I don't know what's happening to my beloved Grey's Anatomy. I am seeing it but I don't see it clearly, it's the irony that sucks. Or maybe, it's the storyline that feels so downtrodden all of a sudden. For Christ's sake Sonda Rhimes, please bring back the great writing you've done before in Season 1 and 2. Now Season 3, Episodes 5 to 7, is boring. Well, except for the first 4 episodes, which are all brilliant. Sorry Chris O'Donnell, your character must really leave. And putting Eric Dane as McSteamy trying to flirt with Meredith is such downright over-the-top now. What are they trying? Trying to tangle more the already-very-tangled relationships of Seattle Grace? Such sex-crazed doctors! Lol. Anyway, Cristina Yang trying to keep Burke's failing hand is an alright factor, and I could see erasing Bailey's name from the board is a great mistake. Surely, the real Nazi will come back again in the next episodes. But then again, I am so sick watching Episodes 5 to 6, sick of listening Meredith's formulaic and predictable narrations, so sick of having the relationships more entangled with each other, as if they couldn't see other people inside and outside of the hospital. Oh, I still adore Izzie, she's a great character. I definitely loathe the scene where the boys went to camping. It's a very useless scene. It feels like wrapping a gift, yet you don't have anything to put something inside nice, but you just stuffed it with useless things. C'mon, please please please, I am now downloading Episodes 8 to 10, and I am crossing my fingers that the real Grey's Anatomy will come back. Fresh, funny, brilliant and greatly written. That's it for now, I still have to watch the ultimately astounding, shocking, and captivatingly thrilling Prison Break Season 2. God, one of my favourite characters, John Abruzzi, was already down. There's only 7 of the escapees left. Michael Scofield should be on a great danger, along with his brother Lincoln Burrows.

December 21, 2006, J. K. Rowling announced in her website the highly anticipated 7th book installment of the universally popular Harry Potter series, and dude, from the title itself, it's as ominous as it could get and very dark indeed. Amazon.com is already calling Deathly Hallows as the most eagerly awaited book of all time. While Rowling is gliding away from the formulaic titles, putting "and the" with every title, she creates a new mood starting from "Half-Blood Prince" and now just the simple two words that has the creepy ability to raise some hair. It's not a horror thing, but it makes you feel that death here is the horror. Of course, for a thousand times, Rowling had been plaguing fans that there would be deaths. Yes, death with an 's', that's more than one.
For myself, in my opinion, I really think Death Hallows is a fantastic title and a creepy way to mark the conclusion of our beloved series. By the time Rowling will finally put the final word 'scar' in her final page, it would be goodbye then, just like saying goodbye to a good old friend. If there are deaths, I have my own inkling of who will make it up to the soul-world and rejoin Black and Dumbledore (sorry for spoilers), but if it is a death - I believe Rowling would make it sure that it would be an IMPORTANT death, something about sacrifice. Hey, I am not saying Harry would die, but based on the prophecy, neither would die if one lives, that's between Harry and Voldemort. One has to die between the two of them, but either way, maybe Rowling wouldn't give the Harry Potter series a bright-rainbow-fairy-tale-kind of ending most kids are expecting. As it becomes increasingly dark and adult-ridden, I am afraid Potter would be a tragic epic. Hmm, let's wait and see what will happen to Death Hallows. I am just very sure that Albus Dumbledore wouldn't pull a Gandalf in book seven. I don't see him returning, shining in white light amidst the darkness. All I could foresee is darkness really. No Dumbledore. No Sirius Black. Just Harry, along with Ron and Hermione, fighting a battle unimaginable. Now, I really can't wait.

If you have seen the previous 300 teaser trailer, then you have probably been wishing that March 7, 2007 would come tomorrow. And for those who haven't got an inkling on what is 300 all about - it's Zack Snyder's ultra-cool looking, mind-blowing escape to cinematic vistas and breathtaking cinematography. Adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel, 300, who also created Sin City, it follows the story of 300 Spartans, as told that they were the descendants of Hercules, battling a shocking number of a million army from Persia. From the look of the film itself, it looks as if a new Gladiator has conquered the eye-rousing Sin City. I am so definitely looking forward to this film. And to a higher note, Yahoo Movies had just released the brand-new spanking theatrical trailer for 300, which means "Tonight, we dine in hell!" Click Gerard Butler's picture to view the theatrical trailer in different formats (i.e. Windows Media, and the HD Quicktime), or if you don't like Mr. Butler, click HERE.

