Already a Voltie? Sign in!

Escape to Voltra!

Join for free
Posted in Divergent series Posted 6 years ago
I only saw the movies but I have the first book. I thought they were pretty good, but I understand what you mean about some of the elements not being original enough or not necessarily making much sense. That's why I couldn't really get into The Hunger Games, cause that series basically stripped Battle Royale's bones clean. lol
Posted in Asian Movies Posted 6 years ago
Asian cinema is my life!!! I'm linking trailers on YouTube in case anyone wants to check any of these out:

Comedy

カタクリ家の幸福 ("The Happiness of the Katakuris" - Japanese). This movie is disgusting but it's one of those train wrecks you can't stop watching. A family runs a Bed & Breakfast but they have horrible luck: everyone who stays the night at their house dies. And they don't want to get shut down, so they just keep burying bodies. Then they are informed the nearby road will be expanded onto their land. They don't want the bodies to be discovered, so they dig them up to move them. That's when the movie gets REALLY weird. The corpses get up out of their mass grave...and perform a musical number along their way to their new burial spots. This whole movie is effed up but for some reason I like it.

써니 ("Sunny" - Korean). HILARIOUS. It will also make you bawl your eyes out. Honestly, this is one of the greatest films of all time, in my opinion. It's about a group of women who were friends as teenagers but are in their 40s now, and one of them is dying of cancer and wants to get the old gang back together one last time. There are frequent flashbacks to the 80s when they were teens so you get to see them up to all kinds of shenanigans (crushes, bullies, family drama, school events), but you also get to see the harsh reality of childhood dreams never realized and the way people lose touch over the years, even though when you're a teenager you think you will always be young and you will always have your friends from school. Gah, this movie kills me. T_T It's so good. And so, so funny.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ("Oh, Heart!" - Indian) Again, hilarious, but will make you bawl your eyes out. A man falls deeply in love with his best friend, but she doesn't feel the same. She loves him like her dearest, best friend and favorite person of all time, but he keeps trying to be something more, and she can't love him like that. She's super crazy, wild, and spontaneous, the kind of girl you would love to have for a best friend, but the kind of girl you could also easily fall in love with. Seriously amazing film. And, hey, it's Bollywood!!! Awesome music throughout.

Action

도둑들 ("Thieves" - Korean). This is also hilarious but may also make you bawl your eyes out... It's about a group of Korean con artists/thieves who team up with some Chinese gangsters to pull off a really big heist. Things go completely awry. It's hilarious but bloody, too, and it takes no prisoners.

中南海保鑣 ("The Bodyguard from Beijing" AKA "The Defender" - Chinese). Seriously, everything Jet Li does is amazing. I literally used to have "Jet Li Appreciation" parties in my dorm where my friends would come over and just watch Jet Li movies all day long. I recommend all his films. lol But I picked this one for the list cause I think it's kind of romantic. haha He plays the bodyguard for some bigwig's girlfriend. She's a knockout and falls in love with him, but he can't be with her cause he's just doing his job as her protector. *sniff*

變臉迷情 ("Devil Face, Angel Heart" - Chinese) Daniel Wu is a-ma-zing. Love everything I've ever seen him in, but this is one of his best films, in my humble opinion. He plays a hideously disfigured man who falls in love with a con woman who tricks him into doing her dirty work, with the end result his intended death. He survives, gets plastic surgery to become a drop-dead gorgeous hottie, and comes back for revenge.

Horror

ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ ("Shutter" - Thai). Hands down the scariest Asian film I've ever seen. The end? Woo. That stays with you. Like...for eternity. It's pretty sickening, honestly, but I loved it. A college student gets a girlfriend but she is very plainly and the other guys mock her and try to make him break up with her. He starts ignoring her because he's ashamed of her. Then he does the unthinkable... Serious rape trigger in this film that I could have done without, but if you want to be scared, this is the movie that'll do it to you.

異度空間 ("Inner Senses" - Chinese). This movie is about a woman who sees ghosts everywhere and seeks psychiatric help. It turns out her therapist is being haunted, himself. This movie was terrifying to me, but the ending is kinda wack. Still, soooo worth it for the late, great Leslie Cheung, who was a gay actor who committed suicide in the early 2000s. Broke my heart. T_T

回路 ("Closed Circuit" AKA "Pulse" - Japanese). This is one I cannot watch in the dark. I don't even know what it's about, but people keep turning into ash and it freaks me out so bad. T_T They go to a haunted website and then they can see ghosts (or something). They just act weird and it's terrifying. They put red tape around their doors to keep the spirits out but eventually the entire world's population just turns to dust, and they leave behind these black smudge shadows. Freaky!!!

