Archive for November, 2010

Harry Potter 7 (Part One) – No Spoilers

I put off watching Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows last week because, well, the theaters were too crazy and jam-packed with people … and I couldn’t even get a ticket. So really, there was nothing I could do anyway, haha. But I did finally see it today. The theater was surprisingly not that full, though part of that may have been related to the fact I went to the theater at noon. I’m sure evening showings are still pretty busy.

Keeping in mind I am obviously NOT a professional critic or anything even remotely close to one, here were my thoughts on the movie:

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. When it ended, my friends and I all agreed that we could have sat another two or three hours in the theater to watch part two. I don’t remember anything from the book (speaking of which, I think I might re-read soon), but thankfully the movie wasn’t difficult to understand despite that. I love the Harry Potter series in general, so I’m probably a bit bias, but I was entertained by it and the movie was engaging for me.

The fact that the seventh book was split into two parts has a good and bad side though. The good thing is that the movie does not need to be rushed in order to cram the entire plot in, so the audience can see many more scenes they remember and cherish from the novel. The bad side is that because they don’t need to rush, the pacing of the movie is kind of slow. In fact, I found it almost kind of jarring how the scenes flowed. The action scenes are very abrupt followed by sudden calms … then more sudden action. That works fine and all in a book, but on screen, it doesn’t work as well.

There was, uh, one scene which I found really … odd? When Ron is supposed to destroy a horcrux and he sees a scene of Harry and Hermione … If you’ve seen the movie, you probably know what I’m talking about. I can’t remember if that exact scene happened in the book. Not that I’m a prude, but it just seemed really out of place in the movie, even if it WAS Ron’s imagination.

I read somewhere that someone thought the movie didn’t seem “magical” compared to past movies. I can see their point, but I think considering the plot of The Deathly Hallows, it is reasonable to tone down the magic-ness. This is no longer about Harry discovering the wizarding world, but about Harry on a hunt for the seven horcruxes. Don’t get me wrong, we still have wizards and witches shooting spells at one another, teleportation, etc. but this is the seventh movie now. We are no longer as amazed by the magic in Harry’s world because we’ve become so familiar with it, and that’s why I think it seems less magical in a way. Well, I wasn’t bothered by it. I didn’t even notice the “lack of magicalness” until I read that review, which led me to think about it.

Still, I loved watching this movie and seeing all the scenes from the book come to life. My favourite scenes include infiltrating the Ministry of Magic (the actors playing Harry, Ron and Hermione in their disguised forms were excellent, in my opinion. Even though they were completely different actors, I was impressed that they were able to retain Harry, Ron and Hermione’s mannerisms) and my second favourite scene was the retelling of the Three Brothers fairy tale.

I am excited for part two, which is supposed to come out June 2011. Seems so far away, but it’s actually only maybe half a year. I feel like life is going to be a little empty without anymore Harry Potter-ness to look forward to, yet at the same time, I am eager to watch the conclusion on the big screen :)

November 27, 2010 2 comments

I’m a Kingslayer now!

In front of the Lich King’s now empty throne, muahaha.
I would have screenshotted dead Arthas too, but his body despawned :(

First time raiding with my warlock’s new guild. I didn’t think I’d be getting the Kingslayer title this expansion … but I did, which was a pleasant surprise. As a warlock, the fight wasn’t hard for me at all. Seems more like a healing intensive fight than anything else. Bravo to the healers, and the tanks … and the DPS of course :)

That’s all I have to say about that.

November 26, 2010 0 comments

4 Revlon Lipsticks

You’ll have to excuse the extremely bad lighting. I still can’t find that damn cord that connects the camera to the computer, so I’m still using my cellphone camera.

(Everything in this picture looks much darker than they actually are).