There was a scene in The Queen that showed a vast expanse of Scottish land, and stuck at the middle of the a freely-flowing shallow river was a rugged jeep. And on the other side of the vehicle, there was HRH Queen Elizabeth II in ordinary clothes, wearing boots that rise up to her knees. The jeep she was driving in caught a rock and it couldn't push any longer. She was sitting there, waiting for rescue, looking out to the horizon. And then, there were tears falling into her face. It was a scene of proper silence, a moment by which we knew she's not only a queen - but a human.
This was where The Queen succeeds in all its being. The humanization of such dignified icon brings so much tangible realism to this fictional undertaking of factual events. Focusing on the events that had befallen right before and a week after Princess Diana's death, the film was a story on how the monarchy struggled to gain its confidence and sustain its dignity. We somehow felt that this was all real, yet apparently it persisted to be a fictional account of real events, in which the real story or the mystery behind Diana's death was still left unsolved. Therefore, for the film's sake, we should not take this film as one of those based-on-real-events story but tackle on this one as a momentary fiction. Yet a fiction with marvelous bearing.

It starts with Tony Blair being recently elected as Prime Minister in 1997 in a voting landslide, and walks to meet the Queen for the first time. Of course, the bows and curtsies followed, and he was being reminded by the Queen herself about tradition of the monarchy. That was all being put to test when they woke up one night to receive the news that Princess Diana just met a horrible accident in Paris while fleeing away from the papparazzis. That news alone shooked the monarchy foundation, and as the royal family flees in a private estate in Scotland, the press claimed it that they were avoiding the demise of the People's Princess.

This was where The Queen suddenly became an important film. Important in the sense that it could be a major target for bigger controversy, and important in the sense that it shows us the perpetual struggle between following our traditions and the demanding coerces of modernity. It was perfectly demonstrated by the scene where Tony Blair (played sophisticatedly by Michael Sheen) calls the Queen and asks her to raise the flag in the Buckingham Palace in respect to the British people and to pay tribute to Princess Diana's death by giving her a public funeral. To this, the Queen explained her beliefs that the flag is not only the people's flag, it was as well her own, in which it must be only raised by the time of her presence in the palace. She also explains that she could not give Diana a public royal funeral since she was no longer a part of the royal family anymore (the divorce was already in effect between Diana and Charles). She did not flee to Scotland to avoid the press and media, and out of the limelight, but to share silent grief, privately, to the two boys who had just lost their mother. It was obvious that Blair was indeed a modern man and he exuded modernity, but the Queen was torn between choosing what is right and what is easy. Right things don't have to be easy. They're more difficult to do and takes great courage to face them.

This is a great film, and it's not rubbish as some might say. People might take this by heart and utterly believe it as real events. Of course, the events were real, it was the story of the film was made-up. The moments were dramatised, but also humanized with brilliance. It was obvious that Stephen Frears had directed this film with effort.

All hail to Helen Mirren for giving out such a fine performance as HRH Queen Elizabeth II. She shines like the topmost jewel in a crown full of jewels. She gives a layered acting on the character, gives a scale that's both intimidating and stupefying. Yes, carve her name to this February's Oscar Best Actress nomination. If she couldn't get any, then critics on the Academy must be blind or maybe heartless. Mirren is actually an Oscar front-runner now, and she's taking hurdles no matter how high it could be for portraying a woman raised in convictions, of dignity, of traditions and glorified manners; a woman who swore to serve her counrty for all her will.

The Queen is one of 2006's best films. There's no doubt about that. One that would say it's a bad film would have to be shallow, sorry if I need to say that. Most of all, the film is brilliant in a way it's a human-scaled drama, a touching film with moments, a featherly-light comedy, and most of all, a movie that carefully studies its main character.

Rating: A

Wow. An almost pitch-perfect TV blockbuster. This jaw-dropping, seat-gripping, mind-bending jail drama-thriller would thoroughly glue you right into your seat, as you try to take the helluva ride that you wouldn't want to miss. Yep, even a miss-out episode would make you feel incomplete, or even incompetent to step into the maze that is Prison Break. This might remind you a bit like The Escape From Alcatraz, but there's no Clint Eastwood all over it. Instead, there's a guy named Wentworth Miller and man, did he rocked the role. As the name speaks for itself, the Season 1 just went and it was worth it.