Drama

시월애 ("Time-Transcending Love Story" AKA "Il Mare" - Korean). Did you like the movie "The Lake House" with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock? That was a remake of this Korean film. A man and woman exchange letters through a magic mailbox, each claiming the mailbox and lake house are theirs, and they eventually realize they are in different places in time. Fascinating. Also heartbreaking. I can't remember how the Korean one ends... The American remake ends happily but Korean movies usually kill everyone off at the end, so...don't hold your breath. lol!

동감 ("Ditto" - Korean). I love time-travel stuff, so here's another favorite. This time a teenager in modern times is contacting a girl who is living in the 1970s via transistor radio. And it's no coincidence, because they are actually connected. And if they had never met via radio, the boy would have never been born... Watch it to find out why! It's so good! (Why are all these films tear-jerkers...? lol)

감기 ("Flu" - Korean). People thought "Train to Busan" was an awesome zombie film, but I think Flu is better by leaps and bounds. It's not zombies per se, but it's about a deadly virus that infects instantly and kills within hours. They start creating landfills of bodies and the main character's child ends up in one in a plastic bag. This movie is seriously scary but ends strangely happily. Unlike Train to Busan. lol I'm mad they took it off Netflix!

Historical Drama

비천무 ("Warrior of Virtue" - Korean). Another bawlfest. A prince is exiled by an invading army and raised as a pauper, but learns secret martial arts. He falls in love with the invading king's daughter and they meet in secret, until the king finds out and has the prince killed. He comes back filled with hatred, brings an army, and sets out to murder everyone who hurt him, including the princess. Except of course his old feelings return. And a lot of twisted, sad things happen that I won't say and spoil but this movie is amazing!

Science Fiction

단적비연수 ("The Legend of the Ginkgo" - Korean). People hate this movie cause it's weird and Koreans aren't the biggest sci-fi film fans, anyway, but I freaking love it and will defend it till I die. A chosen child is meant to be sacrificed by some witch in a freaky cult, but her father gets her away from the witch (who I think is her mother, incidentally) and she is raised by a Viking-like tribe. Two boys in the tribe fall in love with her and as she is discovering her true destiny, their fight for her comes to a head. Very sad, but the popular lead actress Choi JinSil committed suicide years later.

2002 (Chinese). I'll watching anything with Nicholas Tse in it. He's beyond beautiful. But team him up with Stephen Fung? Yummy! In this film Nic is a cop who is partnered with a ghost to take on supernatural threats, but his ghost partner is soon to be reincarnated so Nic needs a new partner. Enter Stephen Fung...a ghost-hunter who is terrified of ghosts.

LGBT recommendation

美少年之戀 ("Bishounen" AKA "Love Between Beautiful Men" - Chinese) I can't find an actual trailer but there are tons of music video fan vids on YouTube. I love this movie, but warning, it does fall into the cross-cultural trap of "gay people can't have happy endings!" Nobody dies, but the men don't stay together. Still, it's worth the ride for that ONE almost-love scene... Daniel Wu plays a security guard who lives with his parents and reveres them above all (it IS an Asian film...) but he and a male gigolo develop crushes on each other. After a lot of UST (unsatisfied sexual tension) they finally wind up in each other's arms...but Daniel's character's father sees them and he is so scared of disappointing his parents that he ends the relationship immediately. This movie breaks my heart but two of my favorite actors in a romantic relationship on the big screen??? Gimme that!!!

Imma stop here cause I could go on forever...
Posted in Kendare Blake Posted 6 years ago
I finished Two Dark Reigns last week and...omgosh, I don't even know what's going to happen next. Everything I expected to happen in the future may have completely fallen apart. I don't know how I'm going to stand the wait for the last book!!! Or how I can stand to read it, knowing it's the end...
Posted in Love Nikki players, gather around! Posted 6 years ago
Night XIV:
@Eldweena: Love Nikki is 3 years old? o_O
They just had their one year anniversary event...

