, I'll illustrate so it'll be clearer. A few days ago I got into the mode again of making plotlines for possible stories and the lazy me just thought it up in my head and let it stay there.. didn't even write it down. I had the light bulb moment the day I read Howl's moving castle at one go (I bought it Thursday and finished it by Friday night. I was reading like woah! while riding the MRT, while walking on the streets, riding the escalator, having lunch, waiting for a page to load, all the itty bits of time I can squeeze in I squeezed because I couldn't put it down, and I JUST HAD to know what happens next). I digress! let's go back to my ah-here's-a-potential-plot moment. It was about a girl, who is living a pretty ordinary (read: boring life). One day, while taking a bath she saw some scars on her arms. not really big scars but big enough to leave a mark. The wounds were not fresh and seemed to be a few days old but she couldn't remember where she got it. the next day she noticed some new ones. She got alarmed and almost contacted a doctor but some things she was busy with put that off.. anyway the main thing is ... this happens pala when she dreams.. turns out whenever she dreams she has big adventures where she has to fight some evil (thus the wounds and scars) so she goes to this place where her life is as remote from her boring one as it possibly can.
I was pretty happy with that plotline.. but not for long. Last Sunday because of certain happy circumstances I found myself killing time in Mega Mall where I haven't been to for like ages. So I hopped from bookstore to bookstore and browsed to my heart's desire and was pleasantly suprised that both Powerbooks and GoodWill were having a sale. GoodWill won out in the end and I went out of their store carrying 4 new books for less than a thousand pesos. One is "The Lost World" by Arthur Conan Doyle (which I've been looking for and thankfully got for only P80), Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (this one for P399 which the girl on the counter said had no discount... but this particular books goes for more than P500 in Natio, I know 'cause I keep picking it up and imploring it to go on sale everytime I go there). Next is Amrita also by Yoshimoto...it's P599 and it's 50% off! If I were Sengoku (PoT reference) I'd say "rakki!" but I don't believe in luck .. so I don't ^^. Last is this seven story collection by Charles De Lint (anthology) (got introduced to the guy first in the anthology called "Green Man" and have been on the look out for his stuff (already got The Rose Grey Harp from FullyBooked, haven't gone past the first chapter though). His story collection is called "Ivory and Horn". I read the first story and it was good, but no Eureka or "man! this is awesome!" moment yet. But the second story was exclamation worthy for me. I truly did a double take because it was about this weird girl who dreams up this guy who owns a bookstore and there was a blurring between her reality and her dreams. Aaaaah! there goes my plot-line T_T. I knew it! There's nothing more disheartening for someone who thought he just came up with a good idea... only to be dashed to pieces the next moment because somebody beat them to it already. I feel like exactly like that guy Jacopo (if I remember his name right) in Eco's novel "Focault's Pendulum". Everything has been already written, and that was why instead of a becoming a writer like he wanted, he ended up being an editor.

But wait, there's more! I stayed online last night until 5am at first with the excuse of talking to my friend online and just virtually spending time with her since we don't get to go out that much. but later after she signed off I continued getting lost in the web doing this and that until finally when it was about 5 I put my foot down and determined to sleep. I couldn't really sleep at once so I opened up the plastic packaging of Amrita and started reading. It started out with the main character rattling off about her being a night person and how she was woken up before 9 and it was hard because she slept at 5 the previous night and she normally starts her day early afternoon. She could very well be talking about me. Finally sleep took over but not before I had this lingering thought in my head that books are taking over my life! ^^

surprises about hanazawa rui and kondo isami

2 things i discovered today had me floored, first the pleasant one and its backgrounder.
I have been watching this really funny j-dorama called densha otoko (train man) about an otaku who falls in love with a beautiful girl he saved from a harasser on a train and who, in order to date her successfully, asks help through the message board from fellow geeks and otakus. Curiously enough their advises work most of the time ^^. Anyway, one of these advisers, naaah, more of a cheerer-on is a computer geek who sends these amazing ascii-drawings to encourage densha otoko. I was intrigued by this guy and found him cute.
A few days after watching Hana Yori Dango, I figured something out. There was something familiar with the guy playing Rui and that set me off. From the net I was able to confirm that Rui and the computer geek guy in densha are one and the same. Just for that, I think I'm starting to appreciate him in the role of Rui more and more.

oguri shun:

hanazawa rui	=	densha otoko's computer geek guy
	=

Now for the more painful part. The first series that got me interested in Japanese dorama was Shinsegumi. I saw this in NHK and had me hooked even if I didn't understand half of what they were saying .. okay more than half! The person who played the lead role of Kondo Isami was a member of SMAP (a former boyband in Japan). I know! I couldn't believe he can successfully portray the leader of shinsengumi back in the meiji era, but he did. And he was still cute even with tha samurai haircut (read: receding hairline) and ponytail. That was a year ago I think. Recently, a friend gave me random clips about Gackt, and there was one with Shingo Mama (apparently a cross dressing six-foot or so man who likes pink and polka dot ... A LOT... and champions working mothers everywhere) trying to "kiss" Gackt (only by camera illusion though). That clip really cracked me up. But I wasn't quite prepared about what I found out when I looked for info about Shingo Mama.

shingo katori:

shinsengumi's kondo isami	=	shingo mama
	=

!!!

iiiyaaa! my head just broke..someone fix it please.