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Let’s face it, more often than not, there’s no such thing as “happily ever after” in reality. Sure we read about them all the time in fairy tales, but that doesn’t mean whatever happens in those books transcend into real life. However, in Disney’s recent movie, Enchanted, we see what happens when fairy tales meet reality, and boy is it a humorous sight.

The movie first starts off as a cartoon with a princess, prince, and promises of happily ever after. Of course, in comes the evil witch who decides to destroy all their hopes of marrying each other and living “happily ever after” by sending the princess to the real world. The real movie only starts 10 minutes in, with princess Giselle (Amy Adams) emerging from a manhole in the middle of downtown New York City. Even in the real world, she continues to search for her prince Edward (James Marsden) at the “castle”. It is when she starts talking to an advertisement (with a picture of a castle on it) that she bumps into Robert (Patrick Dempsey) by chance. He then brings her home and allows her to stay the night, and from then on they get into all sorts of sticky situations, mainly due to the fact that Giselle still believes that true love exists in the reality she’s in.

Revealing any more about the movie would be a huge spoiler for anyone who’s interested in it, and after watching it I think that includes everyone. First of all the premise of this movie is just so unique and fresh, no other movie before has thought about bringing fairy tale characters into real life. It is quite a sight to watch the prince run around New York City in an 18th century costume, slaying a “metallic beast” (a bus) by stabbing it in its side. Obviously, the plot of the movie is really unorthodox, and the twists are so unbelievable that this movie is more of a fairy tale set in real life. However it’s probably because of this fact that the movie transcends all ages, making it the best family movie that’s been released in quite some time. Kids will love seeing their fairy tale characters come to life and parents will be able to relate with how “happily ever after” seldom occurs in real life. Perhaps the best part of this movie is probably the fact that it tries to parody classic Disney works - the opening animation sequence is meant to resemble a typical Disney cartoon with a princess and prince singing with the birds and the bees, and all the other songs sung throughout the rest of the movie are typical childish songs that seem even more so when sung in real world situations.

The acting throughout the film is great obviously, Adams manages to pull off a stellar performance as a fairy tale princess, always beaming widely and always hopeful (and obviously always singing). Marsden does an equally good if not better job of playing the zippy prince, always hyperactive in his search for his fair maiden. Both Adams and Marsden have done an incredible job which will make you go “yeah, that’s how a fairy tale character would act like in real life”. In contrast, the film almost always gets boring everytime Dempsey starts talking, which is a good thing. He’s meant to be the ordinary boring guy who has to let Giselle know there’s no such thing as dreams coming through. He does a great job in directly contrasting the always hopeful Giselle by being the normal guy who’s just bored of life.

All in all, this film will definitely stick around for quite some time with kids begging their parents to let them watch it over and over again. The romance and comedy in this film do such a great job of parodying fairy tales and cartoons that most people who have grown up reading Cinderella or Snow White will love to watch this film to get a kick out of it. I’ll give you one last hint about the plot: In the end, all of them live ________ ever after. No prizes for filling in the blank correctly.

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Personally, I’ve never been a fan of puzzle games. Most of the time, after a long day at school, I just want to come home and start playing a shooter or action game to relax instead of continuing to rack my brains over another puzzle. Thus, I was apprehensive about trying out Valve’s new game, Portal, which is included in The Orange Box. Even after it began to receive rave reviews from practically every single gaming magazine and website out there, it still took awhile before I finally decided to try the game out for myself. Thank goodness I did or I’d be missing out on a lot.

For those who still don’t know, The Orange Box is the latest product released by Valve which includes not only 1, but 3 games: Half-Life 2 (the original game as well as the 2 sequel episodes), Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I’ve never tried Half-Life 2, and I’ll probably do a Team Fortress 2 review in the near future, but for now I’ll focus on what’s definitely one of the best games in recent (if not all) times.

Portal is played from a first-person perspective and you’ll carry a single gun throughout the entire game. However, you’ll never fire any bullets, because this gun doesn’t carry any, instead, you’ll shoot 2 different “portals” (as the name of the game implies) onto surfaces which you can then teleport in between by walking through them. Using this special gun, you then have to navigate through a series of 19 levels, all of which require you to “think with portals”. While this gameplay concept sounds really simple, it actually makes Portal a highly addictive game. In fact, this gameplay mechanic originated from a freeware game, Narbacular Drop, which was actually a student project. However, the entire development team is now hired at Valve as they helped make Portal what it is today. For those of you who are interested in Portal but aren’t ready to fork out cash to buy the game, I’d suggest you give Narbacular Drop a spin. It is quite short however (5 levels) and I’ve never personally played it before.

While it sounds simple, Portal is anything but an easy game. While I breezed through the first 15 levels in slightly under an hour, the last 4 levels (especially the last one) took me forever to complete. Even with such a seemingly simple gameplay mechanic to work with, the people behind these levels have created amazingly complex level designs that will positively confound you. As you progress, you’ll meet sentry guns that you’ll have to figure out how to take out using nothing but portals, and the final boss fight is unlike any other boss fight I’ve ever played, since this is the first time I’m not using bullets to kill it.

