Day's Digest

[tanithryudo]

So I went up to Cal yesterday for a fun day out with cashew now that she's back from China. Though, in retrospect, I guess we should've waited until after she got rid of her jetlag. Oh well, I guess sleep just such an overrated commodity. :p ^^;;

We had lunch at Gypsy's. It's been a long time since we ate there. They still haven't lost their touch. Yummy and filling entrees. Cashew got a veggie dish and I got a seafood dish. Mmmm... calamari & mussels. :)

Then we went to B&N for a while. I skimmed a few manga volumes - nothing that good, though I did get halfway through the first volume of Fruits Basket, which seems rather interesting. Maybe I'll follow up on that series later. Cashew was trying to reread Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but she was also in a constant struggle against good 'ol sleep. :p

After that we went to Oaks Theater to see the 3rd Harry Potter movie... only to get there to find that they're not showing it anymore. Grr. Bakas. So why did you still have it listed up on Yahoo!Movies?! So instead of watching the movie, we took a stroll through the nearby Half-price Bookstore (they didn't have any of the textbooks for our Philosophy class) and then grabbed something at Jamba Juice before taking the bus back to the downtown Berkeley. (Oh, and because I don't have a Class Pass anymore, I had to spend $3 roundtrip for bus tickets. Geez.)

So we went back and ended up watching "I, Robot" at the UA Theater instead...

The movie is quite a pleasant surprise in that it didn't totally butcher Asimov's works. They kept the letter AND spirit of the Three Laws of Robotics. I liked the movie version of Susan Calvin (as wishy-washy as she was) better than the book version. Even the basic idea behind the main conflict is something I can see coming out of Asimov's works.

Also, just by itself, the movie also works pretty well. The detective/mystery plotline was well handled - I had the same suspicions as the main character as to the main culprit, for the entire duration of the investigation. There was suspense until we got to the climax - it's not a movie where the viewers can guess who the main bad guy is by the first half-hour or so. It's not cliche, I guess is what I'm saying. There also wasn't any hammy romance stuff to mess things up - thank goodness. A bit of romantic tension here and there is about all we get. The SFX were pretty good. I liked how they designed the robots - not entirely human-looking, but with enough human traits to look spooky/suspicious and display the proper emotional cues for the audience. The action was okay; quite a bit of it is very improbable, but then, that's what action sequences tend to be like. It's just eyecandy, so I don't think too much of it.

My favorite part of the movie would probably be the robot Sonny. I didn't think too much of him at first, but by the time the climax hits and Sonny shows his true colors and true strengths... well, I guess he just grew on me.

After the movie we dropped by Comic Relief, where I introduced cashew to a new manga series that I've gotted hooked on. "FAKE" is explicit yaoi, and we're both very much surprised that it got passed the American censors to reach the shelves. I mean, this is a series were we see the to main characters - both male bishounen - kiss in the very first chapter. They pretty much make out in every chapter, for that matter. And in the last volume, we see them quite graphically in bed together doing the horizontal tango... twice. For some strange reason, though, most bookstores only carry the first few and last few volumes of the 7-book series. So far, from visiting 3-4 stores, I've read all except volume 3. But no worries, I will get my hands on it... somehow.

Anyways, after we were done with the manga, we had pizza for dinner at Blondies before I went home. Not a bad day, all-in-all. ^_^