Thursday, January 19, 2012
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Yummy
So these days I've been trying every singaporean/malaysian restaurants that I can think of. So I tried Coconut Grove, a singapore/malaysia/thai diner at Great Mall, with andrew, he had nasi lemak, i had chicken rice which is better than Shiok's but I wouldn't call it chicken rice. There's another s'pore/malaysia restaurant somewhere around san jose-milpitas call Banana Leaf. What's up with all these fruit names??? There's another one at Milpitas Square call Penang Garden. But my favorites are still Layang Layang and Shiok, but the chicken rice at Shiok is not chicken rice at all. Merlion, the Singapore fusion bar-restaurant opposite of cupertino square is too expensive and the food is...er...not worth it. I had char kuey teow and it sucked. It's more for high class drinking. I like the hokkien mee at Shiok, and planning to try their chili and pepper crab.
I've been writing papers these days. Mentally straining. I did them last minute so my heartbeat went faster too. Helped my friends with their filming last Saturday. I'm also having ideas for a simple short. I want to develop a serial character and make many series of shorts based on him/her, like what Bill is doing with el gato diablo (devil cat). I have some character ideas that I'm developing..
Watched the pink panther on wednesday. Er...it can't fill in for the classic pink panther with Peter Sellers. But still...not too bad.
Slumdog Millionaire won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Picture (best movie). The awards is British equivalent to the American Academy Awards (Oscars). Danny Boyle also won best director. That leaves Slumdog to be the overwhelming favorites to win Best Picture at the oscars, since they won best picture or it's equivalent at every other major awards that I can think of. Heath Ledger is also winning best supporting actor at every awards.
I've been writing papers these days. Mentally straining. I did them last minute so my heartbeat went faster too. Helped my friends with their filming last Saturday. I'm also having ideas for a simple short. I want to develop a serial character and make many series of shorts based on him/her, like what Bill is doing with el gato diablo (devil cat). I have some character ideas that I'm developing..
Watched the pink panther on wednesday. Er...it can't fill in for the classic pink panther with Peter Sellers. But still...not too bad.
Slumdog Millionaire won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Picture (best movie). The awards is British equivalent to the American Academy Awards (Oscars). Danny Boyle also won best director. That leaves Slumdog to be the overwhelming favorites to win Best Picture at the oscars, since they won best picture or it's equivalent at every other major awards that I can think of. Heath Ledger is also winning best supporting actor at every awards.
15 Steps and Twilight
I'm surprised that 15 Steps was on the end credits of the movie Twilight. I mean...a radiohead song in a teen flick? I was even more surprised that Twilight fans like the song, and Radiohead earned new fans who are most probably into pop/rock or straight forward hard rock. In my mind Twilight fans and Radiohead just do not match. It's good that they do know how to enjoy "weird music". Here's a link for 15 Steps with Twilight scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIE9U5nPzB0
Sir Paul McCartney of The Beatles said that he likes radiohead a lot. You have good taste Paulie.
http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/42627
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIE9U5nPzB0
Sir Paul McCartney of The Beatles said that he likes radiohead a lot. You have good taste Paulie.
http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/42627
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Grammy Review
It's been a week since the grammy awards were handed out. What happened?
Robbery happened.
First of all this is my first grammy viewing in 5-6 years. The Grammy Awards has been my source for knowing new musical acts and some of the acts I love right now were first introduced to me or further cemented my attention on those artists by the awards years back when I was in middle school (Radiohead, Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, White Stripes, Kanye West to name a few).
I didn't care about the Grammy ever since 2003. Why?? It keeps going to U2! I like them but come on.. It also got more and more into commercialized acts. However, I do follow the album and record of the year as well as Best Alternative Music Album every year. But I had better things to do..like facebooking, whenever the event was on tv. So why did I watch it this year? The guy in the link summed it up for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpcTKaW7-n4 (the segment about david bowie is cool too)
So the album of the year went to Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - Raising Sand. Radiohead and Coldplay were robbed. Critics are saying it's what the Grammy always do. Sympathy over artistic. Raising Sand is a good album, I believe in that, although I only listened to a few songs. But radiohead (In Rainbows) and coldplay (Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends) have more artistic albums in the nominations for this year's event. Lil Wayne's The Carter III should be next in line. Plant and Krauss did an upset, and even Plant was bewildered himself.
