Wednesday, 29 July 2015

TVB Ghost of Relativity Update

So far I am on track with the episodes of this series. My thoughts right now is that this series is quite bitter, bitter in the sense that May and Gin's relationship are filled with doubts, jealousy and frustration. The thing that drags this series so far is not Gin, May or Michael, but it's the backstory of Charlie and his triple angels or the backstory with Suo Yuk Gu and her rivalry with a main lander. Everything just doesn't seem that funny anymore.  Kristal Tin is the only person that is keeping me watch this series.  

Sunday, 26 July 2015

TVB's Master of Destiny and Ghost of Relativity and Love Come Home Update

I have been tuning a little bit of TVB's Master of Destiny but to be frank I only watched parts of it because the TV was on. I spent half an hour to watch a long trailer of this series in Mandarin so I got to know the gist of the whole storyline and hurts to say but I wasn't impressed. This was mainly due to the fact that the overused of wrongly accused of rape then jail then back to take revenge and the wanting to take over someone's rich business and also the family feud of brothers not getting along anymore and then the rich spoilt boy making mistakes and all these dramatic plots are not amusing to watch. It feels like the series tries to triumph largely only on the series' value on being dramatic (overly dramatic) rather than a meaningful, original and refreshing series.

Performances wise, most people were a miscast. Even though the drama is leaning towards its finale Kenny Wong is still boring to watch and Harwick's unemoted face doesn't help either.

On the other hand, Ghost of Relativity is much much much better in terms of acting and script. Even though this series sort of went downhill when it dragged on too long about how Charlie's three girls that he taught to manipulate Michael's architect assistants, Kristal's scenes were highly entertaining to watch. For this year's TVB awards, I would want Kristal Tin to win Best Actress or even my Favourite Female Character because she deserves it by bringing the character May to life and playing it to perfection. Nancy Wu and Moses Chan are so far doing fine.

One surprising actress in this series at the moment is Vivien Yeo. Yes her Cantonese is still noticeable accented but she really went out there in terms of her ugly character Lolieta. Vivien really made her character look like a cheap flirt. Acting wise she is ok.

TVB's sitcom series Love Come Home also witnessed a drastic change in terms of storyline and cast. Now the main leading actors are Louis Cheng and Priscilla Wong and now it's about a fitness centre. When it was about Love Come Home with the old storyline viewers were complaining about how they wanted a new change and now with the new change viewers want the old characters back (not like they have completely left but just not the focus anymore).

By now it's nearly August and this series TVB has hardly had any big hit series or candidates for awards which is quite embarrassing for TVB. I know it's still early but if I were to choose the winners for awards I would want Kristal Tin for TV Queen and Ruco Chan for TV King (because no one else I could think of). As for Most Improved Actress it would be Grace Chan and Most Improved Actor it would be Tony Hung (because no one else I could think of either). Best Drama? Should be Ghost of Relativity so far.  

(Random) Waiting for Windows 10 to come out

Like many others, I use Windows PC system since childhood and I am anticipating for the new Windows 10! At the moment I have Windows 8.1 which is alright but nothing earth-shattering or even worth an upgrade. I hope this time Windows have learnt their lesson and will make Windows 10 upgrade truely amazing. Why should I care? Because I need a good PC system since I do all my work and school stuff on my laptop. 

I was even part of the Windows Insider Program so I got to feel the gist of the new Windows 10 system and all I can say that besides some bugs it was decent and nice! They got back the left-hand side start bar which is great but they kept most of the Windows 8 designs and looks which is rather bland but I am fine with that and what nots. 

As you all know by know , Windows 10 is coming out on the 29th of July (but I most likely have to wait for the 30th of July since America and Australia's time zones are a stretch away). 

P.S I haven't been doing episode thoughts for Ghosts of Relativity (only up to episode 2) because I have been procrastinating for too long. Will try my best to catch up (maybe a format of recap and then overall thoughts of the episode to make it more succinct?) 

Stay tuned. 

Monday, 20 July 2015

TVB Ghost of Relativity Episode Thoughts - Episode 2 (鬼同你OT)

I enjoyed watching Episode 2.

