TV | Forever Summer with Nigella

After the widespread success of Nigella Bites, British food writer and cook Nigella Lawson was given a second series, Forever Summer with Nigella. While the two previous seasons of Nigella Bites had a mishmash of different cuisine centered on some kind of rudimentary theme, Forever Summer focused on cuisine that was mostly prepared during the summer, or food that will make you think of summer.

Forever Summer used colors as the main themes of each episode, where the color mostly corresponded to the ingredients used in the dishes, like "Yellow" for dishes made with lemons, "Pink" for dishes with beets, and so on. 8 episodes were made for this series, which originally aired in 2002.

Nigella's kitchen at her Shepherd's Bush home, with the garden now
clearly in view beyond the glass doors

This series was still filmed at Nigella's former home in Shepherd's Bush, but now the white covering that mostly covered the backyard beyond the kitchen glass doors was usually removed to show Nigella's garden in all its verdant, blooming glory, and it really does look summery with all that greenery seen through the doorway.

In addition, some of the episodes were filmed at Nigella's summer home, which was located right in front of some small lake or inlet. It's amazing to see that her pantries for both homes are well-stocked, and she even lugs around her huge mixer in a tote bag, LOL.

Nigella eats by the window of her summer home

To make it even more summery, the music has been jazzed up and made more upbeat, and production values have never been higher. The food looks scrumptious, whether it's being served at her West London home or right by the huge open windows of her summer home. My only complaint is that I hate the way the camera tends to blur often during closeup shots--they probably wanted an artsy effect, but all it did was make me dizzy.

Forever Summer is probably Nigella's best series in terms of content and overall production. Everything fits well here, and even though you could clearly tell that Nigella gained some weight since her previous series, that eloquent, mellifluous voice is still there, along with her irresistible charm and hotness, hehe. Now if I could only taste all that yummy food...

Film | 2012

When the movie trailer for 2012 debuted sometime last year and showed huge tidal waves slamming across the Himalayas, it became one of my most anticipated movies for this year. I'm always a sucker for films that depict widespread destruction on a massive scale, having previously enjoyed Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow when it was released back in 2004.

Emmerich is back for 2012, and he ups the ante here significantly. While The Day After Tomorrow showed the effects of global warming that resulted in most of the northern hemisphere being engulfed in a second Ice Age, Emmerich throws everything in 2012 but the kitchen sink: ancient Mayan prophecies, planetary alignments, crust displacement, polar shifts, supervolcanoes, megatsunamis, and more.

The result is a uberdisaster film of sheer cataclysmic proportions, with awesome, jaw-dropping visual effects that manage to outdo every disaster movie that came before. It's for this reason alone that 2012 deserves praise, as it clearly shines in most of the technical and production aspects.

As for the plot, that's another matter entirely. Like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 takes a backseat to the numerous cgi effects, with scientific theories that are considered virtually implausible. Furthermore, it's saddled with a story that focuses on an annoying lead character, his utterly annoying family, and an even more annoying bunch of supporting characters--I had no sympathy for all the characters (except for the dog, LOL) and actually wanted all of them to die, heh.

Story-wise, with its "only the super-rich can survive" plot, 2012 is a big "FAIL", and the science is impossible, but I still recommend it as okay entertainment, something to be enjoyed on the big screen with its superb visual effects and some edge-of-your-seat moments. Bring loads of popcorn, check your mind out the door, sit back and enjoy the ride.

Gizmos | Nintendo DSi LL

Barely a year after the Nintendo DSi was launched in Japan, a new version of the handheld was announced sometime last month. Called the Nintendo DSi LL, this model is noticeably bigger, with bigger screens (4.2 inches wide) and includes a second pen-sized stylus aside from the regular stylus stored at the back of the unit. Three colors will be available on the November 21, 2009 launch date: Wine Red, Natural White, and Dark Brown.


The announcement was met with surprise from the gaming industry--Japanese trade publication Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or Nikkei, first broke the news during the last week of October, which Nintendo quickly dismissed as conjecture. But then the DSi LL was officially announced days later--so much for conjecture, eh?

With the exception of the bigger screens, the DSi LL is exactly the same as its DSi counterpart, right down to the 2 cameras, system firmware, and all. There's still no GBA cartridge slot, and the camera resolutions remain the same. Also, a bigger screen size doesn't necessarily translate to a higher screen resolution; it will be pretty much the same, with some games only becoming more pixelated when displayed on the larger screens.

The good news about all this for me is that I'll no longer have to squint reading all that tiny text in some DS games, particularly the eyestrain-causing Chrono Trigger, whose microscopic font will make anyone go blind after prolonged reading. Nikkei reported that Nintendo actually wanted the bigger screens for older people who found the current screen size difficult to view, and I'm inclined to agree with them.


And the bad news? With the huge screens and hardware form factor comes the larger weight--around 314 grams of it. When you start to compare this to the DSi's weight of 214 grams, and the old PSP model 1000 (a.k.a. the PSP Phat) which only weighs in at 280 grams, then you realize that the DSi LL is much more heavier than the bulky PSP Phat. While gamers won't get eyestrain, they'll probably develop repetitive stress injury from holding this heavy thing--I can only predict that the RSI industry will see a significant growth in 2010, heh.

It's a good thing I haven't bought a DSi yet, as I'm certainly getting the DSi LL instead. The only thing I have to put up with will be the name--the North American and European versions of the DSi LL will be changed to DSi XL when it's released in those regions in 2010. Why the hell change it to XL? It sounds like a T-shirt, or worse, like the ill-fated Atari 1200 XL console released during the mid-1980's that bombed miserably. Minus points for whoever suggested that stupid name change.

Music | La Roux - Bulletproof

I chanced upon this video by accident, and was completely mesmerized by all the bright colors and shapes bouncing around--if the producers were hoping to draw attention to the music through its video, then I'll say they've succeeded. Since I'm not really up to date on current pop music anymore, I've never heard of La Roux until now; turns out they're a relatively new act, a duo from the U.K. composed of singer Elly Jackson and synth player Ben Langmaid.



La Roux's music appears to be heavily influenced by the synthpop sound of the 1980's, and even Elly Jackson looks like she warped from the 80's herself, with bright red hair frozen in an upright swirl and appearing to magically defy gravity. The first time I saw her, I also thought she was actress Tilda Swinton, LOL.

Despite Elly's rather discordant singing style (which is actually more of wailing than singing), Bulletproof is actually quite enjoyable, with a memorable hook that tends to stay in your head. Aside from that, most of those bouncing colored shapes in the retro-inspired music video remind me of the dice from Dungeons & Dragons, with some pixelated grids, Tetris blocks, and even d-pads thrown in--all of which appeal to the gamer in me, making this video a winner, heh.