What more must they do to win? They might come up with another masterpiece (In Rainbows is not really a masterpiece though) but one veteran singer will have a comeback album and snatch album of the year, as well as every other award he/she could be nominated in. The same situation was with the collaboration of Norah Jones and Ray Charles a few years back. They won everything, due to some artistic credit but lots of sympathy.
John Mayer did the double by winning both the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for Say) and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (for Gravity) in the same year. Michael Jackson did the treble in 1984 for Thriller and Beat It respectively, as well as Best Male R&B Vocals (Billie Jean) in the same year. Maybe other male artists won it before, but that is as far as I know. Congrats to Mayer. I like his voice and the way he sings. Probably my favorite male solo music act in the past few years.
But to be fair, grammy members' favorites The Eagles did not win any for their comeback album. AC/DC, R.E.M and Oasis were all shut out. Or maybe they released their albums after the eligible date (like Guns N' Roses). I'm lazy to find out. Indie acts that the critics put at the top of their lists of '08's bests, TV On The Radio, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend and MGMT were all shut out.
Metallica won Best Metal Performance. Is that a surprise? No. Congrats.
Coldplay won Song of the Year and Best Pop Group Vocal, both for Viva La Vida, and Best Rock Album for Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. They were, however, robbed in the Record of the Year category. I don't really like Viva to want it to win record of the year, but there's no way Krauss and Plant should win it with Please Read The Letter. The best single of 2008?? I'm not the only one puzzled.
Kings of Leon won Best Rock Group Vocal Performance for Sex On Fire. They deserve it. Congrats Kings.
Lil Wayne swept the rap categories, winning Best Rap Album (The Carter III), Best Rap Song (Lollipop), Best Rap Solo Performance (A Milli), and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group with Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West (Swagga Like Us).
Best New Artist nominee The Jonas Brothers gave a great performance with Stevie Wonder. I hope they'll break out of the Disney box and become a "real" pop/rock band soon. I was hoping they'd win but they didn't. Adele did.
Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift performed...not my type. But good for them.
I was quite impressed with Carrie Underwood's performance. The only country performer that kept me interested. Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West did a take with the pregnant M.I.A. Blink 182 appeared and announced that they are back together again. Green Day presented Album of the Year.
Radiohead's In Rainbows won Best Alternative Music Album, their 3rd win in this category, joint most wins with White Stripes.
Gwyneth Paltrow introduced Radiohead and described them as "one of the most influential, adventurous, and thoroughly artistic musical groups of all time".
Radiohead performed "15 Steps" with the University of Southern California (USC) marching band. But only Thom Yorke (lead singer) and Johnny Greenwood (lead guitarist) was on stage. The performance was a little disappointing, yet epic. Besides not having all the band members on stage, Thom was all crazy and ...lost himself, it was cool for the fans but new listeners could have enjoyed the radiohead mood with a slower tempo. Johnny's guitar sound was not clear and lots of instrumentation from the CD version were missing in this live performance. The marching band's "Eh!" shout doesn't bring the same mood as the kids in the studio version. The song could have been performed at a slower tempo. Nevertheless, it's Radiohead's first grammy performance even though they have been nominated and won several times.
Congrats to the winners. Now off to the Oscars.
Robbery happened.
First of all this is my first grammy viewing in 5-6 years. The Grammy Awards has been my source for knowing new musical acts and some of the acts I love right now were first introduced to me or further cemented my attention on those artists by the awards years back when I was in middle school (Radiohead, Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, White Stripes, Kanye West to name a few).