Before I start my episode thoughts I noticed that this series is broadcast 7 days a week - quite unusual to TVB's usual schedule of 5 days a week (during the week day). I remember the last time that TVB did this was for Empress of China (probably because there were 72 episodes) but here it's only 25 episodes. Well I can only welcome it because I anticipate in watching this series everyday as it is very entertaining.

Here was what happened:
The episode started with a photo of Gin at a burial memorial site. That being said, it wasn't about Gin but about the photo of the guy on her right. May's mother (I will just refer her as Mimi) was a psycho scam who was obviously doing phony practices for her clients so the dead guy could live in peace without the ghosts bothering him. Watch that scene and you will know what I mean.

Pause. I find the dialogue of the 'linglang' (does it mean child?) to 'ailang' (lover) to 'darling' rather funny. At her first scene already Mimi shines as someone that is convincing as a scammer. Zhu mimi suited this veteran role perfectly.

Continue. Anyway there were two shark loaners outside of May's place and demanded her to come out and pay her back the money that her dodgy boyfriend from the first episode made her borrow (I knew it). Mimi comes to the rescue and tells the two men that she's not inside but they can go inside and be her client. The shark loaners agree and they come inside. With May not in sight, Mimi asks what they are looking for and they simply reply 'money'. Mimi plays all these tricks and say, 'nope you guys will never get the money back.' The two refuse to buy what Mimi said after Mimi charging them some hundred dollars but when they went to the draw to get the cash back it was instead fake money for the dead and off they go.

May comes out and Mimi gives her a lecture on being conned by her boyfriend. Mimi urges May to hunt her ex-boyfriend and tells her to look west. May actually goes looking for her ex-boyfriend on the west-direction and surprise surprise she saw him trying to con a chubby lady (this guy should claim the title of soft rice king or serial liar). When he sees May he tries to run away but instead run into May's sharkloaners. The sharkloaners weren't targeting for dude but instead were targeting for May. He decided to set up a trap and called May's name. May sees the shark loaners she runs off and when she was being chased there came a phone call from a local police station asking her to collect the evidence from the incident of Gin's death.

May runs towards the local police station that was conveniently across the road and force the shark loaners to leave her alone. This is not for long as once she retrieves the handbag along with the phone the shark loaners come after her and she tries to run towards a car in a car-park. The shark loaners refuse to let go of her and got a tool to try and get in. Her phone was smashed before so she uses Gin's phone (more like her fake phone that Gin innocently used and got electrocuted) to call the police. It was out of battery so May had to charge it and there comes Gin's ghost emerging.

Gin was unaware that she was dead and she tried to call the police. Instead she made the shark loaners call the police themselves and then the police told them that they locked their location and will be arriving momentarily. They run off and May is scared to death with Gin, who was supposed to be dead.

May hurries back home and tells her mum that she saw a ghost. Mimi was scamming a client during that time and she scared the client away. Mimi was frustrated with May and shooed her off. May was back in her room and she listened to Mimi's dialogue with her client before about how ghosts were humans in the past and to avoid ghosts bothering them is to first fulfill their regrets in life. May charges the phone back on and then Gin comes out. She got dead scared this and went back to Mimi of course couldn't see Gin. May was holding a sword and tried to take Gin down with the sword but it just went through her and instead May accidentally knocked her mum!

After Gin and May calm down, they search on the web about what happened to Gin and they found a clip that explained Gin wasn't a ghost at all but some electronic particle (some weird stuff I tell you).
After that all I could remember was that May searched on another link showing posts to remember Gin after her death one year ago and May went back to Gin's office.

Inside the architect firm, everyone was talking about the post about Gin and distastefully her past co-workers who didn't have a good experience with her decided to comment on the post by posting 'shit' -yes, 'shit'. Gin got furious.

They get back outside and we see Michael one year after with a cool car, cool girl and cool sunglasses. Funnily enough, he changed back to the nerdy glasses and took his luggage. Gin simply stared at him but Michael couldn't see and walked past. The episode ended with Gin looking disappointed.

End.

What I like about this series so far is that it is consistently funny and that in each episode it is filled with gags and some punny dialogues. Mimi is fantastic so far as the scammer who I have yet to get her name, Kristal shines in her role as May who gives the right expressions at the right time and everything was spot on. Nancy on the other hand is fine as well but she did exceptionally well in the last scene where she looked at Michael with the look of joyfulness yet curiosity. No comment for Moses in this episode.