Actually, I think it's been 4 years. The one-year must be from when they broke the game and had to start over.
Posted in Unwritten Rules Posted 6 years ago
Mousy:
My favorite so far was listening to a first date go horribly south. XD
I can assure you, he did not get a second one.
He sure thought he was hot stuff though.

That is awesome! I never overhear things like that. One time I did watch from a second-story restaurant window as as woman tried repeatedly to parallel park and kept slamming into the car in front of her. AND SHE JUST KEPT TRYING. A security guard went over to yell at her, and as soon as he was out of sight, she did it again. LOL!!!
Posted in Best public places to read/write? Posted 6 years ago
@sunny Not a good one... lol! And, right??? Who just wants to eat bread for a meal? I don't get it, either. And I'm a big fan of bread. As a side.
Posted in Favorite books? Posted 6 years ago
@nyreen She also wrote a series called The Secret Books of Paradys, which are collections of short stories that take place in the made-up world of Paradys. I wasn't as crazy about those, but the first story is about a guy who falls in love with a gender-changing vampire. Tanith Lee is very subtle in the way she handles the topic; she doesn't write it like, "Suddenly the woman I loved was...a man?!" It's more like, suddenly she's using different pronouns for the character and the person has just shifted to another gender without any explanation or dramatic reaction. Her writing really can't be compared to anything. Very underrated.
Posted in Reading lists and challenges Posted 6 years ago
@Rallaa I'm too tired to read in the evening. I do it in the morning while my work computer is booting up its 15 million programs (mild exaggeration) and I take a book with me wherever I go, so I actually do a lot of my reading in the checkout line at the grocery store, while my tank is filling with gas, and while stuck in traffic. lol! Then there are those awesome days where our systems go down at work and instead of goofing around with people or messing with my phone, I read.

What fantasy authors were you into?
Posted in What would you do if you won the lottery? Posted 6 years ago
Realistically, I mean. Or gained an inheritance or something?

I ask because I'm expecting to come into some money within the next year or so...and I'm torn about what to do with it all. I really want to put the majority into savings, but there are other things I could use it for, rather than saving up my own paychecks to take care of it.

I am definitely considering buying a new car. Mine's getting a bit old and every time I get an oil change I find out about some other problem.

Other than that...what should I do? Take a dream vacation? Remodel the master bathroom like I've been wanting to do? Those things sound wonderful but would be expensive and once that money's gone, it's gone. (I'm not talking millions, but at least $15 grand.) What would you do?
Posted in Change 1 Letter! Posted 6 years ago
nope
Posted in Count to 100 before the staff gets us! Posted 6 years ago
10
Posted in Need a break! Posted 6 years ago
Work is so tiresome... I really need a break. I have a vacation coming up in two weeks and I had planned to visit my bestie across country, but I'm gonna cancel on him and stay home. I don't feel too bad. I really need some time to do my own stuff cause working 50-60 hours a week really cuts into my personal time!

Anyway, I'm bored. I have a lot on my plate today and it's becoming a bit overwhelming so I'm walking away from my desk for a minute. haha

What do you do when work stresses you out? I'm thinking I need to play some video games. Though at this point even running the vacuum sounds like more fun than work.
Posted in Are you on Goodreads? Posted 6 years ago
Locked due to 6+months of inactivity in the thread. If you would like this thread unlocked, please PM a mod.


Anyone wanna add me? I read mostly young adult fiction, comic books, manga, and true crime, but I'll pick up anything that looks interesting.

I love Goodreads because in the past I've read amazing books, but then later wanted to reread them and couldn't remember the title, and Goodreads does that for me. I also try and leave an honest review for every book I read, partly to remind myself why I loved or disliked something.
Posted in Reading lists and challenges Posted 6 years ago
Locked due to 6+months of inactivity in the thread. If you would like this thread unlocked, please PM a mod.


Do you have a reading list? Do you stick to it? Do you participate in reading challenges?

I've tried making reading lists before, but I never stick to them. I always find something else I'd rather be reading.

I do well with reading challenges, though. I'm a very competitive person and noticed that my friend pledged to read 100 books on Goodreads last year. I thought I'd show her up and pledge to read 200 books myself this year! It's really hard to find that kind of time so I'm about 30 behind right now, and this year she only pledged 5 so now I feel silly. lol!