The day Disney bought Marvel, everybody thought that things will go down hill. I remember reading all the speculation on how people think that Disney will ruin the comics and disrespect the characters and how everything will turn kid friendly. Surprisingly, that has not been the case. In fact, the only thing that changed was the bigger focus on the Marvel the films. Whether you love ‘em or not, there’s no denying the big quality boost they’ve been getting. No movie is a testament to that than one of the greatest action movie of all time, The Avengers. Can they still maintain that roll after The Avengers though?

After the events of The Avengers, Robert Dow- I mean Tony Stark started to get anxiety attacks every time he started to think about it and began to feel that he is nothing without the Iron Man suit. A terrorist that goes by the name The Mandarin (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) starts doing terroristy things and America is wetting its pants. Something happens to Tony (AVOID SPOILERS HERE) and he has to fight this threat without the suit and out of his comfort zone.

The biggest difference in this movie that makes it stand out from the other Iron Man movies is that Jon Favreau isn’t directing it. This time, the director of is the Christmas lovin’, Mr. “Hey Robert Downey, I’ll give you another chance at a big career”, Shane Black. You might know him from great movies he directed, such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and.. Well, Iron Man 3 only the second movie he directed. He also helped write the screenplay along side Drew Pearce. So how well did he do? Well, let’s just say that I think Iron Man 3 is EASILY the best Iron Man movie.

People love the Iron Man movies because of Robert Downey Jr. and in this one, you get a whole lot more Tony Stark to keep you entertained. We all love us some Robert Downey Jr. and we all know how much of a GOD he is, so let’s talk about something else.

The tone of the movie is much darker than the other ones in terms of atmosphere, but then you get this weird mix of dark atmosphere and fun interactions because the dialogue is not dark most of the time. In fact, it goes like this pretty much the entire movie. Every other character is very well thought out and fun to watch, even without the use of one-liners like the other Iron Man movies. It’s like there’s a Stark gene and all the characters got infected by it. NOT saying that every character now acts like Tony Stark, but they’re now just as entertaining in their own way.

A big weak point of the other Iron Man movies has been the villains. They were just dull and unmemorable most of the time or in Mickey Rourke’s case, heavily under developed. This time however, the villain(s) are great. Ben Kingsley is just over the top and very threatening when he wants to be and my lord, Guy Pearce was just a lot of fun to watch do his thing. Huge props to the screenplay and all the actors in this movie. Robert Downey Jr. had to earn standing out this time around all these great performances. It wasn’t Robert Downey Jr. the movie, it was actually Iron Man 3. (Noticed how I love saying and writing Robert Downey Jr.?)

There are some minor complains (that aren’t worth mentioning) and if you’re an Iron Man fan, there’s something that will piss you off in the movie that involves The Mandarin. Saying it is a huge spoiler to movie and it’s hard to not talk about it because it is something that deserves to be discussed. Maybe later I’ll edit it after everyone went out to see the movie, because you SHOULD see it. The lack of AC/DC songs aside, it’s just a really fun movie.

And I think that’s the word that pretty much describes the whole movie. Fun. Action scenes? Fun. Dialogue and characters? Fun. Cinematography and choreography? Fun. It’s impossible to not have fun watching it. The only way you will not enjoy this movie is if you had Batman really far up your ass. So do yourself a favor and stop thinking everything needs to be Batman. He gets tossed around by a clown.

To answer my first question, yes, Marvel and Disney are still on a roll and they show no signs of stopping. The list for the upcoming movies that might tie in The Avengers 2 is very big too, so brace yourselves for another set of Marvel movies. Now if only Disney could buy the rights to the X-Men and Spider-Man movies.

‘Oblivion’, based on an unpublished graphic novel, is a science fiction movie which goes right into the year 2077 and tells the story of Jack Harper, a former Marine commander who goes down to earth to repair drones. 60 years prior to the events that take place in the movie, the earth was mostly destroyed after a nuclear war took place thanks to an alien invasion.

The movie starts off well enough, introducing all the characters at its own pace and definitely helps you understand what’s going on. That sense of loneliness can be felt too as a lot of scenes were dragged out (which was a good thing). Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is the last man on the planet and along with his partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), set out everyday to fix drones to scavenge the planet for ‘scavengers’ and turn earth’s oceans into usable fuel for Titan, a space station where the humans have established themselves.

The movie has a brilliant plot, the action sequences were absolutely entertaining, the acting was beyond mediocre and the landscape shots had a lot of depth too, making this movie a visual treat. So why don’t you care all that much for some of the characters? Something you might constantly ask yourself at the end of the movie.

