For Anime Lovers:
There's an anime themed social networking website where members can create their own avatars and participate in the virtual world.
It's headquarters are in San Jose, California USA.
There are over 26 million registered users, 7 million of which visit the site daily.
The main language is English.
It is a social gaming and forum website where users join online games and also communicate through the forum.
Gaia Online generates its revenue through selling Gaia gold, the money to purchase virtual goods. On average, a user spends 30$ per month on the Gaia gold.
Anime lovers might find this website fun!

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE

     Howl’s Moving Castle is a Japanese animated fantasy film made in 2004. It is based on the novel by English writer Diana Wynne Jones. The film made $190 million in Japan and $235 million worldwide. Howl’s Moving Castle was distributed in North America by Walt Disney Pictures and English dubbing was made by Pixar’s Peter Docter (an American film director, animator, producer and voice actor). It was nominated for The Best Animated Feature Academy Award in 2006.

     The story is about a nineteen year old hatter girl named Sophie who was turned into a ninety year old woman by a witch curse. On her way seeking a cure for her transformation Sophie meets a tremendously powerful wizard Howl.

     The film received positive reviews in general. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of the critics gave the film positive reviews, which prove the success and general reception of the film. Every person, at some point in their childhood, probably had dreamt of the magic land where there are witches and wizards who have the supernatural powers, and grow an imagination how everything might look like. This film’s visuals are done brilliantly and the plot is sophisticated enough that makes it more than a cartoon. Moreover, I think grown-ups might find Howl’s Moving Castle more fascinating than small children. Highly recommended to watch! ;)

Check out the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibodUGoL4M 
Source:
http://www.yourfaceisa.com/miyazaki-month-howls-moving-castle/

Source:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1067106/

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

The latest movie I watched is a computer animated film made by Disney Animation in 2009 on Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol. The novel has been adapted many times to stage, film and opera and is popular for never being out of print. It is about a bitter old greedy miser Ebenezer Scrooge who was visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jacob and three other Christmas ghosts:  ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The ghosts come to save Scrooge’s miserable faith and give him the last opportunity to make his life worthwhile and learn to show some mercy on people.

The film received mixed to positive reviews from the critics. One Wall Street Journal review says “the tone is joyless, despite an extended passage of bizarre laughter, several dazzling flights of digital fancy, a succession of striking images and Jim Carrey’s voicing of Scrooge…” Nevertheless, almost 60% of the critics gave the movie a positive review according to Rotten Tomatoes. I slightly agree with the upper comment. There were moments in the film where it seemed to me that the images are a little too spooky for young children and all the laughter and shouts too irritating. All in all, I liked the film. It brings back the Christmassy and fairy-tallish atmosphere. Also the implication is significant. Love, Respect and Chistmas.

Source:

http://commaiclimqui.blog.com/2014/04/02/download-a-christmas-carol-book/

BLIND

Few days ago, when I was thinking about the movies that left me the strongest impressions I remembered one scary South Korean crime thriller movie- “Blind”. It is 2011 movie and I watched it about two years ago. A blind girl who used to be a promising cadet in a police academy before she lost her vision, comes to the police office to reveal the hit-and-run case she witnessed (a taxi she was going in hit someone and ran away leaving her on the road). However, police officer does not take her claims seriously because she was blind and then she proves her acute senses to the officer telling him the correct approximations of his height, figure and age. They start working together having no idea that they just caught a tip of a tie to a major serial killer case which was already investigated by the whole department.

I never watch horror movies, especially the Asian horror movies because I find them scariest of all.  The furthest I can go is the crime thrillers and “Blind” was definitely one of the strongest thrills I had in a while. I remember screaming out loudly with my roommate out of fear and waking up the other roommate who was sleeping (still feel sorry).

Check out the trailer below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz_TgM3UOD4

Source:
http://earnthis.net/dans-bottom-everything-twilight/

TWILIGHT SAGA  

    One of my other favorites is Twilight series:  Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.  They say almost all the fans of Twilight saga are girls. Well I can’t deny, most of my female friends were so much into it. But also I know a lot of guys who love this movie too, although I gotta admit they are not the macho-type of guys. Each and every episode has something different, interesting and unpredictable; and none of them came to disappoint the expectations. I applaud the moviemakers for the amazing job.