Two posts ago, I wrote about the Revlon/Almay warehouse sale happening in the UBC student union building, and how I fell in love with the lipgloss I bought there. Well, I went back today to see if there are any more lipglosses I might like. I realized the one I bought (“Honey” not “Honey Peach” like I originally thought; I don’t know where I got the peach from) was sold out! I looked at the other lipglosses available. There was one called “Ice” or something that kind of interested me but it looked like it’d either turn your lips very pale, or come off clear. The rest were too pink for my liking.

That’s when I noticed the small lipstick display that I didn’t see before. They have tons of lipglosses available, but only a small selection of lipsticks. They’re $3 each or 4 for $10, which I think is a great deal especially for Revlon lipsticks, so I bought four!

3 of the 4 lipsticks are “Revlon ColorStay” and the other one is just a regular one. They are all quite pigmented, which is awesome since the Wet n’ Wild lipsticks I bought weeks ago were quite sheer when applied. I like Tender Pink and Baby Peach (I know I wrote Baby Pink on the picture, whoops!) a lot. Baby Peach is quite orange-y while Tender Pink is like a classic pink colour. My favourite out of the ColorStay lipsticks is Sensuous Spice though. I don’t own any dark-ish colour lipsticks (until now … and I don’t mean dark like black or anything. Just darker than my lip colour; usually I buy colours lighter than my lip colour). Sensuous Spice is a bit of a brown colour mixed with some pink, if you can imagine that. I love this colour, it makes your lips look absolutely sexy.

As for Almost Nude (which is NOT the red-brown colour it appears in the picture; it actually does look nude in its container) — I love nude coloured, or pale coloured lipsticks (which is why I have been in love with my MAC Myth lipstick for the longest time). With that said, this Almost Nude lipstick isn’t really a nude lipstick to me. It is VERY close to my lip colour, rather than my skin colour. When I applied it, the colour looked almost a bit like a pale orange. I don’t know, that’s not really what I expect from a nude lipstick. Then again, it does say ‘almost’ nude, haha. I do like it though, if I don’t think of it as nude coloured and think of it as pale orange. It’s also a bit shiny :) Well, they’re all a bit shiny, but no shimmeries or glitteries here.

My point? I like these lipsticks! And the ColorStay lipsticks really do STAY.

November 25, 2010 0 comments

The Shattering! (Pic Post)

First off, an (early?) happy thanksgiving to my American friends and readers! Thanksgiving has come and gone for us Canadians, but I was reminded that they are celebrating it in the US this month when WoW hosted its annual Thanksgiving event (which I did all the achievements for on my Priest and now am the proud owner of a Plump Turkey pet, haha)! Thanksgiving feasts are set up outside all major cities in WoW, as well as some minor towns and villages. My human rogue (above) got zapped into a turkey (one of the gag item things available for thanksgiving) and I thought it would be funny to seat her at the thanksgiving table … a turkey eating thanksgiving dinner, haha.

BUT the real point of this post is that patch 4.03a was applied yesterday and the shattering of Azeroth is officially upon us! Deathwing already went zoom zoom around the world and destroyed a bunch of places. I spent hours yesterday just exploring and checking things out, and I still haven’t seen everything. I am also leveling some lowbie characters to try out the new quests and zones. I think leveling a new character is the best way to fully experience the Cataclysm, plus I’m excited to try some of the revamped classic dungeons like Deadmines.

The rest of this post is mainly pictures, so I put it under a cut (click read more below). 9 pictures, same size as the turkey picture above, for those of you whose computers can’t handle too many images at once. I will likely be posting more pictures in the coming weeks (especially when the actual expansion goes on sale and everything).

November 24, 2010 0 comments

Revlon Sale @ UBC: Nailpolishes & Lipgloss!

So today at school, in the student union building, there is a booth (a very big booth!) selling Revlon products at clearance prices. Well, most of the stuff was at clearance prices, there was a few things that I felt were ‘regular price’, but they didn’t interest me, so whatever, haha. There is an area in the student union building where people can set up booths to sell things, and the normal ones are usually selling scarves, socks, jewelry and the like, but the Revlon booth, I believe, is a limited time booth so anyway … I decided to check things out … Can never resist a make up sale.