Coming from the science fiction genre, you would expect the movie’s plot to be a straightforward one. Fortunately, it doesn’t disappoint us on that front. The movie was way bigger than what you expect it to be. It kept dragging out here and there, but it was all part of the build up, making all the yawns and groans worth it in the end. A huge twist of events in the end was hugely unexpected and will definitely leave you in awe.

Seeing Tom Cruise back in yet another science fiction movie was no surprise. Surely enough, he carries the movie well all by himself, making this movie a whole lot better. The supporting cast backed him up with intriguing performances. Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman and Andrea Riseborough along with the rest of the cast were beyond convincing.

The movie brings to mind ‘The Matrix’, ‘Minority Report’, ‘Star Wars’ and dozens of other great science fiction movies, and at the same time feels as though the best elements of all these movies were mashed together to produce this fairly great movie.

Looks like director Joseph Kosinski’s (Tron: Legacy) second attempt at a movie turned out to be a brilliant-ish success. ‘Oblivion’ was a visually beautiful and entertaining movie with brilliant action sequences and cast making it a great classic science fiction flick. It is a must watch so catch it in theatres on April 11th!

Rating: 7.5/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpazwrV2YA0

Graduation is around the corner and it’s the most anticipating moment of every students’ lives. A rite of passage for most and the transition to the next step. You’d want to look your best for this specific moment. Once you’ve ordered your gowns and sending out invitations, it’s time to glamourise yourself. Transform yourself from a scruffy exam taker to a polished graduate overnight.

Habibs: Hair & Beauty is up for a treat! They gave us the chance to share with you guys a package aimed towards the youth.

The student package goes as follows:

Hair cut – QR 100

Hair wash – QR 30

Manicure – QR 70

Pedicure – QR100

Eyebrow – QR 25

Upper lip – QR 15

_____________

Total: QR340

Grab this package and visit their salon. 30% discount just for you guys! From QR 340, it goes down to QR 238. Plus, if you mention this article and you’ll get an additional 10% off – and now it’s down to QR 204.

This package is especially given to us and we’d like to share to our viewers. Quick! This promotion is only valid for twelve months from date of issue.

Sugar & Spice is located in Qatar’s most sophisticated and stylish shopping centers – the Lagoona Mall. With the mall constantly unveiling a range of shops and restaurants, Sugar and Spice is one of them. Its location is right by the entrance so you will never miss it. Its somewhat convenient in a way that you will never lose a sight of it. However, the place is tiny, crowded and full of chatters. It’s definitely ideal for socialites to hang out but not for a quiet reading place. Mind you, that the place is always packed. Hence, it is advisable to book your place before coming. You will be also entertained by their choice of playlist which I believe suits the ambience and the interior. Speaking of interior, you might mistaken it for Shakespeare and Co. from a quick glimpse  from the corner of your eye.

Behold the interior! There’s also wi-fi connection – a strong one.

My friend, Tim Gharoui, repeatedly claim the goodie jar to be phenomenal. It is true, warm moist brownie slapped with cold vanilla ice cream at the top. It’s not every day you get to eat from a jar but hey, the presentation is simple yet nicely put. Remember to have some sort of liquid nearby. My companion had this goodie jar along with oreo milkshake (picture below) which was an ideal set – full on chocolate. Then, he got thirsty. On the topic of the oreo milkshake, it’s marvelous! Although, I was expecting chunks of oreos along with a whole round cookie as finishing touches. But without those, it’s still a hell of a milkshake!

The point of this visit is to try out the red velvet cake. When I’ve known this all along, the taste varies from different shops. Now that it has become a standard item in the menu, I’ve decided to go on a perfect red velvet hunt.

The red velvet cake is definitely worth the pay – around QR23. With the right size, it will definitely satisfy your evening sweet cravings. Scratch that, not just during evenings, but all the time! As a person who digs the fridge late at night, this red velvet cake will definitely be part of the food items.

The cake is moist and sweet but lacks butter which I don’t mind. The smooth cream cheese frosting is absolutely delicious. As a person who dive into icings, they did not fail satisfy me. Personally, I don’t mind being served the frost only. I just like things sweet.

And I got a pink lemonade to go with my cake. I definitely love it! It will be better if they add sprinkles of shaved ice but this definitely satisfy my thirst in comparison to the milk shake.

The overall is just lovely. I’ll visit it again.