Thursday, 16 July 2015

TVB Ghost of Relativity Episode Thoughts - Episode 1 (鬼同你OT)

Episode 1 - Fresh new start. First we have Kristal Tin who was hurrying herself to an architecture firm for a job interview. Once the taxi driver arrived at the destination Kristal Tin noted, "The change isn't right." (I think the taxi driver gave her short in change by a small fraction or something). The taxi driver got frustrated at her but as Kristal left the car he noticed she left her Y-Phone (yes they can't use the iPhone term) in the taxi but he drove off anyway. Kristal was looking for her phone and came running after the taxi. The taxi driver stopped the  car and basically threw the Y-Phone at her;

"What Y-Phone? This is a fake one!"

Kristal Tin was trying to grab hold of the Y-Phone but it came fumbling on the concrete. (Lucky it was a fake Y-Phone because if it was a real iPhone I swear the screen would have been cracked).

Late for her interview, Kristal hurries to the place (GSZ Architects Limited) and then she finds Jenny who marks her down late (9:20am) even though Kristal was trying to make excuses. Another woman comes to collect the application forms and she notices that Kristal was 20 minutes late.

"Who comes late for a job interview?"

Pause. That's very true. Number one rule for job interviews is to never be late!!! 15 minutes early is the recommended time to come and I'd say 5-10 minutes early is just as good.

Continue. That bitchy woman takes a look at her resume and she notices Kristal's sub-par job experiences, rather low-ranking high school and she is aged 33! Nancy Wu then comes to the office space and rebuts the bitchy woman, "If we can't hire 30 year olds to be a receptionist then people aged 40 years old and over like you shouldn't be working here then?",

The bitchy woman of course says that it is more appropriate to hire a younger receptionist because she is more "presentable" and better at speaking. Nancy points at the other two applicants; one who has a tattoo on her and the other has a lip piercing. "How is this presentable and good at speaking then?"

Moving on is a scene of Moses and his co-workers. They become nervous as they prepare to test if the tilted model building will collapse without any support. Nancy comes and they accidentally get rid of the supporter for the building and voila - the model building stands still.

Pause. The thing that made this scene quite distasteful was the fact that Nancy was criticising how can someone who has a tattoo be presentable and someone with a lip piercing be a good speaker. I'm pretty sure that it was quite discriminatory and the firm could have been liable for big bucks. I don't know.

Continuing on, Kristal Tin gets hired to be the receptionist and the woman before warns her to never be involved in any inappropriate behaviour, such as someone perving at you, kissing you or physically touching you. They walk into the office space where Pierre Ngo is flirting with a bunch of girls and Kristal goes "Doesn't that match all the faux-pas?" The woman goes, there's a difference between inappropriate conduct and just having fun.

The woman then goes up to Charlie; "I can be the one to wake up you" and Charlie basically said no thanks by saying, "I'll use the alarm clock instead". Funny.

Kristal was trying out her new uniform and it ripped. Moses was simultaneously right behind her and Kristal was crying "you pervert"! Moses said hey you came in before I did. Kristal accepted his explanation and uses his method to having sticky tape taped on her butt to cover the rip and she goes hi nice to meet you, you can call me May.

Pause. Why May? Why the same name as her character in 'Black Heart White Soul' that was so damn serious and this series is so lighthearted?

I was yelling out "Why!!" more when Kristal met up her dodgy boyfriend outside (like in BHWS). He gives her a new handbag (that was obviously fake) and asks if Kristal can help him to borrow money from some place. Kristal agrees and off they go into a webcam interview and with the help of her boyfriend Kristal lies about her job position (as the leader), she's worked for three years and she's the lucky winner of the day to be allowed for more loan. Without needing to show any evidence to prove all this she got $80,000 and her boyfriend took it all.

As her boyfriend was about to say see you later got something to do Kristal wants him to buy her a real Y-Phone and then her boyfriend instead takes her to a small mobile repair center. Kristal's boyfriend winks at the owner of the store and the owner of the store recommends Kristal to not change her phone but instead change the battery and just add a new case (the same case as Nancy).