I didn't care about the Grammy ever since 2003. Why?? It keeps going to U2! I like them but come on.. It also got more and more into commercialized acts. However, I do follow the album and record of the year as well as Best Alternative Music Album every year. But I had better things to do..like facebooking, whenever the event was on tv. So why did I watch it this year? The guy in the link summed it up for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpcTKaW7-n4 (the segment about david bowie is cool too)
So the album of the year went to Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - Raising Sand. Radiohead and Coldplay were robbed. Critics are saying it's what the Grammy always do. Sympathy over artistic. Raising Sand is a good album, I believe in that, although I only listened to a few songs. But radiohead (In Rainbows) and coldplay (Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends) have more artistic albums in the nominations for this year's event. Lil Wayne's The Carter III should be next in line. Plant and Krauss did an upset, and even Plant was bewildered himself.
What more must they do to win? They might come up with another masterpiece (In Rainbows is not really a masterpiece though) but one veteran singer will have a comeback album and snatch album of the year, as well as every other award he/she could be nominated in. The same situation was with the collaboration of Norah Jones and Ray Charles a few years back. They won everything, due to some artistic credit but lots of sympathy.
John Mayer did the double by winning both the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for Say) and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (for Gravity) in the same year. Michael Jackson did the treble in 1984 for Thriller and Beat It respectively, as well as Best Male R&B Vocals (Billie Jean) in the same year. Maybe other male artists won it before, but that is as far as I know. Congrats to Mayer. I like his voice and the way he sings. Probably my favorite male solo music act in the past few years.
But to be fair, grammy members' favorites The Eagles did not win any for their comeback album. AC/DC, R.E.M and Oasis were all shut out. Or maybe they released their albums after the eligible date (like Guns N' Roses). I'm lazy to find out. Indie acts that the critics put at the top of their lists of '08's bests, TV On The Radio, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend and MGMT were all shut out.
Metallica won Best Metal Performance. Is that a surprise? No. Congrats.
Coldplay won Song of the Year and Best Pop Group Vocal, both for Viva La Vida, and Best Rock Album for Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. They were, however, robbed in the Record of the Year category. I don't really like Viva to want it to win record of the year, but there's no way Krauss and Plant should win it with Please Read The Letter. The best single of 2008?? I'm not the only one puzzled.
Kings of Leon won Best Rock Group Vocal Performance for Sex On Fire. They deserve it. Congrats Kings.
Lil Wayne swept the rap categories, winning Best Rap Album (The Carter III), Best Rap Song (Lollipop), Best Rap Solo Performance (A Milli), and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group with Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West (Swagga Like Us).
Best New Artist nominee The Jonas Brothers gave a great performance with Stevie Wonder. I hope they'll break out of the Disney box and become a "real" pop/rock band soon. I was hoping they'd win but they didn't. Adele did.
Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift performed...not my type. But good for them.
I was quite impressed with Carrie Underwood's performance. The only country performer that kept me interested. Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West did a take with the pregnant M.I.A. Blink 182 appeared and announced that they are back together again. Green Day presented Album of the Year.
Radiohead's In Rainbows won Best Alternative Music Album, their 3rd win in this category, joint most wins with White Stripes.
Gwyneth Paltrow introduced Radiohead and described them as "one of the most influential, adventurous, and thoroughly artistic musical groups of all time".
Radiohead performed "15 Steps" with the University of Southern California (USC) marching band. But only Thom Yorke (lead singer) and Johnny Greenwood (lead guitarist) was on stage. The performance was a little disappointing, yet epic. Besides not having all the band members on stage, Thom was all crazy and ...lost himself, it was cool for the fans but new listeners could have enjoyed the radiohead mood with a slower tempo. Johnny's guitar sound was not clear and lots of instrumentation from the CD version were missing in this live performance. The marching band's "Eh!" shout doesn't bring the same mood as the kids in the studio version. The song could have been performed at a slower tempo. Nevertheless, it's Radiohead's first grammy performance even though they have been nominated and won several times.
Congrats to the winners. Now off to the Oscars.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Album of the Year
hahahaha. I knew it. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's Raising Sand won album of the year. Oh well...Grammies are gonna lose more viewers I think. Coldplay and Lil' Wayne not winning would turn many viewers off. Radiohead is becoming the Kate Winslet of Album of the Year. Nominated multiple times but never win.
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