Quality of food: 10/10

Menu variety: 8/10

Customer service: 9/10

Place: 6/10

Here’s happy Timmy~

‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ is an upcoming science fiction action film which is directed by J. J. Abrams (Mission Impossible 3, Star Trek) and is the second flick in the rebooted Star Trek Franchise. It tells the story of… well, I’m not too sure myself. The movie’s storyline has not released and you can’t really decipher all much from the trailer. All you know is that ‘The Enterprise’ and its crew members are going up against a villain far more superior to them.

Chris Pine returns as Captain James Kirk along with Zachary Quinto Commander Spock and Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura. The films also stars John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg.

All the trailers so far keep teasing a dozen things, making you more curious than usual. From the looks of the new trailer, it’s going to be one hell of a movie! ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ opens in theatres on May 17th, 2013!

Check out the new trailer below!

A great look at the villain can be seen in the TV spot below:

An outstanding young fashion designer, Fatma Ghanem (Fufistylist), along with Fahad Al Rahiman have partnered with National Center for Cancer Care and Al Amal Hospital in organizing a charity fashion show. The event was initiated as an awareness of cancer and its early detection along with the treatments.

“To reduce risk of cancer you need to make just 3 changes in your lifestyle – don’t smoke, keep active and eat 5 daily portions of fruits and vegetables.”

And these words echo throughout the event.

The young Libyan designer auctioned some of the diverse collection of Abayas to raise money for cancer research. Her collection was called “The soul of the 60’s” reflecting the fashion back in the 60s. Along with that, other young artists sold their artworks at the event.

Karl Moreto & Lubaib Gazir, two outstanding local photographers were one of the few that showcased their works.

Interesting enough, that the event was held on International Women’s Day, 8th March. The young female designer may be heading on being a role model for the ladies.

Delicious cupcakes from Tasmeem: Flowers & Chocolates were given out at the event.

Papabubble spotted at the event! They’ve created customized candy just for the event.

Sam Raimi directed this movie, Bruce Campbell made a cameo. And that, ladies and gentlemen, ends the list of good things about this movie.

Oz the Great and Powerful is the story of Oz (played by James Franco), a circus magician who isn’t kind to others and who constantly lies to women in order to sleep with them. One guy tries to chase him down for sleeping with his girlfriend (I assume), so Oz hops on a hot air balloon, gets sucked in a tornado and ends up in Oz, where they claim a powerful wizard that bears the name of the land will one day come to save them.

Yes, I know, the story is really damn old, so there’s no escaping the cliches. Could they AT LEAST have written a better script though? There is no way to watch this movie without cringing at how terrible the dialogue is and how poorly written it is.

Normally people won’t talk much about who was in charge of the casting, but the main and supporting characters of this movie were so badly cased that I need to mention what a terrible job John Papsidera did. I get it, he wanted the characters to seem human and there’s no actor more human and relateable than James Franco. But here’s the thing; most of these characters aren’t supposed to be human aside from Oz. It’s not like James Franco did a good job either. I think this was probably the worst acting of his life. He made the character very dull, boring and just unlikable throughout the entire movie.

But the worst casting decision has to be Mila Kunis as the Wicked Witch. My god, you could not have picked a worse actress to play that character. I could not get into the movie because I kept being distracted by how out of place and out of character she was. It’s like they just dubbed her voice on. Hell, I don’t even think they let Mila do the Wicked Witch’s laugh, that’s how terrible she was.

What about the visuals? It IS the Land of Oz after all. Sam Raimi directed some of my favourite movies that were visually amazing like Army of Darkness. However, while there were some great camera shots in this movie, it just looked absolutely terrible. Everything to do with the CGI either looked poorly made or just plain scary. I’ll go on a limb and assume that they didn’t want them to be scary or poorly made, so good job accomplishing neither of those.

There’s a moral there somewhere, but the script is so poor that they’re not even sure what it is. They keep hammering in “believe and anything is possible” by is that what really happens? Nope. What they end up teaching is “it’s okay to lie as long as nobody knows it’s a lie.” Awesome, movie. I’d let you babysit my kids any day.

Oz the Great and Powerful was just a poor experience with poor acting, poor casting and a poorly written plot. If you enjoy things with poor quality, then you should go see it. Or just go buy a DVD copy of Return to Oz instead. It’s a way better movie and it’s probably cheaper.

Name: This rumor has been out for quite a long time and it’s been mentioned from several sources that the name they’ve chosen to go for is Orbis. This has a whole psychedelic feel to it since the vita means life and when you put the two together, you get Circle of life….really deep, bro.

Hardware specs : According to the super-sleuths at Kotaku, the system memory and video memory will be 8GB and 2.2GB respectively. It’ll feature a blue-ray drive and HDD of 160GB. Yet it must be noted that these specs are for the PS4 development kit and not for the final product, so breathe easy if you thought the HDD was rather minute. Want more details on the specs, check it out here.