Anyway, I spent a grand total of $10 for the 3 nail polishes and lip gloss above, which I think is a pretty good deal. The lip gloss was priciest, $4.99, but the nail polishes were only $5 for three :) I really tried not to buy too much because, well, I’m not made of money even if the things are cheap. And I completely avoided the eyeshadow section because damn it, I have too many eyeshadow stuff already, I really should stop buying more! (Although I did take a peek, and it’s mainly stuff I already see in drugstores … so not really interested. When it comes to eyeshadow, I tend to go for non-drugstore brands). So I only looked at the boxes of nail polish and the lip stuff section.

The nail polishes were in large boxes, and unfortunately, there were no tester nail polishes or anything like that, so people were just opening them all and trying them and … well, it was kind of hard to find a bottle of nailpolish that didn’t end up having a smear of polish on it because people just threw them back in the box when they were done, not always making sure the lid is tight. Anyway, I chose those three colours above. I am excited to apply the bright colour onto my nails today :D It is as shiny as it seems in the picture, with a pearly element to it, I like!

The other two nail polishes don’t have quite the shine or pearly-ness that coral one has, they are more like “normal” nail polishes … and I chose darker colours just because I already have quite a few bright, light colours at home. I was curious as to how the silver one would look. It looks almost gray to me. I actually didn’t try it on my nails yet. I kind of have a feeling it won’t look as good as a solid colour on my nails, but maybe I can use it for when I want to do some easy nail art … I dunno … gray dots on a black background? Or something? The purple-ly red one I’m excited to use as well. I’m not a fan of traditional bright red, like old Hollywood glam red … but darker reds, I do like.

Then there was the lip gloss. I do not buy lip glosses that often just because they always show up on your lips different from the bottle, and differently from when you test it on your skin, like your hands or something (skin colour on hands usually not the same colour as your lips! Haha). And obviously I don’t want to be applying the tester one directly onto my lips because, well, you never know who last used it. So when I buy lip gloss, I am gambling that I will like the way the colour turns out on my lips. This one was called “honey peach” or something like that (I don’t know why, but the bottle doesn’t have the name of the colour, though it was labeled on the display stand). I put it on when I got home and I LOVE this colour on my lips. It is shiny like gloss, but it’s not clear; there is enough colour to turn your lips into a nice, pale pink colour, but sheer enough that it isn’t overwhelming … does that make any sense?? Hahaha. The colour it appears inside the bottle is accurate enough, maybe a shade or two lighter when applied on your lips. I love this colour, I think I found a new favourite lip gloss to wear! (And it smells kinda good too …)

November 23, 2010 0 comments

Pre-Cataclysm: Elemental Attack

So the elemental attack phase of the pre-Cataclysm events are happening. So far, I have been having difficulties fully participating in them :S For one, they occur every 2-3 hours (so I heard). Above, you can see everyone crowding Stormwind waiting for it to happen. I did battlegrounds in between waiting, and passed two hours without it happening :( Kind of disappointing how long you have to wait for an elemental invasion to occur. I understand it can’t be too often because the entire city shuts down more or less (no bankers, no auctioneers, no innkeeper, no trainers, no anyone!) and that would be problematic for people unable to participate in the event or not interested in doing so, and just want to play the game normally. Unfortunately, this is also annoying for people who DO want to participate in it. We have no idea what time it is supposed to start, people aren’t sure how long the intervals are supposed to be between events and well, it’s extremely boring just waiting for it to occur.

The next day, I did stumble upon an elemental invasion happening in Ironforge! Lots of Earth Elementals and Fire Elementals everywhere, their “corpses” littered the ground, giving the area a chaotic look. Of course, our purpose is to defeat the elementals. As a level 80 (in decent-ish ICC gear), they were no challenge at all. I was on my warlock and just ran around putting my DoTs (damage-over-time spells) on everything.

November 16, 2010 0 comments