I love this show. I had never been glued in front of the TV for ages (well, except from Grey's Anatomy, which is entirely a different story because it's a hospital drama), and I had been trying to immerse myself in Lost but I just couldn't help to get lost out of it too. And then Prison Break came. What else, it was a breakthrough surprise.

I had been trying to bisect the anatomy of Prison Break, and tried to analyse why was it so watchable and utterly compelling that it forces audience to hurtle from episodes to episodes and just never break free from it. First off, it's appeal to its audience. What was amazing, in my opinion, to this show was its plot. Alright, it's TV and they made something that feels like a film that runs for like 22 hours. The plot is just marvelous, carefully thought and somewhat incredulously constructed. Michael Scofield is an intelligent man, a decent guy who lives his decent life out of trouble. He's a structural engineer who works in a large engineering firm. And once he discovered for his own self that his brother, Lincoln Burrows was in prison and was innocent of the crime he didn't commit, he was guilty of the things that he thought about his brother: the murderer of the Vice-President's brother. Lincoln was about to be hanged and within three weeks, Michael would be doing the most unlikely thing in the whole world - to save his innocent brother. Lincoln, while sitting in death row, didn't know that his brother Michael, was making an elaborate plan to get his brother out of Fox River Prison, and it just happens that Michael Scofield, the structural engineer, was one of the designers of the prison itself. He smuggled the building's blueprints and tattooed it all over his body. Season was focused on the escape, and Michael had deliberately robbed a bank to be incarcerated in the same prison his brother was in. Yet, everything was planned, and every careful step would be on its way, inmates would involved, people will be killed, and this series would wound itself to the perfect time they would make themselves out of the prison walls. And beneath the struggle for escape, to find justice and redemption, little by little, Burrow's attorney and ex-girlfriend Veronica Donovan was also in a dangerous journey in unearthing a web of conspiracy that was something greater, something like politics behind it all.

The characters were very engaging. Like most TV series, they were able to carefully bring out the life of each character, their own stories. Michael Scofield was a believable character and what was more awesome was that it felt like Wentworth Miller didn't act it. It came out naturally from it. I think that was something great from an actor; they make the characters they play convincing and Scofield did not come off as Wentworth Miller but Scofield himself. Undeniably, this would be Miller's breakthrough act and he's on his way to his career now. Inmates were present too, some were very annoying in fact, and some were pathetic and most of them were sympathetic. There's Sucre, the Mexican inmate of Scofield's cell, the hateful T-Bag with the devilish grin, the former mob boss Abruzzi, the pathetic boy-toy Tweener and the rest of the crew was manageably believable. There's also Dominic Purcell as the convicted brother Lincoln Burrows, and the TV-turn of Robin Tunney as Veronica Donovan. Yay, they're both brilliant.

The environment was played convincingly, and even though we know it's all fiction, the writers were able to pull off good dialogues and a situation that was almost realistic. It's also the writing that made the episodes very cliffhanger-like.

Watch this series, and please don't overreact if you find yourself physically craving for the Season 2. It's very suspenseful, has depth, and awesomely engaging to say the least. And that just the least of it, there's more to Prison Break than what meets the eye. It's an intelligent thriller, a very good drama filled with convincing yet little-known cast (except for the three leads; Miller, Purcell and Tunney), and an unexpected TV guilty pleasure. You just can't help but get addicted to it too. And oh, Brett Rattner directed the very first episode, which obviously launched its way to jail goodness. This would remain to be one of my very few TV-series favourites.

Rating: A

Imagine a world engulfed in war, terrorism, uprising - a world filled with noise of explosions and gunshots, void of any human child's cry. Believe me, it's not too difficult to imagine because signs of them are already happening now, but a world facing a dilemma of infertility, we could ask ourselves. Will it really happen? Is it possible? Children of Men will stir that thought and it will provoke such questions that would haunt humanity till the rest of its remaining breath.

Children of Men is potentially the most powerful film of 2006, and if not, clearly one of the finest that's crafted this year. It's though-provoking, emotionally compelling, and worldly conscious. Being one of those films that gives us a view into the dystopian not-too-distant-future like The Island, I,Robot, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and V for Vendetta, Children of Men would have to be the most realistic idea ever conceived and Alfonso Cuaron's artistic hand on it makes it the more indomitable.