Backwards compatibility : according to this Techradar article, the PS4 will have backwards compatibility in the form of streaming existing ps3 games to the new console. This is a wise move of carrying on with their console tradition of integrating backward compatibility and allowing the later generations to experience the joy “Uncharted and Killzone brought to us.

Controller – This is the only visual evidence of the PS4 that has trickled through all the rumours  None can be said much from the photo except for that the black Plexiglass space in the middle of the controller has been said to be for touch-gaming purposes. It will still have the same wireless feature as its’ predecessor.

Image source: The Verge

No second hand games to work on the PS4:  The title speaks for itself … Oh the inhumanity.

So, these are the main headlining rumours that have been floating around but all will be cleared at Sony’s press release today at 6.PM EST. Let’s see what the future looks like.

Note to reader: This review might contain some spoilers. If you know nothing about the movie and you’d like to keep it that way until you see it, skip to the last paragraph.

I’m kind of annoyed. When movies make you think, that’s usually a good sign. However, the more I think about this movie, the more I get annoyed by the amount of all the lost potential it had. Having a good idea turned into a bad movie is one thing, but having a good idea and not use its full potential is probably worse.

Mama starts off with Jeffrey (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) Kidnapping his two daughters, Victoria (played by Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (played by Isabelle Nelisse) after killing his wife. After driving off in the snow and crashing, they find themselves in an abandoned cabin. Jeffrey then attempts to commit a murder-suicide, but something ends up killing him, leaving the little girls in the cabin for five years before they’re rescued by their uncle, Lucas (also played by Nikolaj). They end up taking the girls and trying to have them cope with living with them. Decent plot setup. The problem? Honestly, everything involving the horror elements. I felt like Mama was just not needed and she took away the focus from what could have been a great story. She should’ve not been the focus of the movie and I felt like she should have been non-existent.

I can tell you what I loved about the movie; the main characters. They’re all so interesting and they all have so much depth. Victoria got caught in the tragedy when she was three, old enough to have had a life before it. She remembers her father, so when she saw her uncle, she started to remember all of it and try to return to that reality. Lilly on the other hand was younger. All she knew was her life with Mama, so she couldn’t accept another reality or another figure to love other than Mama and her sister. Annabel is a rocker in a rock band with that “screw the man” kind of attitude. She was completely against having kids and completely against raising the little girls, but she still loves Lucas, so she was willing to deal with it and accepting to change. Nikolaj was also pretty good as Lucas and Jeffrey, but you don’t see much of him in the movie as you would expect.

What about our antagonist, Mama? I felt that during the first half of the movie, she was very scary. You never really see her face and the way her body is designed is very eerie and creepy. The way she moved was even scary, creeping me out a few times. You do get to see her face in the other half of the movie and.. well, let’s just say it’s all downhill from there. The CGI on her face was so bad, I found myself laughing every time she pops up. they could have kept her face in the shadows of her hair and she would’ve been way scarier. At least not laughably terrible. She would have easily been one of my favorite monster/ghost designs of all time, but the way they handled her face just absolutely ruined it. Yeah, they gave her a somewhat tragic backstory and they tried to make us sympathize with her, but she honestly came off as a psycho and I never felt bad for her.

Maybe they were on a tight schedule and that’s why she looks so bad. After all, the night scenes were literally shot in broad daylight. They couldn’t even cover that up. I mean when they say “It’s late, go to bed”, I AT LEAST expect the sun to not be up, but that’s really a minor complaint. A minor complaint on a mistake they couldn’t possibly have not notice. I can forgive it since the movie has many great shots that truly made it scary. This is why horror movies are great. You don’t have to have a lot of special effects or a big budget; one creative shot could be all you need.

What really disappointed me though is the amount of potential in the idea. You had a very good story here, something everyone could sympathize with and absolutely love. A psychological study, a journey of two little girls who do not want to let go of Mama and accepting reality. Hell, the ending could have still had the same concept even if Mama wasn’t real, with one girl accepting reality and the other one not accepting it. Being a horror movie and having all the super natural elements ruined all that potential and kind of made it not matter.

Perhaps I’m being unfair to the movie. I’m judging it based on what I wanted it to be instead of what it really is and, to be honest, it’s a decent horror movie. I just think the idea could have been done WAY better as another type of movie, even as a psychological thriller. But it’s not and I have to accept that it’s their vision. If you’re looking for a horror movie that has a little more to it than shock scares (even though there’s a lot of that), check it out. If that’s not enough, Jessica Chastain is very hot in it.