Back at the office, Nancy coincidentally has the same phone case and same handbag as Kristal, the only difference is that Kristal has the fake bag and Nancy has a real HerV bag. Nancy was busy on the phone and Kristal was trying to compare the differences between the fake and real handbag, and she finds out that the difference was really just the zip that looked different.

As Nancy finished talking on the phone May (I'll call Kristal May from now on) places the handbag back to the table and Gin (I'll call Nancy as Gin from now on) went to collect the handbag and off she went. Kristal noticed that she gave the wrong bag.

How clumsy of her. For a minute I thought that May was going to swap the real handbag for herself but she was just clumsy.

Anyway May tried to find Gin so she can give the real handbag back. Gin was nowhere to be seen but the handbag was there so May tried to swap it. She tried to make sure that this time it would be right but she somehow manages to take the real handbag again (-.-). As May was leaving though she knocked on the model building and she was lucky to hold it before it was going to fall. Seeing that it was unstable, she used Moses's idea (only realised this when I was doing episode thoughts) to use sticky tape and stick the building to the ground with it.

During that time Moses and Gin and the crew were having a very very very important presentation to the judging panel for some architecture competition. The presentation was so far so good until when Eddie Kwan was talking about how good the model building was. He told the judging panel, "this building design we have is so good because it can withstand fierce winds and severe climatic conditions, and also Earthquakes... (Funnily enough they didn't actually test the model building about the Earthquake part yet). This led the judging panel to question if the model building design can withstand Earth tremors. Moses was confident about it and he tried to shake the already unstable building model. May was panicking besides the door and yelled, "Don't shake it! It will collapse!" Gin bluntly said "What are you on about?!?!" and Moses was still shaking the building model and then there we go - it collapsed.

So everything failed. The judging panel disqualified Moses' submission since the model building collapsed and May got hired for ruining everything when I don't think it was really her fault (the model building was probably unstable before May even knocked it) and she got absolutely nothing.

Gin was discussing with Eddie and Moses about the failed project and Eddie was unhappy with how many resources went towards the competition. After that Gin was saying some words to make Moses feel better. I couldn't remember much what Moses said afterwards but Gin got frustrated for what he said and she tried to ignore him for a little while.

Then Gin realised that she has the wrong handbag and phone as the phone was ringing. Gin said to May "I don't care if you stole my handbag or if it was by accident, give it to me right now". May said she was walking towards there and Gin said, "Run!" May was at the office entrance and she asked for the password to enter. Gin only managed to say "23..." and then May said, "23..and then what?" May's phone was running dead and Gin tried to charge it. The fake Y-Phone went unusual and then it electrocuted Gin!!!! Moses came in the room; "Gin!" and Gin was dead.

End.

It should have been quite a sorrowful episode for a main character to die from a fake Y-Phone (which was completely avoidable) but the character Gin doesn't end here as she will now become a ghost for the rest of the series. Overall I enjoyed this episode because the first episode was eventful, the script was tight and the performances were mainly good so far.

Kristal Tin is doing well as someone clumsy and naive. Her character has the same name, hairstyle, lovesick and both have a dodgy boyfriend compared to her other May role in BHWS but in here she is quite funny. I think this is the first time I've seen Kristal in a comedy and she can be quite funny.

On the other hand Nancy Wu is also doing fine as Gin: someone who only likes to buy famous and expensive items like "HerV handbag" and quite serious when at work. Yet to see her being funny though.

Moses as Michael is ok. Some might care he looks too old or this geeky role doesn't suit him but I might he is doing ok. Will comment more about him throughout the series.

Others like Pierre Ngo as Charlie are doing ok as well but one actress stood out to me in this episode and it was Celina Ma (had to look up at Wikipedia for it). She is blunt, bitchy and bias. Celina did a very nice job already by making her character quite entertaining.

Again overall I am impressed with TVB so far for a quite refreshing drama that I look forward in watching (unlike Master of Destiny that is unoriginal, unimaginative and underperformed in many aspects).

TVB Ghost of Relativity Episode Thoughts Welcome

Hey everyone I will be doing episode thoughts for the new TVB series 'Ghost of Relativity'. This year TVB's load of drama production has hardly appealed to me at all but I want to give this series a try because it is a comedy and it's about ghosts - something that TVB has hardly touched on at all.

Stayed tuned!