Set in the year 2027, where the world is crumbling into ruins due to terrorism and environmental chaos, United Kingdom had fallen into anarchy and in order to protect itself from the outside enemies of the global war, the country captures all immigrants and shove them all into refugee camps. Activist uprising, Islamic terrorisms, and a nation deluded with fear and corruption stood in the brink of devastation. Yet, there is one more problem: mankind has no future. Women became infertile due to environmental concerns like ozone breakouts, pollution, gamma rays, food synthesis and genetic malfunctions. No child had been born for the last 18 years, and as the film started, it shows the denizens of London losing hope after the break-out news from BBC that the youngest person on Earth just died.

Clive Owen plays a Londoner bureaucrat, Theodore Faron, also an ex-activist, who had been drawn back into activism when ex-wife, also an activist considered terrorist by the anarchy, Julian (played by Julianne Moore) pulls him to be a part of a keeper of an explosive secret. They were harbouring a black woman named Kee, who was pregnant of the world's first baby in 18 years. As both Theo and Kee tries to get away from a nightmare of the war, they struggled to preserve and get into the safest place that was the future of all mankind.

This is a very dark film, filled with ideas yet painted realism all over its canvas. From the scene alone where Theo visits a friend in the Arc of Arts and had dined with Picasso's world famous mural painting, Guernica, on the backdrop, we know that Alfonso Cuaron would do the same to Children of Men also as what Picasso had did to his masterpiece. Almost a black and white portrayal of the future, with the world stumbling into desperation, gloomy with despair and trodden with doom. Most scenes in the film will leave audience gasping, and powerful images of humans in cages and running, avoiding gunshots will surely haunt many. Cuaron, who directed the astounding road-trip growing-up themed film, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and brought artistic magic to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, gives us a realistic point of view in the film. He uses hand-held cameras, not the sweeping kind of cinematography, to infuse a strangely believable environment that is very frightening. Sometimes, it doesn't really feel like a movie, but captured moments of events that happened, putting a documentary feel on it. There was even a scene in which blood sprayed on the camera, and yet it was never wiped out, which makes it the more astonishing to watch. The portrait he made was indeed very believable and ultimately daring to say the least.

The story of Children of Men would have to be, of course, flawed. There are notions in the film that are left unexplained, and the plot could be sometimes underdeveloped - but it is a great story to tell. Actually, thematically speaking, this film has one of the most interesting, most involving plot in recent years. Similarly, the characters keep us involved too. Theo Faron was a man of confused with his own community, yet struggles to survive with his own belief. Clive Owen is a fantastic lead. Hopefully, Oscars would recognise his work here because he just keeps getting better every single movie he's in. Also, Kee, the pregnant woman bearing the world's miraculous child, wasn't presented as a Mama-Mary-like saviour who bears a child but a very real person, who also sees the world in its destruction, fighting to survive like many yet fearing humanity's end too and her daughter's life. Although Julianne Moore was far too brief in the movie, she displays exactly what her character's responsibility was, and Michael Caine was also entertaining as the aging hippie who helped save Theo's life. Pam Ferris also stars in this, and was equally brilliant too.

It's of course, undeniably, an impressive film. It's an intelligent piece of film that would appeal to all humans with brains. It could also help humanity become more intelligent, that the film is indeed not too far-fetched and that it COULD possibly happen. Who knows? It would surely captivate your mind to think that our world right now is slowly being destroyed by our own stupidities and that mankind creates his own doom. The most powerful scene in the film, one that could move you into tears, was when all the gunshots, the explosions, and bombs were silenced and the only sound that could be heard was the baby's cry. All the people, who fought against each other, stood in incredulous silence as they all witness a miracle happening before their eyes, enemies being silenced by one child. It's a beautiful film amidst it's darkness, and it's message to the whole world deserves an ear to it. Most of all, Children of Men convinces us that the future is indeed a battle on how to survive hope for all of us. Alfonso Cuaron manages to bring out a strong punch both to our minds and to our hearts. This is absolutely one of 2006's bests! I just really feel so lucky that I've seen this quite early, because it opens wide on December 25th, Christmas Day, and right where it should leave me, thought-provoked.

Rating: A+