Speaking of the boss, I haven’t touched on the best part of this game: its humour. Many game reviewers have called this the funniest game ever developed, and I’ll have to agree. Throughout the game, GLaDOS’ voice will guide you through the various levels, providing hints as to how to get past a certain obstacle. However, more often than not, she (it’s a female voice) will throw in a few weird comments, suggesting that her motive is more sinister than it looks. I won’t spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t played this game yet, but be prepared for some pretty hilarious bits in Portal. Not to mention Portal has time and time again received the award for best end-game song ever, you’ll have to play through the entire game to understand what it’s about though (the cake is a lie!).

One thing to note however, Portal is a very short game. While the last 4 levels will take you some time to figure out, the entire game will at most last for 2 or at best 3 hours. Some reviewers have claimed it’s a good thing, since Portal doesn’t outstay it’s welcome by having so few levels, but others feel that it contains too little content. Personally, I think I belong to the latter group, I would have thoroughly enjoyed more levels which were of similar difficulty to the last few levels in the game. Still, the game’s content was more than worth my US$10 in my opinion, since it can be purchased individually over Amazon instead of having to buy the entire Orange Box.

All in all, “this was a triumph”, and I’m hoping that a sequel to Portal will be released soon since I still haven’t gotten enough of it. For those of you who are still wondering if you should get this game, stop hesitating and just go buy it already, I’m quite sure you’ll find it worthwhile. Practically anyone will enjoy this game, with such a simple gameplay mechanic but yet such complex levels and plenty of humour to boot, what’s not to love about this game?

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The name “Simple Plan” is almost synonymous with the punk rock genre of music. Formed almost a decade ago in 1999, Simple Plan has had major successes world wide. Releasing “No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls” back in 2002 and then “Still not getting any…” in 2004. Both albums achieved double and single platinum in the United States respectively as well as quadruple platinum in Canada. Just recently (a week ago as a matter of fact), they released their 3rd studio album, simply titled “Simple Plan” (no pun intended).

However, the standard of this album falls far behind that of the other 2 albums in my opinion. The most popular song in this album, Your Love is a Lie, as well as I Can Wait Forever remind me of the boy bands of the 1990s (ala Backstreet Boys/Westlife), especially the chorus. Not to mention Take My Hand sounds like an oddly “cheerful” song (S Club 7?) and The End is practically indistinguishable from all the other punk rock songs (Yellowcard, Good Charlotte… take your pick) as do Generation and Time to Say Goodbye (both sound like Bowling for Soup, and the latter is just irritating me by repeating the song title over and over again in the song itself). Save You almost sounds like a boy band singing along to rock music in the background (ie. completely weird).

The only songs in the album which I can bring myself to remotely like are When I’m Gone, Holding On, No Love and What If (ironically the first song and the last 3 songs). Yet, even then, there isn’t anything completely unique about these songs that sets them apart from all the other punk rock songs out there, including Simple Plan’s own songs from previous albums. In my opinion, the music found in Simple Plan (I’m referring to the album here) simply hasn’t evolved much over the years.

In fact, I loved Simple Plan’s debut album No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls and Still Not Getting Any… When it comes to the punk rock genre, I’ve always enjoyed their songs, unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about this new self-titled album of theirs. Honestly, these type of songs were fresh when they first appeared a few years back in their earlier albums, but it’s time they injected something new into their songs. I don’t know what that secret ingredient is, all I know is that it’s missing from this album.

All in all, I expected better from a band of this standard and am pretty disappointed by this album (I’m not alone). Simple Plan’s plan for this album was perhaps a little too simple (pun intended this time).

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Cartoons are certainly enjoyed by all children, however as most people grow up, they inevitably become more mature and stop watching these cartoons. However, it seems like the Japanese have been able to keep teenagers and even adults drawn into seemingly childish shows in the form of animes. They’ve probably captured the hearts of so many people due to their simple presentation but yet deep and immersive plots and stories. One such example of a pretty good anime in my opinion would be Black Lagoon.

Despite the title of the show, it has absolutely nothing to do with an actual lagoon. It is set in the port city of Roanapur where the biggest criminals and gangsters in the world gather at. Black Lagoon is the name of a “delivery company” which often has brushes with the wrong side of the law. Their job is simple: deliver a package (or even a person at times) to a specific location, except they usually use a torpedo boat to do so. The show starts off with the crew (Revy, Dutch and Benny) hijacking another boat to steal a certain disc containing valuable information to the client and then delivering it to the client. While doing so, they kidnap one of the office workers on board and intend to collect some ransom for his safe return. However, due to a turn of events, Rock ends up joining the crew of Black Lagoon and then follows them on their various missions throughout the 25 episodes.