     One night four years ago, I was in my bed changing the TV channels and came across with some movie that was just beginning. I turned the TV off after ten fifteen minutes because I didn’t like the movie at all. The next month as I finished reading my borrowed Twilight book, I was super excited to watch the movie and compare my visualization with that of the moviemakers’. As you might have predicted while reading, I found it funny that the movie I turned off because of the boredom, would be the one that I would read the book and go crazy about.      

    I did Twilight marathon with my boyfriend last winter, and he got to like the series after all. He used to hate it and was teasing me whether I was a “Team Jacob” or “Team Edward” J . Now, he’s in my Team Edward lol.

Source:
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Frozen

FROZEN

    Frozen, the latest 3D animated musical film produced by Walt Disney Pictures, was a very successful work which was nominated and won numerous awards and so far grossed 914$ million in worldwide box office revenue. The interesting plot, beautifully expressive and at the same time catchy songs and the artistic features of computer generated imagery make the film so attractive and favorite of the audience. Personally, I prefer watching this kind of quality animations rather than the mediocre movies.

     Rotten Tomatoes, a review website, reports that 89% of the critics gave the film a positive review. A lot of appraisals are collected on the songs of the film. The song from the film “Let It Go” performed by American actress and singer Idina Menzel in the role of Queen Elsa got so appreciated by the audience that Disney Animation released a multiple language version that includes about 25 different languages. (Check out the video through the link below)   

A month ago, while we were talking about this multiple language version, one of my friends said “Have you watched Tangled? Rapunzel from Tangled shows up in Frozen”. I replied “You probably mistook Elsa with Rapunzel” and he got all confused, then we made a bet. Well I lost my bet (look at the picture I’ve uploaded).    
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC83NA5tAGE 

Look, Rapunzel and Flynn! :)
Source:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Frozen-Tangled-Little-Mermaid-Actually-Linked-42225.html

Source:
http://mediasociety.drshellyblair.com/analyzing-friends/

MORE FRIENDS
Friends Vs How I Met Your Mother

No offense to the fans of How I Met Your Mother, but I have watched the first few seasons of How I Met Your Mother and towards the fifth season I just kept losing my interest in it and by the fifth season, I just stopped watching any further. The humor and irony there seem to be too repetitive and too unsophisticated. I couldn’t help but it got more and more boring and instead of laughing or just enjoying, I was often annoyed by the plot and especially the characters. No one of How I Met Your Mother’s characters is my favorite, (funny that my boyfriend likes Barney Stinson very much, the “legen-wait for it-dary” guy). Compared to that, the characters of Friends are so cool that I could not answer right away the question “Which one of the six friends do you dislike most?”

Well I thought about it and I do not dislike any of them. I can only make a list of Friends characters from the most favorite to the least favorite:

1.      Monica Geller.

2.      Joey Tribbiani/ Phoebe Buffay

3.      Chandler Bing

4.      Ross Geller

5.      Rachel Green

First comes Monica, because I like her upbeat mood, smart jokes and hospitality. Next, there are Joey and Phoebe, whom I cannot tell one over the other. Although naïve and dumb, Joey is too cute and Phoebe is just cool, she handles difficult situations better than anyone else. Chandler’s sarcastic jokes bring him to the third place. Lastly I like Ross almost as much as I like Rachel, however a lot of times Rachel acts only in her best interest which brings her at the bottom of my list. 

FRIENDS
Friends- twenty years old, but to me still the best show ever.

Friends is about twenty something year old New Yorkers’ lives of love, friendship, downfall and career. The series won numerous awards and was nominated for Emmy awards for 63 times. 52.5 million Americans watched the final episode when it was aired on 6^th of May,2004. Up until now, many critics consider Friends to be one of the finest shows ever. I’m one of the fans of Friends and right about to finish my second round of “marathon” (just going to watch the first episode of the last season after posting this).  No matter how many times I have watched Friends, the jokes still make me laugh over and over again and the sad scenes are as touching as it was for the first time. (Once again the part where Monica sits down on her knee to propose to Chandler got me all excited with tears in my eyes).

Just an interesting fact to know: turns out that initially producers wanted Courtney Cox to portray Rachel and Jennifer Aniston Monica. However Cox and Aniston disagreed and exchanged their roles. Seems to me that almost nobody could have been Monica better than Cox. The writers found that they had to adjust the characters they had written to suit the actors, and the discovery process of the characters occurred throughout the first season.

More posts to come about Friends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends

Sources:

Source: http://wanna-joke.com/tag/f-r-i-e-n-d-s/page/6/