Probably the most stunning and striking thing about Black Lagoon is its presentation. Being a show with many violent scenes throughout, the show makes use of a lot of graphic violence in order to portray large scale gun fights. Oftentimes, characters seem to possess extraordinary strength and skills which help make the show all the more exciting. The different characters and personalities of the crew members also make for interesting scenes. For example Revy is a trigger happy girl who always uses violence and guns to solve problems and has little disregard for other people. However, Rock is almost the direct opposite as he dislikes violence and is a cool headed negotiator who is able to help the group out but hinders them at times due to his inexperience in gun fights.

Initially, the jobs they get are on a fairly small scale, however as the series progresses, we get to see a lot more action, mostly in the form of gun fights. Revy has the nickname of “Two-hands” for a good reason, she has 2 pistols (whom she names Cutlass) in holsters that are easily accessible to her at all times, and she frequently pulls them out throughout the series to take down enemies and defend Rock and the other crew members of the Black Lagoon. This becomes all the more important later in the series when the crew becomes entangled with modern day Nazis, triads and even a triad war in Japan. The stories become more and more epic and deaths aren’t uncommon. The different story arcs are all very well thought out and provide plenty of opportunities for large scale gun fights which make the series all the more exciting to watch and enjoy.

Unfortunately, despite many great story arcs throughout the 25 episodes, there isn’t much continuation between the different arcs. One arc just suddenly ends and the next one begins in the next episode and the viewer is left to wonder what happens in between. This means that there is no overall storyline to make the show feel complete, rather it feels like bits and pieces thrown together to form an entire series. For example there are a few twists near the end of the series (for example one of the characters turns out to be CIA operative) but nothing ever comes of them, which is really disappointing. The last episode also doesn’t seem to round up the series at all, but it’s still unclear as to whether there’ll be a third season. However, that seems unlikely since the second one ended a year ago and there’s still no news about a third season.

All in all, Black Lagoon is still a really great anime series which I would recommend to almost anyone who enjoys watching action packed gun fights as well as detailed and compelling story arcs. The only drawback is that there isn’t much of an overall story to the whole season. Still, the individual story arcs as well as the great presentation all make up for it.

You can watch this anime series for free over at Anime Crunch or you can search for it at Veoh. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles.

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The PDF format is definitely an industry standard for many documents, especially soft-copies of manuals that are distributed online. While Mac users (like myself) need not worry about opening and reading these PDF documents (since Mac OS X comes with the software Preview which is able to open both pictures and PDF files), Windows users are often stuck with having to download the Adobe Reader which is often slow and buggy since it takes up quite a lot of system resources for a program that’s just used to open documents. Thankfully, there’s now an alternative to the Adobe Reader: Foxit Reader, a free PDF reader for the Windows platform.

Despite the somewhat strange name, Foxit is actually a really good piece of software. It does one thing only: read PDF files of course, but it does that job pretty darn well. For starters, the installation file which you have to download is only around 2mb. As compared to Adobe Reader’s installation file, which is 20mb, you’ll be able to download Foxit Reader much faster. Obviously, a small installation file translates into an extremely lightweight program unlike the Adobe Reader. You’ll immediately notice the difference in speed between Foxit and Adobe Reader the first time you run the program. Compared to Adobe Reader, Foxit is blazingly fast. When you open a PDF file, it almost immediately pops up (the speed depends on your computer of course) and you don’t need to stare at a splash screen like the one found in Adobe Reader.

Once open, Foxit Reader takes up a lot lesser system resources as well, being a much more lightweight program. As long as your computer isn’t too old, you should be able to scroll through most PDF files pretty smoothly. The search function also works faster as compared to Adobe Reader, allowing you to search for a particular word or phrase extremely quickly. All these features allow you to quickly browse through PDF files using Foxit instead of constantly having to wait for Adobe Reader to catch up with your actions. It has a standard PDF viewer layout, with all the pages listed at the side for easy reference and has most of the features you’d come to expect from such a program.

Of course, Foxit doesn’t just display PDF files. There are several annotation tools available that allow you to make notes on PDF files. You can draw graphics, highlight text or add your own, then save or print out your edited PDF to keep. These tools will obviously come in very handy for many people who wish to make comments on a certain portion of a PDF file. If necessary, Foxit will also allow you to convert an entire PDF file into a simple text file so that you can easily manipulate the text, not that it’s hard to manipulate it within Foxit in the first place. Best of all, Foxit is completely free to download for personal, non-commercial use. While some might be worried about any spyware or virus being included in the installation file, rest assured that there’s no such thing in there (I’ve checked that out for myself).

There really isn’t much else to say about Foxit Reader, after all it’s just a PDF reader. However, I definitely recommend that everyone switch to using Foxit instead of Adobe Reader to open PDF files because it’s a lot more reliable and stable. Furthermore, being a freeware program, there really isn’t any excuse for you to not get this program now.

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